No.
No no no. Fuck.
“Aly—”
“I got carried away. I shouldn’t have—shit, this was a mistake.” She sat up and gathered the blankets around her breasts. Rage cracked down my middle, slicing me neatly in two. She was hiding herself from me. Protecting herself from the animal that I was. The one who’d devour her and leave her bleeding.
She was right, of course. I would leave her bleeding. And this whole thing had been a mistake. But the selfish, pig-headed animal in me wanted her to stay. I wished I was capable of giving her the things she wanted—things other than orgasms—so she’d bloody stay.
“Please don’t leave.” I sounded desperate. I didn’t want to tell her why I was the way that I was. I hadn’t told anyone. Not a soul.
But suddenly, I needed her to know. Needed her to know why I could never be the real deal she wanted. I owed her that much.
Scooching onto the edge of the bed, she swung her legs around. “We can’t do this, Rob.”
I winced. She stood. Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed her wrist.
She spun around, hair falling over her shoulder. Her eyes were wet.
“Please,” she said hoarsely. “Please let me go. I don’t want just a hook-up anymore. You don’t want what I do. If we go any further…”
It was hard to speak around the tightness in my throat. “I can’t want that, Aly. Doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could give it to you—the real deal.”
Her eyes softened. “Why can’t you? And don’t give me some bullshit about how much fun fast cars and pussy are. You’re better than that, and you know it. So tell me the truth. What the fuck is so wrong with you that you keep running like this?”
It was a risk telling Aly. But I owed her an explanation. More than that, I wanted her to understand. She needed to know this had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me.
And she trusted me. It was important that she knew I trusted her, too.
I dropped her wrist and got out of bed. “Wait here.”
“Rob—”
“Please.” I looked at her. “Ten minutes and then you can go. I promise. I need to show you something.”
Aly tucked her hair behind her ear. Then she nodded. “All right. Ten minutes. Then I’m out of here, got it?”
“Got it,” I said grimly. Then I grabbed my jeans and headed for the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Aly
While Rob was gone, I used the restroom and got dressed. I was shaking all over again. The throb in my lips didn’t help. I was two-and-a-half-cups-of-coffee kind of wired. I couldn’t sit still.
I paced in front of his bed, trying not to look at the deliciously rumpled sheets. I wanted to crawl back into them. Pull them over my head and go back to those moments we’d just shared.
Doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could give you the real deal. Did Rob really mean that?
Of course. Of course he’d been an amazing kisser. The orgasms had been great, don’t get me wrong. But it was his kiss that sent me over the edge. It’d finally woken me up from my orgasmic stupor.
It was time to admit that I’d started to like Rob. Really, really like him. Something happened tonight—he was different, and I was different, and the whole thing just felt…different. In such an awesome way.
When we were kissing and his arms were warm around me and his hands were on my body—I realized that that was why I wanted to be in a relationship. I didn’t want it because it came with the house and the Volvo and the baby. I wanted it because I wanted to feel like that. Adored. Known.
Cherished.
How could two people who weren’t in love make each other feel that way? I was so confused. Probably why I’d kissed him in the first place. I couldn’t have sex like that, and be kissed like that, and not feel something real.
Maybe Rob could, though.
That thought should’ve pissed me off. But instead, it just made me feel sad. What had happened to this guy to close him off like this?
I looked up at the soft shuffle of footsteps on carpet. Rob strode into the room, holding something in his hands. On his way out, he’d put on his jeans and Oxford shirt. The shirt still hung open, the thick slopes of his chest peeking through.
I swallowed.
“Sit,” he said, motioning to the bench at the foot of the bed.
I did. He dropped a packet of yellowing envelopes in my lap, tied with navy blue ribbon. My pulse began to pound in my ears. The first envelope was scrawled in shaky, looping cursive. The kind of old-timey cursive you didn’t see anymore. A single word: Alexander.
Prince Alexander. Rob’s grandfather—the Queen of England’s husband. They’d been married for close to seventy years when Alexander had died last year.
I glanced up at Rob. He had a hand in his hair, and his brow was furrowed. Eyes were clear but pained. The man in front of me couldn’t look more different from the cocky playboy prince I’d met a few months ago. This man was exhausted. Hurting.
My hands were really shaking now. Whatever Rob was about to share with me, it was a big deal.
“What is this?” I said, holding up the packet. The envelopes were so worn they felt velvety in my hands.
“My grandfather’s letters—the ones he’d kept from the fifties onward.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wow. Love letters?” The media made Prince Alexander out to be the consummate British subject. His faithfulness to his Queen, his country, and his family had become the stuff of legend.
Rob scoffed. “Open them. You won’t need to read many.”
Settling the letters in my lap, I carefully untied the ribbon and folded it, setting it and the packet on the bench beside me. I opened the first letter, gently unfolding the paper inside. It was written on Queen Margaret’s letterhead, dated 23 September 1958.
I glanced up at Rob one last time. Even if these letters didn’t belong to the royal family, I’d still feel weird reading them. I was eavesdropping on a total stranger’s life. A very famous, very glamorous stranger.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I asked.
“You asked why I am the way that I am.” He nodded at the packet. “There’s your answer.”
I began reading the letter, my eyes flying over the words. I quickly understood why Margaret’s handwriting was shaky. A bit uneven.
A—I shall get right to the point. I received a letter this morning from a woman named Catherine Colton. She claims her one-year-old boy is your son and that you have been having an affair with her for three years. She says you neglect his care.
My stomach dropped. I looked up at Rob.
“This was a letter to your grandfather Alexander, right? The same man who was commended over and over again for his service to crown and country?”
A muscle in Rob’s jaw twitched. “The very same.”
“1958—he was married to your grandmother at the time,” I said.
He nodded. “They married right after the war in 1946. By the fifties, they’d already had my father and my Uncle Carlton.”
I swallowed. “So that means…”
“Yes.” Rob’s eyes were hard. “Catherine Colton was just one of my grandfather’s many mistresses. The only one to have his child, though. As far as we know, at least.”
“Oh my God,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God. So that means…”
“Everything you’ve ever heard about him is a lie.”
The words hung between us.
My mind raced.
If that was true, then Rob had not only grown up in the shadow of a very bad man, but he’d also been compared to him. Constantly. I’d read the interviews, the articles. The gossipy blog posts. Everyone was always saying how Rob fell short of his grandfather’s promise. I imagined that had always hurt Rob. But now I understood how infuriating that must have been, too. Rob knew that Alexander was not at all the hero everyone made him out to be. But he couldn’t say anything about it.
“Why?”
I asked. “Why does everyone worship him when you know he did this?” I held up the letter.
Rob sat heavily on the bench beside me. “Back then, it was normal for upper-class couples like my grandparents to sort of live parallel but separate lives. They’d spend weeks, even months apart.”
“Different world,” I said.
“Different universe. During their time apart, my grandmother fulfilled her duty as Queen. But my grandfather—” Rob smiled tightly. “He engaged in much less wholesome activities. The press wasn’t like it is now. There were no camera phones. Hardly any cameras, period. You could get away with murder. And he did.”
I set the letter on my lap. “Still amazing that no one found out about it. The boy, I mean. The affairs.”
“The Queen bent over backwards to bury it. The scandal it would have caused would’ve rocked the monarchy to its core. My grandparents had to be models of fidelity—they had to be the perfect couple. On the outside, at least. They couldn’t get divorced. As the Queen of England, my grandmother is also the head of the Anglican Church. And back then, the church didn’t allow divorce. They were so strict that divorced people couldn’t even visit the palace.” He took a breath. Let it out. “I also think my grandmother was so in love with my grandfather she wouldn’t have left him even if she could have. She fell in love with him when she was sixteen, and she’d been stuck on him ever since.”
I stared at him. “Stuck on the man who fathered a son with another woman? A son he apparently ignored?”
“I don’t understand it either.” Rob shook his head. “It devastated her. I think she’d suspected Alexander was running around behind her back. But to have the evidence thrown in her face like that…Aly, it destroyed her. Keep reading her letters. It’s all there.”
I plucked another letter from the pile. This one was dated January 1959.
I do not need to tell you the absolute humiliation this is causing me. I haven’t slept. Food has no appeal. You’re slowly poisoning me. How can I hate you and miss you at the same time?
My heart twisted. The pain in Her Majesty’s words was palpable. The Queen Margaret I knew was stalwart. Impeccably self-possessed. It was hard to imagine her as a young, starry-eyed woman. Hard to imagine she’d be a fool for any man, even one as dashing as Prince Alexander.
The next letter was one from Alexander himself to the Queen, dated 1960: I’ve tried to change for you. But I have failed, every time. I am a failure. Don’t think I don’t hate myself for it. I’m sorry. But I cannot think this is unrelated to us getting married so young. I’d told you many times I was not ready. I’d told you I may never be ready. But you insisted. You knew from the beginning that THIS IS WHO I AM.
Don’t you dare blame this on me, the Queen replied. You are a man of free will. You walked down the aisle that day with a smile on your face. We were happy.
I set down the letter. Folded it and slid it back into its envelope, hesitating. Did I really need to read any more? I was starting to feel nauseous. Rob had been raised by these people. There was no way he hadn’t been affected by their dysfunction. Their unhappiness.
“Keep going,” Rob said, like he knew what I was thinking.
I shot him a glance. “Why?”
“Because, sweetheart. I need you to understand.”
Taking a deep breath, I looked back down at the packet. The next letter was written in unfamiliar handwriting. I glanced down at the signature.
It was from Catherine Colton.
Chapter Twenty
Aly
Alexander—we feel your absence acutely these days. James is growing like a weed, the spitting image of you. Such a handsome boy. He needs a father. All children do. I fear for him growing up without one.
Rob’s grandfather wrote back with a biting reply. You should’ve thought of that before you went to my wife. I had the situation under control. But now it is out of my hands—her people will make sure no one ever finds out about the boy. Which means this must be our last communication. James shall receive a monthly stipend from me. I shall keep him in my thoughts and prayers. But beyond that, I can do nothing for him. Forgive me, Catherine.
The letters were dated all the way to the nineties. There were even a slew of letters from James—ones he’d written in the seventies and eighties. Updates from his time at Eton. A transcript from St. Andrews. An especially poignant letter where he begged his father to attend his graduation. Each letter got shorter. Angrier.
You ruined my mother’s life, he wrote. And now that I am an adult, I understand how you ruined mine. The teasing at school. Being called a bastard. The whispers that broke out every time I entered a room. You left me to the wolves without a second thought.
My arms were covered in goosebumps by the time I finished reading it.
“Did he ever respond to James?” I asked. “Alexander, I mean.”
Rob shook his head. “He couldn’t. The Queen and her secretaries forbade it, and it was far too dangerous at that point anyway. My parents had gotten engaged right around that time, and public interest in our family soared. The press was becoming more and more intrusive. He knew they’d find out about James if he began communicating with him.” He swallowed. His voice cracked. “I feel horribly for him—James. I can’t imagine how horrid being abandoned like that must’ve been.”
My eyes pricked with tears. I ran a hand across Rob’s broad back. He glanced at the letters. “One more—that one there, from the Queen to Alexander.”
I opened it.
We were happy once, weren’t we? Difficult to remember after all this time. I’ve tried for twenty years to forgive you. I can’t. There’s no solid ground to be had between us. The grief you’ve caused me has swallowed me whole.
“Holy shit, Robert,” I said.
He scoffed again. His knee bobbed against mine.
I didn’t even know where to begin. I was overwhelmed.
“Where’d you get these letters?” I asked, turning my head to look at him.
He put his elbows on his knees. “My grandfather gave them to me right before he died. Literally handed me the packet from his death bed and said, ‘We’re the same, you and I. Marriage is a shackle for men like us. Don’t make the same mistake I did, or you’ll end up destroying everything that matters to you’. Up until then, I’d believed in the myth, too—the one where he was the hero. But that day I learned he was…quite the opposite.”
Heat rushed to my eyes. I blinked back tears. Jesus Christ, no wonder Rob had been torn up about Alexander’s death. Not only was he grieving the loss of his grandfather.
He was grieving the loss of the man he thought he knew. The man he thought he’d grow up to be one day.
That day, Rob had learned his grandfather wasn’t a hero. He’d also learned he wasn’t a hero, either. We’re the same. Alexander all but told Robert he’d become a monster, too.
Jesus Christ.
“Your grandfather said all that to you?”
“He did.” He scoffed again. “If he’d just waited to settle down—or never settled down at all—he believed none of that would’ve ever happened.”
I was really crying now.
“That’s not true,” I said.
He looked at me. “Definitely wouldn’t have hurt.”
“Rob.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I am so, so sorry.”
He shook his head, turning it to look at me. “I’m him all over again, Aly. Sometimes the Queen can’t even look at me. She tries to hide it. But there’s a reason why Kit’s her favorite, and I’m not.”
I was sad. But now I was getting angry, too. How dare Alexander fuck with his grandson’s head like this? He’d ruined his own life. The Queen’s. James’s. Because apparently that hadn’t been enough, then he’d gone and tried to ruin Rob’s, too. Rob, the kid who’d idolized the only real father figure he’d ever known.
“That’s not true,” I repeated, my voice wobbling. “None of it is true, Rob.”
Rob’s gaze was sea
ring. I didn’t see Alexander in his eyes. But I did see pain. Confusion. “I’m telling you, Aly, this shit is passed down. He told me so. His father was the same. His father’s father, too.”
Outrage gripped my heart and squeezed.
“I think that’s bullshit,” I said. “No offense. You’re not taking into account how differently you were raised. And what about personal choice? Don’t you think you can learn from how he screwed up and choose to be different? Mind over matter, Rob. It’s a real thing.”
He looked at me. “Maybe. But I saw firsthand how much hurt I can cause by committing to something—someone. He crushed Catherine. Destroyed James. And my grandmother—God, Aly, she’s so bitter, and so bloody lonely. He broke her heart, over and over again.” His eyes were filling with tears now, too. “I’m terrified of doing that to someone. He was in love with her. And he tried to be good. Told me as much. But he ended up destroying her happiness. James’s, too. He couldn’t be the man they needed. He wasn’t cut out for it. Neither am I.”
For what felt like the hundredth time tonight, I was speechless. My hands clenched into fists on my lap. Rob really believed this about himself? This rubbish fed to him by a careless, backward old man?
Then again, Rob’s parents had died when he was very young. He’d clearly clung to his grandfather like glue, maybe because he thought they were alike. I thought about my own family and the roles we’d unintentionally assigned each other and ourselves. Whether or not they fit, we’d still taken them on. The nerd. The athlete. The savior. Rob had been assigned the naughty playboy. A role he’d taken up with gusto. To feel closer to his grandfather? To make his older brother Kit—the white knight—shine that much brighter?
We were all desperate for our family’s love. I just wondered how far Rob believed he had to go to earn it.
“I refuse to believe that’s who you really are,” I countered. “From what I just read, your grandfather didn’t seem very kind. Or thoughtful. Doesn’t sound like he came through on his promises very often. But you do, Rob.”
Royal Rebel: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Flings With Kings) Page 13
