by Kate Johnson
“Oh yes. And they all open their presents on Christmas Eve, because that’s how the Germans do it, the children finish trimming the tree, which is fun when the oldest is five and just wants to put Spiderman on everything, and they all give each other gag gifts. I mean, don’t go expecting diamonds or anything. It’s, like, novelty loo seats and Homer Simpson cufflinks.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. I mean, what do you get the family who has everything?”
“Jeez.”
“Still, it’s better than my family Christmases,” Clodagh said as Eliza came back down the stairs. “Eighteen of us in a three bed flat, arguing over who broke the remote control. Last year I dropped off some presents and got out in about five minutes flat.”
Jamie came in, bearing garlic bread. “You actually used the ‘So sorry, must dash, such a treat,’ line,” he said, grinning.
“You’re rubbing off on me.”
Later, after Jamie had hooked up Eliza’s iPad to the TV so they could play a drunken game of Hit, Miss or Maybe with her outfit choices for the engagement announcement, Eliza and Xavier retired to bed, the same bed they’d shared all those months ago.
“When are you going to call your mum?” Eliza asked as she took off her make-up.
“Ah. Choices are: immediately before or immediately after the interview goes live. Will it be livecast in the States?”
Eliza raised her palms. “You’ll have to ask the media department. I suppose you could call and tell her to tune into such a channel at such a time, but then she might figure it out.”
“Hah.” Xavier folded his shirt. “She’s been waiting for an engagement announcement since she met you. She’s impressed you’re learning Spanish,” he fished.
“It’s not too bad once you’ve learned French, although the verb forms get a bit tangled up in my head.”
“You didn’t learn it at school?”
“Spanish? Hmm, no. Choices were French, Latin, or German. Only chavvy people went to Spain for their holidays, you see. One was expected to order in French on the Riviera, and also to entertain one’s husband’s international colleagues from the world of international finance and diplomacy.”
Xavier blinked at her. “One’s husband’s colleagues?”
Eliza shrugged. “Darling, we’re a thousand year old institution, some things are hard to shake off.”
“So, nobody at your fancy school learned Spanish, even though it’s the most widely-spoken language in the world?”
“Wasn’t even an option. I had a few private lessons in how to do the pretty in all languages relating to various world monarchies—Spain included—but not much more.”
“So when you went to Cuba and Hispaniola… what, Melissa translated for you?”
“Ugh, Melissa.” Eliza shuddered. “No, she’s terrible at languages. Does that slightly racist thing of just shouting louder in English. Let’s not talk about her. You’ve got to break it to your mother that we’re getting married in the Church of England.”
Xavier groaned, accepting the change of topic. “If she’s told me once she’s looking for a priest who’ll marry me in Miami, she’s told me a hundred times.”
Eliza grimaced at him through the mirror. “You did tell her we have to get married here?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. She gets wind of the M word, it’ll be all over the world before you can say ‘secret’.”
“However did you last so long as an undercover cop?”
He dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. “I’m not my mother.”
“Which I’m very glad for. I like her a lot, but I don’t want to marry her.”
She rose and came into his arms, her body warm and lovely against him. “What would she tell me to wear?” she said against his chest.
Xavier considered the question. “I’m not sure my mom has much of a relationship with fashion,” he said.
“She will when I wear the wrong thing.” Eliza sighed. “Whatever I do, I’ll annoy someone.”
He tilted her chin up. “So wear what makes you happy. What’s your favourite thing to wear?”
She shrugged. “A swimsuit. Tatty old leggings and a sweater four people could live in. Or, nothing at all, in bed with you.”
He laughed. “Okay, well much as I am a fan of both the first and last ones, let’s park them and revisit the second. Can’t you do a kinda dressy version of that?”
“No, it…”
“What? Is there an actual rule about this? Like at Ascot?”
“Well, no, but…”
“I mean it is freezing in this country now.”
She laughed. “Xavi, it’s October. Practically t-shirt weather.”
Was she insane? Xavier didn’t think he’d survive a winter in this country.
“But you might have a point,” she conceded. “About something more casual. I’ll see what—” she broke off, then went on more carefully, “I’ll think about it.”
He kissed her softly. “Great. Now, about that third clothing option you mentioned…”
Chapter Twenty-one
RoyalGossip.com: Princess Elizabeth engaged!
That’s right, Princess Elizabeth is… wait, haven’t we had this headline before? Oh that’s right, she never announced it the first time. Just told us after she’d dumped Xavier Rivera that she’d been engaged at one point. Anyway, it’s back on now! The princess, currently fourteenth in line to the throne but only the fourth adult female, announced her engagement to American hunk Xavier Rivera today in the Sunken Gardens of Kensington Palace.
Princess Elizabeth broke with tradition by dressing casually in a forest green cashmere sweater dress and grey suede boots. She was lucky it wasn’t raining! Her fiancé Mr Rivera, a Florida native, clearly felt the cold in a handsome navy Irish tweed overcoat over a shirt in a shade of pink most men would think twice about.
Of course, all eyes were on the princess’s ring. What sort of rock can an unemployed ex-cop afford? Well, we’ll never know, since the couple were at pains to point out the sapphire sparkler had been passed down from her father’s family, where it had been presented as a gift to her great-grandmother on the successful delivery of her grandfather, the seventh Duke of Suffolk. It’s a good job she wasn’t given diapers…
“Pros, that green looked amazing on you, the ring is gorge, Xavier would look handsome wearing a binliner and bunny ears, and you’re absolutely besotted with each other,” said Drina, scanning her iPad.
“Cons?” said Eliza warily.
“They didn’t like the pink—which, they’re obviously blind because it is your colour, darling—thought you were too casual, Lize, and quelle horreur, you were blatantly flaunting that scar again. How did you ever get a man to marry you when you’re so hideously deformed? Ugh, my eyes!”
“That word again, flaunting,” Xavier said, ignoring her theatrics. “The press here is terrible.”
“Get used to it,” said Eliza.
“I thought I had,” he sighed. The poor man. He’d been through quite the adjustment period these last few weeks, and it was taking its toll on him. He’d been terribly distracted of late, and there had been hundreds of phone calls back to Florida that had left him grimacing.
“Anyway, then there’s lots of wittering on about the Succession and how you’re going to get thrown out of it,” Drina said, wiggling her eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
“Great. Thanks for reminding us.” There had still been no movement on the whole issue. Eliza was trying to plan a wedding without even knowing what she’d be called at the end of it.
“Hmm, and a load of guff about neither of you having a job yet still owning a house worth… well, that’s a lie, I was there when the insurance people came round. Did you not want somewhere bigger?” Drina asked, looking around.
The kitchen had been redone in a Shaker style that complimented the massive brick fireplace where you could still see the brackets for the turning spit. Most of the rooms, Eliza had been relieved to dis
cover, didn’t need much more than a redecoration, although she’d insisted on having the place rewired and plumbed. Her father and the recent tenants had apparently been quite happy with electricity that conked out every time it rained, and a bathroom that the 1970s would have been ashamed of.
“We have eight bedrooms,” she said. “I don’t know what we’ll do with eight bedrooms.”
Xavier quirked his eyebrows at her over his coffee cup. “Tell me that when my family come to visit.”
Xavier wore a navy lambswool jumper and flat-fronted trousers and black brogues and looked like the tycoon hero of every romance novel Eliza had read as a teenager. Only maybe more handsome.
His eyes were warm as he smiled at her. Eliza found herself smiling back, and didn’t realise how long they spent gazing at each other until Drina cleared her throat and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two to shag in every room of the house. Tatty-bye.”
“Bye,” Eliza murmured, and was vaguely aware of the door closing behind her sister as Xavier moved closer and boosted her up onto the marble counter of the kitchen island.
“Your sister really has some excellent ideas,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
“She’s a smart girl.”
“She is.” His hands slipped under her shirt. “There are a lot of rooms in this house.”
“Mmm. Should keep us going a while.”
Her shirt was undone and Xavier had been lazily kissing her for a good long while when there was a sharp flurry of knocks at the kitchen door and Drina came in, her hand over her eyes.
“Sorry, darlings,” she said, “but a rather large car has just pulled up outside and Lady Ogilvy-Wright informed me she’s brought someone to talk about your dress.”
“What?” Eliza blinked, removed Xavier’s hand from her bra and buttoned her shirt rapidly. Lady Ogilvy-Wright was one of her mother’s ladies in waiting, which might be a ceremonial title but was taken very seriously by this particular holder.
Eliza had already begun covertly researching wedding dress designers, making look books of styles she liked and sending various staff members undercover to suss out viability. “I haven’t… oh God, has Mummy sent her?”
“Are you serious?” muttered Xavier against her neck. “What did we do to her?”
“We’re being punished for breaking the rules,” Eliza muttered back, straightening her clothes.
“She says she’s been ‘appointed’,” said Drina, “but she didn’t say by whom. Oh, Lady Ogilvy-Wright. How lovely to see you.”
Eliza slid down off the counter and made a point of standing in front of Xavier, although his first sight of Lady O-W would probably put out the passionate fire she’d been kindling. She was stout, wore baggy tweed skirts and florid headscarves and had a purple whiskey nose. Her hair was the colour of iron and possibly the same consistency.
“Your Royal Highnesses,” said the woman who’d known Eliza since she was an hour old. “Mr Rivera.” She bobbed a little, casual curtsey that was firmly aimed only at the two women, and Drina rolled her eyes at Eliza. “Your mother has despatched me to speak with you about your dress for the big day. As you know, I was a bridesmaid at her own wedding, and a close advisor on her dress.”
Eliza’s mother had got married in a gown of such epic proportions she’d appeared to be drowning in it. Every surface had been encrusted with seed pearls and handmade lace, the veil dripping with the stuff. The train was so long it had taken two bridesmaids to carry it.
She and Drina used to stare in gobsmacked horror at the ugliness of the thing. Her mother said it should have been an omen she was marrying the wrong man.
“Oh, that’s very kind, but actually I—”
“We can’t have a repeat of that dreadful monstrosity of last year,” Lady O-W said with a shudder.
“You mean Clodagh’s dress? I—”
“Yes. Gold embellishments, whoever allowed that? And the flowers. Orange and pink, how… common. There has never been a hint of colour in a royal bouquet, and on my watch there never will be.”
Then come hell or high water I am not getting married on your watch, thought Eliza, who’d loved Clodagh’s blingy gold dress and hibiscus flowers. She opened her mouth to make an excuse to get rid of the woman, then closed it again. If she sent her away now, she’d just get a repeat next week. Best get it over with, then find some way to turn her down.
“Why don’t you come through,” she said. “Please excuse the mess, we’re still moving in.”
The house was half-furnished, and several rooms hadn’t been redecorated. Lady O-W, of course, had opinions on that.
“Terrible carpet,” she sniffed at the navy wool in the dining room, which Eliza rather liked. And of the sitting room, “Who would ever paint a room such a dreadful colour?”
Eliza, who had picked out the sunny yellow with Xavier, didn’t look at him. “Who indeed?” she said.
“Honey, do you need me?” he asked, in tones that begged her to say no.
“Of course,” she replied, adding firmly, “this is the most important day of our lives after all.”
“Oh, no, dear, I don’t think it’s fitting,” said Lady O-W, and Xavier fist-pumped behind her back.
“I’ll be in the gym, Princess,” he said, and made his escape. Eliza began wondering if she could call the engagement off.
Lady O-W looked after him with an indecipherable expression. “My goodness,” she said.
“I know,” Eliza said proudly, checking out Xavier’s arse despite herself.
“He’s very… American, isn’t he?”
Eliza gritted her teeth and tried to excuse herself to make coffee, but Drina got there first. Politeness, she reminded herself. Politeness at all times.
She entertained a fantasy of telling Lady O-W to just fuck off, then sighed and smiled instead.
“Whaddya got?” Xavier asked as he left the house. They’d set up a gym in one of the outbuildings, he might as well go and hide out there until this terrible lady in waiting had left.
Perez sighed. “No more than we had before. Luis won’t say a thing unless we offer him something.’
“So offer him something.”
“Like what? All he wants is his freedom, and he ain’t getting that. The man kidnapped a princess for Christ’s sake.”
Xavier switched on the heater that was supposed to warm up the room. A princess who doesn’t believe in central heating. “There’s nothing the British police can offer? MI5? Interpol?”
“They’ve investigated this Melissa woman.” Perez refused to attempt to say her surname. “They got nothing on her.”
“Nothing?” Xavier scoffed. “Perez, she tried to throw paint over Clodagh Cambridge. At her wedding. How the hell did she smuggle that in? I’ve seen these places. There’s security everywhere.”
A short pause. “Clodagh Cambridge, is she now?”
Xavier rolled his eyes. In the short time he’d been living with Eliza, Jamie and Clodagh had been very generous with their time and advice. Especially Clodagh, almost as new to this as Xavier was. They were going to be his family soon. He liked to think they were becoming friends.
“She’s been very helpful,” he said. “Perez, you can’t imagine the stuff I have to learn. They’ve all had lifetimes. I’ve got a couple months.” He’d made Drina laugh until her eyes watered by talking about suspenders to wear with a suit, and it was only Eliza who explained to him that in England, suspenders held up ladies’ stockings.
“Right, all that tea drinking.” Perez slurped on something that was probably a milkshake. No one has those over here either. “Listen, buddy, I got nothing on this Melissa chick. If she can talk herself out of throwing paint on a royal bride, she can get herself out of a conspiracy to kidnap charge. Besides, who’s to say it wasn’t all just chance?”
“Just chance Luis happened to kidnap the only person there who was actual royalty?”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe he recognised her. I mean, she was at that wedding. She had t
hat hat.”
“My fiancée is more than a hat,” said Xavier, because Eliza was sick of being associated with the thing.
“Your fiancée is also, I gotta tell you, smokin’ hot,” Perez said. “If I was looking to kidnap someone, I’d pick the hot one.”
Xavier sighed, because that was what Luis had said in his own defence. He’d just chosen Eliza because he fancied her.
“Maybe,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. Something scratched at the door and he flinched, before realising it was one of the many cats that roamed about the place in order to keep the mice down.
“You got to let it go, Xavi. You’re not a cop any more.”
“No. I know.”
“Is it really true they don’t wear guns?”
“Nope. Although the Duke has a whole room of them. Apparently it’s different if you use ‘em to shoot grouse.” He’d been invited to something called the Glorious Twelfth, where he was expected to shoot game birds. Apparently that was all there was to shoot here. The deer were purely ornamental and there were no dangerous predators.
The cat currently sniffing around the weights stand was probably the largest predator stalking the land.
“You live in crazytown, bro. How’s the wedding planning?”
Xavier groaned. “Even crazier. Half of it is dependent on whether Eliza will even be a Royal afterwards. How can they not know? A thousand years of monarchy and they just don’t know what’ll happen if she drops out.”
“Beats me. I’m gonna be watching it with popcorn.”
“Like hell you are. You’re gonna be watching it from the front right pew of St George’s Chapel, my friend.”
“St—what? What do you mean?”
Xavier grinned. “Or maybe it’s the left. Eliza’s not great with these things. Come on, man, you didn’t think I was gonna let my brothers duke it out, did you? You’re going to be my best man.”
“Xavi!” Perez spluttered for a bit, and then he made a noise of horror. “Oh man, I’m going to have to go on a diet. Hey, she got any hot bridesmaids?”
