“It’d damn well better not be Casino Royale. Or any of the Bond movies, come to that.”
She laughed. “Well, it’s on my mind because I didn’t get to see it when you were here, did I?”
“We can see it the next time. Watch something else.”
“And how was your tea?”
“Just about to have it.”
“Oh! Sorry! I thought tea was at four.”
“Normally it is. Granny takes hers a little later sometimes.”
“So you’re at her house?” Melody’s gaze scanned his surroundings. “What a gorgeous room.”
Again: the irony.
“I’m at her house,” he said, struggling hard to keep his grin on lockdown.
“I’ll let you go. Have a scone for me. With clotted cream and all that.”
As always, it made his heart ache to tell her good-bye.
“I will, darling.”
She grinned at him. “I love the darling.”
“You don’t have a nickname for me, I’ve noticed,” he said sourly.
“I’ll have to think of one.”
“It needs to be something affectionate and/or dignified—”
The mirrored door swung open.
Bloody hell.
Anthony leapt to his feet and snapped to attention.
“Gotta go,” he whispered to Melody. “Call you later. Bye.”
And he hung up on Melody’s startled face just as the herd of beagles swarmed into the room, tails wagging.
“Hello, guys,” he said, putting his phone up and shooing them away from the tea tray on the coffee table. “No, you don’t want to eat Granny’s cakes. She won’t like that.”
“She certainly will not.” His grandmother, the Queen of England, strode in and brought that crisp air of authority and unmistakable voice along with her. Today’s twinset was a foamy green colored one that rather matched the silk-covered walls, and her pearl necklace was the lustrous three-stranded one she usually favored. Evidently she’d had no public engagements this afternoon, because she wore plaid trousers and flat little shoes rather than the skirt and chunky black heels she usually chose. “You’re late, AJ,” she said, offering him her hand.
“Your Majesty.” He took it and gave her a kiss on each cheek before nodding sharply and kissing her hand. “I’m not late. I’m never late.”
“You were late for tea when you were eleven.”
“Yes, and you cured me of that, didn’t you? Fed all my treats to your nasty little beagles and made me watch. I’ve never been late since, have I?”
“Cover your ears, boys,” Granny called down to the dogs as she sat on the sofa and reached for the teapot. The dogs collapsed in a heap about her feet, their eager little faces turned up and on the scent of the cakes. “He doesn’t mean it.”
“Oh, I meant it, boys,” he assured the beagles.
Anthony sat beside his grandmother. They grinned at each other.
“You’ve done something with your hair,” he said, pointing at her head.
Her hair, like his lateness, was a running joke between them. She’d worn her sandy brown hair in the same bun (he remained silently convinced that she’d taken one of the portraits of Queen Victoria off the wall around here somewhere, shown it to her stylist and demanded the same look) since good old Henry VIII beheaded that second wife.
She patted the bun and made a show of primping. Her blue eyes, so like his own, sparkled like a young girl’s, and her English rose complexion, lined now with her seventy-plus years, went a lovely shade of pink in the cheeks.
“Do you like it?”
“I do.”
She splashed a little cream, just the way he liked it, and handed him a cup of her special Queen’s Brew blend. Then she caught sight of the tiered tea tray and frowned.
“You haven’t eaten one of my salmon sandwiches, have you? I’m one short.”
He stifled a sigh. He doubted Mrs. Brompton had ratted him out. Ergo, he still hadn’t been able to fool his grandmother any better than he had that time when he was six and hid her handbag under a seat cushion. She’d eyeballed the askew pillow, retrieved her bag and given him the rough edge of her thinned lips and raised brow.
No, you couldn’t put one over on the old girl.
Which left his lifelong score something like Granny: 496—Anthony: 0.
“Yes, I choked one of your nasty sandwiches down. Wish you wouldn’t put them on rye bread. I hate rye.”
Granny shivered with satisfaction as she raised her own sandwich. “Why do you think I choose it? More for me.”
“Next time I’ll have to choke all of them down. Just to punish you.”
They laughed. She handed him one of her heavy cloth napkins, which he smoothed across his lap. They selected their various cakes and sandwiches. Munched happily.
God, it was good to be there. Nothing relaxed and grounded him like spending time with his grandmother. In an ever-shifting world where mothers died far too young, overseas wars were fought and fathers disappeared and reappeared, forgetting you were there one moment, then turning up again and demanding a relationship with you the next, this one woman had been his constant.
They were each other’s favorites, he and his grandmother. Oh, she’d deny it if questioned, probably giving a politically correct answer about loving all her grandchildren equally, but death had bonded them into an unshakeable team. She had scraped him up off the ground when his mother died, setting aside her grief over the loss of her daughter to make sure that he got out of bed, showered and went to school in the mornings. She had held his head in her lap, night after night, and wiped away his orphan’s tears until finally those tears eased a bit and he remembered what it was to smile again.
And he had returned the favor when his grandfather had a massive stroke just as he graduated from NYU Law, forgoing the bar exam so he could return to London and sit quietly by Granny’s side during those shell-shocked days when she planned the funeral and led the country through its mourning period without ever letting her spine bend or her shoulders droop. Granny never cried, but Anthony had been there within arm’s reach that time or two when her steps faltered or she blindly reached out for a hand to hold.
When the dust had settled and she’d asked him to return to London and stand in for her on some of her appearances, he’d happily agreed. Not because she was his monarch, but because she was the brokenhearted blue-eyed grandmother he adored and she needed him in a way no one else ever had.
It had been both his duty and his honor to slide into the role.
That arrangement had quickly segued into a full-time schedule for him. If a royal body was needed at a ribbon cutting, ship christening or board meeting and all the senior members of the family were already booked? Well, then, by God, Anthony Scott was your man.
Was it a thrilling career? No. But anything for Granny.
“Nice of you to visit your old Granny, Bubba,” she finally said, using the childhood nickname she’d given him when teasing him about his Texan roots. “Make sure I’m still alive.”
“Well, if you’d keeled over, it probably would have made the papers,” he said, carefully selecting a slice of date bread.
“Hmm.” She sipped delicately, her straight spine never touching the back of the sofa. “I hear your wretched father’s had a heart attack. Imagine my surprise upon discovering he has a heart.”
Anthony rolled his eyes. Of course she’d heard. And now here it came. Never took long.
“Is that concern I hear in your voice? Planning to send him a card, are you?”
A sharp bark of laughter from Granny, much like her little dogs.
“Speaking of keeling over. A card from me would finish him off for sure, wouldn’t it? Poor man would die of shock. So how is he?”
Anthony shrugged.
His grandmother treated his face to that same slow inspection she’d employed back when she’d caught him and one of his cousins filching strawberries from her garden and, unbeknownst to them, they’d
had red rings around their mouths.
“I imagine he’s feeling his mortality now,” she said, pursing her lips. “Probably regrets he’s wasted so much time with you. As well he should.”
Anthony shrugged again, his ears beginning to burn. Leave it to Granny to get to the heart of any matter in two or three short sentences over tea and a biscuit.
“I’m not his greatest fan, obviously,” she said, clipping her words as though she had a pair of shears. “Never have been. But he’s the only father you have and you’re his only child. He needs you. You’ll give him a chance.”
Well, there it was, Anthony thought dismally.
The royal order.
“Don’t scowl at me,” she said. “Your mother would tell you the same if she were still here. God rest my precious daughter. You know I’m right.”
He supposed he did.
The mention of his mother made a sweet ache of loss tighten around his heart. Angry as his grandmother had been at Tony following the collapse of their marriage, she’d only ever encouraged Anthony to love his father. It was Anthony who’d gone off script by hating the man’s guts for the repeated infidelities and making his mother so miserable. If only Mummy were still alive. She’d know what to say to help Anthony get past some of his anger. He knew she would. She wouldn’t have wanted Anthony to spend his life mired in bitterness about past events.
And then there was Melody, he thought moodily, selecting a scone and putting it on his plate. Her advice to give his father a chance had resonated with him, of course, but it was easy to try to talk himself out of making a real go of it with his father. Excuses always abounded. For example? Why waste time on a person who would likely never appreciate Anthony’s effort and would probably never change anyway?
But here, finally, was a directive.
One did not ignore one’s sovereign.
Or granny.
Still, he didn’t have to be gracious about it.
“Why is everyone taking up for that man lately?” he grumbled.
“Who do you mean?” she asked, her keen gaze sharpening. “The young woman you were making cow eyes with when I walked into the room?”
“I was not making cow eyes,” he said as severely as he could, knowing all along that the general effect was ruined by the sudden heat burning his ears. “And you should stop spying on people all the time. It’s beneath you.”
She hiked up her chin, looking absolutely unrepentant. “How else am I to find out what’s going on in the real world?”
He had to laugh.
“We’ll get back to your young lady in a minute,” she said. “But first, it’s time.”
He froze. This was what he’d been afraid of when she insisted on tea.
“Time?” he asked, stalling while he got his thoughts together.
“Yes. Time. T-I-M-E. You’re to be the Earl of Stockbridge. You’ll be thirty-five next year. We’ve put it off long enough.”
He slumped back against the cushions and felt his shoulders begin to hunch. “I don’t see the point, to be honest. Why is this necessary? My mother didn’t care about the title.”
“Your mother acceded to your bullying father’s wishes when you were born.” She scoffed. “He wanted you to be a regular boy. Whatever that means.”
It probably didn’t mean growing up in a palace like Buckingham, the one in which they currently sat, with nearly eight hundred rooms and a thousand servants, Anthony thought glumly, keeping his commentary to himself.
“So we did not give you the title when you were born and we did not give it to you when you turned eighteen or twenty-one. We didn’t even give it to you when you became a war hero.”
“I’m not a—”
She silenced him with a glare.
“I’d made up my mind long ago. We’d either do it when you married or when you turned thirty-five. And now the time has come.”
“Yes, but what are we accomplishing here? I don’t need the estate or the income from the lands. I’ll have my trust fund soon. I’m not a farmer. I have no desire to supervise tenants. I just don’t see the point.”
“You do understand that this is a tremendous honor and not a punishment?” she asked icily. “And that several of your ancestors went to the Tower and sacrificed their heads for much less than an earldom.”
Anthony’s voice rose with frustration.
“And this earldom will come with the sacrifice of my relative anonymity. Right now, I’m keeping my head down with my boring little engagements and flying under the radar—”
“You are deluding yourself.”
Anthony had never had any idea how she accomplished it, but his grandmother had a knack for making her voice boom throughout the room without ever speaking a decibel higher. She also did this thing where her entire face turned to stone—starting with her forehead, lingering with her eyes and ending with her rigid lips and squared jaw—that had always scared the hell out of him and everyone else who ever beheld the phenomenon.
And Melody thought that he had an intimidating expression.
Wait’ll she got a load of this routine.
Just to make sure she really had his attention now, the old girl remained perfectly still and stared him down for several seconds. Until his whole head burned along with his ears. Until he shifted uncomfortably. Until he ducked his head, unable to maintain eye contact.
Until he wished he’d never been born.
“Let me see if I understand you,” she said with that deathly calm of hers. “You are flouting my wishes, your entire heritage and who you are. Why not run off and join the circus and have done with it if you’re so determined to be someone else?”
Frustration got the best of him.
“But who am I, Granny?” He hoped she would forgive the yelling, just the once, but for God’s sake, did she think he knew what his lifelong ambivalence was all about? “I’m British and American, but I’m not quite British or American enough. Am I a Texan? A Londoner? Would I do better in a place like New York? Do I have a career other than marching about being a figurehead to my charities? Am I doing any good there at all? Am I a lawyer if I’m not licensed? I’m not in the military anymore. I know that much. But I’ve damn well still got the guilt and the panic attacks to go along with it. What the hell am I supposed to do with myself? And how am I to know whether people like me or want anything to do with me as a person if I’ve got a fancy new title and my face suddenly splashed all over the tabloids?”
She absorbed his entire tirade with nary a blink or eyelid twitch.
And when he paused to catch his breath and his voice stopped ringing off the silk-covered walls, he had a serious oh, shit! moment.
Had he just said all that? To his grandmother?
Bloody hell.
“Are you quite finished?” she asked when he’d worn himself out.
“Yes,” he said dully, thinking that this would have been the moment, back in the day, when guards with swords would have shuttled him down to the river, where a barge would have escorted him to a nice room in said Tower of London to await the block and the ax.
“And what do you have to say to me, sir?”
He paused to straighten his tie. At times like this, it was hard to remember that he was a grown man.
“I’m sorry for yelling.”
“And?”
He thought it over. “For being an ungrateful arse.”
“Very good.” She thawed out, reached for the teapot and poured again. “Have some more tea and a cookie, Bubba. You must be parched and famished after that disgraceful display.”
He snorted out a laugh and took a gingerbread cookie.
She selected a cucumber sandwich. On rye.
“What’s this all about, AJ?” she asked briskly.
He opened his mouth, but no answers came to him for several long and embarrassing seconds.
“I’m tired of being half this and half that,” he finally managed. “I want to belong somewhere. I want to know who I am and what I
’m supposed to be doing.”
She took her time about finishing off her sandwich, dabbing her mouth with her napkin and clasping her hands in her lap. Her rigid posture straightened even more, if that was possible, and he half wished he had a textbook to balance on her head just to see how long she could keep it there. Probably for life, he was guessing.
He braced himself. Here it came.
“Let me help you out of your existential crisis, young Hamlet…”
He winced.
“You’re supposed to be keeping your word and helping take some of the burden off my shoulders.”
Anthony bit back a despairing sound. What were you supposed to do when your beloved elderly grandmother and monarch, who still worked more than the rest of the family combined, played the duty card?
“You are the future Earl of Stockbridge. All your cousins have their titles, and you shall have yours. There will be a small blip on your radar when I bestow the title, and then I’m certain everyone will forget all about you and leave you to your anonymous woolgathering. I’m sure you’ll be delighted.”
He snorted. That was the thing about Granny. She had a biting sense of humor.
“Yes, well, this isn’t exactly the most opportune time for me.” He ran a finger under his starched collar, which now felt hot enough to singe his fingertips. He wasn’t at all sure he should get into it this early, but what choice did he have? Plus, he’d already told Melody he wanted her to meet Granny, hadn’t he? “I, ah…I seem to have met someone. It might be easier if the news of my earldom didn’t drop just yet.”
She’d reached for a scone and begun breaking off bits to feed to the tail-wagging assemblage, but now she paused, one brow up.
He coughed. Fidgeted with his collar again.
“She’s a, ah, pediatric surgeon in, ah, Journey’s End. New York. Harvard-trained. Brilliant. Beautiful. Very funny and kind. An extraordinary woman.”
He’d meant to leave it at that—he had the growing suspicion that he’d lapsed into babbling—but Granny kept watching. And waiting. And of course he’d never mentioned a woman to her before, so the conversation had already crossed into unprecedented territory.
“Her name’s Melody Harrison. I just met her, so it’s all very new. And I obviously don’t have a crystal ball to know where all this will end up. It’s far too soon to talk about anything serious. Like, ah, marriage.”
Everything I Hoped For Page 16
