by Avery Wilde
“Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen!” The footman with the impressive voice rapped the floor with a staff for silence and it descended across the hall. “Her Majesty, the Queen.”
I watched my mother get to her feet. She had an innate understanding of how these events worked, an intuitive restraint that had seen her through long years in the thankless role of monarch. To look at her, you could not tell that she’d had an argument with me only hours ago, nor would you ever guess how much was riding on this event or how important it was to her.
“It is my great pleasure to announce the upcoming betrothal of my son, Prince Andrew, and his lifelong friend, Princess Alexandra of Sweden. May they know half the happiness that my late husband and I knew.” She raised a glass. “The beloved couple.”
What the hell?
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Even though she’d made it clear she wanted an engagement announcement by the end of this royal visit, I’d told her she wasn’t getting one, so she’d obviously taken it upon herself to try and guilt me into one by announcing our supposed ‘betrothal’ first thing at dinner. I glared at her, but she ignored me and kept her glass held high with a thin smile on her face.
The room rose to its feet, lifting glasses in well-meaning salute. “The beloved couple.”
I was about to tell everyone it was a load of shit, but then I saw Keira’s face from across the room as she stood there, holding a tray. She shot me a warning glance, then shook her head, so I sat back down and raised my glass with everyone else, playing along with the charade. Keira was right to have stopped me. If I got up and humiliated my mother by calling her out on her crap right here at the dinner table, then the story of the drama would be all over the tabloids by tomorrow morning—courtesy of one of these gossip-mongering guests—and that was the last thing we needed to have happen, seeing as we were trying to figure out a way to make things right for everyone.
With my hand otherwise occupied and unable to stop her, Alexandra made her move, and I nearly choked on my drink as a small hand grabbed my crotch and gave it a squeeze. The room sat back down and Alexandra leaned over to me to whisper in my ear.
“So the stories are true.”
“Alexandra, stop it,” I hissed. “I’m not interested in you. Not even a bit. This whole thing is a sham.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away. “Sure. You know, I’ve heard about what you’ve been up to in the last few years, Andrew. Any hole’s a goal, huh?” she said. “Well, no other beautiful high-society woman in her right mind would ever marry you, but I’m willing to. So you can think of me as your final goal. The only goal.”
“Does this rambling speech with the poor sporting analogy have any sort of point?” I asked.
“I suppose what I’m saying is….this engagement is no sham. The wedding is happening whether I have to drug you and drag you down the aisle or not.”
She gave me a sickly-sweet smile, and I narrowed my eyes and turned away.
It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 18
Keira
Although a conveniently placed table setting hid Princess’s Alexandra’s inappropriate groping from most of the room, I could hardly have been more ideally placed to see it. My blood boiled and my arm automatically moved to draw back the now empty tray I was carrying, ready to whack the Swedish princess sturdily about the head with it. But, fortunately for my future employment prospects, I didn’t follow through. It wasn’t good sense that stopped me—the sight of that hand tightening on Andrew’s crotch had sent any good sense I might’ve had straight out the window—it was Andrew himself.
More specifically, it was Andrew’s reaction. The old Andrew might’ve been startled but would’ve still welcomed the overfamiliar intrusion. He would’ve enjoyed it and then made the excuse that he was a man and couldn’t be expected to control how his body naturally responded to a beautiful woman touching up and down his crotch. But instead, he’d exhibited extreme discomfort, and not just from shock; he simply didn’t want this woman touching him. He removed her hand and, when they sat back down after the toast, placed a napkin over his lap in an attempt to protect himself, to some small extent at least, against future attacks. Most importantly, he did all of this without knowing that I was still watching his every move. So he wasn’t doing it to keep me happy, he was doing it because he didn’t want Alexandra’s attention. Maybe it sounded arrogant, but I knew the reason why, and I felt a smug warmth drift through me.
He was my man.
To my further delight, when the incident was over, Andrew happened to glance back and notice me still standing there across the room. The situation being what it was, there was little he could do in the way of public displays of affection, but he shot a smile at me. It was just a smile, but then again it wasn’t. To me, there was so much contained in that simple smile. They say that couples who have been together for years lose the need for speech, and can communicate together without a word ever passing between them. Andrew and I had been together for hardly any time at all, and yet already, a look could convey a world of meaning. In this case, it said ‘I love you, and I would rather be curled up with you on a sofa eating day-old pizza than at a banquet with anyone else.’
I hoped that the look I replied with expressed my own feelings just as clearly.
The banquet seemed to last an age, but when it was finally over, the guests quickly filed out to have nightcaps in a sitting room, Andrew included. By the time the tables were cleared, the floors swept and the servants finally dismissed, I found that I wasn’t really tired. Even though I’d been working for hours, it’d been quite an occasion, and I was still wide awake and full of energy. I decided to go to one of the Castle’s galleries. Looking at beautiful paintings always calmed me, and a half hour spent gazing at works of art would get my system in a much better state for sleep.
Unlike the galleries in Richmond, those in Wellington Castle were open to the public almost daily, so I didn’t need any special permission to go and look, provided I didn’t look too closely as infra-red alarm systems guarded the precious items. There’d been something very special about having access to the more private and less widely-seen collection at Richmond Palace, but that did nothing to detract from the works on show at Wellington—for all their familiarity, they were still old masters that equaled anything in the great galleries of the world.
I strolled in and let the gentle silent ambience of the gallery flow over me and calm my buzzing mind. All the problems of the world seemed to fade when I was in a gallery, my own concerns drifting away in the happy firmament of art. Time had no meaning here, and I couldn’t have said how long I’d been standing and viewing the paintings when a sound caught my attention. I turned to see a figure silhouetted in the open doorway. The darkness of the gallery contrasted with the light from the hallway left the figure’s face obscured, but I knew who it was as soon as I heard the slightly accented voice.
“They said that I might find you in here,” Princess Alexandra said.
It was no secret amongst the other servants that I was addicted to art and spent a lot of my downtime in the galleries.
“Is there something you need, your Highness?” I asked in my most respectful tone. I might not like this woman, but serving her was still my job, and besides, it wasn’t Alexandra’s fault that her family had been trying to marry her off to the man I loved, who happened to be the father of my unborn child.
When I thought the whole thing out like that, I realized that my life had really started to sound like a soap opera.
“Do you think I am blind?” she replied.
It was swiftly becoming clear to me that the Princess hadn’t been looking for a maid to help her find her room or bring her a late night cup of cocoa. She’d been looking for me specifically, and clearly for some personal reason.
“Your Highness?” Although I had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was going, I decided that being dumb was probably the best way to pl
ay this, for the moment at least.
“I’m sorry, perhaps it is my English. I said; do you think I am blind?” Princess Alexandra enunciated the words with efficient threat.
“No, your Highness,” I said, still sticking to deferential servant with a side-order of dumb. “And your English is excellent.”
“How kind of you,” she replied with a smile that was anything but friendly. “But since you do not think that I am blind, I must ask another question: did you think that I would not notice what is going on between you and Prince Andrew?”
My mind raced. Even though I could’ve guessed that this was coming, I hadn’t figured out how to deal with it and was now left floundering between honesty, which was bound to make the Princess angry, and lying, which she probably wouldn’t believe. Neither way looked good to me.
Perhaps saying nothing was an option?
“Don’t bother denying it!” Alexandra said. “I saw the way he was looking at you and the way you were looking at him. Do you think I’m blind?”
“No,” I replied; my answer to that question had already been established.
“You are having an affair with him, yes?”
“No!” I blurted out. Panic seemed to have made the decision for me. “No. I’m just a maid.”
Alexandra snorted derisively. “As if that matters. We’ve all done it. There is a footman back in Stockholm who I....and a maid as well, actually. And a stable boy—my goodness, that stable boy! Put him and the horse side by side and you’d barely see a difference in the size of…but that’s not important. Stop trying to sidetrack me!”
“I’m not. And there’s nothing between me and Andrew.” I knew it was an error as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
“Ha!” The Princess sprang on the mistake. “You called him Andrew! Servants do not speak of royalty in such a fashion. None of my servants would even dream of calling me Alexandra. They call me Princess Alexandra or your Highness. Even the stable boy calls me ‘your Highness’ while we fuck, it’s a bit of a turn-on actually.”
Even through my fear and uncertainty, I couldn’t help wondering at the workings of Alexandra’s mind; it must’ve been like a roller coaster in there.
“We knew each other before I came to work here,” I said, deftly weaving fact into fiction in the hope of coming up with something halfway believable. “We met in New York. We were friends before I worked for him. So yes, sometimes I forget myself and slip into old habits. And maybe that’s why you misinterpreted any looks that might have passed between us. I wasn’t aware of any, but we’re such good friends I guess it might have happened.”
For a moment Princess Alexandra was silent, and I believed that I might’ve got away with it, but this was merely the calm before the storm.
“Liar!” The word echoed and re-echoed about the empty gallery.
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are!” Suddenly the Princess’s mood seemed to change again. “Something is strange about this.”
“That’s because it’s not…”
“Quiet!” She might’ve been a little unhinged, but Princess Alexandra really had the sense of royal authority figured out. “I came here because I thought you were Andrew’s—how do you English say it…crumpet?”
“I don’t know about the English but that’s definitely not how we Americans say it.”
“I thought that you were his sex toy,” she said, finding a less ambiguous term than ‘crumpet’. “I do not want any husband of mine with a toy. All the sex is for me! But now I find that you call him by his first name, and you lie to defend him. You love him.”
I didn’t answer, and I knew my defense was becoming less and less convincing.
“And perhaps he loves you too,” Alexandra mused, pursing her lips in distaste. “Yes. I thought he was looking at you with lust but I now see the truth.” She turned to look me in the face and, to my immense surprise, she laughed. “Now I feel better.”
My eyes widened. “Why?”
“In sex,” Princess Alexandra explained, with the air of an expert giving a lecture. “Men’s eyes are bigger than their…you know. They always want more, right up until their…you know, drops off. For that reason, a wife cannot compete with a mistress. No matter how available she is and how much better in bed she is than the mistress, the husband will still want the mistress because men always want more. But if your relationship with Andrew is deeper, if you and he have ‘feelings’ for each other, then I have nothing to worry about. For while a man always wants more sex, he will only love one woman—and why on earth would he choose you over me?” She laughed heartily again. “I have been worrying over nothing. He may love you now—in a small way—but in a day or so he will be so infatuated with me that he will not even remember your name.”
“Is that so?” I spoke through gritted teeth. Literally nothing she’d just said had made any sense whatsoever, and I was starting to get the sense that Alexandra was seriously mentally unstable.
“You will never be able to steal my man from me,” Princess Alexandra finished.
I’d finally had enough of her crap, and I steeled my nerve. “Surely you’d be the one doing the stealing?” I said.
“What?” The Princess drew herself up. “How dare you speak to me in such a fashion?”
“I’m not saying that there is anything between me and Prince Andrew,” I went on. “But if there was, then he would be mine, and you’d be the one coming in and trying to steal him. And if that were the case…then I’d like to see you try.”
“You impudent little slut.” The psychotic gleam re-entered Princess Alexandra’s eyes, and I was forced to wonder if deliberately provoking someone as clearly unbalanced as Princess Alexandra might not have been the smartest thing that I could have done.
“You’ll regret those words,” she continued. Her tone was edged in steel. “You’ll pay for them.”
I wasn’t what I expected the Princess to do at that point, but I absolutely didn’t expect her to draw a knife, pilfered from the dining table…and yet that was exactly what she did.
“Where are your jokes now, maid?”
Princess Alexandra advanced, and I backed away, trying not to trip over my own feet in my nervous haste. My heart seemed to be pounding in my throat, my mouth was dry, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. Alexandra turned away from me and rushed at one of the paintings, and I winced as I heard the knife plunge into the fragile canvas, tearing down through it.
For a moment, I felt only relief, firstly that Alexandra was slashing up a painting rather than me, and secondly that she hadn’t chosen one of the old masters but a more recent family portrait of the royal family, painted by the same hand as the one the Queen had shown me back in the Long Gallery at Richmond. But, while the painting might not have been anything special, I couldn’t just wait around to let her come at me next, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t simply let me rush out of the room in an attempt to escape her craziness. I had to take charge and defend myself before she seriously hurt me.
I rushed at her, grabbing her knife arm before it could descend for a fifth time. She snarled, and we struggled, Alexandra lashing out like a woman crazed, while I was just trying to keep the knife away from anything, especially myself. Finally, with a mighty tug, I managed to grab the knife from her just as the Wellington guards rushed into the room, alerted by the silent alarm that protected all the paintings. They froze at the sight—I guess their training had never really covered this particular scene.
“What’s going on here?”
At that point, the only person I wanted to see coming through the doors was Andrew, who would comfort me and protect me and, above all, believe me. I would have even settled for Queen Constance, because despite our differences, I knew the Queen to be fair and just.
What I got was Prince Michael.
“What’s going…?” Michael began to repeat himself but then stared aghast as he took in the scene. “What have you done?”
He ad
dressed me directly, speaking with blank horror, and it was only as he said those words that I realized that the knife was still in my hand. To anyone coming in without knowledge of what had happened before, there was only one conclusion.
“She attacked me! She’s crazy!” squealed Princess Alexandra, suddenly springing to life again.
You’re one to talk, I thought.
Alexandra rushed across the room to hide behind Michael. “I was having a look at the pictures before going to bed when she stormed in with a knife and starting yelling things about me stealing her man!”
A look of understanding entered Michael’s face, and I could see that he believed every word; his own suspicions about me and his brother being confirmed.
“I thought she was going to kill me!” Alexandra continued. “But then she attacked this painting instead. I tried to stop her, but she was too strong for me.”
Michael patted her hand comfortingly. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”
“That’s not what happened!” I’d been struck dumb by Princess Alexandra’s lies, but I’d found my tongue now. “She’s the one who slashed the painting, just so she could make me look bad!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Michael said. “Why would she do such a thing?”
“Because she’s crazy! You’ve got to believe me.”
“You’re the one holding the knife,” Michael said. “And you’re the one with the motive. I don’t think we’ve got to look very far to know why you might have a grudge against the princess and against my family.” He indicated the shredded picture. “I think we can count ourselves extremely lucky that you did this to a picture rather than my actual family. But don’t worry,” he said in a mock soothing tone. “We’ll see that you get the help you need. Guards!”
The guards, who’d been rather transfixed by this little drama, sprang to hasty attention. “Take her to her room and ensure that she remains there. We can call the proper authorities in the morning.”
