The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  “I’d have had you up there, if it wouldn’t have been such a to-do for you,” she whispered.

  I shook my head and hugged harder. “Better to keep the focus on you,” I said. “I am just thrilled to be here. I love you, and it was flawless.”

  She pulled back, her eyes shining. “And so will yours be.”

  “On that note,” I said, turning to Gaz. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Want to sue the knickers off The Royal Flush?” he asked. “I can look into it.”

  I grinned. “Tempting, but no.” I drew a breath. “My mother isn’t sure she can walk me down the aisle without totally losing it,” I said. “My aunt Kitty’s been divorced three times, so I’m not close with my uncles, and my grandfathers are both dead. You are the best extended family I could want anyway, so I wondered if you would mind giving me away.”

  Gaz blinked once, hard, then burst into the most spectacular wail.

  “Don’t play it so coy, darling,” Cilla teased.

  Gaz wiped his eyes on the kerchief that had been in his jacket pocket—it had gotten a lot of play already—and then looked at me, red and puffy and wonderful.

  “That is the most magnificent favor that a person has ever been asked,” he said. “I’m so honored I could cry.”

  “Bloody hell, if that wasn’t crying, what is?” Freddie asked, thumping Gaz on the back. “Jolly good work here, Garamond. Bex, we’re in the way of their fans. Let’s go drink.”

  As he dragged me away, an elderly woman who’d made a beeline for Cilla stopped and grasped my arm. “You look lovely. We’re so excited for you, dear. And aren’t you a dish,” she said to Freddie, whacking him lightly on the shoulder with her program. “You two make such a charming couple.”

  “He’s the other one, Estelle,” her equally elderly spouse hissed as they trundled past us. “She’s marrying the main one.”

  “Fred, that isn’t—” I began.

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Hear it all the time,” Freddie told me, but his gaiety was forced. “At least she thinks I’m dishy. But now I really need that drink.”

  The reception, like the wedding itself, was intimate, funny, unexpected. There were six toasts from Cilla’s side of the family and one riotous speech from Gaz’s father, the infamous disgraced finance minister, about how not to handle your joint bank accounts. Cilla danced a comedic tango with her new husband before a lively foxtrot with her dad, which made my heart ache for mine. I caught myself envying my friends. This wedding was deeply personal, with no artifice; Gaz and Cilla could just be Gaz and Cilla, the same in public and in private, a luxury that Nick and I never would have. This ceremony was for them. Ours was for the country, and for the Crown, and I felt a pang for what could have been if Nick had been born anything but what he was—a pang that was as much for him as for me. Instead of cheering me up, the cocktails pushed me deeper into the melancholy I had tried and failed to leave at home.

  Freddie noticed. And he tried to help. He told gleefully atrocious rumors, including one about Dim Tim Fitzwilliam and a yak that I wasn’t even sure I fully understood. He roped Gemma and Bea—the latter, in diametric opposition to me, rather more buoyant than usual—into a rousing game of Spot the Sutcliffes (we were tripped up when the man with the parrot turned out only to be the owner of Cilla’s village pharmacy). And he coaxed me onto the dance floor, where I gave gaiety my best shot. But I was a husk out there. As the music slowed into a ballad, I glanced over and saw Bea and Gemma grind to a halt, awkwardly, before Bea drew her girlfriend in for a loving slow dance. It was a public spontaneity of emotion that had become absent from my own life, and it ground me to a wobbly, empty halt.

  Freddie abruptly pulled me close, as if to dance. “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  I could not speak. My emotional dam was poorly built, destined to burst, but I’d never thought it would happen here. BITCHY BEX’S BRIDAL BREAKDOWN would be the best day of Xandra Deane’s life.

  Freddie clearly sensed this, because he raised his voice and said, “I’m sure Bea has some allergy medication in the house.”

  He marched us past Bea and said, under his breath, “Mayday.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clive begin to extricate himself from Paddington to join us. Bea waved him off with a very awkward thumbs-up—like she’d never done that before, which she probably hadn’t—and he seemed surprised and reluctant, even as Paddington pulled him away. Then Bea leapt into action.

  “Let’s keep this as tight as possible,” she said. “Freddie, you get her out of here and straighten her out.”

  “No.” I shook them off. “This is Gaz and Cilla’s wedding. It’s important. I can’t leave.”

  “You cannot stay,” Bea countered. “Not catatonic. We’ll tell Gaz you got far too drunk, which he’ll think is an extreme compliment.”

  Gemma piped up, “There’s a secret back road. Freddie, you leave alone, wave at the paparazzi, drive off, and then double back. I’ll tell you where. Bea can take Bex.”

  Freddie saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Bea then marched me out of the barn with loud commentary about the whereabouts of her antihistamine. I followed mutely, mentally adrift, as we completed our diversion and then crept to a well-hidden access road snaking through the foliage. I tried fervently to tamp down the feelings that wanted to come out in pure, unregulated Bex fashion, but when Bea propped me up on a gate and turned to leave, brushing off her hands as if her work was done, I met her with a sob. She sighed, then put an arm around my shoulders and let me heave it out all over her cashmere wrap, turning her head away as if feelings might be contagious.

  “I told you this was a job, and it is,” she said after I had burned through the first wave of tears. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not the right person for it.”

  She wiped my eye with a thumb. “You won’t get many of these,” she said. “Take full advantage of this one and get it all out.”

  “I can see why Nick loved Gemma. I’m super glad for both of us that she turned out to be a lesbian,” I blurted.

  Bea laughed. “Rebecca, so am I,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me back then?” I asked, snuffling. “About Gemma?”

  Bea looked exasperated. “Because it wouldn’t have mattered,” she said. “She wasn’t the problem. She was a symptom.” She paused. “And I didn’t bloody well want to. We’re not all as blubbery about things as you are.” She nudged me. “Here’s Freddie.”

  He pulled over and she yanked open the door on his borrowed sports coupe—Freddie never met a sedan he didn’t disdain—and hurled me into the passenger seat.

  “Crikey,” was all Freddie said when he saw my condition.

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. “I ruined your night.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I’m an officer, and occasionally I am a gentleman, and I am seeing you home. And then whatever this is, we’ll fix it.”

  * * *

  I spent the whole ride crying, but casually, helplessly, as if someone was ritualistically flushing my tear ducts. Freddie simply drove, companionably silent, and then hustled me back into the flat. He took one look at the lived-in mess, my laptop—still awake, with new comment alerts pinging fast and furious—open to The Royal Flush. He shook his head.

  “Let’s get you into bed,” he said.

  I barely blinked as he led me into my bedroom. As soon as he let me go, I flopped onto my mattress with extreme melodrama and a very satisfying thwack.

  “Five stars. Great buildup to a satisfying climax,” he said.

  A fresh gallon of tears burst out of my face. Freddie sat next to me on the bed and patted my back awkwardly, silently, for what must have been twenty minutes.

  “I’m going to get you some water and a snack,” he finally said.

  “I’m not drunk,” I mumbled into my comforter.

  “Aha, it speaks!” he said. “But you have to be dehydrated. Be right back.”

  Th
e day’s events swam in front of my swollen eyes. Gemma and Bea throwing their reservations to the wind. Cilla’s father and Gaz’s, leaning against the bar, watching their children slow dance. And Cilla, so beautiful in her wedding dress; Gaz, blooming with pride. They’d texted me during the drive home, seeing through the ruse and somehow loving me anyway. I loathed myself the more for not deserving it.

  “You have no reasonable snacks,” Freddie said. I opened my eyes to see two of him holding a bag of kale chips and a glass of water. He coalesced back into one.

  “I’ve been put on a diet,” I told him.

  “What? That’s absurd,” he said, giving the bag a tentative, unimpressed sniff.

  I shoved a joyless fistful into my mouth. “Takes a lot to upgrade me into duchess material.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you?” Freddie asked, sitting back down on the bed. “Talk to me, Bex. Please. You can trust me.”

  I sat up, my head spinning, and chugged half the glass of water before wiping my lips ingloriously on my arm.

  “Did you know we can’t invite both the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Norwich because they’ve vowed to duel if they’re ever in the same room again?” I hiccupped.

  Freddie frowned. “Who?”

  “Or that the Duke of Bridgewater proposed to Eleanor three times before she married your grandfather, and everyone thinks he’s still hot for her?” I barreled on. “Or that I spent weeks memorizing five facts about each of the eight hundred people on the guest list for the Wedding of the Century, only to find out Eleanor had already cut two hundred of them and added fifty others and never told me?”

  Freddie just shook his head. “Gran would be much easier to get along with if she let old Bridgie get a leg over,” he said tastelessly, to get me to crack a smile. Instead my face crumpled.

  “And did you know Barnes holds weekly meetings to discuss my facial expressions and what’s wrong with them? And that The American’t has a whole category devoted to my man hands?” I kept going. “Or that Marj weighs me every three days and has a folder called Nancy’s Accent? And I had to kick Lacey out of the wedding? Oh, and Nick maybe settled for me because he had to, and Eleanor wants me to renounce my citizenship?”

  “Wait. What?”

  “And I can’t talk to Nick about any of this because he’s offline all the time, and it sounds whiny, and I can’t freak him out while he’s off fighting pirates or whatever,” I said, my hysteria cresting. “I am an idiot. I told him to go on this extra deployment even though everything inside me was crying for him to stay home and save me.”

  “Save you? From what?” Freddie asked, still nonplussed.

  “From everything!” I waved my arms around my bedroom. “From myself, from Eleanor, from Marj, from Lacey, even. From failure,” I said, starting to cry again. “I’m an unsuitable American, and your family acts like I’m a defective model that needs refurbishing in a hurry before anyone notices I was the last-ditch option. But it’s too late. Everyone knows it.”

  “Bex! I told you, The Royal Flush is—”

  “You and I both know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” I said.

  Freddie was silent.

  “I can’t tell what’s true about anything anymore. I don’t even know what’s true about myself. I am wearing fucking pantyhose, Freddie!” Another sob surged out of me. “I haven’t felt like me in I don’t know how long. I couldn’t even keep it together at my best friends’ wedding tonight. What kind of asshole does that? And now your grandmother is telling me that I have to give up the last piece of the person I used to be, the person I recognize, and without Nick here to bring me back to myself, I am losing. My. Mind.”

  “Bloody hell, Bex,” Freddie said. “How did it get this bad before you talked to anyone?”

  I gave him a helpless look. “Who am I supposed to I talk to? My mom is still grieving. I can’t put this on her. Lacey and I aren’t speaking. Cilla works for me. And everyone has other stuff going on that’s just as important. I feel so weak and awful and embarrassed that I can’t deal with this on my own.” I took another quivering breath. “And the worst part is, I find myself getting angry with Nick about it. Like this is his fault. I was scared he’d resent me if I told him not to go, but now I’m resentful that he went. And I hate that. I hate feeling that way. But I do. And sometimes…”

  I fought for what I wanted to say. Freddie was frowning, as if he were trying very hard to process everything I was dumping on him. My pressure valve had blown off and hit him squarely in the chest.

  “…Sometimes I just want to get out,” I said. “Which is something Nick said to me once, years ago, and I thought I understood him then, but I really do now. When most people get engaged, it’s a love story, and I used to feel that way, too. But now it’s more like a business transaction. I spend every day working for the good of a company that doesn’t seem to like me very much, fighting for approval I will never get, dieting for a goal weight they will always lower, and sometimes I catch myself thinking, Why the hell did I take this job?”

  Freddie put an arm around my shoulders, looking increasingly upset—not with me, but for me. “Bloody hell,” he said again, to the wall.

  I started crying again, in earnest. “How can I even feel that way? I love Nick. But I sometimes hate what loving Nick has led to, and I catch myself wondering what it would be like if I just got up and ran. And I hate those feelings most of all. Because I can’t tell which of them are real, either, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because I can’t run, and I just…I just…I can’t.”

  Freddie looked at me with nervous intensity. In the quickest of flashes, he tipped up my chin.

  “What if I told you that it does matter?” he asked urgently. “What if I told you that you can run? And what if that was with me?”

  “What are you doing, Fred?” I breathed.

  “You once told me I’d never had my heart broken, but it’s not true. Mine felt like it smashed the day I helped Nick make that bloody lasagna, because I knew I’d missed my chance,” he said. “If I’d known when we kissed how much it would kill me not to do it again, I wouldn’t have let you walk out of that bloody little room.”

  I could only blink.

  “I tried staying away from you. I did stay away from Lacey, because I didn’t trust myself not to make things worse.” He inched closer. “But there’s something here, Bex. You can’t pretend there isn’t. I’m not saying I know what it is, or what it means, but we jumped at each other that night when we only had us to think about, and I’ve been reliving it ever since.”

  He took my face in his hands. “Tell me you don’t feel it,” he whispered.

  Then his lips were on mine. Unlike the fire and madness of a year and a half ago, this kiss was slow and powerful and tender, his hands stroking my jaw, my hair. There wasn’t the hunger, but there was just as much need.

  Freddie pulled away, then kissed me again, so lightly. “Maybe it’s crazy, but it’s not impossible. Not for us,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. “You can be free, Bex, if that’s what you want. Let me save you. Let’s save each other.”

  Long ago, I reminded Nick that he had the power to turn a life of being in-waiting into a life he wanted to live—that he could still be in charge of himself. So could I, and so could Freddie, and running away was not taking charge; it was just running. Besides, if I’d ever really wanted to leave, I wouldn’t have needed Freddie to open the door. I would have saved myself. My heart’s decision was made and sealed in a nondescript love nest in Windsor Castle, where, surrounded by the trappings of Nick’s station, he and I had found a way. The optimism we kindled that day had flickered, but it hadn’t died.

  Freddie saw it in my eyes without me saying a word.

  “What have I done,” he said to himself, looking almost seasick.

  He shot to his feet, pacing and fretting, and I let him, because anything I said might sound patronizing or pitying, and I didn’t want him to feel either one. He pull
ed out his silver cigarette case as he walked and idly flipped it open, then clicked it shut, over and over, before frowning sadly at it and tucking it away again. I simply waited.

  Freddie paused near the window and fiddled with the shade. “Are those photographers out there?”

  “Probably. There usually are a few, since the Lacey thing.”

  He peered through the glass. “Wait, no, one of your neighbors is having a party. Maybe I should go. Might meet someone.”

  He laughed mirthlessly and then let go of the shade. It snapped back just a bit askew, a metaphor if ever there was one.

  “I did five engagements in the last two weeks, and I still heard Father grumbling to himself about when the first-string is coming back,” he said, bitterness seeping into his tone.

  “I know how much you hate the way Richard talks down to you,” I said softly. “It’s unfair. You don’t deserve it.”

  “He and Gran only see me as the Ginger Gigolo, or whatever the news used to call it,” Freddie said, kicking stubbornly at the carpet. “And I’ve been playing at that for so long that sometimes I forget it started out as an act. Even Lacey looks at me like a person with potential, who just needs a spot of repairs.” He exhaled hard. “But you treat me like who I am is enough. Like you already see in me something nobody else has bothered to look for. That’s important to me.”

  “Well, you are important to me,” I told him.

  “You sounded so broken tonight,” he said. “Talking about running, and feeling erased. Thinking no one really ever sees you. Things I’ve said to myself a hundred times.” He bit his lip. “For a second, the answer just seemed so simple. For both of us.”