His Royal Secret (6 page)

Ben went to the bathroom, vomited, showered. Once dressed, he ran through the mud and drizzle to the nearby lounge where James had told him he’d gone the night before. To his surprise, the staffers were all willing to go on the record.

“He actually sat down and played cards with us! And he didn’t get angry when Kalonzo won.” Everyone laughed.

It turned out that James had been more or less the ideal guest, appreciative of everyone’s efforts and quick to praise them to their boss. Aside from the rainy-day card game, which had clearly gone over well, he had not imposed on their time. He had asked thoughtful questions about their lives and work, about their families, and (most surprising to Ben) about their opinions regarding the political issues facing Kenya and nearby nations.

“James—the prince—” Hopefully that slip wouldn’t attract attention. Ben continued, “Did any of you see him leave?”

A few people nodded, and someone said, “He looked haunted. Truly devastated. The prince must be very close to his grandfather.”

That was the only emotional observation offered. James’s friendliness with the staff had ensured their loyalty, and so no more intimate details about the departure would be forthcoming. But Ben kept working around the margins, building the scene both from their descriptions and memory: the torrential rains, the way people had held an umbrella over James’s head even though he was walking through calf-deep water.

Ben did not invite anyone to speculate on what might have been in James’s heart. He already knew that, because James had guilelessly opened that heart to him for a few hours.

When the interviews were done, Ben went back to his cabin, sat at his laptop, and hesitated. He had two stories he could tell now.

One was an unexpectedly pro-monarchy story, a sympathetic portrait of the prince as a thoughtful, down-to-earth man whose time in Kenya had been cut short by a family loss, and a rise in status that might prove nearly as devastating as any death could be.

The other was a hell of a lot bigger.

The Prince of Wales, who may at any moment become the King of England, is a homosexual.

Ben had no proof of this save his word. Well, he could dig the bedsheets out, take them to a lab and get them tested for DNA, but that was a total Lewinsky move. Still, he suspected that if James were confronted with that truth, he wouldn’t deny it. Lies of omission were one thing, but James probably didn’t have the steel it would take to lie outright.

Some of Ben’s reasons for wanting to write that story were venal in the extreme, and he knew it. Roger was well and truly furious at him, for the best reasons, meaning Ben’s potential transfer to the London office was in jeopardy. A scoop like this? That would more than get Ben out of the doghouse. It would be one of the top stories of the year. Every paper, magazine, and website in the world would run with it.

But some of Ben’s reasons for wanting to expose James weren’t as selfish. He believed wholeheartedly that closet cases not only kowtowed to homophobia but also enabled it. Yes, he understood that some people lived under fear of real oppression, and their only protection might be secrecy. Those who remained closeted under such circumstances could be justified. But one of the richest, most protected men in the world? One whose coming out might have substantial impact? He hid merely to maintain the status quo, Ben thought, the same status quo that kept him at the very pinnacle of worldly privilege. That wasn’t anywhere near good enough of a justification.

And yet he knew the anger he felt toward James didn’t spring from such a high-minded place. James had done little to justify Ben’s hostility. The truth was simpler than that, and bleaker.

He thought:
We always feel the greatest anger toward those we know we have wronged.

The rain kept pouring down as Ben sat at his keyboard. Thirty minutes to his self-imposed deadline. Time to write.

•   •   •

Only two guests were allowed free rein of Clarence House. One was Indigo, who legally resided there with James, though for the past several years she had kept mostly to her suite in Kensington Palace. To this day she remained most comfortable in the rooms where she had spent the earliest years of her childhood. The other was announced that evening, as James lay on the sofa. Exhausted as he was, he didn’t bother to rise and greet her—even though she was the only person in the world he’d have wanted to see.

“My God.” Cass stood in the doorway to his sitting room, hands on her hips, wearing her usual jumper, jeans, and wellies. “You look like hell.”

“I feel worse.”

“Come on. Buck up.” She plopped down on the sofa next to him and ruffled his hair. Her own pixie cut, always vivid ginger and now mussed by rain and humidity, contrasted absurdly with her china-doll face. Cassandra’s delicate features and frame made some people believe she was fragile. Those people were sorely mistaken. “They say the old boy’s going to pull through. He is, isn’t he? Or is that just the TV version of events?”

“Grandfather’s going to live. But he can’t speak for a few months, at least.”

“That ought to be a relief.”

James would’ve laughed were the situation any less dire. “The general election requires a head of state who can talk. Only for five minutes or so, but on those five minutes hangs our entire constitution. Which means a regency. Which means me.”

“Oh, bloody hell!” Cassandra squeezed his hand, then went toward the bar. The same graceful figure most women would long to show off was completely hidden by the oversized woolly jumper she wore; she looked almost like a child, save for her practiced hand with a whiskey bottle. “If you don’t need a drink at that, I do.”

“None for me.” He was still parched from the long flights, and the last thing his mood needed was a depressant. “Oh, Cass, I’m well and truly fucked.”

“Now, now,” she said over the sound of pouring liquid. “Let’s stay calm. A few months, you said. You usher in a new prime minister, if current polls are to be believed, and that’s more or less an end to it. Right? You should be off-duty before the Christmas speech.”

December seemed too far away to contemplate. “That may be true in more ways than one.”

Cassandra frowned as she returned to him. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve made a mistake. A serious one.”

“You mean a man.”

“At the resort in Kenya. Last night.” James’s voice wavered at the thought. This time yesterday he’d been lolling in Ben’s arms, drowsy and sated and believing all was well with the world.

“That’s not like you.” She petted his shoulder. “But it’ll be all right, won’t it?”

James shook his head. “He lied to me. Let me think he was a novelist. But he was a reporter, Cassandra.”

“Oh, shit!
Shit.
Fucking
hell
, James.”

“It was stupid. I know it was stupid. But he was—yes, he was handsome, but that wasn’t it, there was something about him—” What was it, the quality within Ben that had captivated James so much? The hard, confident, possessive way Ben had claimed him, perhaps, and yet also the need James had sensed just under the skin. The shadows of vulnerability just beneath his powerful exterior. But it had all been a lie. “You know when I found the press pass? I went through his desk looking for a pen. I was going to write down the protocol for him to reach me if he were ever in London. I actually wanted to see him again. So utterly stupid.”

“Stop calling yourself stupid,” Cass said fiercely. “You’ve been lonely a long time. One of those media jackals ran a game on you at a vulnerable moment. You weren’t stupid to fall for it. Only human.”

James motioned at the iPad on his coffee table. “I keep checking and rechecking the news. Waiting for him to lower the boom.”

Cass’s gaze had turned inward as she considered the ramifications. “You can deny it. Just flat out call him a liar. I’ll swear up and down that you take me three times before midnight every evening of the year. Unless . . . oh, God, you don’t think he filmed you. Do you?”

“I don’t know.” Nanny-cams could be hidden in anything: a clock, a picture. Then he remembered the white linen draperies that had surrounded the bed, sealing him and Ben off from the world. “Maybe not.”

His body still ached from Ben’s touch; a small bite mark reddened one thigh. Thinking of those moments they had curled together on the canopied bed, the heat of Ben’s kisses . . .

If only it had been real.

“Did you offer him money?” Cass said gently. She was the only person he’d told about Niall.

“Yes. He became extremely angry.”

“So he’ll only whore himself out for a story, then.”

“Don’t say that.”
Why am I defending him?
James tried to focus. “If he exposes me, I think it’s more, you know, righteous anger. About my being in the closet, hiding while other gay men take the slings and arrows. And I don’t know whether he’s wrong to despise me for that.”

“It’s every person’s right to come out when they choose, and how they choose. That’s true even if they aren’t in your situation, which happens to be devilishly complicated on this issue.”

“I’m not the only person with a complicated life,” James said. But he leaned on Cass’s shoulder, and she cuddled him close; for a while they sat there on the sofa in the wordless comfort only old friends could give.

He and Cass had known each other since early adolescence. Most of the girls in his aristocratic set had been coached since birth to catch him if they could. He was not a person to them, merely a trophy they’d always been told to win. Aware that these girls had not chosen their parts in this drama any more than he had, James had felt sorry for them and tried to be kind.

On the day he’d met Cassandra, she’d been wearing grubby trainers, blue jeans, a polo shirt two sizes too large, and not a stitch of makeup. Rather than flirt with him, she’d engaged in some sailor-level swearing about Arsenal’s latest loss to Man U. James supported Man U, so they’d gotten into it, bickering for the better part of an hour before she finally smiled and said, “You know, you’re an idiot about sport, but really you’re lovely, all the same.” It was the first compliment he’d ever received from anyone besides his immediate family that he knew to be totally sincere. They’d been inseparable from that moment on.

Cassandra had announced three days into their acquaintance that she’d rather shave her head than be queen, so they’d better be friends only. This had spared them both confusion that might have torn them apart later. He’d come out to her just before they were both about to matriculate at Cambridge. Cass had never guessed, which surprised him, but she said, “Well, let me know if you ever need an actress in the role of girlfriend.”

She couldn’t have suspected then that the ruse would last for nearly a decade, or that it would cost her any semblance of privacy, of a normal life. Yet she had never abandoned him.

The tabloids called her “faithless.” How little they knew.

“Check again,” he said.

Cass took up the iPad. “Why is the Google Alert set to ‘Benjamin Dahan’?”

“That’s his name.”

“Now I know what to call the voodoo doll.”

James laughed, but he still had to fight back the physical sensation of fear as Cass went through various websites. But after a few moments she said, “Most recent story by him is two days old and looks legitimate enough. Hmm. Writes pretty dry stuff, for the most part. Seems to freelance for
The Economist
and
Financial Times
.”

“I know.” James had read most of Ben’s online work during the long, awful afternoon. He was galled by the knowledge that it was actually rather good: well-written, lucidly considered, thoroughly reported. If Ben were to eviscerate him in the press, at least he’d do a spectacular job of it.

She kept frowning down at the iPad as she ran searches. “He’s not on Twitter.”

He had to smile. “No. Not the type.”

“You liked him, didn’t you?”

“I did. I really did.”

Cass sighed. “I’m sorry, love.”

“Me too.”

•   •   •

For once, Ben enjoyed spending several hours on an airplane.

Enjoy
might have been too strong a word. Ben was a veteran traveler and had borne forms of transit far more punishing than South African Airlines, with its better-than-average wines; however, his mood and his hangover didn’t allow for any real relaxation. But on the airplane he was cut off from the news, which meant he didn’t have to see James’s face staring back at him from every website in creation. He could immerse himself in a science fiction novel and forget the previous twenty-four hours had ever happened.

By the time his flight landed in Cape Town, Ben thought he was past the worst of it. Kenya was half a continent away. He was back to himself, back to his life. Roger would have filed his story, so he didn’t even have to think about work again until the morning. Maybe he’d call up some guys he knew. Go out. Tend to his hangover with a hair of the dog.

Then he walked into his apartment, back into reality.

It wasn’t a bad apartment as such things went. Right in the heart of Green Point, which meant he could walk to cafes and shops, and gay clubs were as plentiful as coffeehouses—anything a man in his situation could want. But when he stood in the door, Ben was reminded of just what his situation was.

This was the tenth place he’d lived in within the past ten years. He’d lived in another ten places, at least, in the three years before that, when he first broke ranks and stopped trying to be a good boy. Ben prided himself on owning no more than would fit in two large suitcases. (Books had always threatened this resolution before, but the advent of the e-reader had saved him.) He only rented furnished places, which came complete with serviceable décor that was as impersonal as any in a hotel. The only personal touches were two silk panels from Thailand, which hung in his bedroom, and those could be packed away at a moment’s notice. As glossy as this apartment was, as well as it suited his purpose, when Ben walked into it he knew he wasn’t coming home. For him there was no such place.

And no matter how far off the margins Ben went, no matter how much he relished his wildness, no matter how many good times he’d had, sometimes a man wanted to come home.