Royal Disaster

by Parker Swift

  Dylan slowly caged me in, backing me against the edge of the closet door, pressing his front into my own. He held the navy dress by the hanger in his hand, high against the wall behind me. “That’s because it’s red and fits you like a goddamn condom. And every time you wear it, every bloke who passes within a mile sees you, sees how fit you are, and can’t help imagining what it would be like to fuck you.” He was whispering in a controlled, determined way, his face above mine, looking down. “And every woman who passes wants to be you. You should be grateful I allow you to wear it at all,” he said, glancing down at the red dress still pressed into my hand.

  I gulped, and Dylan knew he had me. He stroked the hair from my face and tucked a loose strand behind my ear. Whenever he did that, I felt like he was trying to uncover me, see me. Then he grabbed the wrap dress from my other hand and shoved it harshly against my bottom, pulling me even closer to him. “This one I can’t look at without remembering the first time you wore it. When I tied you up, plugged this perfect ass, and fucked your mouth. If you wear this at my parents’ I will be drooling at the table.”

  I chuckled between my increasingly shallow breaths. “We wouldn’t want that,” I said back, my voice barely recognizable.

  “No,” he said, leaning down to brush my lips with his own. “This one is perfect,” he added, tossing the navy dress on the bed behind him and then running his thumb along my lips while my cheek rested in his palm. “Now. Damsel. Stop worrying. And get this sweet, perfect ass into your jeans. I want to get there in time for a jaunt around.”

  My heart rate, which had been elevated with anxiety only a moment before, was now elevated for entirely different reasons. I was completely seduced and gave a frustrated groan as he backed away, fully prepared to leave me all hot and bothered.

  But he quickly turned on his heels and came stalking back towards me. “Fuck it,” he said under his breath, and he lifted me against the closet door as I smiled and laughed into his shoulder. I guess we could be late after all.

  * * *

  An hour later than planned, Dylan sat behind the wheel of the Land Rover and drove us east, out of the city, towards Humboldt Park. I sat cross-legged in the front seat, flipping through my email on my phone while he switched from classical music to a mix I’d made him of indie bands from New York.

  A new email arrived, and my hand stilled.

  It was from Daphne and the subject line read, As if you’d ever get Botox. Gross! I clicked the link to some royal gossip blog and was afraid to start reading.

  “What is it?” Dylan asked, interrupting my anxiety.

  “Daphne sent me a link to a blog post about me.”

  “Oh? From where? What does it say?” Dylan’s hand moved to my thigh, and I could feel him tense a little. “Read it to me.”

  “Okay.” I gulped. “‘If the American shopgirl wants to land Dylan Hale for the long haul, she’ll have to learn to piss with the lords (and ladies). Well, Lydia, we’re here to help. We asked, and here are the top six things our readers think you can do to be more aristocratic.’”

  Dylan chuckled. “Well, this ought to be good.”

  I gulped again. “It’s a list…and some pictures.” All of a sudden I really didn’t want to do this.

  Dylan slid his hands between my thighs and gave my leg a squeeze. “Go on, then.”

  I exhaled loudly. “‘One. Hold your fork properly.’” I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “There’s a picture of us eating at that restaurant in Butler’s Wharf.” Dylan quickly looked over my shoulder at the photo. “I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, well, we don’t eat that way over here.”

  “What way?”

  “You switch the fork from your right hand to your left to cut your food, and then you switch it back. We keep our fork in our left hand over here.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Have you noticed that?”

  “Damsel, it’s meaningless. Don’t you think if it really mattered I would have told you? Come on, don’t be daft. What’s number two?”

  I already hated this game.

  “‘Two. Don’t wear T-shirts with writing on them.’ There’s a picture of you and I running, and I’m wearing my Brooklyn Lager T-shirt.” I looked down, and sure enough, under my sweater I had on an old concert T-shirt. “Is that really a thing?” I searched back through my memories and couldn’t remember one instance of Dylan wearing a T-shirt with any kind of logo or writing on it.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I love all your worn-in old T-shirts. They’re adorable. Never stop wearing them.”

  “But is it true? Do you not wear T-shirts like that?”

  Dylan just shrugged.

  “Okay, ‘Three. Go blond.’ There’s just a picture of a debutante ball somewhere and all the girls are that perfect shade of sunshiny blond.”

  Dylan looked over my shoulder to see the picture again, flicking his eyes back to the road. “Oh, that lot. Boring. Don’t go blonder, please,” he said, and he ran his fingers through my decidedly dirty-blond, light-brownish hair, cupping the nape of my neck.

  “‘Four. Get Botox.’ There’s no picture, thank god.” I flicked down the mirror in the sun visor and started to look at my lips. But before I could get a good look, Dylan flipped it back up.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know how I know your lips are perfect?”

  “How?” He opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped him. “No. Wait. You’re about to say something dirty.”

  Dylan laughed, clearly caught. “No,” he emphasized. “I was just going to say because I can’t take my eyes off them.”

  “Yeah, right.” I gave him my best exaggerated eye roll before continuing. “‘Five. Attend Ascot.’ Again, no picture of me, just a picture of Ascot.”

  “It’s not till June, but I’ll take you if you want.”

  “‘Six. Learn your place.’” I stilled. In other words, You don’t belong here. Below were photographs of the several single, beautiful, young aristocrats who would be deemed better girlfriend choices for Dylan—daughters of earls and barons, fashionable, willowy, sunshiny blond model types caught leaving exclusive nightclubs, dining in members-only clubs, and just walking down the street. The kind of women found in the society pages not because of who they were dating but because of who they were. Amelia Reynolds was number four.

  Dylan peeked at my phone again, catching a glimpse. “Damsel, that’s ridiculous.”

  Just then another email arrived from Daphne with the subject line Ignore my last email!!!!!! I opened it and read her begging me not to read that terrible post and how she should have finished reading it before sending. Too late.

  “Damsel,” Dylan said, hearing my heavy exhale for what it was: the desire for blog posts like this to disappear from the Internet. “You must develop a thicker skin. Trust me, this kind of thing has nothing to do with you and everything to do with selling adverts. And it won’t stop. At least not until the next exciting thing comes along.”

  I nodded. In a few short months I’d come to need him, to want him, to not be able to envision my life without him, but things like this—this litany of ways in which we were different, our worlds were different—nagged at me, frayed the edges of my confidence that those differences didn’t matter. He would always be the one born to be a duke, and I would always be the one born to be a normal person, someone for whom Botox would be out of the question. I could never go back to pre-Dylan, but there was a part of me that didn’t know what it meant to go forward.

  Dylan interrupted my ruminating—his soft fingers stroking my leg. I realized that the car had stopped. We were pulled over to the side of the road. I looked at him, wondering what was happening, and he swiftly lifted me and pulled me over the console so I was straddling his lap.

  He held my face in both of his hands, forcing me to look right at him. He kissed me firmly on the lips, slow, warm, and with total conviction.

  “Number seven. Nothing. Dylan Hale wants
Lydia Bell in the exact package, the exact character, and the exact delightful attire in which she arrived on British soil.” His hand was now playing with my shirt and creeping up under it towards my breast. “Trust me, damsel. Thicker skin.”

  I nodded and inhaled just in time before his lips met mine. His tongue pried my lips apart and coaxed me into the kiss. He refused to let my mind wander back to that blog post and instead, with every flick of his tongue, with every movement of his lips, with every stroke of my skin, insisted that I be right there with him. Only with him. If only I could stay in that kissing world forever.

  Chapter 13

  An hour later we approached a driveway entrance flanked by two tall stone pillars. In some ways the entrance was unassuming—the pillars were covered with ivy, no signs or gilded gates. The only reason I even knew it was the entrance to Humboldt Park was because Dylan uttered “Home sweet home” as we turned into the road. It snaked around bends with fields on either side, wooded areas in the distance. I could see farmhouses and outbuildings a ways off, and I was simply taking in the enormity of the place.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a square, stone, towerlike building deep in some gardens.

  “It’s called a pigeonnier. It gives the birds a place to nest, and we collect their eggs. We used to occasionally collect the birds as well but haven’t done in some years. My father prefers shooting parties.”

  We continued to round the estate and came across the edge of a large pond, with a bridge over it. It reminded me of Central Park, with its winding paths crossing over water and its crisscrossing walkways. “Is this all part of it?” I asked, nearly leaning over Dylan to get a better look out the window.

  “I’ll show it all to you later.”

  When the house finally came into view, my jaw dropped, and I felt my eyes bug out of my head. This place was a palace. I’d seen pictures of it online, but it was different to have it looming over me in person, to feel so dwarfed by it.

  When I was a child, my father and I went to Newport, Rhode Island, one summer to look at the mansions. The memory had been long buried, nestled somewhere under a zillion movie nights and years of cancer treatments, but it emerged fully realized now. That was the only other time I’d seen houses like this one, and we’d had to pay for tickets to get into those. People rented them for weddings, for Christ’s sake. This is where Dylan had grown up? Holy fuck.

  “Dylan, I…” I couldn’t finish that thought. I had no idea what to say. The house was enormously tall and so grand. We rounded a corner and a stately columned façade came into view with several steps. There was a curved driveway in front, and I couldn’t miss the Roman statue and fountain. I remembered Will’s comment about Geoffrey’s mistress.

  “Come,” Dylan started after a moment of silence and as the car rolled to a stop in front of a grand set of doors. He leaned over and kissed me quickly but firmly, even though I barely registered or responded. “It’s just a house.” Yeah, and the Grand Canyon was just a ravine.

  An older woman in a crisp blue dress was waiting by the door, and a younger man in a collarless button-down shirt and a pair of pressed trousers was approaching the car.

  “Hello there, Jake,” said Dylan to the guy with a genuine smile. “Our bags are in the boot.”

  “Right, sir. Her Grace has Miss Bell in the blue room,” he added, looking at Dylan as though he knew this cryptic phrase would get a response, which it did—a huff of anger.

  “Of course she does. Please put Lydia’s bags in my room as well, if you would.”

  “Of course, sir,” the young guy replied with a barely noticeable smirk.

  Dylan then looked to the warm older woman waiting for us by the door. “Mrs. Barnes,” he said, giving her an all-encompassing hug. “It’s lovely to see you.”

  “You look so well, my lord.”

  “It will never feel right for you to call me that.”

  “Fine, then,” she said, pleased with herself. “Master Dylan it is.”

  Dylan chuckled. “You haven’t called me that since I was a boy.” He sighed. “Anything’s better than ‘lord,’ especially from you.” He was smiling so warmly towards her, it was almost as if this woman were his mother. You could feel the comfort radiating from her. And Dylan’s respect for her. In the next moment, he turned and gestured back towards me, and I stepped forward. “Mrs. Barnes, I’d like to introduce you to Lydia Bell, my girlfriend.”

  Mrs. Barnes beamed and took both my hands in her own. She looked me over and took me in with the eyes of someone who loved Dylan without end. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Bell.” And she held my hands for just a moment longer.

  “Lydia,” Dylan said, turning to me, “Mrs. Barnes has been the housekeeper here for nearly forty years. The story goes that my parents attempted to hire a nanny, and Mrs. Barnes here was charged with interviewing them, but there were no good candidates, so she was left with the onerous task of looking after me herself.”

  “Now,” said Mrs. Barnes, “I won’t have you telling falsehoods while you’re under this roof. The truth, Miss Bell, was that I couldn’t part with young Master Dylan here. I’m sure any one of those nannies was perfectly qualified, but none was good enough.”

  “All for the best,” Dylan said. “I’m sure I would have ended up hiding under your apron regardless.” I’d never seen Dylan so warmly embraced, so much like a son, until this moment. It was the first time, apart from moments with his sister, that I could truly see him as part of a family.

  “You? Hiding under an apron? Why do I find that hard to believe?” I asked, looking at Mrs. Barnes as I spoke, and she hollered in reply.

  “Oh, you know him well, don’t you?” she replied, and we both laughed as she followed us into the house.

  We walked into a great hall with ceilings higher than those in any museum I’d been in, certainly any home. Looking around, I was pretty sure that some of the paintings on the wall were taller than my ceilings back in the New York apartment.

  “Their Graces are in the library,” Mrs. Barnes continued, “but I imagine you’ll be going for a walk before joining them?”’

  Dylan nodded in confirmation. “I’ll show Lydia my room. Could you please have Jake round up Cider and Monty? We’ll take them with us.” I looked at him, confused, and he clarified, “The dogs.”

  As we walked through the house, away from the main staircase, we passed endless entrances to endless hallways, windows big enough for elephants to climb through, and furniture that I was pretty sure dated from before the founding of the United States. “Is it really just your parents in this place?” I asked, holding Dylan’s hand for dear life, afraid that if we got separated I might never find my way back again.

  “Well, my parents and six staff who live here. And guests—they often have guests. In fact”—he slowed—“up here.” He tugged me through a doorway in the wall that didn’t even appear to be a doorway—it blended in completely with the ornate wallpaper—and dragged me up a flight of stairs. When we arrived at the second floor, he opened the first door we passed, and we stood in the doorway looking in at an astoundingly ornate bedroom. “Rumor has it that a French monarch was conceived in this room.”

  “Seriously?”

  Dylan nodded. “Not in my day, obviously, or in my grandfather’s for that matter, but you know, back when.”

  We finally arrived at a door at the end of a hallway, and Dylan opened it to reveal a suite of rooms that felt thankfully more modern than the rest. Sure, the bed was still a grand mahogany four-poster that made me feel like a miniature person, and the drapes looked heavy and silken, and the rugs looked foreign and fancy. But there was a TV mounted on the wall, a comfortable and worn-looking velvet couch, and bookshelves lined with trophies and evidence of a teenage boy’s existence. Photographs and concert tickets pinned to shelves, rugby jerseys draped over hooks, paperback novels strewn about a table. Thank god. And somehow our bags were already there.

  “This is yours?” I
asked, starting to poke around and finding myself at a window looking out on a vast wilderness with the occasional evidence of man’s reining it in with box hedges and pathways. I felt Dylan’s hands on my hips and his front pressed to my back before he actually spoke.

  “You can snoop later. Let’s go for a walk,” he started and turned me around to look at me, browsing my attire and landing on my sneakers. “Can those trainers take a few rocks and twigs? Maybe a little muck?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, then let’s get out of here.” As we began to descend the main staircase, the enormity of this place registered full force. There were coats of arms everywhere, tapestries that looked old—like, really old—hanging from the walls. What kind of life was this? All of a sudden I understood, just a little bit, what Dylan’s future meant. I knew Dylan in his modern London architect world, where his being a future duke felt like a funny quirk, a wanna-hear-something-crazy-about-my-boyfriend? kind of thing. But being here made it real. Suddenly I understood why a world of bloggers thought I wasn’t aristocratic enough.

  * * *

  Cider and Monty were two Irish setters, and Dylan was clearly their master. They bounded around him, swarmed him, nuzzled him, and licked him silly. I actually felt honored when Cider licked my hand and gave me the time of day.

  It was three in the afternoon when we set out, and we walked for nearly two hours. The property was so different from the property at Dylan’s own country house—what I called his hideaway—which was sprawling and natural, and felt untouched apart from the deliberate and minimalist landscaping around his moderately sized modern house. Humboldt Park was vast, almost like a city of landscape with different neighborhoods. There were gardens around the pond, with carefully articulated spots for fishing. There were highly structured and elegant English gardens, with different “rooms” and themes—roses or various perennials. And there were orchards, wooded areas, and a deer park.

  There were pathways and trails and huge swaths of wild land, all so beautiful, and they made me feel like we could be in any time. While walking across one trail, we ran into an old gentleman in his walking cap who bowed his head and said “G’day, milord” to Dylan in a way that made me feel like we were in the late-nineteenth century.