The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  Nick burst in two hours later. “Sorry, I was out with India. We need a bat signal so I can come home as soon as these get here.”

  He stopped short when he realized I was on the phone.

  “Everything’s fine, Dad, that’s just my horribly impatient hallmate Nick,” I said into the receiver.

  “He’s pretty loud,” Dad said.

  “He was raised in a barn.”

  Dad chortled. “I’m going to tell the Queen you said that.”

  “I’m going to tell Gran you said that,” Nick was whispering at the same time.

  “Put him on the phone, honey,” Dad said. “Prince or no prince, if this Nick fellow is going to run around your dorm room I should at least get the chance to scare him a little.”

  “Dad, we’re just friends. And he probably isn’t allowed to talk to you.”

  “Oh, I most certainly am,” Nick said, snatching the receiver from me. “Hello, sir,” he said in an absurdly proper-sounding voice. “This is Nicholas Wales speaking.”

  This is one of my favorite memories. The put your man-friend on the phone gambit was the greatest gift my dad gave Nick, because it said from the get-go that he didn’t view him any differently than any other guy who hung out in my bedroom.

  “What studies, sir?” Nick said into the phone. “Are you quite sure she’s doing any?”

  I kicked at his leg.

  “Oh, indeed, loads of trouble,” he said. “I expect she’ll get kicked out of the country fairly soon. Sharing humiliating stories might help—you know, really good blackmail material, to keep her on the straight and narrow.”

  I lunged at the phone but Nick stiff-armed me away from him.

  “That is shocking, sir,” he said.

  “You are dead to me,” I called out in the general direction of the phone.

  “Oh, that one’s even better. That’ll do nicely,” Nick said. “Thank you, sir. Yes, my royal upbringing should be a wonderful influence. Oh, and if you’ve got any in Liverpool red, my mate Gaz would love a Coucherator.”

  “Those things would never fit up these stairs,” I hissed loudly.

  “Maybe we can fit it in through a window,” Nick said. “Right, sir, we’ll measure it. Have a wonderful night. Go Cubs.”

  “Sycophant,” I said, reclaiming the phone. “We’re already out of the playoffs.”

  I let my dad know rather colorfully what I thought of that whole scene, and then hung up. Nick was studying me, a mischievous expression on his face.

  “You threw your prom date into a rubbish bin?”

  “He was being too handsy!” I protested. “He kept trying to hump my leg on the dance floor, and then told me he had a pearl necklace for me in the limo. So I may have spiked his punch an obscene amount, and the Dumpster was right outside—”

  Nick held up his hand. “Oh, I heard,” he said. “Although not the necklace thing; that is disgusting. But there is also the matter of a pet hamster named…let me see if I get this right…Prince Nicky? Whom you tried to flush down the toilet?”

  “Lacey named him!” I said. “And he fell in! He was fine! He was aquatic!”

  “I ought to call PPO Furrow and have you reevaluated,” Nick said.

  I held up the latest Devour episode. “No sudden moves, Nicky. I can end this for you right here, right now.”

  Nick took his usual spot on the fluffy rug and raised a hand. “Twinkies, please,” he said airily. “Be a good subject and pass them along. It’s what your father would want.”

  I threw the pack at his head, which he caught deftly before it smacked him in the nose.

  “Treason,” he said. “I quite like your dad. I can’t wait to meet him.”

  I grabbed the Cracker Jack and grunted.

  When the credits ran—Spencer Silverstone threw supernatural acid at her romantic rival, a mortal named Carrie, and it gave her a mind-controlling scar with a murderous agenda—we plunged back into the end of season two (known to me and Lacey as The Ill-Fated Talking-Candle Experiment), which led to a lively debate about the laws of shape-shifting. Nick finally groaned and rolled over straight into a half-eaten microwave curry from the local supermarket.

  “I am numb,” he said, picking congealed lumps of chicken off his arm. “Oh God, is it getting light outside?”

  He ran to my window. “It has gotten light outside,” he amended, squinting at my travel clock. “It’s seven fifteen, Rebecca Porter.”

  I yawned forcefully. “Night Bex and Night Nick strike again.”

  “Rebecca,” Nick said in a whisper-bellow. “This is very bad.”

  “Why?” I peered up at him, crunching my pillow under my cheek.

  Nick began pacing, picking things up and then immediately putting them down again.

  “Well, for starters, I have spent another full night in your room and Clive is not going to like that,” he said.

  “Clive underst—”

  “And beyond that,” Nick said, not hearing me, “I have an event today. Father and I are opening an exhibit of family ancestral writings at the Ashmolean.”

  I sat up. “That’s today?”

  “Yes, Rebecca, that is today.”

  “Why do you keep calling me Rebecca?”

  Nick pulled every hair on his head straight into the air. “Because, Rebecca,” he said, “I have gone insane. My father is due in three hours. Why did we stay up so late? I am an idiot.”

  He was doomed; I was sure of it. His eyes were bloodshot and his face looked gray. But I decided this was one time honesty was not what Nick needed.

  “Everything is going to work out,” I said instead. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to leave my room and you’re going to take a cold shower.”

  “This already sounds like the worst plan.”

  “It’ll wake you up, dumbass.”

  Nick didn’t even flinch at that, which I now know is because Freddie has called him worse at least once a day their entire lives.

  “Then,” I continued, “chug a pot of coffee and, like, a gallon of water. The caffeine will wake you up and the water will keep you hydrated. And get some greasy food. But no pastries, Nick. Pure carbs will make you crash.”

  “How do you know all this?” Nick asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “Nicholas,” I said. “You may have named her, but Night Bex has existed since long before I met you. One day, I’ll tell you about the time I only slept two hours before my aunt Kitty’s wedding, where I had to give an insanely long reading in German, which I don’t speak.”

  “How much more could there be to tell?” he said.

  “Focus,” I commanded him. “You are not going to blow this. I promise.”

  Nick grabbed me in a tight hug. Improbably, he smelled delicious, an indescribable scent that I will always only be able to define as him. And maybe a bit of tikka masala.

  “I’d be lost without you,” he said. And as he scampered off to his room, I turned around and passed out on my bed.

  * * *

  Everything about Prince Richard is narrow, from his body to the oval of his head to the line of his longish nose. But his bearing, the way he carries his position with just enough pomposity that you feel it but not enough that you wholly dislike him for it, gives him an aura of being good-looking even though the sum of the parts is fairly plain. I’d long been familiar with his face, because my parents went to London in the eighties and brought back a commemorative Royal Wedding wastebasket that’s in their downstairs bathroom (“He’s going to be king. He should live in the throne room,” Dad had said). But seeing someone in magazines—or tossing used Kleenex into him—is different than watching him move and speak in person, especially after the passage of more years than my parents or Richard might care to admit.

  That night, Richard and Nick were hosting a grand reopening of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum after a large renovation. The new modern lobby and balconies were packed with donors, rich alleged art lovers, local looky-loos who’d won a ticket lottery
, and us, Nick’s motley support crew—stuck upstairs against a glass railing that put us nose-to-nethers with a giant naked statue of Apollo from the fifth century BC. This delighted Gaz, who loudly wondered if he could distinguish one huge dick from the other.

  “It gives me great pleasure to have my son with me today, in our first joint venture since he gave up polo,” Richard was saying into a microphone. His speaking voice is not the rich baritone I always expect; it’s higher, thinner, a touch raspy. The Queen Mum once told me she thinks his tantrums as a young boy made it that way forever. I love her.

  Nick—just behind his father, who stood at a podium on one of the angular atrium staircase’s landings—remained serene and impassive, despite the hot-button polo issue. I’d become fluent enough in Nick’s facial expressions to recognize this veneer as Advanced Pleasantness. It meant he was annoyed.

  “We’re delighted to christen the new Ashmolean with never-before-seen private writings of our Lyons ancestors,” Richard continued. “The Princess of Wales wishes she could have been here. She’d have been immensely proud to see Nicholas contributing to Oxford’s history and culture. Especially as she once practically had to drag him through the Louvre.”

  Nick gave a hearty belly laugh, as did the crowd, and Richard preened. I knew he and his staff had swept Nick out of Pembroke for Official Princely Duties at bang on ten o’clock that morning—I woke up at the sound, then passed out again—but he seemed as rested as if he’d gotten ten hours. Lean and handsome in his navy suit, Nick had worked the crowd like a pro, shaking hands, chatting up old ladies, posing for photographs with museum dignitaries, and making merry with his father. It was like he’d been born to do it, and of course that’s exactly what he was; this Nick was utterly in command, with none of the jagged edges and endearing goofiness that I was used to, and it made him a bit alien to me.

  Richard finally yielded him the microphone.

  “I’ll have you know my mother never dragged me through the Louvre,” Nick said, practically twinkling. “Because I wouldn’t let her get me past the entryway. She had to sit there and play cards with me while Freddie and the others got a private look at the Mona Lisa.” The crowd roared. “It was worth it. I won,” he added, cheekily, as Richard reached out to squeeze his son on the shoulder. It was a warm moment in complete opposition to the frosty one in the paper a few weeks back—the news would later call it an affectionate father-son volley, presenting a united front in the face of rumors of friction—and the elderly, wealthy benefactors loved it.

  For different reasons, so did our friends.

  “Better laugh than his father got. Take that, Prince Dick,” grumbled Bea from behind me. I turned to look at her, surprised. “May I help you?” she asked haughtily.

  “I hope you’ll take the time to enjoy the exhibit tonight before it opens tomorrow,” Nick was saying. “I know I must, because during term—”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Clive whispered into my ear, giving it a nip.

  “Shh.”

  “No one’s paying attention to us,” Clive said. “They’ll never notice if we sneak off and find a dark corner. Everyone’s too busy gossiping about him and India.”

  “Look at her down there,” Bea grumbled. “The cat that got the cream. The cat that got several pints of cream.”

  Even from up high, I could see the glowing face of India Bolingbroke, who had not arrived on Nick’s arm but whom the rumor mill—so, Clive—insisted had been placed specially in the front row on the ground floor, along with a clutch of Richard-approved luminaries. The appearance caused reporters to use words like adoring and ladylike and exceedingly well matched in the papers the next day. I couldn’t imagine she and Nick were actually that tight. Nick had shortened or rescheduled several outings with her in favor of hanging out with me, and I never saw her on our floor at all. I assumed she’d been inside his room, but I couldn’t have guessed when, and although I’d seen them holding hands surreptitiously in a dark bar, he’d never so much as given her a peck on the cheek in public. But that night I had witnessed him guiding her gently through the throng, leaning in attentively, drawing her into conversations. If she was besotted, he was at the very least protective.

  “Richard loves her,” Clive said, in reporter mode, as we watched India applaud exuberantly. “Fancy parents, rich enough not to be grasping, not a whiff of scandal.”

  “Nor a whiff of personality,” Bea said. “I’ve known Nick since we were tots”—Gaz mouthed along at this behind her back—“and she’ll bore him to tears in a week.”

  But unquestionably, India looked like the sort of person who ought to be dating a prince: model-gorgeous with a megawatt smile, wearing a dress that easily cost two thousand pounds. Given that nearly everything I owned at this time was from Old Navy, I’d greeted Nick’s group invitation to the gala with a panicked phone call to Lacey, who pointed out that I had a clothing designer living next door. This turned out to be a mistake: Joss had insisted I wear her favorite new design, a stretchy crushed-velvet-and-leather dress that twisted strangely across my torso, in which I resembled nothing so much as a lampshade at a biker bar. Cilla had taken one look at it and lent me a very large coat.

  We drank flute upon flute of free Champagne while Nick made the rounds, introducing India to a series of elaborately bearded lords. She certainly seemed to charm Nick’s father. To the outsider and even to many insiders, Richard seems like a relic, a man meant to rule five hundred years ago when a mere flash of his sword could vanquish his enemies and oppress the peasants. But with India that night, Richard laughed and was as solicitous as Nick, which the news claimed was tantamount to him anointing her as his future daughter-in-law.

  It was two hours before we got anywhere near them.

  “Thank God,” Nick said, excusing himself from whomever Richard was speaking to; Richard never abandoned the conversation, yet kept a firm eye on Nick’s back. “I have answered the same two questions forty-five times.” He eyed my massive coat. “Are you cold?”

  “Joss,” Cilla said.

  “Say no more.” He grinned.

  “Dick bringing up the polo thing was a bit much, given the papers,” murmured Clive.

  “But your speech was great,” I said. “That Louvre story is super charming.”

  “And apocryphal,” he said. “Father told me we needed Warm Family Stories, and obviously most of mine are fictional.”

  I started to laugh, until I saw nobody else was, and that he wasn’t joking.

  “Where’s India?” I asked, changing tacks. “I’ve never officially met her.”

  Nick pointed across the way. “I left her with a woman who kept asking me how I plan to defend myself in case of kidnapping.”

  “How attentive of you,” said Bea.

  “She’ll be all right. They’re talking about Pilates,” Nick said. “It’s awkward bringing someone to these things, but Father insisted, and I was too tired to fight it.” His gaze flickered toward me.

  PPO Furrow stepped in, his signature wrinkle in full effect. “The Prince of Wales prefers you to stay with the VIP guests,” he said in a low voice.

  Nick closed his eyes for a brief moment and then shifted back into work mode. “Yes, I must get back to my duties,” he said. “Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it.”

  “What a piece of bloody work Richard is,” Cilla said as we peered through the crowd to see him greet Nick with a slap on the back of ostensible gaiety—but with a slightly harder thump than was strictly necessary.

  The five of us spent another half hour people-watching. We weren’t so much in a crowd as in the middle of an impromptu receiving line—as if the hive mind told everyone to arrange themselves in a way that might hide their essential purpose of waiting for a touch of the royal hand—and as soon as the princes were whisked away, the alleged art aficionados disappeared along with them. They may have said they were there to support the Ashmolean, but they bolted as soon as the bar had closed.

  By
that point, as occurs in nearly every story from my Oxford year, we had gotten a wee bit drunk—or at least, moderately tipsy, enough so that when I insisted we be cultured and look at the manuscripts, Gaz actually booed. I didn’t care. I wanted to linger at the glass cases containing so much sloping, dated cursive on yellowing pages—the intimate and sometimes illuminatingly banal correspondence from back when people cared to do it longhand. Eleanor had very precise penmanship; her father, King Richard IV, was prone to decorating state documents with doodles of the Crown Jewels. But the best were the letters between King Albert and his queen, Georgina Lyons-Bowes, whose untimely death during World War I broke his heart and—my old syphilis joke aside—eventually his mind as well. It was that first torrent of grief that prompted him to adopt Lyons as the dynastic name, and it’s endlessly romantic to me that his progeny have reigned under that name now for over a hundred years, all because Albert really, really, really loved his wife.

  “Oh, Bertie, my pet, do be a love and stay true forever and ever. You are a dear,” Clive mimicked as I studied one of Georgina’s letters.

  “Don’t be like that,” I said, elbowing him. “These are amazing.”

  “You look amazing.” Clive’s voice reverberated in my ear, as he reached under my coat and ran his fingers over my dress.

  “I look like a lunatic.”

  “A gorgeous lunatic.”

  “Don’t bother me with your hormones. I’m reading,” I said playfully.

  “These are so bloody formal,” Clive complained, leaning over the case, so close to me that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Look, this one uses the royal we. ‘We do love you ever so much.’ That’s about as romantic as an appendectomy.”