“Happy birthday!” My father shook Nick’s hand. “Quite a place you’ve got here.”
“Thank you both very much for coming,” Nick said warmly. “It means a lot to me to have you here, and I know Bex has been missing you very much.”
“Well, obviously, we’re delighted to be here,” my mother said, launching into what sounded like a TripAdvisor review. “It’s tremendous, and the level of service! I can’t even begin to imagine the planning.”
“Luckily, all I had to do is show up,” Nick said, smiling. “I don’t want you to think your daughter would have anything to do with the sort of person who would approve an ice sculpture of himself riding a polo pony.”
“He barely even rides,” I said. “Because of the wooden leg.”
“Bex!” Mom gasped.
“Don’t tell,” Nick said conspiratorially. “I’m so sorry I can’t stay and chat longer, but Gran will have my head if I don’t circulate.” He caught my eye, and did a quick double take. “Nice necklace,” he added.
“Happy birthday,” I said, holding his gaze, unwilling to melt. “My best to Gemma.”
Before he could react, he was whisked away. It was the last I talked to him that night.
After another hour, the footmen began notifying the older guests that their cars were lining up outside. I desperately wanted my parents to stay, but Mom and Dad had an early flight back to the United States, where my father had a long-standing meeting with the SkyMall board to discuss the Coucherator 2.0, which came with the option for a full sleeper sofa.
“This was marvelous, Bex,” my mother gushed quietly, as we were saying our good-byes. She gently touched my chin. “And you were dignified and composed and wonderful. A credit to any family, even a royal one. Maybe especially.”
“Stop it, Mom,” I said. “You’re going to make me cry.”
Mom kissed my cheeks—both of them, European-style—and moved over to say good-bye to Lacey. I went to hug Dad, and he squeezed my shoulders very paternally.
“This is a strange kind of life,” he said, looking me square in the eye. “There’s always going to be a part of it that looks different from the outside than inside. And that you can’t share. With anyone.”
Nothing escaped my father. “I know, Dad,” I said.
“And you really have to love a person to put up with that,” he continued. “Love the person, not just the trappings. Because the rest of this…”
“Is fabulous,” Mom supplied, bouncing over as Lacey drifted back toward the party.
“Is a lot to hitch your wagon to,” Dad said. “Especially for someone like you, Bex.”
“What does that mean?” Mom twittered. “She’d be grand at it.”
I think this was a beginning of her quasi-English accent.
“It means this is the antithesis of someone as free-spirited as Bex is,” Dad said to her. “Or used to be, anyway. And I worry about that.”
There was a moment of silence among the three of us. My mother looked thoughtful.
“I really do love him, Dad,” I finally said.
But as I watched my parents disappear down the Grand Staircase, I chewed on what Dad had said. I’d had to swallow an awful lot of irregularities to be with Nick, many of them hurtful, and all of them starting to chip away at my core.
While we’d dined and danced, the Picture Gallery had been transformed into a tiki theme, with potted palm trees lining the walls and a thatched roof over the bar, which was dishing out cocktails in coconuts. Someone had even wrangled an enormous tank, full of colorful tropical fish, against the far wall. That someone had to be Tony, whom I spied standing in the corner, talking animatedly to Cilla. Near the door, Gaz slumped against a totem pole.
“Freddie got Tony a gig designing this,” Gaz said, gesturing around the room. “He only pretended to fail security. Top secret. So impressive.” He sighed. “I feel a right pillock.”
“Pillock.” I tossed the word around in my mouth. “What is that rhyming slang for?”
“Not a bloody thing,” Gaz said morosely.
Nick was dancing loosely with a cluster that included India Bolingbroke and Gemma Sands. His bow tie swung open and carefree, his eyes not searching for mine the way they would have a year ago, and I knew there would be no covert rendezvous later. I leaned against the pole with Gaz, my partner in feeling inconsequential and insufficient. The room was buzzing with energy and people and revelry, and even as I looped my arm around my friend, I had never felt so alone.
Chapter Seven
Nick and I broke up ten weeks later.
As I’d feared, Gemma’s impetuous kiss had made the papers, and the tabloids immediately blared that she was in and I was out. Clarence House didn’t want to make a statement either way—“We can’t discuss them if we never discussed you. Consistency,” had been Marj’s unsatisfying explanation—and Ladbrokes christened Gemma the odds-on favorite for a potential royal bride. I’d been kicked down to twenty-to-one, just inside “Someone He’s Related To” and “A Man.” Nick and I had barely discussed this, beyond Don’t worry and Gem’s just a friend, because he was off at the Britannia Royal Naval College before joining the officers’ ranks. The little he did come home, we had sex in what felt less like insatiable need for each other, and more like an insatiable need to do something other than squabble. And despite what Nick had promised, still there was no movement toward going public. The excuses that piled up were everything short of astrology, reasons and Reasons eventually blurring into nonsense. The longer we weren’t official, the more I officially felt like his dirty little secret.
Things came to a head during the run-up to Prince Edwin’s wedding to a young dance teacher from Sussex, Lady Elizabeth Bewley. Per the official story, Edwin met Elizabeth at a dinner party and, besotted, carefully wooed her out of the public eye. Per reality, no one had a clue how they’d met, and the Palace was caught totally by surprise.
“I think he got tired of Gran nagging him, so he bought himself a quickie bride who’d irk her and get him a lot of press,” Freddie said one night over pints in his chambers at Kensington.
“Sounds familiar,” Nick said dryly, raising an eyebrow at Freddie.
“What if they don’t like each other?” I asked.
“He’s fifty-two years old,” Nick had said. “Gran doesn’t care if he likes who he marries, so long as he does it.”
“That seems so archaic,” I mused. “What if Edwin is gay?”
“You can’t expect royal obligations to take pesky little things like sexual orientation into account,” Freddie said.