by Kate Johnson
Eliza sighed. “That my presence is required at Sandringham. Granny reminded me today. No wiggle room.”
“And I really can’t come?” He wasn’t that disappointed. Eliza’s descriptions made it sound like a nightmare and besides, he’d have every other Christmas to endure it. Might as well enjoy the last one with his family while he could. Unless the amendment doesn’t pass.
“Unmarried partners are never invited to Sandringham. Not even when they’re engaged. Annemarie had to go home to Holland. Clodagh spent it in her mum’s council flat. You can take the jet,” she said, stroking his arm consolingly.
“I’d rather take you.”
She kissed him apologetically and said there was nothing she could do. “I could fly out afterwards and we could go skiing?” she said. “The family usually goes to Verbier, but I’ve always wanted to try the Rockies.”
“Princess, I’m from Florida. I don’t ski.”
“Would you like to learn?”
He said yes. Xavier realised he’d have said yes if she’d asked him to spend New Years cleaning garbage off the beach. He called his mother, attempted to explain it would just be him coming home for Christmas, and wondered whose sofa he’d be sleeping on.
The morning he was due to fly out, the car came round from the stables and Xavier held Eliza very close, unwilling to leave her for so long. He’d gotten so used to being with her all the time, waking up beside her, teasing her over breakfast, making dinner with her in the evenings, cuddling with her on the sofa watching boxsets. The days when she had royal or wedding business and he had meetings with survivalists and charity boards left him lonely, eager to see her again.
“I’m going to miss you so much.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Are you crazy?” He tried to memorise the scent of her hair. “I miss you when you’re in the next room.”
Eliza extricated herself, with difficulty, from his grasp and went to one of many wardrobes in her dressing room. “Well, in that case, you’re in luck,” she said, extracting something from the cupboard.
It was another suitcase. Her suitcase.
Xavier’s eyes went wide. “You’re coming with me?”
Eliza smirked. There was no other word for it. “Now let me think. Christmas in a house with no central heating, four children under five, changing outfits five times a day and going to church twice, Granny’s choice of food and Grandpa’s choice of jokes, or a romantic getaway with the man I’m absolutely mad about in a very sexy penthouse guest suite in South Beach? Tough one.”
He kissed her long and hard. “You are a terrible woman and I love you.”
She grinned and bumped her suitcase down the stairs, refusing the help of the staff. “Anyway, they’ll probably barely notice my absence. Have you heard? Poor cousin Tom, rehab failed again. He says he’s getting better but have you seen the girl he’s dating? The one with the hair and the tattoos. She’s gorgeously unsuitable. He’s vehement they’re just friends, but good Lord, I don’t kiss my friends like that…”
After the plummeting temperatures of rural Norfolk and the determinedly restrained Christmas decorations of Eliza’s family, Miami seemed reassuringly bright and warm. Eliza thought the Christmas-decorated palm trees were brilliant and scoffed at Xavier for wearing a sweater in such balmy temperatures.
Abuela and her Seniors Club friends had long told Xavier and his siblings about the parrandas they had held back in Puerto Rico, where, if she was to believed, they’d sneak up to a friend’s house, start playing loud music outside to wake them up, and basically force a party on them. The friends would then join in and they’d move on to another house, and another, the whole group getting bigger and more raucous.
“Makes wassailing sound positively tame,” Eliza said, as Xavier translated some of the more complex bits for her. Her spoken Spanish was coming on pretty well, although if she were asked to read anything she’d hand it to him, saying she didn’t understand enough yet.
He’d seen her struggles with some of the notes and memos sent by the wedding planning team, but she refused to ask for help.
“So what do you do for Christmas?” asked Anita, who had put some Netflix reel of puppies playing around a Christmas tree on her TV. Her house was in the Spanish style Xavier had grown up with, the walls painted bright, warm colours and the furniture cheaply cheerful. He felt a sudden pang for the life he’d be leaving behind for good.
“Me personally, or the English as a whole?”
“Oh, we’ve all seen Love Actually. We wanna know about Royal Christmases,” said Valentina.
Eliza, who was helping to wrap some last-minute gifts she and Xavier were meant to be distributing to his family, seemed to be considering her answer.
“Do you have a huge tree there?”
“Not huge, no, not in the Palace.”
This was something of a lie, as Xavier had seen the trees at Buckingham Palace, and ‘small’ wasn’t a word that could be used to describe them. They were lavishly decorated in what Eliza insisted wasn’t actually real gold.
“The one in Trafalgar Square is very large, though, and a present from the King of Norway. Granny made her speech this year from the Music Room, which has a nice tree, but it’s not too large because quite often she has a choir or something there to perform when she’s finished. We all watch it after lunch and critique her performance.”
“Wait, I thought you all went to Sandringham for Christmas?” said Xavier, whose only job at present was to top up the eggnog. Eliza had explained to him all about the Queen’s Christmas Day speech, and how its 3pm broadcast was carefully timed so that as many people as possible in the Commonwealth could view it.
“Oh, we do. Granny’s house in Norfolk, not far from Xavier and I,” Eliza explained to his sisters. “She records the speech just before she goes. One year we were sitting out of sight, trying not to giggle. Edward—” she broke off. “My cousin Edward had quite the mischievous sense of humour. Uncle Frederick used to say his children had been born the wrong way around, that Victoria would have made a better monarch than Edward.”
He touched her arm, and she smiled. It was clear her cousin’s death had left a scar on the family, and the whole country.
She cleared her throat and explained the complicated order of precedence that informed the arrivals at Sandringham on Christmas Eve. Xavier couldn’t get his head around a gathering that insisted you arrived in the correct order and curtseyed to the head of the family, but also included the giving of gifts like personalised toilet paper and snakes in a can. His sisters seemed positively disappointed that they didn’t all give each other racehorses and priceless antiques.
“Granny goes to church twice,” Eliza said. “The private chapel and the public service. Five different outfits—”
“Five?” said Xavier, at the same time his sisters did.
“Oh yes. At least.” She ticked them off on her fingers, which held bits of sticky tape. “Breakfast—something casual, but not too casual, no pyjamas—church outfit, which must include a hat and coat, because we do a meet and greet too and it gets quite chilly, and then back home to change for lunch—I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear we’re having ham, by the way, I don’t think I can face another turkey—and then it’s cocktail hour, so something short but not too short, of course, and finally dinner, which is full black tie.”
“Oh my God, it’s so Downton Abbey,” sighed Anita, who had a mild obsession with period drama. Xavier, who’d given up asking if Eliza was joking, closed his eyes and made a wish that the rules might change by next year.
“Yes. Although we don’t hunt on Boxing Day. Drina usually goes for a ride, but it’s shooting, traditionally. At least, Grandpa and my uncles do. Ed used to show willing but Jamie said he got shot at often enough in Afghanistan that he’d quite willingly never hear another gun again. My other cousins usually slope off to their mother’s family.”
“I still can’t believe Jamie did two tours in Afghan
istan,” said Xavier, who had trouble reconciling the smart, kind, skinny computer geek he’d met with a man who had survived an IED blast in Helmand.
“Oh yes. I’m rather in the minority, not having been. Virtually all my cousins have been in the military at some point, and both my uncles. Poor Tom was in Syria last year and he still hasn’t recovered. Even Victoria holds a couple of honorary commands. I think she ought to wear her uniform more, she looks terribly smart in it. Now, Anita, which one of these dolls was for Ana and which one for Ximena?”
Eliza confided herself relieved to find they exchanged presents on Christmas Eve, which was what her own family did at home. After some thought, and vetoing of the ‘gag gifts’ mindset Eliza couldn’t get out of, Xavier had made a list comprising solely items that could be bought from the royal palaces’ gift shops.
His nieces and nephews got Guardsman pyjamas and princess tiaras. His sisters were given a selection of branded chocolates and the buttery cookies the English insisted on calling ‘shortbread’. His mother, who cooked constantly, got a Buckingham Palace apron and oven mitt. His brothers got whiskey and shot glasses. For Abuela, he had bought a bone china dish carrying the Royal coat of arms and finished in real gold.
She kissed him on both cheeks and told him she’d display it in her living room, so she’d be just like the Queen.
His brother Pierre rocked up after dinner, apologising that they hadn’t been able to get the baby settled. He carried a tiny bundle, whose birth had occurred mere weeks before. Xavier happened to be on the other side of the room from Eliza, whose shoulders stiffened for the shortest moment before she smiled and offered her congratulations.
He made it to her side just as she was handed the baby to hold, and for a long moment neither of them spoke. The baby, a boy named Louis, closed his eyes and settled into her arms.
Then, “What a lovely name,” she said, and Xavier figured no one else heard the tremor in her voice. “And December is such a festive time for a birthday.”
She handed the baby on to someone else and apologised profusely for not bringing any appropriate gifts. “I came at the last minute,” she said, smiling a little too brightly. “So all I really had time for were these.”
She handed out envelopes inscribed with the excellent penmanship of a hired calligrapher and sealed with Eliza’s initials in wax. Xavier watched his family try to react politely to what was sure to be a gift card inside.
Anita was the first to open hers. She drew out, not a gift voucher, but a sheet of heavy cream card, the edges dipped in gold.
Xavier turned slowly to look at Eliza, who wore an innocent expression and sipped her drink. They’d been informed of the style and wording of the wedding invitations, but none had been sent out yet.
“It’s really more of a save-the-date,” she said, as Anita’s eyes grew wider and wider.
“Her Royal Highness Princess Henrietta, the Princess Royal,” she said, and had to break off to hyperventilate. Valentina ripped open her envelope and took over the reading.
“The Princess Royal! Requests the pleasure of the company of Mr and Mrs Michael DeLuca to the Marriage of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth of Suffolk with Mr Xavier Rivera at St George’s Chapel, Windsor! Oh my God!”
All around the room, envelopes were opened and invites were screamed over. Xavier had never actually heard anyone say, “Squee!” before, but he supposed that was what a royal invite did.
Abuela regarded hers with a frown. In slow Spanish, Eliza told her her presence was very much desired, although both he and Eliza knew she was very unlikely to attend since she had a passionate dislike of both travel and speaking English.
Abuela looked her over, an expression in her eye Xavier couldn’t quite place, then said, “There is no room for two queens.”
“That’s a great line,” Eliza said later, as they got ready for bed in the quiet of their hotel suite. “‘No room for two queens.’ The irony is I think Granny would love her.”
“She’s right though. Imagine the chaos those two would create together.”
“Hmm. Windsor might not survive.”
He slanted Eliza a look. She’d run away from her family, again, only a few months before the wedding. She’d been swearing blind she was absolutely fine, but he’d watched her eyes follow baby Louis around the room all day.
“And you?” he said. “Are you surviving?”
Her mouth went kind of tight, her gaze rooted on the bedlinen. She nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m still swimming.”
Xavier took her hand, and without looking at him she curled her fingers around it. That first night, he’d watched her leap off into a dark sea, alone and terrified, and come up swimming. She’d never drown, his Eliza. She’d scream and thrash. She wouldn’t sink quietly.
“If you get tired, you tell me,” he said softly, and she nodded, and curled into his arms.
The next day they met up with Perez and some of his other former colleagues. After Eliza had graciously put up with the curtseying and the questions—how did she stay sane?—Xavier drew Perez to one side.
“After the promise of a reduced sentence, Luis was persuaded to remember that the text about the girl came from a friend attending the party,” Perez said, and the look on his face told Xavier how much he believed that. “He maintains he had no idea the girl he took was the princess. He just likes blondes.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah. You get any surveillance on this Melissa girl?”
Xavier smiled across the room at Eliza and pretended to be engaging in Best Man talk. “Officially, the police would need a warrant to check her bank accounts, phone records and all that. But it turns out there are a few advantages to knowing someone with her own secret service.”
“Seriously?”
Xavier eyed him. “Nothing official is happening. But Melissa will find it pretty damn hard to get close to any member of the Royal Family for a long time. She may find, for instance, if she attempts to travel to the wrong place, she will be subject to entirely random security checks that result in her missing a flight, or her car may have a flat tyre.”
“Nice.”
“Entirely coincidentally, of course,” said Xavier, pretending to laugh at a joke Perez had made.
“Of course.”
Before they left for England again, they made a stop at the beachfront hotel that would be hosting the American reception. Eliza evaluated the entertainment spaces. Xavier evaluated the security.
“Oh, Tapper,” Eliza said as they left, having approved the menu choices and vetoed the fireworks spelling their names. “Have you given the girls their instructions?”
Tapper, unflappable even when spending Christmas organising a royal wedding in a foreign country, handed a set of envelopes to Valentina. They were each addressed to Xavier’s sisters.
“We already got the invites,” she said, clearly confused, and broke open her own.
“You are requested to attend the bride at the Miami Beach reception. Please report to to following address for dress fittings and provide contact details—are you kidding?”
“No, Tapper needs to know how she can contact you in case there are any changes.”
“You want us to be your…?”
“Bridesmaids, for want of a better word, yes. Just for here, I’m afraid, I’ve got a hundred and one choices in my own family for the chapel, but I thought—oof!”
Valentina hugged Eliza so hard her feet came off the floor.
“This must be kept a secret,” Eliza warned. “There is a non-disclosure agreement—yes, a fresh one—for each of you. There are some rules to follow about choice of style, accessories and the like, but these will all be explained. Keep this very much to yourself,” she added again.
“Keep what to myself?” Valli said innocently, and Eliza winked.
Xavier held her hand as they were driven to the private airport. “You just made her year.”
“Do you think it was the right thing?
Not inviting them to be part of the English part—”
“They’ll be guests. Hey, Princess, listen to me: you just gave them the invite of the year and the opportunity to do an incredible amount of shopping on someone else’s dime. They’ll love you forever.”
Eliza smiled, but he could see the strain around the edges. His family was large and boisterous, and even for someone as practised at being sociable, at the end of each day they’d spent together she’d been exhausted. Eliza had been raised to be gracious and decorous, to listen and smile, and to never be outrageous. Xavier hoped his sisters didn’t go too nuts within the guidelines they’d been given.
They arrived at the exclusive resort in the Rockies two days after Christmas and were met by a stylist in their suite.
“We have to be styled to ski?” said Xavier.
“Only on the first day,” said Eliza, and introduced him to how Royal holidays were done. They were kitted out in gear that came with eye-watering price-tags, both processed through hair and make-up—a development Xavier wasn’t fond of—and taken to a picturesque spot near a waterfall, where they met carefully-selected skiers and resort staff.
Xavier was given enough tuition to stay upright on his skis, then the cameras were allowed to take shots of him and Eliza on the nursery slopes. It was freezing cold, the snow made his face ache, and he ached in places he didn’t even know he had. How was this supposed to be fun?
He fell at the end of the run, to uproarious laughter, and Eliza swished to a perfect stop beside him. She looked down, her cheeks pink and her hair tousled, and winked at him. Then, extending a hand to help him up, she pretended to fall, right into his arms, and laughed photogenically.
“Kiss me,” she said against his lips, “and then we can go and try out our private hot tub.”
That brought the first genuine smile to Xavier’s face that day. It was a photo that made it into most of the newspapers.
Two days later, he thought he saw a girl who looked like Melissa Featherstonehaugh, and made the abrupt acquaintance of a tree.
