Edwin randomly announced the engagement himself on the morning chat show Sunrise, just because it is Elizabeth’s favorite (she likes that the weather graphics wear human accessories, like sunglasses and scarves). His press secretary publicly quit in a huff, and Eleanor was in a tizzy—so much so that she actually suggested that Nick bring me to the wedding.
“Wait. You mean…like a date? A public date?” I’d asked when he told me. We were in my living room, him doing a crossword before his phone rang; me pretending to try one, but actually idly sketching various imaginary cartoon ladies (who all ended up looking rather like Gemma with devil horns).
“Yes,” Nick said. “It’s all been thrown together so fast that Gran is worried it’s a bit of a shotgun wedding, and she’s keen for a distraction.”
“So I’m just part of a gambit,” I said, letting out with a sad puff the excited breath I’d held.
“We don’t have to go, if you’d rather not.” He tugged at his hair, not meeting my eyes. “I agree it’s not ideal.”
I couldn’t tell what he wanted me to say. But I knew that for me, Job One was getting out of this discomfiting personal purgatory.
“No, we should do it,” I said. “It’ll be nice. Right?”
“Right,” he said. Then he did look at me, and warmth crept into his face. “Right,” he repeated, more confidently, and we exchanged smiles that were—if tentative—at least sincere.
The one definite upside to this wedding: Figuring out who exactly Lady Elizabeth Bewley even was briefly proved more enticing to the public than Nick, or Freddie, or Gemma, or I, and the press dug into her life hungrily. Elizabeth was sweet. Elizabeth taught children how to do pliés and stand in fifth position. Elizabeth had been very popular, but not very academically gifted. Elizabeth raised chickens at her family’s summer home and named them all after great romantic heroes of books she probably hadn’t read. Elizabeth’s blond hair was trimmed every six weeks, and she took a gap year in Chile but then never went to university, so it was hard to say what the gap was technically bridging. But I loved her, even though I hadn’t met her, because all the photographers in front of my house and Greetings & Salutations temporarily decamped to her place.
I used the break in media attention to sneak my way into a new, hopefully more compelling job working in marketing for Sir John Soane’s Museum, a terrifically bizarre place jam-packed with art and antiquities. I no longer got goose bumps in my own apartment, knowing the windows were being watched, and could actually go outside without the company of a pushy, camera-laden mob. Finally, I felt free again, enough so that I felt comfortable voicing my relief to Joss and Cilla over lunch one day.
“I know it seems weird to feel safer when a street is empty,” I told them. “But it had gotten crazy. Nick has trained assassins looking after him. I’m on my own.”
And of course, the next day a story ran under the headline LET’S TALK ABOUT BEX, BABY: Nick’s Nosh Begs for Bodyguard, swearing I’d demanded security from the Palace at great taxpayer expense. (A blazingly mean sidebar titled ME ME ME implied I felt overshadowed by Elizabeth, and was furious that I hadn’t gotten a ring when this English rose had snagged one in thirty seconds flat, even though her prince was kind of a frog.) Barnes telephoned specifically to share how unimpressed Clarence House was—“Last I checked, Miss Porter, you are not a member of the Royal Family”—and I’d cursed myself for talking about it at all, much less in public.
Two weeks before the blessed event, I was hat shopping after work with Bea and Joss at a private room in Stephen Jones Millinery in Covent Garden. Joss was pitching me on a hat she’d made herself in which the various flowers on the brim actually spelled out hat, which appealed to my limited budget because it would be free. I refused to ask my parents for any more money.
“Come on, Bex,” Joss pleaded. “It could be a big deal for me.”
“I do actually like this hat,” I said, studying Joss’s drawing. “Is that weird?”
“Yes,” Bea said, ripping it out of my hand. “We are not at home to DIY projects. Not for this.”
Joss looked so crushed that I said, “I’ll find another occasion, Joss, I promise.”
“We’ll see,” muttered Bea, plopping a spiked fascinator on my head. I looked like a cactus.
Joss brightened, despite Bea’s side eye. “Hunt would be ever so chuffed.”
“Please tell me you are not referring to Tom Huntington-Jones,” Bea said.
“That’s what he tells me to call him,” Joss said. “Philippa’s dad,” she explained to me. “My investor. He says I’m an exciting emerging talent.”
“That’s great, Joss,” I said warmly.
“I assume ‘investing in emerging talent’ is not a euphemism,” Bea said, crossing her arms over her silk-clad chest.
“Ew,” Joss said. “I mean, I think he fancies me, but he’s not my type.”
This was a compliment, to Hunt. Joss’s last boyfriend had been a guy who wore a large stud in his left ear with a chain attached to it that turned out to be the leash for a hefty white rat called Bob, which prowled around his shoulder and neck. Eventually, Joss dumped him for refusing to take off Bob while they had sex, and we’d been glad to see the back of him before any of us caught rat-bite fever.
My phone rang. “It’s probably Gaz,” I said, digging in my purse. “Penelope Six-Names wants to take him to her tarot reader. I think he’s over it.”
I wish it had been Gaz.
“Bex,” Nick said. “Have you bought a hat yet?”
“No,” I said. “What do you think, tasteful beige, or a potted plant?”
“Um,” he said.
My face fell so fast that I’m pretty sure it made a sound. Quickly, I got up and walked over to the window; a banal-looking grill across the street was packed with theatergoers overpaying for a meal before curtain at the Starlight Express revival running around the corner.
“What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound unconcerned.
“It’s off,” Nick said bluntly. “With your public opinion ratings so low after the PPO thing—”
“I have public opinion ratings now?”
“It’s not—”
“And you care about them?” I hadn’t wanted to fight, not with Nick all the way at the southwestern tip of England and out of my physical reach. And yet. “What other data should I know about? Did Marj decide she prefers the odds on ‘Nick Gets a Fellow Officer Pregnant’?”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said impatiently, but not without sincerity. “It’s been decreed. It isn’t a good time.”
“It never is,” I said. “And I’m starting to think it never will be.”
And I hung up, barely getting the words out before a sob escaped my throat.
*