The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  Thirty-five minutes and one mildly bruised tailbone later, we were sweaty and spent, and the ill-advised vodka made it urgent that I go home. Unfortunately, a large contingent of paparazzi was outside, waiting for a glimpse either of Nick, or a certain redheaded actress from Neighbours (who’d most likely called them herself). So Tony threw dark glasses and a purloined hat onto Cilla and had Clive smuggle her out while shouting loudly about recent Neighbours plot points, distracting the photogs long enough for me to pour myself into the back of Nick’s waiting car and camouflage myself on the floor under a chunky dark blanket—where I promptly conked out, my cheek pressed ingloriously against the mats. I awoke just as Nick was tucking me into the most glorious of beds, explaining with a grin that he’d brought me to Kensington Palace because hauling me up into my flat would’ve made him and Stout look like they were hiding a dead body. It was my first time bunking in Kensington, thanks to Eleanor’s strict policies about unmarried couples sharing royal bedchambers, but I was too groggy to register it; I barely got out a thank-you before I collapsed back into sleep.

  The next morning, I awoke facing a robin’s-egg blue wall, the weight of a body next to me on the bed.

  “I thought your grandmother didn’t approve of sleepovers,” I said, closing my eyes and rolling over to spoon him.

  “Yes, but I was in the mood for a proper pillow fight,” came an unfamiliar voice.

  My eyes flew open and I screamed, whacking at the man lying next to me with my fists before leaping out of bed.

  “Who the hell are you?” I spat, before taking in the familiar-looking person lounging on the bed in front of me, all mussed ginger hair and ratty track pants, rubbing his arm where I’d cracked him. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another human being laugh so hard.

  Nick burst in, panicked. “Bex! Are you all right?”

  He stopped when he saw his guffawing brother, the infamous Prince Frederick of Wales, rolling on the bed and clutching his chest with mirth.

  “I should’ve known,” Nick said, affecting what looked like a full-body eye roll. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were in Somerset.”

  “I’m on leave for a bit,” Freddie said. “As far as you know. I shouldn’t discuss classified details with a half-naked civilian standing right there.”

  If Freddie thought this would make me blush, he miscalculated.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in your secrets,” I told him. “I am interested in punching you again, though, for scaring the hell out of me.”

  “Go on, a nice young lady like you?” he said, sitting up against the baroque carved headboard with a grin that could charitably be described as shit-eating.

  I leaned over the bed and socked him hard in the other arm.

  “Easy, Killer!” Freddie yelped. “Where are my PPOs when I need them?”

  “Where are mine? No one even stuck his head in to make sure there wasn’t a murderer in here,” Nick said, tossing me some sweatpants from an ornate dresser. “You’re lucky she didn’t punch you someplace less polite.”

  “I would have,” I told them, “but I think it’s treason to break the Crown Jewels.”

  Freddie shot me an appraising look. “Funny,” he said. “And pretty. Natural. Like a toothpaste commercial. I don’t know why Father was so sprung on you and old India Boringbroke, Knickers. Must have been her massive—”

  “I’m sorry, Bex,” Nick interrupted. “I’d like to tell you that he’s not usually this crass.”

  “It’s true,” Freddie said cheerfully. “I’m much worse.”

  I smiled as I tied the drawstring on the sweatpants. I couldn’t help it; that’s Freddie’s charisma at work. Nick sank down next to him on the expansive bed—the future king, dwarfed by his king-size.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Father’ll have your head if you’ve skived off your job.”

  “At least I have a job,” Freddie taunted Nick. “What’ve you been up to? Staring blankly at the Times cryptics? More juicy trips to the library?”

  Nick’s face darkened. This was a sore subject. To Nick’s endless envy, Freddie had joined the Royal Navy immediately after Eton, and was training to be a helicopter pilot at a Fleet Air Arm base near a town called Yeovil that sounded more like a medicine than a place. But Richard, in a move I suspect was to keep Nick under his thumb, ordered Nick to bypass military service for the moment and instead divide his time between a postgraduate course in global development through Oxford, and reams of outside reading so he could converse fluently with farmers, politicians, dock workers, even bookmakers. Essentially, Richard was guiding Nick toward both an actual master’s and an unofficial graduate degree in all things Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was useful, but because it primarily involved staying indoors, it also had the press calling Nick a layabout when, in fact, I’d never seen him work so hard.

  Freddie must have regretted his comment, because he abruptly sprang up from the bed and saluted me. There was a hole in the armpit of his T-shirt.

  “Madam, I’m Frederick Wales, pilot in training, at your service.”

  “Bex Porter,” I said. “Hired thug.”

  “Oh yes, Nick’s told me all about you,” Freddie said, moving to a wingback in the corner of the room and gesturing for me to sit next to Nick. “Although I’m now the second Lyons you’ve met without wearing any trousers. What’s going to happen when you meet our father?”

  I glared at Nick as I climbed onto the bed and stretched out my legs. Nick shrugged sheepishly and then crawled over and rested his head on them.

  “You cannot blame me for telling my brother about the adorable American running around in a hand towel,” he said, blatantly trying to suck up.

  “To be fair, that was the second time we met,” I corrected.

  Freddie nodded. “Of course. The first time you went on about sexually transmitted diseases.”

  I flicked Nick’s earlobe gently. “If you know all that,” I said to Freddie, “then surely you heard I already met Prince Richard. Sort of.”

  Freddie rubbed his hands together. “I can’t believe you left out this part, Knickers.”

  “It wasn’t exactly one of our better memories,” Nick said.

  “No, that’d be Windsor, wouldn’t it?” Freddie said with a mischievous gleam.

  I fully pinched Nick’s ear this time, but I was laughing. “Jealous we beat you to it?” I teased Freddie.

  “Who says you did?” Freddie fired back. “Rebecca, I’ve got secrets that would curl your hair and cripple the monarchy. And you know horny old Henry the Eighth sullied every one of those antiques with his great greasy bum.” He smacked his hands on his thighs. “Right, let me guess: Prince Dick was screeching at Nick and you overheard and he got all growly and menacing.”

  “Got it in one,” I said.

  The words were barely out of my mouth before Freddie jumped up and walked to the window. Freddie is nearly always moving. He’s athletic enough that it doesn’t come across as fidgeting—more like he’s a very handsome perpetual-motion machine. He pulled apart the thick silk curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing a gray, foggy morning, then fished a thin silver cigarette case out of his track pants pocket and pushed open the top half of one of the windows.

  “Freddie, don’t smoke in here,” Nick said as a cold draft blew into the room.

  “Too bloody freezing anyway,” Freddie said, slamming the window closed and tossing the engraved case onto the floor. “You win this one, Knickers.”

  “Please pick that up. When did you start smoking again?” Fatigue and strain crept into Nick’s voice, as if a lifetime of being forced to nag his brother was wearing on him all at once.

  “It’s just every so often.”

  “It’ll kill you, and so will Gran.”

  “Thanks, but I already have a mum,” Freddie snapped.

  An unsettling current passed between them. Nick looked away. A flicker of something like guilt crosse
d Freddie’s face, before he turned to me.

  “So, you were saying Prince Dick was a complete fuckhead to you,” he said.

  I laughed, despite wanting to be irritated on Nick’s behalf. “I did not say that.”

  “And is old Dickie just thrilled about this romantic development?”

  “Is he ever thrilled about anything?” Nick countered. “We don’t discuss it.”

  “Which means his army of spies has skulked around and reported back all manner of sins,” Freddie concluded. “Run while you can, Killer, before they tell him you chew with your mouth open and have been seen sniffing around Aunt Agatha’s collection of Fabergé eggs.”

  “I can’t run,” I said. “I’m really gunning for those eggs.”

  Freddie nodded approvingly, then checked his watch. “Stay for lunch, won’t you? Surely there’s something decent knocking about in the kitchen.”

  Something decent proved to be cheese, salad, a standing rib roast, Scotch eggs, and four different kinds of potatoes. It was the first of many such meals where the three of us would take refuge and stuff our faces. We ate this particular one in the second, smaller dining room, which has a view of the public park that used to be the palace’s front yard. Compared to some of the other state holdings, Kensington Palace looks the most like a regular old manor: The careworn, faded brick main building houses a museum, and fronts a village of well-concealed, sprawling private apartments for a variety of royal relatives. And given that the green space around it is now royal parkland, gawkers get a whole lot closer than you’d expect. Imagine if you could walk right up to the White House lawn and sunbathe topless while the president looked out of his window. It wouldn’t happen, and yet right now there was a girl in Kensington Gardens stretching in the most perfunctory of shorts.

  “Your next girlfriend, mate,” Nick teased.

  “Or an old one,” Freddie joked back. Then he squinted through the window. “Actually, she does look familiar.”

  I had heard about Freddie’s addiction to dating gorgeous women—the more the merrier—who were also either odd or ragingly inappropriate enough to keep him entertained for more than a week. The stories he regaled me with over that day’s lunch more than confirmed the rumors, including one about his comparatively lengthy three-month dalliance with a Scottish actress named Turret who’d had to be paid off by the Palace to stop her turning the relationship into a one-woman musical. She was now a party planner in Ottawa. Little wonder Nick’s own taste in women had been the subject of so much media curiosity.

  “So when is the big coming-out?” Freddie asked, passing a Bloody Mary pitcher around and then taking a loud bite out of his celery stalk. “Bex should meet the family.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Nick replied.

  “You know what I mean. I don’t count,” Freddie said. “I’m barely even frightening.”

  “You know what I mean,” Nick said. “I’m just not ready to hand this relationship to the wolves yet. Any of them.”

  The brothers exchanged a silent look, again, that seemed to say a lot in a language that I didn’t yet speak. Freddie nodded slowly.

  “Quite right, as usual, Knickers,” he said. “Your secret is safe with me. This particular secret anyway.”

  Freddie bounded away and returned with some leather-bound photo albums to show me what he called “all fourteen years of Nick’s awkward period.” They were notable in that both boys were as appealing then as they are now—it was a teen girl’s dream scrapbook—and that there wasn’t a photo of Emma anywhere, although to be fair, Richard wasn’t present much, either. It was largely nannies; Clive’s father, Edgeware; and their uncle Awful Julian, who, despite his reputation as a drunk and a bounder, was clearly adept with the boys. (Freddie once told me that this is because Awful Julian likes them better than his own equally awful son.) We dallied until nine, at which point Freddie suggested we hit up a club he’d been wanting to try in Soho, because he was chasing around a part-time model and party planner called Tuppence.

  “And I intend to collect.” He winked.

  “Appalling,” Nick said, but he was smiling.

  “I should actually get home,” I said. “I’m wiped out, and I need clean clothes.”

  “It’s dark already,” Nick said, nudging me affectionately with his knee. “Stay.”

  “Won’t that be scandalous?” I asked. “Two nights in a row?”

  “Probably,” Nick said. “But Freddie rudely hogged all my time with you today, so I don’t want to say good-bye yet.”

  Freddie hopped up and took my hand. “Enchanté,” he said, kissing it lightly. “It was a pleasure being abused by your fists. I hope you hit on me again very soon.”

  Then he turned to Nick and waved a mock-scolding finger. “Now, Nicholas, you simply mustn’t sleep in the same bed. Gran will be furious.” To me, he added, “Knickers is a stickler for duty, have you noticed? Oh—speaking of…”

  He pulled out his wallet and rummaged through it, before pulling out a folded piece of paper and flicking it at Nick. “Finished yesterday’s cryptic,” he said. “Consider it your new duty to study it and learn.”

  Nick threw a coaster at Freddie’s back as his brother fled the room, and we spent the ensuing hour chatting on the couch, our legs in a cozy tangle, until our yawning could no longer be denied.

  “We probably do have to aim for propriety here,” Nick said. “Gran is very persnickety about sleeping arrangements. You can stay in mine again, or if the flashbacks to Freddie’s appearance this morning are too horrifying, you can take the Howard Bedroom.”

  He escorted me to a cozy, wood-paneled chamber with deep-set windows overlooking a private courtyard, and an intimate seating area with fresh flowers and magazines scattered artfully on an end table. Against the opposite wall was an imposing four-poster bed, begging me to flop onto it. I am a world-class flopper. I can heave myself onto a couch so hard it’s still vibrating five minutes later.

  “Despite Freddie’s appalling behavior, that went well, right?” Nick asked, collapsing onto a love seat. “You’re the only girlfriend of mine who’s been able to keep up with him. The one time I invited Ceres for a nightcap, Freddie sent her to a pub down the street. He told her we were out of cups.”

  Affection washed over me. In all my nerves about meeting Freddie, I never stopped to think that Nick might have been just as worried.

  “Freddie’s great,” I said, sitting down and sticking my feet on the table. My socks didn’t match. As usual. “It would’ve been fun to have a brother like that, although I probably would’ve wanted to throttle him for a few years because he’d have been letting his pervy friends go through my underwear drawer.”

  “I often still want to throttle him,” Nick said. “Promise me he didn’t stress you out about meeting the family. Honestly, I don’t have much that’s just mine. I want to keep you to myself for a bit.” He grabbed my foot and started rubbing it. “Mismatched socks and all.”

  “Mmm. It’s a shame I’m going to have to turn you out of my maiden bedroom,” I said.

  Nick dropped my foot. “Oh, you sweet naïve commoner,” he said.

  He pulled me up and led me to one of the bookcases flanking the bed, where he tugged on a peeling volume called Historic Houses of England. The entire bookcase swung inward.

  An actual secret passage.

  “The hidden perk of the Howard Bedroom is that it connects to mine, which is where the Duke of York slept back in the day. This is where he housed his…”

  “His mistress?” I supplied.

  “I didn’t realize until the end of that sentence that it was somewhat insulting to you,” Nick said. “Let me try again. Ahem. This room is where the Duke of York housed, ah, the guest he might most wish to visit in the middle of the night, for a variety of respectable reasons, one of which is her advanced taste in hosiery.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But that still doesn’t solve the problem of your grandmother not wanting us to d
efile a royal bedchamber.”

  “I thought of that,” Nick said smugly. “Being as this is a guest suite, it isn’t a royal bedchamber at all. In fact, it’s a wickedly unpopular bedchamber because it’s haunted. We’d be doing it a service.”

  “Giving it a reason to live,” I agreed. “Or giving the ghost a reason to pretend to live.”

  “Quite selfless, really.”

  “Sexual philanthropy.”

  “Fancy term. Now you’re just showing off for the ghost,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to mine and sliding my sweatpants to the floor. If the ghost was scandalized by what happened next, he certainly never complained.

  Chapter Two

  But why haven’t you met them?” my mother asked, picking up the white and mint-green teacup and jerking her pinky finger impatiently out to the side, as if scolding herself for it not being innate. “It’s suspicious, Rebecca.”

  It was a reasonable question, and not unexpected: Almost a year had passed since I woke up to find Freddie in my bed instead of Nick, and I still hadn’t encountered anyone else in the Lyons family beyond that old, unofficial—and still secret, even to my parents—dustup with Richard. Mom and Dad, in fact, had flown over with the express purpose of meeting the esteemed Prince Nicholas, and yet there were no current plans for me to have a sit-down with the opposite side. Certainly, there were reasons for this; royal life always came with reasons, almost all of them Reasons, some of them even typed up and filed in a manila folder. But as much as I swore I didn’t need family dinners at Balmoral to validate my relationship, I couldn’t help being stung by the math: A thousand days without a handshake was hard to explain, even to myself, and absolutely not something I wanted to psychoanalyze during a ritzy high tea.

  “I can text Nick and tell him you aren’t comfortable meeting him without knowing his intentions,” I offered, dropping a cube of brown sugar into my exotic blend. “We can really draw a line in the sand, if that’s what you want.”

  Mom patted the neatly curled ends of her silver-streaked bob. “We cannot be so rude,” she said imperiously.