by Marci Fawn
“Kristine, this is my son.” My mum turns proudly to display me like some sort of prized possession.
“Edward Leighton – the Prince of England.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.” She stands and curtseys, showing me the prettiest dress that I’ve ever seen.
It’s obviously been hand crafted just for her, and it fits like a dream. I kiss her hand, feeling a little weird to finally be behaving like a prince for this girl. Everything is so right, just as things are supposed to be, exactly as my life has supposed to have been played out all along.
This moment is exactly the way that a prince like me is supposed to meet his future wife.
But she isn’t Faith.
She isn’t Faith, so I feel nothing, and I honestly don’t know if I would even if I had met someone else.
This might be the way that things are supposed to be, but they don’t feel right for me. It all feels a little… staged, like I’m playing a role, like I’m not actually being myself.
This girl could be the most gorgeous, loveliest creature on the entire planet, and she wouldn’t hold a candle to the girl who still to this day has my heart. It makes me sad because if I were to just go for this moment, I would be doing exactly what my mother, my family, and society expects of me, but I can’t. Not when there’s hope, not when I have a child.
Not when I’ve experienced what true love is supposed to feel like.
“It’s lovely to meet you too, Kristine,” I reply with a smile.
“Please, tell me more about you, I have heard wonderful things.”
Of course, this is a lie, but it achieves what I need it to, and it gets her to open up. If I can keep her talking then time will pass that much quicker.
As the evening passes and I start to loosen up a bit – almost to the point of enjoying myself – I get to know Kristine much better. Despite her reputation, she actually seems like a very nice person and I can’t help but wonder what she’s done to people to deserve being spoken about as if she’s nasty…
But then I see evidence of it for myself.
“…and then she told me that…” she’s in the middle of telling me about an embarrassing moment that she had recently at a royal engagement, when a teenage waiter accidently brushes past her with one of his trays, causing the smallest reddened stain to appear on her dress.
If I hadn't seen the bump happen, I wouldn’t have noticed the spot at all – that’s how small and insignificant it is – but Kristine simply explodes. Inexplicably so.
“What have you done?” She shrieks, standing up to ensure that she causes the biggest scene.
Once all eyes are upon her, she carries on with her charade.
“You’ve absolutely ruined my dress! Do you know how much this cost? Probably more than you’ll ever make in your entire life.”
The filthy look that she gives him, as if he’s completely and utterly worthless doesn’t sit right with me, and I feel the need to interject.
“Kristine,” I whisper to her.
“It doesn’t matter, you can hardly see it…”
But she isn’t done.
“Go and get your manager right away. Who is in charge of this… this fuck fest?”
Her face is red and angry, and she’s practically spitting as she talks. As the real Kristine comes to the surface, her beauty begins to fade. There’s a deep-seated ugliness inside of her, I can see that now.
I instantly feel myself retreat. I was just starting to think that we could have a friendship, but now I can see that will never, ever happen. She is not the sort of person that I ever want in my life.
As a middle aged balding man, who I assume is the manager, shuffles uncomfortably by Kristine, she starts all over again, laying into the poor lad who really didn’t do anything wrong.
“Are you going to allow this from one of your so called staff members?” She snaps.
“He has wrecked my outfit and ruined my entire night. This whole thing might as well shut down now, I should send everyone home.”
“I… I…” he stammers, growing paler with every passing second.
“I don’t…”
“You, you, you don’t want?” She imitates him nastily.
“Are you going to do anything? Do you intend to pay for this dress yourself?”
“I couldn’t…” she knows that he can’t, and that she has hundreds of similar items in her wardrobe, proving that she’s just being a brat.
“Well fire him then. I don’t even want him in my presence.”
“Now hang on a minute,” I stand up defiantly, even as my mum tugs on my suit jacket, trying to stop me from standing up.
“That really isn’t necessary. You can’t even see the stain.”
She turns to stare at me with a fire in her eyes, and an awkward mumble rises up around the room. People are trying to pretend as if they aren’t listening, even though we both know that they are.
“Are you sticking up for him?” Kristine hisses at me, with frustrated tears starting to prick her eyes.
I know that if I completely shut her down she will go into a frenzy, and I just want this to calm down rather than explode even further.
“I just don’t think that we need to go so far…” I try to be diplomatic, but she interrupts before I can get too far with my explanation.
“I just thought that you would agree with me,” she leans in closer to me, winding her fingers in mine.
“We’re the same, we get one another. It’s these… these commoners, non-nobility, they don’t get it. They don’t understand.”
I look at her, trying desperately to find a redeeming feature, one shred of decency in there, but there’s nothing. She’s like a bottomless empty pit of nothing.
“They disgust me.”
In this moment, she reminds me too much of my mum and all of her negative opinions regarding Faith, so I simply shrug Kristine off and I stalk from the room. I can’t just stand there and listen to that nonsense, not for anybody. I don’t even want to spend another second looking at her, never mind speaking to her. She’s a horrid, selfish girl and I have much better people that I really need to be spending time with.
To think that I actually left Faith and Lily to be here!
What the hell was I thinking? This was really only going to go one way – the way that it has!
“Marcus,” I call to him as I spot him standing in the reception area, just waiting for me.
“Get the car back around, I’m heading back now. I refuse to stay here for even another night…”
“Edward!” I roll my eyes as my mum’s voice rings out from behind me once more.
Does she never intend to let this one go? Can she not see that this is already over?
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Back!” I snap, turning to face her.
“I don’t even want to be here, never mind with Kristine at this mess of a party. Did you not see what happened in there?”
“Well, that was rather unfortunate…” she says, but I don’t believe her words at all.
I know that she doesn’t think that way. She doesn’t care one bit – the girl is royalty. She could have punched someone in the face and mum would have found a way to suggest that it wasn’t her fault.
“But Kristine is under a lot of pressure.”
“Unbelievable,” I shake my head in disgust.
“Mum, I’m going back to Philadelphia, to see Faith and Lily…”
“I told you,” she hisses, looking angrier than I’ve ever seen before.
“I do not want to hear that awful girl’s name mentioned ever again. Do you even remember what she did to you? She ran out on you, completely abandoned you, and you haven’t heard from her in seven years! Now she turns up with some child that isn’t even yours… don’t be so stupid.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I argue back, finally wanting to free myself of the burden that has been sitting on my shoulders for far too long.
“I went l
ooking for Faith, not the other way around, she wasn’t even keen to reveal that Lily is mine…”
“Even less reason to trust her!”
“…but she is,” I continue, ignoring her snippy remark.
“And I don’t want to be here, I want to be there with them.”
“But Kristine is to be your wife!” Mum halts me, just as I’m about to leave.
“You are promised to her. You cannot just run out now.”
I step closer to mum, looking her square in the eye.
“This better be some sort of sick joke,” I snap.
“You brought me here to meet this woman, without telling me that she thinks she’s going to be married to me?”
“She doesn’t think that, she is going to become your wife.” Mum is as defiant as ever, which riles me up even further.
“You have already proven that you are unworthy of making the right decision when it comes to picking your own wife, so I have taken matters into my own hands. I know what is best for you, for your title, and for this family, so you will be doing this.”
“No, no way,” I shake my head.
“She’s horrible and I won’t have her in my life. No matter what you say, or what you think is best…”
“It’s already done,” she smirks at me, sending me a look like I’ve never seen before, one that sends a cold chill racing right through me.
“As soon as this little charade is done, I’m heading over to Norway to speak to Kristine’s parents and get all of the paperwork finalized.”
“You can’t,” I plead.
“I don’t want any of this. It isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” she shoots back, showing her emotions finally.
Her nostrils flare and her cheeks stain pink. This is the most wound up I think I’ve ever seen her in my life – but I suppose that’s because I didn’t see her right away after I got married. I’ve heard about it though… and it isn’t a pretty picture that I’ve had painted for me.
“But that’s just tough. Your privileges come with responsibilities, and this is just one of them. So you can walk out of this door right now, and you can head back to Philadelphia, but that won’t change anything. In fact, I suggest that you prepare yourself and head back to the UK, because in three weeks’ time, the official announcement of your wonderful engagement will go out to the world.”
I stare at her silently for a few moments, trying to think of anything that will help me get out of this, but my mind remains frustratingly blank, so in the end, I spin on my heels and I stalk from the room, with Marcus close behind me.
I know that I can’t do anything right now, so I might as well remove myself from the situation until I’ve calmed down enough to make some kind of rational decision.
“What do you want to do?” Marcus asks in a panicked tone.
“Shall I tell the driver to take you back to the hotel?”
He obviously wants me to stay on the good side of the queen, but I don’t care what anyone thinks. I don’t care what he wants anymore; I only care about what I need to do.
My mind is made up, and that’s the end of it. Nothing that anyone can say will change my plan.
“No, I’m still going to see Faith,” I tell him.
“She’s the one that I want to be with, and that’s the end of it.”
“But what about Kristine? What about your mother?”
“I’ll deal with them,” I tell him, trying to sound confident about it.
“I’ll get everything sorted. Don’t you worry about that.”
But as the car tears through the city, and takes me back to where I so desperately need to be, I can’t help but worry endlessly about just that.
What am I going to do about it?
Once an official announcement is made to the world, I will be bound and stuck there with it. Much as it isn’t fair, mum is right about that. My privileges so come with duties, and I know plenty of royal people who have had to do things that they really didn’t want to do.
But I have so much at stake here – I have the love of my life and my beautiful daughter. Will I lose them both forever if mum does this to me?
That’s obviously what she’s aiming for, which admittedly hurts a whole lot, but is the least of my worries.
How am I going to tell Faith – who I have only just found again, and who I’m not very sure how she feels about me just yet – that I’ve been promised to someone else?
It’ll kill us both.
People assume that have endless money and only royal duties to worry about is a life of luxury, and while it has its perks, all I’ve ever really wanted is freedom. I’ve dreamed about carving out my own life, making decisions by myself, and to me that is the fantasy.
It’s ironic really, everyone seems to want what they don’t have, but right now my desire is only for one thing. I just want to pick the person that I spend the rest of my life with – is that too much to ask? I just want to be the husband to Faith and the father to Lily that I have been all along.
Why am I not able to just have that one thing? I’ve given up so much of my life for everyone else, I’ve scarified so many things and allowed so many choices to be made for me. But I’ll be happy with that, I’ll accept it willingly, if I can just have this one thing.
Please, I pray to no one in particular. Please let all of this somehow work out. Please give me the only thing that I’ve ever wanted – my family.
But of course, I don’t know if my prayers will ever be answered.
13
Faith
My heart pounds heavily as the phone rings against my ear. I’ve been putting this off for far too long now; it’s time to finally take that step. However much it terrifies me.
“I would like to prepare you for what might be to come. This is the most powerful woman in the entire world.”
Marcus’s warning rings loudly in my ear, just like it has been doing for the last few days, but I won’t let it stop me from doing what’s right. I need to put Edward and Lily before myself.
I need to stop allowing myself to get bullied – it hasn’t exactly worked out so far.
“Hello?” He answers, in that silky voice that sends butterflies flooding through me.
“H… hi,” I stammer back, just as uncool as ever.
“It’s Faith,” I cringe to myself, why did I say that?
Surely he has my number saved in his phone by now.
“I just err, I wanted to know if you’d like to hang out at any point. I’ve been thinking about going to the zoo later on today with Lily, if that suits?”
He doesn’t answer right away, which causes insecurity to consume me.
“Of course if that’s too short notice, we can sort out something else…?”
“No, that sounds perfect,” he sounds happy as he finally speaks out.
“I would love that. What time are you going?”
“Whenever you’d like? Does any particular time suit you?” It feels so weird, speaking in such a formal manner to the man that I love, the father of my child, but I don’t know what else to do.
There’s no denying that the years apart have affected us in a very strange way. I just hope that eventually we’ll be able to get back to the us that we once were.
“In an hour?”
He sounds a little distracted, but I’m just glad that he’s agreed. I finally feel ready to face him again, and although I haven’t fully explained who he is to Lily yet, I think she will be comfortable with it too.
“We’re just all friends today,” I warn.
“Just until I find a way to tell this to Lily in the right way. I don’t want to put a lot of pressure on her knowing that you’re her dad – I just think that we should take things slowly for her. I hope that’s okay with you.”
“I agree,” he says instantly.
“I think that’s perfect all round.”
“Right, okay,” I’m literally shaking now as I talk, filled with fear at the idea of laying my
eyes on him again.
I don’t imagine that it’s going get any easier, no matter how much time passes…
As I hang up the phone, I’m left with the job of going to tell Lily what we’re doing today. I remain sitting on the bed for a few seconds, chewing on my nails, wondering how to do this in the best way. In the end, I stand up determinedly, deciding that the only thing I can really do is rip the band-aid off quickly.
She’ll be fine, I’m sure of it.
“Lily?” I call down the hallway to her bedroom.
“Lily, did you want to go out today?” I walk towards her, trying to rearrange my face into a much calmer expression.
I don’t want her to suspect that anything is up, which is difficult because she’s very perceptive for her age.
“Would you like to go to the zoo?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” She screams excitedly, and as I pop my head around her bedroom door, I can see her jumping up and down.
“Okay, so why don’t you put on one of your best dresses?”
I want her to look nice for Edward, so he can see what a beautiful and lovely girl she is. I want him to have the best impression of both of us really, especially since we haven’t been around for a very long time.
“Okay… one of my princess ones?” She starts tugging at her wardrobe, desperate to pick out one of her many, many dresses – she’s such a girly girl.
“Of course,” I go quiet for a moment, trying to figure out the best words to use for this next part.
“Mummy’s friend will be coming with us, if that’s okay?” I can feel my face heating up, making me look about as guilty as I really am.
“The one that we saw at the museum last week.”
“A boy friend?” She asks innocently enough, but it’s a statement that has me coughing awkwardly to cover up my embarrassment.
“Err… a boy… friend, yes,” I nod, hoping that’s the right thing to say.
Luckily, Lily is already distracted by the many outfits available to her. So while she’s getting herself dressed, I head to my bedroom to make myself look as presentable as possible.
