The Royal We (16 page)

“I don’t actually want to discuss it. I am simply being polite,” Bea said sharply.

Then her phone beeped, and she pulled it out to check a text message. “Ceres,” she said. “She’s on her way over.”

I said nothing.

“Yes, Nick’s ex is in town.” Lady Bollocks’s radar for other people’s insecurities is as precisely groomed as she is. “And his other ex could be dropping in at any minute. Are you jealous?”

“No,” I said, mostly honestly, although I was starting to feel intimidated. And outnumbered.

“I doubt they want the job,” she said. “Or else they’d already have it.”

“Nick isn’t a job.”

“You’ll soon see,” Bea said, tapping the air with a stiff, well-manicured pointer. “Those hungry mobs at Oxford were just sycophants and desperate, disgraced blue bloods. The real catches don’t want any part of this.”

“So you’re saying I’m here by default.”

“Those are your words, not mine,” Bea said.

“Well, I don’t believe them.”

“Suit yourself,” Bea said. “But someone should inform you that being Nick’s partner isn’t actually a partnership at all. It’s accepting a position. You’re on display, and on trial.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “To help, or to
pretend
to help until I run away screaming on my own? Because we all know you don’t want me and Nick to end up together.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” she said. “You’re who we’re stuck with at the moment, and Nick is my friend, and I don’t want him going any further with someone naïve or unsuitable, or weak. He doesn’t need it, and honestly, if you are the spineless sort, neither do you. So if you do not think you can handle it, step aside before it ends badly for both of you.”

No one has ever accused Lady Beatrix Larchmont-Kent-Smythe of mincing her words.

“You know, for someone who says she’s Nick’s friend, you are really bad at being friendly, Bea.”

“Someday you might disagree,” Bea said. “Cheerio, Rebecca. Enjoy your prince.”

And with that, she sailed out of the room, leaving me unsettled as Pudge snored softly.

“How’s the snow looking, sir?”

The BBC News photographer got off the first question over the rustling and clacking of the rest of the press corps. Richard and his staff at Clarence House arranged this photo op for the royals in attendance every year, in the exact same spot—atop one of the gentler slopes, the Alps cresting behind them—in exchange for total privacy the rest of the week. It was a deal not unlike the one that had kept Nick protected at Oxford, and which everyone observed, again, because both sides essentially needed each other more than anyone cared to admit.

“The snow is as perfect as my lovely wife,” Richard said, his attempt at a romantic tone contrasting with his villainous black ski suit and polarized wraparound shades. “She wishes she could have been here, but she is no longer so partial to sport.”

He laughed lightly, at odds with the actual sentiment he’d expressed. It made me think of the most famous of the Klosters photos over the years: Svelte in a red ski suit even though she’d had Freddie only six months earlier, Emma had two-year-old chubby, cheeky Nick standing on his stubby skis between her own, giggling as she kissed him. Even Richard had been smiling. It was one of the last family photos on record.

“Freddie! There have been reports that you’ve brought former glamour model Fallopia Jones as your personal guest,” a reporter shouted. “Can you confirm?”

“I believe she has been sighted on the slopes,” Freddie replied with a cheeky grin.

“What a coincidence,” Richard said, jaw clenched.

“Perhaps, but we are extremely good friends.
Allegedly.
” Freddie winked broadly, which got a laugh.

I glanced at Fallopia, obliviously drawing faces on the fogged-up glass of the medical cabin where we’d been stashed to watch and wait for the press conference to end. She had probably, whether she knew it or not, just served her last purpose. Freddie’s frowned-upon girlfriends arrived on a schedule as regular as the crosstown bus and were just as interchangeable, and Fallopia had just left the station.

“Nick!” called the royals reporter from the
Daily Express
. “We’re also hearing rumors that
you’ve
got a new girlfriend. Care to comment?”

“Uh-oh,” Cilla muttered, next to me.

“Come on, Annalisa. You know I’ve no comment on my personal life,” Nick said, his expression hardening subtly from Perfectly Pleasant into Aggressively Pleasant.

Freddie must have noticed this, too, because then he chimed in: “One minute it’s girlfriends, the next you’ll be wanting our inseams, eh?” he chirped. “Although personally, I’m always delighted when you lot do us the favor of believing that my brother has any game at all. I mean,
look at him
. You’d have to be—”

“And that will do it,” Barnes interjected. “Thank you, everyone. Enjoy the slopes.”

Nick, Freddie, and Richard shooshed swiftly away, giving off the convincing air of resuming a jovial family adventure, even though Nick had actually spent the morning popping Nurofen between sips of the darkest coffee he could make. (Our chalet—still minus Gemma, who never left Africa, to Clive’s dismay—had only even woken up forty-five minutes ago after a long night of compensating for the lack of nightclubs by inventing drinking games, like the instant classic, Take Three Sips If Anyone Does Anything. That any of us has a working liver left is a miracle of body chemistry.) But as Gaz, Cilla, Clive, and I huddled around our ski maps to figure out where to meet later—and in my case, what runs I could take without breaking my face—my mind wandered to what mood Nick would be in when he reappeared. Because the
Daily Express
was onto something, somehow. I knew our sneaking around was on borrowed time, but I hated that it might’ve run out when I was stuck in an enclosed space with his less-than-welcoming relatives.

“He’s with
which
one?” I heard Agatha hiss as she and Awful Julian tumbled inside after kicking off their skis.

“The one in that terrible sweater,” Nigel rang out.

I suddenly felt several eyes in the cabin turn to me.

“The
American
?” Agatha breathed, in the same tone of voice as you’d expect from someone saying,
The Satanist
? “I thought she was just some fancy of Clive’s, or I wouldn’t have been so kind to her at dinner.”

I nearly spat out my coffee. Agatha seemed to approach the world as if people she didn’t care to acknowledge therefore automatically did not have the privilege of hearing her.

“Her sweater looks like vomit, Mummy,” Nigel prodded. “It hurts my eyes.”

“He’s a wonderful argument for birth control,” Gaz muttered.

I looked down at my sweater. “Is it seriously that bad?” I asked. It was a thank-you gift from Joss for being her fit model for her latest fashion school project, and I was trying to be supportive.

“It is a bit…scribbly,” Cilla allowed, gesturing to the neon scrawls knitted into it.

“Nicky! Nicky! You’re not really seeing the American in the terrible sweater?” Agatha wailed.

I looked up to see Nick, Freddie, and Richard shaking snow off their boots inside the cabin. Nick and I made eye contact, but for once, his face was inscrutable to me. I plastered an expression on my face that I hoped looked confident rather than arrogant or smug. Jumping into this wouldn’t help anything, but I also wasn’t going to let them shame me into staring at the floorboards so they could add poor posture to my list of obvious faults.

“I can assure you my son is not seeing anyone seriously,” Richard said, with a pointed look at Nick. “And certainly not the American in the terrible sweater.”

“Told you it was horrible,” Nigel singsonged.

“Bit saucy, American girls, eh?” Awful Julian said, wiggling his eyebrows at Nick.

“Nick can see anyone he wants to,” Freddie insisted. “It’s not like Bex is going to topple the dynasty.”

“You will not engage me on this here,” Richard said.

“Just leave it, Freddie,” Nick hissed.

“Why should I let him be such a prick about it?” Freddie asked. “Why do you always—”

“
Just leave it
,” Nick said frostily.

I remember once waiting for the Tube and thinking, as its oncoming headlights gleamed brighter in the tunnel,
I could just jump
. Not because I wanted to die, but because sometimes your mind dangles the worst-case behavior in front of you specifically so that you can be aware that you’re choosing to resist it. They call them intrusive impulses, and mine stacked up high: throw my arms around a clearly reeling Nick; scream at Nick that Freddie was right; smack Richard upside the head and ask him why he was such a raging douchelord; take Agatha and Nigel and crack their skulls together like the Neanderthal they apparently thought I was. Instead, I casually studied my ski map as if none of this was unfolding in front of me. I just wish Clive had told me sooner that I’d been fake-reading it upside-down.

Suddenly, Gaz patted his stomach. “I’m famished,” he said loudly. “Anyone care to dive into some fondue? My treat.”

“Not likely. You’d faster see a yeti than Gaz with cash,” Cilla said.

As they bickered, Clive gently turned us all toward the door as if it were the most natural time in the world to take our leave. As the three of them swept me out of there, I heard Agatha’s voice.

“Oh, Nicky, just don’t go off and get engaged until I’ve at least introduced you to Ursula Northrop-Cumber’s daughter Ruth,” she pleaded. “She’s
so
aristocratic. She speaks four languages!”

“I’m
not
getting engaged, Agatha,” Nick said firmly, and that was the last thing I heard before the door slammed behind us.

There was something undeniably awkward about hearing him say that so staunchly, particularly after Bea’s lecture the previous night. Cilla seemed to feel like she had to distract me from it, dispatching Gaz and Clive in the direction of the ski lift and regaling me over lunch with the latest details of her on-off relationship with Tony. He had not been invited to Klosters, most likely to prevent headlines like
PRINCES HIT POWDER WITH SOHO COKE HO
.

“He swears it’s his business partner who’s doing it,” Cilla said, poking at her bratwurst. “I know you think it’s mental of me to still be with him. He’s just a sight better than any of the blokes ’round my sister’s village. And nannying her children takes it out of me. All I want is a bit of fun when I’m in London.”

“But there might be plenty of fun guys who don’t also potentially sell drugs,” I said.

“Is my bar that low?” she groaned. “Am I turning into Joss?”

“Just as long as you don’t start giving me sweaters,” I told her, a rueful glance down at my own. It was not the last time that my wardrobe would publicly be found wanting.

Nick caught up with Cilla and me as we were strapping on our skis for another run. He had changed into an orange ski suit with green piping, and with that and a knit cap and goggles, he looked totally anonymous.

“Irish colors?” I asked. “Interesting pick.”

“They’ll never expect it,” Nick said.

The three of us carried our skis to the enclosed gondola and rode it all the way up to the top, passing quaint mountainside cafes and looking down at skiers of every ability carving through the fluffy powder, and occasionally wiping out. In fact, we were about to disembark when a round-looking figure careened down one of the steeper runs, totally out of control, screaming as he went past.

“There goes Gaz,” Cilla observed calmly.

He rolled like a ball and then skidded to a stop, spread-eagle, in the snow.

“He can barely ski at all,” Cilla added. “He just doesn’t like Clive to feel superior.” She sighed. “I’d best go make sure he hasn’t broken his leg again.”

“I’ll take you down the hill, Bex,” Nick said as she skied away. “It’ll be nice to slow down and actually see the views.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I will be watching my feet.”

We pushed over to a patch of snow-covered trees and plopped down in the powder to get our gear in place. Nick sat with his back to most of the other skiers and pulled up the hood on his parka while rubbing sunscreen onto his face.

“My family has been in rare form,” he said. “I’m sorry about that whole scene down there today. That reporter’s question had me in such a mood, I didn’t even defend you properly until you were already gone.”

“Don’t sweat it. I understand.”

“I just can’t believe we’ve got a leak,” he said. “I promised I’d keep you out of the papers.”

“It’s not your fault,” I insisted. “You can’t control the entire world.”

He blew out his lips. “Clearly, I can’t even control my own corner of it.” He stared out at the mountain. “I just wanted it to be on our terms, always. What’s the bloody point of being who I am if I can’t even make it safe for you to be with me?”

“Nick. A question from a reporter is not going to scare me off,” I said.

He gave me a grateful smile, then fell silent, fiddling with the straps on his poles.

“Gaz seems happy in his legal training. Clive’s a reporter, just like he always wanted. Joss is busy making clothes. Even Cilla seems to enjoy taking care of her sister’s children,” he finally said. “I’m going to sound ungrateful, but I’m so jealous that they get to
pick
. They can be
anything
. Even Freddie gets some choice, but I have none. I’m stuck hanging about looking cheerful until everyone around me dies and I’m given a job I am required by genetics to do.”

His voice cracked. I’d never heard him sound so dark about his life.

“I am a placeholder,” he said. “And I am a chess piece. And obviously, this comes with a lot of advantages. I know I am extraordinarily lucky. But do you know what it’s like to never, ever be asked what you want to be when you grow up? Or being told not to bother about it because it doesn’t matter?”

“No,” I said softly, wanting to hug him and hating that I couldn’t.

“I do sometimes look forward to military service,” he admitted. “But is that because it’s the best of the options I have, or because I actually want to do it? It’s so bloody hard to tell. I might never know.”