The Royals Series

by Bay, Louise

  People at the eight or so desks raised their heads to look at me.

  “This is Violet. She’s Mr. Knightley’s exclusive assistant.” There was a collection of shocked faces and groans, but I wasn’t sure if it was just a general lack of enthusiasm at the thought of a new person or sympathy that I was going to have to tackle Knightley. “I need you to give her all the help she needs,” he said, and then he turned to me. “The clerks are responsible for taking instructions from law firms and then giving them to the barrister they think would be best suited to do the work. Sometimes the law firms request a specific barrister, then the clerks tell the law firms how much it will cost and liaise with the law firm to make sure they have what they need. Clerks also arrange the bill for the law firms, but the barristers need to tell them what they’ve been working on and for how long. Then the clerk can negotiate a fee lift if necessary. The issue we have with Mr. Knightley is that he never tells us when he’s completed work or what time he’s spent on what. Sometimes we know, but oftentimes we don’t. That’s why we need your help.”

  I nodded, trying to take things in. “So you guys organize the work for the barristers and negotiate the fees. But the invoice is raised by finance?”

  Craig nodded. “But finance won’t bill anything until they’ve heard from us that the work is completed and how much to bill.”

  Okay, that seemed straightforward.

  “The admin staff sit through there”—Craig pointed through an archway to a connecting room—“along with the small finance team we have. You’ll get to know everyone soon enough. I’m going to leave you in Jimmy’s capable hands. He’ll introduce you around and show you where you’re sitting.”

  A lanky guy about my age wearing a pink shirt and a blue-and-pink tie came toward us. We shook hands. “I’ll be happy to show you around. Anyone brave enough to take on Mr. Knightley will need all the help they can get.”

  Brave? Maybe if it was just him and me alone, he’d be different. Perhaps that crackle of tension between us would return.

  “Well, don’t make her more apprehensive than she already must be,” Craig said. “I’ve got a good feeling about her. Anyway, things can’t get any worse.”

  Craig shook my hand and left me alone with Jimmy and the other clerks. Life in an office involved a lot more hand-shaking than a restaurant ever had; hopefully there’d be less ass grabbing at the same time.

  “So, I’ll show you through here,” Jimmy said, leading the way through the archway to where Craig had said the admin staff sat.

  Jimmy showed me to the only free desk, which was pushed up against two walls. I’d be facing the corner like I was being punished.

  “And can I see what Knight—Mr. Knightley is working on from my computer?” It felt weird calling a man who didn’t seem much older than me mister. It was so formal.

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, because the barristers are all self-employed they aren’t networked. Only the clerks, finance, and admin.”

  Well, that was going to make life difficult. How would I see what he was working on? “So, I either ask him or hack into his computer?”

  Jimmy laughed, but I wasn’t joking. I used to enjoy hacking into MIT’s systems for sport when I was at college. I was sure Knightley’s computer wouldn’t be so difficult.

  “He won’t answer questions about his billing, not even when they come from Craig. So, yes, I guess hacking is your only option.” He grinned as if we were sharing a joke, so I smiled along with him, but my stomach churned. He clearly thought that I had an impossible task, that I’d been set up for failure. At least when I was waitressing, no one actively tried to stop me delivering plates to the tables.

  “You think I have no chance?”

  He shrugged. “I think people before you have tried and failed.”

  I folded my arms. “If sorting this out is impossible, then I don’t know why I’m here.”

  “Mr. Knightley is a very important name in chambers. His father was the barrister of his generation and our Mr. Knightley attracts a lot of attention because of that. And he’s brilliant—he really is. Clients love him.” Jimmy seemed to have real respect for Knightley, which gave me a little hope that despite being described as a monster, perhaps there was a softer side of him that would be open to me helping him, like the one he’d shown me this morning. “He’s going to follow right along in his father’s footsteps, but he can’t take on the bigger cases while his office is a shithole—sorry, I mean it’s in disarray and he’s not working efficiently. He’s doing everything himself and he’s going to burn out. He needs to get into the habit of letting people help him.”

  Disarray was right. I’d never seen so much paper in my life. There were floor-to-ceiling piles of the stuff. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with it all. Craig had said in the interview that I’d get some help in figuring it out, but it seemed a little overwhelming at the moment. It was weird because he was perfectly dressed and had not a hair out of place—how was his office such a mess?

  “And his billing has to get sorted. Chambers can’t afford to get a reputation for not billing properly or mismanaging finances. That looks bad on the clerks, particularly Craig. And if Mr. Knightley isn’t earning what he should, that’s bad for all of us, him included. At the bar, money equals success. Unfortunately, Mr. Knightley doesn’t see it that way.”

  I didn’t know where to even start. “So how would you go about it?”

  Jimmy pulled in a long breath and shook his head. “Honestly, it’s going to be tricky. I think you need to try to keep out of his way as much as possible. If it were any other barrister, I’d say go into his office when they were out and start on the filing. Once he sees how useful you can be, you might be able to help him more. The problem is Knightley works around the clock.”

  Jesus, who was this guy? Didn’t he have friends or family? He couldn’t work every hour of the day, surely.

  “The only time I can guarantee he’s not in his office is when he’s in court.”

  “Perfect. So does he go to court every day?”

  Jimmy chuckled. “No, but he starts a big case in three days. There’s a master calendar in the clerks’ office of when all of the barristers are in court.”

  That seemed like a good place to start, but what was I going to do for the next three days? I’d never worked in an office before, but I’d graduated summa cum laude from MIT. This job couldn’t be beyond me. I just needed to come up with a plan. A way to organize Knightley and turn him into an example for this chambers rather than someone who was going to stunt his career and the reputation of this chambers and the clerks in it.

  And if he asked me for a drink at some point along the way, I might just say yes. Or suggest we skip the drink bit and get right to the good part.

  * * *

  I’d spent yesterday getting to know the clerks and all the members of the admin team. I figured out that while the guys liked to tease and joke with each other, people took their jobs seriously and were hard workers. I’d asked each of them a billion questions about Knightley—his habits, his moods, his calendar, his computer. I’d extracted every last drop of information about him from the people in chambers, only to realize he asked nothing of them. I’d discovered that other barristers used the clerks and admin staff to arrange things like meeting rooms, hire couriers, and even copy and file paperwork with the court. But Knightley did everything himself. Most of the people I talked to mentioned Knightley’s father and how he was the greatest barrister of his generation. Other than that, no one mentioned his personal life. I wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t have one or because he was fiercely private.

  From what I could figure out, the man was a driven, ambitious control freak.

  Because Knightley had no boss, he could really do what he wanted, and clearly he was doing just that. I had no idea why he didn’t want any help, and I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to change his mind. I needed a way in.

  Now that I’d gathered
all this information on him, I wanted to get into his office to see what else I could find that might give me a start. And then I could also begin his filing. He was the only barrister in chambers who didn’t share an office, so I only had to wait for him to leave to have the place to myself. I wanted to take a look at some of those piles of paper that I’d seen. What the hell was all that crap? I also wanted to see if he had any photographs on his desk or mementos on his wall; maybe if I got to understand him a little, I could figure out who he was aside from a man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a cologne ad in the pages of Vanity Fair. From what people had said, he had a brain the size of Jupiter, but none of that told me what made him tick. People described him as surly and gruff, but there was clearly more to him. The way he’d offered to replace my phone and walked me to chambers, saved me from an oncoming cyclist—he wasn’t a complete monster. Was he one person in chambers and another at home? Was he a loving husband and devoted father? And if so, why the fuck didn’t he care about getting paid? Nothing added up.

  I left my desk and made my way along the narrow corridor to the door of Knightley’s office. It was closed. Opposite was a staircase with an ornate wooden banister leading up to more offices. I climbed the stairs and just as I reached the point where the steps curved and Knightley’s office door was partly obscured, I took a seat. I was staking this guy out. He must leave his office for lunch or something.

  After about an hour, the brass handle of Knightley’s office rattled and his door opened. In confident, long strides, he strode along the corridor toward the back of the building. Even from a bird’s eye view, he looked handsome. He’d removed his jacket and his shirt fit tightly over his muscular shoulders. In a flash he was gone. I wasn’t even going to try to slip into his office now in case he was just going to the restroom, but my heart was still beating out of my chest. It wasn’t as if I was doing anything wrong—I was just waiting for him to leave his office—but watching someone who didn’t know they were being tracked felt odd. Especially when I was kinda ogling him.

  This must be the strangest office job anyone had ever had.

  I timed him, and exactly four minutes later he was back, shutting the door behind him. I didn’t know his first name, but I knew how long it took him to pee. It felt like a small victory.

  As the hours passed, I alternated between standing up, sitting down, stretching my legs in front of me, sitting on one numb cheek and then the other. Then, as Knightley’s door handle rattled again, I froze. This was it, another bathroom break or something longer. I checked my watch. Or lunch. It was almost two. He appeared in the doorway, a frown fixed on his face, and this time turned right. My heartbeat pulsed in my ears. Was he leaving the building? As he disappeared out of sight, I crept down the stairs. I got to the bottom just in time to see him heading outside. This was my chance. I grabbed the brass handle and slid into his room and closed the door behind me.

  I didn’t know why I was so nervous. Being in here was my job and it was the approach Jimmy had suggested. I just didn’t want to piss Knightley off so badly I got fired on my third day in the office. I moved between the piles of paper toward his desk. Careful not to touch anything, I tried to figure out what each stack was, but nothing made sense—just mentions of cases and respondents, court and proceedings. Thin, pink ribbons dangled from the towers of paper like ivy growing over stone. I sighed. How was I ever going to be able to go through this stuff? It was as if it were in Chinese.

  I moved farther into the room. I needed to understand him better, find a way of building trust with him. I dragged my hand over the warm, dark mahogany desk, inlaid with green leather. More paper. Everywhere. And his laptop. I pressed down the spacebar. A password box popped up. Well, it couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  There were no photographs on his desk. No inspirational quotes on a notepad by his phone. I glanced at his walls. Only a few certificates in the name A. Knightley. I suppose at least now I had an initial. Knightley, or whatever his name was, was all work. Looking closer, I saw he’d graduated eleven years ago from Cambridge University. That made him roughly thirty-two, three years older than me. We couldn’t have more different lives. Like him, I’d gone to a good college, but he’d spent the last decade building a career and a reputation that was unfathomable to me. All that time and commitment to one thing—what drove him to the levels of dedication he had? Did he ever have fun? Was he married? Have a girlfriend, boyfriend, pet hamster? In just a few days, I’d thought up more questions for him than there was time left on my three-month contract for him to answer.

  I sat down and pulled out the top drawer in his desk. It was just pens and the ubiquitous pink ribbons. I pulled out the next drawer and found a collection of folded shirts, wrapped in tissue paper. All white. Why hadn’t he taken these home? The next drawer was the same.

  I spun the chair around and spotted a large plastic carrier bag. Had he been shopping? I crouched down to see what he’d bought. Rumpled shirts clearly waiting to be taken to the dry cleaners. Well, that was something I could do. Craig had said I should do anything to help Knightley out, and he did seem to have a shirt obsession. Maybe he’d let me on his computer if I took care of his dry cleaning? It was unlikely, but it might be the first step. I resisted the urge to bury my nose in his shirts just to smell that scent of leather and wood that I’d taken in on the train. I picked up the bag and, careful not to knock any of the stacks of paper over, made my way out of his office, shutting the door behind me.

  I waited for Knightley to come back into chambers so I could be sure I wouldn’t run into him with his bag of dry cleaning, then pulled on my jacket and headed out. Jimmy had told me that all the barristers, including Knightley, had accounts with a particular dry cleaners, which was perfect, since I couldn’t afford to pay for this on top of a new phone, which reminded me. I had Knightley’s business card in my coat pocket. That would tell me his first name. I stopped on the path and pulled out the card. What would his name be? Something poetic and British.

  I scanned the card. A? His name was just printed as A. Knightley. Who in the hell didn’t put their fucking name on their own business card? I stuffed the card back in my pocket and picked up my pace. It was as if A-fucking-Knightley was trying to be difficult. Well, it wouldn’t work. The handsome genius with a potential personality disorder had intrigued me. Now, I wanted to beat him. I would succeed where no one else had ever come close. I needed this job. I wanted to be good at something other than taking orders and dodging grabby hands. And the dry cleaning might be my way in.

  Chapter Five

  Alexander

  “Come in,” I barked, unused to being interrupted so often in a single week.

  The door opened and I continued with my work, but when no one said anything, I glanced up to find Miss King taking my coat from the back of my office door. “What are you doing?” I couldn’t help but run my glance down her legs, up to her perfect arse. When was the last time I noticed a woman in the office? When was the last time I noticed a woman?

  She didn’t turn around. Instead she just heaved as she hooked a bunch of cellophane-wrapped dry cleaning on the back of the door. “I had your shirts laundered.”

  What? “How did you get them in the first place?”

  “I came into your office while you were out and found them.” She turned to look at me and I avoided meeting her eyes, refocusing on my laptop. I needed to minimize this pull I felt toward her.

  I should be angry. She’d been snooping, removed personal items from my office without my permission. But she’d also done me a favor. I couldn’t remember how long that bag of shirts had been there. Two, maybe three weeks? Each day when I arrived, I resolved to take them to the cleaners at lunchtime, but then I’d submerge myself in work and I’d forget all about them. She had guts to come in here and just take them, I’d give her that.

  “Did you put them on my account?” I asked, keeping my gaze on the computer screen.

  “I did,” she repli
ed. “Also, I wanted to ask you, the instructions you got last month from Spencer & Associates regarding their client—”

  “Dr. and Mrs. Foster.” I knew every single client I’d had since my career started. She didn’t need to remind me. “I don’t have time for this. I’m in court tomorrow.”

  “I just want to know if you completed the opinion they asked you for.” I glanced up, and she was hovering by the door, her hand on the doorknob as if she were ready to duck out of the room if I threw something at her. It wasn’t like I hadn’t lobbed a book at a bothersome clerk before. She must have heard the stories, so I admired her for having the nerve to ask me questions she knew I didn’t want to answer. She risked me exploding at her, yet she still asked me. Was it guts or did she not care what I thought?

  If I’d really wanted to discourage her from bothering me again I wouldn’t have said anything, but despite myself, I found I wanted her attention. “It was completed. You can bill the agreed amount.”

  She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows but didn’t say a word. She was silent in her victory, and I liked her more for it.

  “Did you retrieve your phone from the tube station?” She’d worn her hair back today. I preferred it loose, but this way I was able to see her fine features a little more clearly. Her generous lips were free of any enhancement and naturally red, as if five minutes ago she’d been kissing someone with fervor. The curve of her neck begged to be stroked; the angle of her breasts had my mouth watering. I cleared my throat. I couldn’t say if half the staff in this place were men or women. I was always too focused on the job, which made Miss King a distraction.

  She pulled in a breath and I wasn’t sure if it was because she’d seen me staring or it was a natural gesture from her. I wanted to know.

  “Nope,” she replied. “It was totaled. Do you need any assistance with preparing for court?”