by Kate Johnson
“I’d be happy to never see a roast turkey ever again,” Jamie said, but of course that was what he was served. He wore the silly hat and read out the daft jokes and endured mostly polite conversation from his second and third cousins. There was always one who couldn’t quite conceal their disappointment that his great-grandfather hadn’t abdicated, as everyone had said he would, leaving his stuttering younger brother—their great-grandfather—to inherit the throne.
“Can you imagine?” said the Duke of… well, Jamie couldn’t remember where. “King B-B-B-Bertie?”
“I used to stutter,” Jamie said, and the table went quiet.
“Yes, darling, but the CBT helped you to stop, didn’t it?” said his mother, ever the social smoother. “And the foundation is doing terribly well. Dr Cressing tells me they’re doing a documentary on it for the BBC.”
“How is Dr Cressing?” asked his Aunt Penelope, who had recovered well enough to eat a hearty dinner but not well enough to eat a single bite without telling everyone in gory detail about her treatments. “Oh, no wine for me, I’m on medication,” she said smugly to the footman.
“Wine, please,” said Jamie, earning a dark look from his mother.
He survived the family lunch, kissed his grandmother goodbye as she prepared to travel to Sandringham, and checked the time.
One more appearance this afternoon, taking presents to sick children, and then he was meeting Olivia for a Christmas drink at some preposterously trendy bar. And then home, where if he was lucky he’d be able to catch Clodagh at the pub. Or at home. He smiled at the thought.
“Something amusing?” That was Victoria, sneaking up on him.
“Nope. Just a joke someone told me. Enjoyed your lunch?”
She grimaced. “Yes, but greedyguts here ate too much and now all the paps will think I’m preggo.” She kissed his cheek. “See you on Sunday.”
“Bye.”
He passed on his good wishes to Annemarie, who had been spared today’s lunch but would be expected to attend Sandringham over Christmas, and headed off to the children’s hospital. Two hours later, changing out of the suit a small child had thrown up on and into what looked like a perfect replica, he waited in the car outside the bar Olivia had chosen while Geraint and Morris checked the interior.
“Bad news, sir,” said Geraint as he came back to the car.
“What?” Olivia wasn’t there? The place was considered unsafe?
“Miss Featherstonehaugh is present with Lady Olivia.”
Jamie groaned, even as a text came through from Oll: “Sorry. Couldn’t stop her. Want to postpone?”
Jamie drummed his fingers. Melissa was… well, she’d been a mistake, to put it plainly. She’d always been part of his social circle but he’d been slightly put off by her desperation to please, like an eager puppy. Avoiding her only made the desperation worse. Eventually, at someone’s wedding, he’d had too much to drink and given in to her advances.
One night, and she was practically planning the wedding. Jamie had been as polite and gentle as he could with a raging hangover, but she refused to take no for an answer. He’d eventually invented some emergency and had Geraint rescue him, and avoided her ever since.
“I can tell her you’re not coming and meet you in Cambs?” Olivia suggested.
Grateful, Jamie texted back in the affirmative, and the car pulled smoothly away from the club. Clodagh usually had the night off on Wednesdays, so she could join them for a drink. That would be…
Well, Olivia would get ideas about him and Clodagh, but he could probably weather that.
The house was empty when he arrived home. No music, no food cooking, no smell of coconut from the bathroom upstairs. Jamie called the gatehouse, where Phillips was on duty. “Did Clodagh go out?”
There was a slight, a very slight pause. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh.” He wondered where. She hadn’t mentioned any friends in the city. “Did she say where?”
“I don’t believe so, sir.” Another pause. “Khan is with her.”
“Oh, good.” He knew Lee Cunningham was behind bars—he’d been persuaded that a Guilty plea was in his favour, thereby sparing Clodagh a court appearance—but he still got uneasy about her being out by herself. Because of her ankle, he told himself, and almost believed it. “Lady Olivia is coming up. We’ll go out for a few drinks.”
“Very good, sir.”
Olivia, when she arrived— “So sorry, darling, I couldn’t drop bloody Melissa. Said I was going home and she bloody followed me. Had to invent a work crisis and dash off,”—suggested the Prince’s Arms for a drink, so she could catch up with Clodagh.
“Apparently she’s out,” said Jamie.
“Oh.” Olivia, like so many people he’d been raised with, could fit all the vowels into that one short word. “What a shame. Still, we’ll have a nice night, eh?”
They did, Olivia using her contacts and sheer ebullience to get them a table at Midsummer House, and then drinks at various places on the way back home. The city was in fine festive mood, free of students but full of tourists and revellers, and more than once Jamie posed for photos with well-wishers.
He resisted the urge to text Clodagh and ask where she was and with whom. It was none of his damn business. He should have asked more about her friends, and then he’d know.
And later, after they’d called it a night, after Olivia had thrown her high heels into the smaller spare room and curled up for a gossip on the sofa, her feet on Jamie’s lap ‘because they’ll swell if I put them down, darling,’ the front door opened and Clodagh came in.
Jamie put down his wineglass and called out jokingly, “What time d’you call this?”
She came in, across the darkened dining room which was currently stacked with various gifts Jamie had to wrap and take to Sandringham.
“You didn’t need to wait up.” Her gaze fell on Olivia. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hello, darling. I was expecting you to be around! It’s a shame, you could have come for dinner with us!”
“Ah. Maybe next time.”
She was quiet. There was an odd look on her face. “You okay?” said Jamie. Fear gripped him. What if Cunningham had—no, Cunningham was behind bars, but what if one of his friends had found her? What if the girl, Hanna, had found her? “Khan did stay with you, didn’t he?”
“Davood? Yes, of course. What kind of date would it be if he didn’t?”
It was one of those moments when nothing seemed to happen for an extraordinarily long time, and the entirety of it wrote itself onto Jamie’s memory for good. He remembered how he sat there, twisted sideways to look at Clodagh as she stood in the darkened dining room, Olivia’s feet in his lap. He remembered the tiny beginning of a giggle from Olivia, as if she thought Clodagh was joking, and then the sound it turned into when she realised that wasn’t the case.
And he remembered the way Clodagh’s chin jutted, as if defying him to ask if it was true, if she was joking, if he’d misunderstood.
“A date?” he heard himself say. “As in… a date?”
“Yes. With drinks and dinner. Just like your evening.”
Hollowness spread inside him. The wine tasted sour in his mouth. “We weren’t on a date.”
“No, of course not.”
She turned away, walking back to the hall cupboard to put away her coat and scarf and shoes. Olivia touched Jamie’s arm, her face full of sympathy. He shook his head rapidly.
“Did you have a nice lunch?” Clodagh asked from the hallway.
Olivia raised her eyebrows when he failed to answer. “Lunch? At the Palace?” she prompted.
“Oh. Oh, yes. Very nice.” He couldn’t remember a single thing about it. “Did you?”
Clodagh gave him an odd look as she came back toward the living room. “I had a sandwich here,” she said. “While I wrapped some presents.” She hesitated. “Mum asked me to go home for Christmas, so I said yes. After all, you’ll be away.”
“Sure,” said Jamie. Eve
n though she was clearly on the outs with her family, she’d prefer to go home than—no, stop it, Jamie.
“Right. Davood’s offered me a lift. He’s going home for Christmas.”
“With you?” Olivia asked.
“No, to his family. In London. Hence the lift.” She went into the kitchen and Jamie gulped some wine.
“It’s just one date,” Olivia said in a low voice.
“Was it a good date?” Jamie called through, and hated himself for even asking. Olivia thumped him.
“Yeah. He’s nice. Funny. Tells a good anecdote. Some of them might even have been true.” She came back, and paused at the foot of the stairs, water glass in her hand. “Well, night then. See you tomorrow.”
“Night,” said Olivia, and Jamie mumbled something similar.
As Clodagh’s uneven footsteps thumped up the stairs, he leaned forward and poured a very large glass of wine.
“Jamie,” said Olivia.
“Shut up. I know. Shut up,” he said, and took a big drink.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.
“Yes.” He drank some more.
“He seems nice. He’ll be good to her.”
“Yes,” said Jamie viciously, draining his glass. Khan—Davood – would be good to her. Jamie wouldn’t have asked him to look after Clodagh if he thought otherwise. They’d make a handsome couple.
They could go out anywhere without people taking their picture and speculating on their future plans and when they’d get engaged, married, start having babies. Without commenting on their outfit choices and hairstyles and changes in weight. Without being scrutinised and magnified and objectified and—
It was for the best. Clodagh wouldn’t want that anyway, wouldn’t want the whole circus. He didn’t want to do it to her.
“Jamie?”
I just really like her.
He wanted to cry. Instead, he got up and fetched more wine.
Clodagh lay in bed and listened to them. Jamie had put music on, that nineties band he liked so much. Crowded House. He’d talked about them before. They hadn’t been very popular round Clodagh’s way. Maybe things were different for Prince Jamie and Lady Olivia.
They hadn’t been on a date, but they might as well have been. Cosy on the sofa like that. The rumours were probably true. Jamie might not think he intended to marry Olivia, but he would, one day. He’d marry someone of his class—or as close to it as one could get, when one was anointed royalty. Someone who didn’t have an excruciating family and a past that would make the tabloids explode with vicious glee. Someone who understood why there were so many kinds of mustard.
Her date with Davood Khan had gone well. As well as she might have expected, anyway. Clodagh hadn’t exactly been on a lot of dates. But he was nice, he was funny, he was kind and she felt very safe with him. All those were good things, right?
And when he’d asked if he could kiss her goodnight, she’d said yes, and hoped for the best, and it had been… okay, really.
He’d asked if she’d like to go out again, and she’d said yes, because it was time she stopped mooning over a man she couldn’t have and spent time with one she could. Yes. Going out with Khan was a sensible idea.
She turned over. Crowded House were singing Don’t Dream It’s Over, which was so horribly appropriate she cried herself to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Arrivals at Sandringham were arranged on a strict schedule. Not for the first time, Jamie considered it weird that an event focused so closely on the nuclear family should be at the same so formal. He had the schedule, printed and laminated by one of Peaseman’s minions, and he also had a million reminders on his phone. Not that he needed them. Nothing really changed at Sandringham.
He was allowed to arrive on Christmas Eve after his cousins, and for once permitted to drive his own car. The wail of a baby greeted him as he went inside, stripping off his gloves. His luggage was taken from him and a comment murmured that he’d be in his usual room. Well, that was something. He’d half an expectation of being banished to the servant’s quarters, because his room was needed for a married couple.
Before she’d married Nick, Victoria and Jamie used to arrive together. But she had precedence now, being married. Jamie had still been allowed to arrive later than his cousins—despite two of them also being married, and Isabella with the baby now—but he morosely predicted a demotion any day soon.
“Come on, droopy-drawers, smile,” Victoria chivvied him, as he set out presents in the Red Drawing Room. “It’s Christmas!”
Jamie nodded. “Sure is.”
“Something wrong?”
He’d woken with a terrific hangover on Thursday, and had to go about his crammed schedule as if nothing was wrong. Clodagh had been out when he came home, and he’d gone to bed before she finished work. Friday he’d hardly seen her, and then he’d spent Saturday with his parents before going through the stupid charade of arriving separately here today.
She’d be on her way down to Harlow now, in Khan’s car, probably teaching him to rap along to Hamilton. They could do one of Eliza and Alexander’s duets together.
He was trying not to think that she’d been alone in the house last night. Because what if she hadn’t been alone? What if she’d invited Khan in? He could hardly object; the man was in his employ after all, it wasn’t as if she’d just asked someone in off the street. And then they’d be shagging all over the house, in her bedroom and by the fire in the living room and on the kitchen table, oh God—
“Jamie?”
“I’m fine. Hangover,” he lied, blinking to try and clear his mind of the image of his bodyguard and Clodagh together.
“Ah. Don’t let Granny see.”
“No. Right.”
The first thing his grandmother said to him was, “Jamie, dear, what’s all this I hear about you and dear Olivia? Are we to expect an announcement?”
“What? No. Still no, Granny.” He eyed the decanters on the sideboard. Too early for a drink?
“Well, you looked jolly cosy the other night. The picture was all over the papers.”
Ugh. Yes. One of the well-wishers on Wednesday had snapped a picture of him and Olivia, just as she’d leaned close to whisper to him, “That guy has his fly undone,” so it looked like she was kissing his ear and he was smiling about it.
“Just one of those angles. You know how it is. Olivia is still just a friend.”
“Still?” the Queen asked wistfully.
“Still,” he repeated firmly.
They opened presents after tea that evening, the traditional mix of cheap and cheerful. Granny hooted with laughter at the light-up singing Santa earrings he’d found for her, and he accepted with good grace his brother’s gift of a picture book entitled Hot Guys With Kittens.
Jamie wondered if Clodagh had found the present he’d left for her on the coffee table. He wondered if she’d appreciate it. It had been so long since he’d bought a serious gift for someone that didn’t involve half a dozen employees and consultation of a diplomatic textbook that he had no idea if his judgement was sound or not.
She sent him a text on Christmas Day. It had a cheerful Santa emoji, but was otherwise not particularly personal. He replied in kind, then got back to the intense schedule of church and meals and greeting well-wishers and more church and more meals, changing clothes so many times he was up and down the stairs like a jack-in-the-box.
He looked at her text again before he went to bed. Slightly drunk, his thumb slipped and scrolled back to the miserable message she’d sent him all those weeks ago from the hospital. “I hate this place. I hate everyone.”
“Sometimes, I’m right there with you,” he said, and fell asleep to tortured dreams of Alexander Hamilton making love to Clodagh.
“How’d it go?” asked Davood when he picked Clodagh up on Boxing Day.
She fell back against the car seat with a groan. “Well, I was greeted with the words, ‘You’re not still wearing that thing, are you?’ wh
en I walked in the door,” she gestured to the walking boot, which still had at least a week to go, “and it went downhill from there.”
“Yikes.”
“Yep.”
Occupying that weird space between not being forgiven for her outburst but still being an integral part of the family, Clodagh had spent forty-eight hours checking her watch. Her mother had been cordial, but not warm. Her sisters had ignored her unless she was useful for watching the kids. Everyone had made jokes about not jumping on her ankle because it was made of glass and she’d fall apart, which had started out unfunny and got worse.
The turkey was too big for the oven, took too long to cook and most of the adults were pissed as newts by the time it was served. Clodagh’s presents for her nieces and nephews—nieflings, she remembered Jamie calling them, with a pang—had been torn into and evaluated critically before being forgotten about in favour of something shinier. Kylie had forgotten to buy Clodagh anything, Whitney claimed she couldn’t afford anything, and both her brothers gave her socks.
Joke’s on you, she’d thought as everyone laughed at their lack of imagination. Socks were something she actually really needed.
“How about you?” she asked.
“Well, we do our main gift thing at Eid, so we’re mostly in it for the tinsel and cheesy movies,” Davood said. “Home Alone. Muppet Christmas Carol. Elf, obviously.”
“Obviously. We had to watch Cinderella this year. The live-action one.”
Davood made a slight face.
“I can’t even tell you if it was any good because the kids squabbled all through it and I had to run out to the shops for carrots because, you know, there’s a million things on the plate but if you don’t have carrots it’s all ruined.”
He laughed.
They passed a house so covered with random flashing crap it made Clodagh’s temples throb. “Also there was a screaming fit because we only had plain lights, and not those flashing emergency-vehicle blue ones that are all the rage round here.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? I keep thinking it’s the police. It’s like being back at work. Speaking of, did you see the Boss?”
