Royal Treatment (Royal Scandal Book 3)

by Parker Swift

  This was different.

  It was nearly six when we settled into our seats, and the server brought us drinks. Dylan had taken his phone call, and I had my legging-clad legs curled beneath me and felt a little like I was settling into a living room for a seven-hour duration. It didn’t feel normal—I doubted it ever would—but it felt comfortable, which was weird in itself.

  Dylan was also different. He was staring at me. More than usual. When I ignored the instructions to fasten my seat belt—I was waiting until the last minute—Dylan reached over and fastened it for me. He was quiet, attentive, even while talking to whom I guessed was his friend Jack from MI6.

  “Is this the same plane we went on to Greece?” I asked when he got off. It looked bigger.

  “No. I charter them. Easier than owning. Less fuss. More efficient.” He leaned in and kissed my ear. “Plus,” he whispered, “this one has a bedroom in the back.”

  “You think of everything, don’t you?” I said, scolding him. Did the man think of nothing but sex? But his only response was to slide his large hand between my folded legs, right above the knee, and lovingly stroke my leg with his thumb.

  We were both quiet as we took off, letting the last few days settle over us. I had no idea what was on Dylan’s mind, but I was fixated on the view outside the window. Downtown, the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the Statue of Liberty. The symbols of the city I’d grown up in. The city that had been my home would always be home a little. But now I felt like I was going home. So leaving New York was odd.

  I looked down and saw a patch of green deep into Brooklyn. It could have been any park, but maybe it was the cemetery. The cemetery where my father would live forever. I looked back towards downtown, where the Franklins lived, where just hours before those children, whom I adored, had been clamoring over me, how that had felt like family too. Dylan had been sweet to put up with that—I knew he still wasn’t sure if he even wanted children. He and I were going to have to have that conversation again eventually. But not yet. We’d been married for two weeks, the world didn’t know it yet—we barely knew it yet.

  I looked down at New York and saw Daphne, NYU, Great Lakes, my internships, my primary school, the hospitals where I’d spent days and nights with my father. But I also saw the city where Dylan had put a ring on my finger. Rings on our fingers. Where I’d become his wife.

  As if reading my mind, Dylan leaned over me to look out the window too and squeezed my leg, stroking it just a little more affectionately. “I love New York.” He looked down at his hand and twisted the shiny new band that lay there. “Even more now.”

  We were high enough now that seat belts didn’t matter. Or if they did, Dylan decided he didn’t care. He flicked his open and did the same with mine. Without saying a word, he laced his fingers through mine, tugged me from my seat, and led me back towards the polished wooden door at the rear of the plane.

  When he pushed it open, the small room opened up onto a bed stretching from one side to the other. Plush and inviting. He pulled me in and shut the door behind us, closing us in the small space.

  Suddenly the air was gone from the room, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, in the best possible way. His smell—that familiar combination of wood and salt and fire—filled the air around me, and the warmth from his body reached mine, heating me up from the inside. I felt the familiar spread of electric anticipation reaching through my limbs, leaving my fingers tingling.

  “Lydia,” he said, firmly but with so much desire. In these moments I became putty, liquid, elastic, ready. His fingers pressed my chin up and I looked into his preposterously blue eyes. I gulped, waiting. “I want to see you.”

  I nodded, and moved my hands to the hem of my shirt. But he gripped my wrists to stop me and just shook his head. I stilled and waited.

  He slid his knuckle under my shirt and ran it along the waistband of my leggings. Slowly, his skin, that gentle touch, heated me, trailed along my skin, until it was two knuckles, two hands, ten fingers wrapping around my waist beneath my shirt. He glanced at me expectantly and I understood to lift my arms above my head. Within a drawn-out fluid moment, like he was moving to a long note in a symphony, my shirt was off of my body, somewhere on the floor.

  I closed my eyes and looked to the ceiling as Dylan sank to the floor in front of me and made the same leisurely moves to remove my leggings, leaving me in nothing but my bra.

  Infinitesimal sparkles lit and crackled on my skin, making every touch feel like it could be the one to tilt me over my axis, knock me into the abyss. Dylan’s hands never left my body—they were slow, worshipful, and without effort he lifted me onto the bed and hovered above me.

  Words had ended somewhere in the beginning, and this seemed too big for them. This was different. Something had changed in him. The way he touched me was like he was touching our marriage, our future, our entire life together. This was celebratory but reverent. Thick with hot emotion, but steady. It was a wedding.

  When we were done making love, I put my hand to his cheek, and he stilled and looked at me. “Why are you so quiet?” I asked, searching for answers in his eyes. He sighed for a moment, and then lay back in the bed pulling me against him.

  “I want…” But he wouldn’t finish his thought.

  “You want what?”

  He waited another moment, and I saw a question pass through his eyes. “I want to marry you again.”

  * * *

  Seven hours later it felt like three in the morning, but it was already eight in the morning London time, and we were sleepily leaning against each other in the backseat of the Mercedes as Lloyd drove us home.

  “I trust you had a good trip, Your Grace,” Lloyd had said when he saw me. I yawned, barely able to keep my eyes open. I knew I was supposed to stay awake to deal with the jet lag, but there was no way that was going to happen.

  Dylan leaned down and whispered in my ear, “He’s talking to you.”

  I probably looked like a scared rabbit in that moment and suddenly felt very awake. “No, Lloyd, you are not allowed to call me that. I’m not ready.”

  Dylan chuckled. “You can see why I married her,” he said to Lloyd, whom I actually caught smiling.

  “Excuse me then, Mrs. Hale, did you have a good trip?”

  “Ack! That’s even crazier!”

  “Hey, don’t you want be called Mrs. Hale?” Dylan had pulled me towards him, smiling at me in a teasing way. “I think you’d be the first of the duchesses to not take their husband’s name.”

  “I’m taking your name. I’m just not used to being Mrs. Anything. I’m only twenty-five. It feels weird,” I said as I yawned again.

  Dylan turned towards Lloyd. “I think I’d better let the wife nap—she’s obviously not thinking clearly.” He stood behind me, and I thought he was going to grab my hand, but instead he swung me into his arms.

  “Another threshold?” I said, yawning again and remembering when he’d carried me over our threshold in the Brooklyn apartment.

  “Only a few more to go,” Dylan said.

  My eyes were closing, and I rested my head against his chest.

  “Caveman,” I whispered on an exhale.

  “Lloyd,” Dylan said over his shoulder, “could you please let Molly know we’ll be having my mother and sister for lunch at noon?”

  On a subconscious level I knew that if I heard those words, I would wake right the hell up, so I let them glide past me and pretended they didn’t exist. Because one thing I was definitely not ready for was telling Charlotte that I was already Mrs. Hale, Her Grace, the new Duchess of Abingdon.

  Chapter 23

  Dylan

  Lydia was in the shower when the doorbell rang, trying to wake herself up after a nap. Of course my mother was early.

  “Hello, darling,” she said in her saccharine way, waltzing in with a newspaper tucked under her arm and her sunglasses still on. It meant the shield was firmly back in place.

  “This better be good,” said Emily, tra
ipsing in behind her, looking like she’d been out all night.

  “Did you just come in from Cambridge?” I asked.

  She shrugged and yawned, even though it was midday.

  “I stayed at a friend’s in town last night.”

  Friend in town? I gave her a look that suggested she’d better fess the bloody hell up if there was a sodding male around. Spent the night?

  She rolled her eyes dismissively. My mother was already in the kitchen talking sternly to Molly about the proper way to make Yorkshire pudding, which was a joke since I doubted my mother had ever even used an oven. I’d have to apologize to Molly later, although she was used to my mother by now. Emily glanced towards the kitchen and then back to me. “Like I said, this had better be good.”

  She started to walk past but I grabbed her arm, and she turned to me. I flashed her my wedding band surreptitiously before sliding my hand back in my pocket. Her eyes widened. Bloody enormous. Then her jaw dropped. I loved shocking my sister. I so rarely got to do it. In fact I couldn’t remember the last time I’d genuinely surprised her.

  She got a huge smile on her face and then charged passed me, up the stairs, presumably to find Lydia.

  “I’m going to kill you two, you know,” she shouted over her shoulder, but she didn’t sound the slightest bit mad.

  I chuckled as I walked into the now silent kitchen, but I stopped when I saw my mother staring at me.

  “I can’t imagine you’ll defend her now, Dylan.”

  What?

  “She’s finally showing her true colors. It was only a matter of time.” At that moment too many things happened at once. My mother held up the newspaper she’d come in with, the morning edition, and Lydia and Emily came bounding down the stairs, chattering and laughing. “And I can’t imagine what business you had in New York—I’d hate to think you ignored business here for weeks for some kind of pleasure trip.”

  It was as though the images in the paper were glowing. Two large color photos, side by side in the society section. In the first, Lydia and me, in New York, outside the museum, kissing. And in the other, Lydia and Eric, kissing.

  Fuck.

  “Oh god.” Lydia’s voice was fragile, muffled as her hand went to her mouth.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, dear? You’ve successfully made my son look like a fool. No small, feat, I assure you. He managed to keep an impeccable public image before you came along, and now, well, I can’t imagine how you’ll justify this.”

  “Oh god,” Lydia said again, and began to turn. She was going to run.

  “No,” I said firmly, and I marched over to where Lydia stood and held her hand firmly in my own. “Mother, you’ll stop right now. Not another word. You want the story, you ask us the story. You should know better than anyone that newspaper articles don’t reflect reality. Your own efforts last year with Amelia should tell you that—only that time the papers said what you wished had been true. That lie hurt me, hurt Lydia, and you don’t appear to have lost a wink of sleep over it. So get off your high horse and listen to me.” Emily stood by the kitchen door, attentive, probably ready to launch into one of her speeches should it be called for.

  I was furious. I was gripping Lydia’s hand so tightly, I hoped I wasn’t hurting her. I couldn’t look at her, because if I did, I knew I would just wrap her in my arms, sweep her up the stairs, and protect her from this preposterous cruelty. And I needed to do this—my mother needed to know that she was done. I would no longer allow her to be an emotional terrorist in my life. I would no longer allow her to use her grief and the years of being mistreated by my father as an excuse to forget who she was: my mother.

  She was staring at me, mouth hanging open just slightly.

  “It ends now. Do you understand? You will no longer be anything other than polite and kind to Lydia.”

  “And why on earth should I do that, Dylan?”

  Emily stood behind me, Lydia to my side, and I could feel them frozen in anticipation.

  “Because she’s the woman your son loves, Mum. Because she’s my wife.”

  My mother froze, and I took it as my cue to bring Lydia into the hug I’d been longing to give her. She let me kiss the top of her head, but then she pulled away. She continued to hold my hand, but she stood on her own.

  “Charlotte,” she said, and I knew she used my mother’s name not out of disrespect but because they were technically family, and to Lydia that meant something. “I don’t have a mother. I never have. And even if I had had one, I wasn’t raised in your family, or with the responsibilities or privilege of Humboldt Park. So I won’t pretend to know what your relationship with Dylan is or should be. But I know how much I love him. I know how much he loves me. And I know how important you and Emily are to him. I know you don’t think much of me. But I assure you,” she said, pointing at the newspaper, “that I have never and would never be unfaithful to your son. Dylan knows the story behind that picture, and he knows that while it’s unfortunate, it’s not what it looks like. The one of Dylan and me, however, is exactly what it looks like.”

  Emily scoffed behind us—I could practically hear her making fun of me for the public display of affection. It turns out that we hadn’t been as safe from the press as we thought—I couldn’t believe the photos had been leaked almost three weeks after the fact. It probably took that long for someone to realize what they had.

  She sighed next to me, and I could feel her shaking slightly in my hand.

  “We did get married without you, and without you,” she said, turning to Emily, “and I’m sorry for that. It was what was right for us, and it allowed me to say ‘I do’ to the love of my life in the place where my father had raised me and was laid to rest. And even though my father wasn’t alive to be there himself, your son made sure he was as present as he could be. He did that for me.” She squeezed my hand. Fuck, she was stunning right then. In her jeans, bare feet, and a loose sweater, her damp hair in a braid over her shoulder. Not a lick of makeup. She was perfect. She was herself, and she was defending us, with all of herself. “And I will be forever grateful. And I’m so grateful to you.” That caused my mother’s brow to crinkle—Lydia’s generous honesty was disarming her. I could see it happening. “You raised a good man, Charlotte. You raised the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. I hope one day, you’ll be able to accept me as your son’s choice. We want a wedding here in England, and of course we want you there.”

  Christ, I loved her. But fuck all, at this moment, I wanted my mother as far away from her as possible. It took everything I had not to physically protect Lydia from my mother, but I knew she could hold her own. My mother remained silent for a moment longer, until Emily spoke up. “Mum, don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know what—”

  My mother held up her hand, and Emily stopped speaking. Mum stood and walked towards the door. She paused for only a moment. “Of course I’ll be there. You haven’t given me much choice, have you? What’s done is done. Plus, what on earth would people think if I wasn’t?” And then she was gone, sunglasses in place, the door shutting firmly behind her.

  I looked down at Lydia, and I caught the tear rolling down her cheek before she wiped it away.

  At first, I didn’t know which part had upset her the most, but that question was soon answered. Lydia grabbed the newspaper from the kitchen island, and sighed.

  “I’ve really done it this time, haven’t I?” She wiped another tear away from her cheek. “Emily, I swear this isn’t what it looks like,” she said, holding the paper up. Then she looked back to me. “And I guess there goes any hope of your mother ever liking me.”

  I tried to pull her into me, comfort her, but she pulled away. She silently poured herself some coffee and retreated upstairs. Fuck, this was not what I wanted her homecoming to be like. Our homecoming. How had that gone even worse than I’d expected?

  Emily stood there staring at me as though I’d lost my bleeding mind and like she didn’t know where to start when it came
to handing me my arse.

  “You know she’s already up there reading every sodding wanker on the Internet right now, don’t you?” Emily had her hands on her hips. I was still rather stunned by everything that had happened this morning, and we hadn’t even had lunch yet. “And you know they’re calling her horrible things, right?”

  Oh, fuck.

  I bolted up the stairs behind Lydia.

  “Exactly, you idiot!” Emily called behind me.

  * * *

  Lydia hadn’t been reading the Internet, thankfully. Or she had, but she said she’d stopped when she saw that there were as many people who claimed to disbelieve the story as there were calling horrible names. It “gave her hope,” she’d said and then sighed, regrouped, and we’d decided to try to pick up the scraps of the morning.

  By three in the afternoon we were sitting back at the kitchen island, eating a quiche Molly had made and attempting to make sense of everything. We’d filled Emily in on the story about Eric, the wedding, all of it. Lydia even managed to get lost in the moment enough to recount Jake’s toast from our informal reception, but within a minute her somber frown was back. We had to fix this.

  Emily slapped her hands on the counter and slid her plate away from her. “Okay. I have a plan.”

  “You do?” Lydia asked, looking up hopefully.

  “You do?” I asked, incredulous. “I was thinking I would just give my PR team a call—they can a release a statement about this all being hog’s wallop, per usual.”

  Emily rolled her eyes and looked at me as though I were a moron.

  “You moron,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That won’t work this time. There is an actual photograph. Of Lydia. Kissing another man. And they are vicious. They called her a whore, Dylan.” I fumed and Lydia cringed. I fucking hated what they were saying about her on the Internet. And “whore” had been the least of it.