The Royals Series

by Bay, Louise

  “Mom and Dad are in Hawaii for the holiday.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me? Do they know they have kids?”

  “They know they have grown children who are happy for them to take a well-deserved vacation to one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

  I growled but I couldn’t argue with her. As far as my parents knew, I was going to be in London for Thanksgiving.

  “I was going to suggest we all have Thanksgiving at Woolton.”

  I sat up straight. Woolton was Darcy’s place in the country. “You were going to fly over?”

  “Yes. And I’ll do Mom’s candied yams if you behave.”

  I grinned. All wasn’t lost in the world. “I would really like that.”

  “Perfect. I’ll make it happen.”

  She really could be a great big sister when she wanted to be. “Also, I wanted to talk to you about something I’m thinking about, so it will be good if you come across for Thanksgiving.” I knew Scarlett thought it was a good idea to go back to college, and the longer I spent away from New York, the more it didn’t seem such a ridiculous prospect—more like an opportunity for a do-over.

  “What kind of thing?”

  I’d prefer to talk to her in person. “Just some stuff I’m thinking about.”

  She stopped what she was doing and faced the camera.

  “I’ve not decided on anything. I’m looking at all the options, but one of them is going back to school.”

  She stayed silent but broke out into a huge grin.

  “Columbia, maybe. But I’d need a place to stay and . . .”

  “Well, you could stay with us, of course. We’re hardly ever there and if you needed me to lend you course fees—”

  “Seriously, Scarlett. I don’t want you to assume this is a done deal. I’m only thinking about it.” I should never have brought it up, except that I wanted to gauge her reaction—see if she thought I was nuts.

  “I promise I won’t mention it again until I see you.” With her finger she made a cross on her chest. “And you promise me that you’ll listen to what Alexander has to say.”

  I rolled my eyes and edged down the bed, farther under the duvet. “I’m not going to be made a fool of.”

  “Of course not, but don’t cut him off without listening—try to stay objective.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I have to go. Gwendoline needs a drink. Just don’t do anything rash without telling me, okay? No quitting your job, you hear me?”

  “I promise I won’t resign without telling you first. I love you.”

  The screen went dark and I couldn’t help but wish I was with her in Connecticut rather than here in London. How on Earth had I managed to have another guy shit on me after so many years of shit dodging?

  The doorbell rang. I flipped my cell over; it was after eleven. The bell sounded again as I forced myself out of bed and my fluffy-sock-covered feet hit the floor.

  “Violet,” Alexander bellowed through the letterbox.

  I stomped down the stairs and opened the door a fraction. “You’re going to wake the neighborhood.”

  “If you’d just answer your phone, I wouldn’t have to be calling through the letterbox.”

  I folded my arms across the cardigan I was wearing over my pajamas. “What do you want, Alexander? I’m trying to sleep.”

  He frowned. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course you can’t come in. I suggest you go home to your wife.”

  He drew back as if I’d punched him in the face. “What? No.” The door flew wide open as Alexander pushed his way into the house.

  “Get out!” I screamed, stumbling back. “Get out of this house.”

  Calmly, he closed the front door and faced me. “Calm down, Violet. I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking or how much you’ve wound yourself up, but you need to hear me when I say that I’ve not been home to my wife in three years.” His voice was deep and even, as if he were trying to talk someone off a ledge. Which maybe he was.

  “Whatever. I’m not interested.” I flounced into the living room.

  He was right behind me. “I’ve seen her twice since we split up three years ago and both times were about our divorce.”

  I put my hand on my hip. “Who the fuck waits three years to get divorced?”

  He sighed and looked around as if he were trying to find something tangible to back up his story. “I don’t know what to say to you, but you said it yourself—I don’t say things I don’t mean. I’m not lying to you.”

  “Even if that’s true, which I very much doubt, why didn’t you tell me you were married? That’s not a small thing, Alexander. It’s not as if you failed to mention you had a Labrador as a kid or you don’t eat chicken. You are someone’s husband. I fucking poured out my heart to you this weekend and you don’t mention the fact that you have a wife?”

  As I stopped yelling, my voice echoed around the room. I hadn’t realized I’d been shouting.

  He looked at me as if he was about to say something and then turned away. “Fuck,” he spat, thrusting his hands into his hair. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Just go,” I said, resigned. He had no defense. Nothing to say.

  “No,” he boomed. “I’m not leaving. Sit, please.”

  I don’t know whether it was out of shock or exasperation, but I fell back onto the sofa.

  “Gabby and I split three years ago. I probably should have mentioned it.”

  I went to speak but he lifted up his finger to shush me. I looked away; how the hell did this man have me doing whatever he asked?

  “But honestly, rightly or wrongly, I don’t think of myself as married. I don’t think I ever did.” He paced in front of me, talking to the ground. “When I left, Gabby and I spoke on the phone a couple of times, but there was never any hope of reconciliation. We spoke to sort out the practicalities of bank accounts and mortgage payments.” He glanced over at me as if to see if I was listening.

  I was. I wished I could block out my ears. Pack up my heart.

  “I saw Gabby last week for the first time in three years.”

  “And she wants you back?”

  “No.” He stopped and looked at me as if I’d just said the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard. “She wants a divorce.”

  “And you won’t give her one because you’re still in love with her,” I said.

  “For crying out quietly, Violet, why on earth are you jumping to all these wild conclusions?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—maybe because you forgot to tell me you were married.”

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “So if I had three kids stashed in the States, you think it would be okay for me to fail to mention them? You can’t give me that it-didn’t-come-up shit.”

  “Look, I know it looks bad—”

  “Looks bad? It is bad.”

  “I swear to God, woman, do you have an off switch?”

  “Yeah, it turns on when you leave.”

  “Just listen to me. I’ve not seen Gabby for three years. She’s not relevant to my current life. You and I haven’t had time to share everything about our past yet. But I can guarantee you that Gabby doesn’t love me anymore. Maybe I loved her at some point in my own fucked-up way, but whatever was between us died a long time ago. A divorce is just a piece of paper, Violet. Two people who haven’t seen each other in three years aren’t married, whatever else it might say on the public record.”

  My judgment of men was so off, I didn’t know what to think. He sounded genuine, but if I’d learned anything in my life it was that I couldn’t spot a cheater.

  “I got the divorce papers last week, then went over to the house to collect my things.”

  “In three years you hadn’t been back to get your stuff? That’s bullshit.”

  “That’s the truth. When we first split, she emailed me that she’d boxed some stuff up and left it in the garage, but I never found the time. I didn’t think she’d kept them.”

  “So why did she co
me to chambers today?”

  “I don’t want you to freak out.”

  This was the part where he dropped a bombshell, I just knew it. “Just tell me.”

  “I hadn’t signed the divorce papers—I’d planned to go through them over the weekend but . . .”

  “Because subconsciously you didn’t want to?”

  “Because I was enjoying my time with you. And then I was behind with work and as Gabby rightly points out, work has always come before her.”

  “She’s mad at you?”

  The cushions of the sofa tipped as he sat down next to me. “All the women in my life are mad at me.”

  I shrugged. It was no more than he deserved, but still, I believed him. No one at chambers had ever mentioned Alexander was married, and I’d heard a lot of shit about a lot of barristers and their wives and who was cheating and who was being cheated on. No one had ever mentioned Knightley. But more than that, now he was here in front of me, telling me the details of his marriage, I believed him. He wouldn’t lie. Not to me and not to anyone. He wasn’t a man who ever thought he needed to.

  “Ironically, seeing her gave me the idea of coming to the spa.”

  “What, she told you to go and meet some random woman, take her to dinner, then fuck her into next year?”

  “Not quite, but seeing her did make me realize I haven’t done much other than work since I moved out. I was hoping you were going to help me exercise that particular non-work muscle.” He reached around my waist, and I didn’t try to stop him when he pulled me close.

  “Am I forgiven?” He lifted me onto his lap, but I didn’t respond.

  “It’s late,” I muttered.

  “Time for bed?” he asked, as he kissed my neck.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I need to know what else ‘hasn’t come up’ before we resume . . . whatever this is.”

  I pulled back but he held me tightly. My stiff body softened against his hard chest.

  “I’m not deliberately keeping anything from you. You know what my life’s like; I don’t have time to get up to anything interesting.”

  “No kids?”

  “You think I’m hiding them under my desk?”

  “What about girlfriends since Gabby?”

  “I can’t say I’ve been celibate, but girlfriends, no. I don’t have bandwidth.”

  For the first time since college, I wanted to feel like the exception to someone’s rule. I’d accepted the cold hard facts in my relationships with men after David—I’d been using them as distraction, for sex, or to make myself feel better. But I wanted Alexander to tell me how I was different, that he wanted to make time for me.

  “I enjoy spending time with you, Violet. And I’m not deliberately hiding anything. My life, or lack of it, is an open book, but that doesn’t mean you know everything about me. We’re just not there yet.”

  The longer he held me the more I wanted to believe that one day I would know everything about him. I hadn’t felt this way about anyone in a long time. It was scary, but at the same time it felt right, as if this was part of why I was here in England.

  “So how about we have a few more moments together? What do you think?” he asked.

  I swept my fingers over his cheekbone. “Don’t hurt me.” It was the first time since David that I’d been close enough to a man to allow them to wound me. The first time I hadn’t hurt them or run before I got too close. But with Alexander, I didn’t have a choice. I was being swept up on his wave and for the moment, I was happy with that.

  “I’ll really try hard not to.”

  I wanted something more than he’d try not to hurt me. I wanted his promise in blood. “That’s not very convincing.”

  “It’s honest. There are no guarantees, Violet. But I won’t lie to you.”

  I nodded. It was an adult response—a man’s answer.

  Alexander might be the first man I’d ever dated.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Alexander

  Everything in the world was conspiring against my getting these amended pleadings out. If I started working with a junior barrister more often, they could probably handle them, but as Lance liked to point out, I was a control freak.

  “Come in,” I answered the knock on the door. My office had turned into Piccadilly Circus today. It had been one thing after another, but I happily closed my laptop as Violet’s legs came into view.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said, beckoning her over.

  “Why sore? You’re the talk of chambers this morning.”

  After the incident with Gabby last week, things had settled down between us. We’d had dinner at my hotel late last Thursday and I’d taken another Saturday night off to take her to my favorite restaurant in London. Two Saturday nights in a row—no one would believe it.

  “I can imagine. Presumably not just because of my divorce.”

  “No, because of this huge case—Bar Humbug or whatever.”

  “It’s the Crown against Hummingbird Motors, but Bar Humbug will do.”

  She jumped up onto my desk next to me, crossing her long legs so I couldn’t see up her skirt.

  “Have you come to tell me that chambers is gossiping about me?”

  “Nope. I’ve come to take you to lunch.”

  “Violet, there’s no way I can—”

  She pressed her finger against my lips. “You have an hour. I know you’re working on those amended pleadings, but they don’t have to be filed until tomorrow.”

  I grabbed her wrist and laced my fingers in hers. “No, they have to be in today.”

  “I checked—it’s tomorrow.” She nodded at my laptop. “Take a look.”

  I opened the computer and began to check through the emails and my calendar. “Yeah, you’re right. The solicitors had it wrong.”

  She shrugged. “So you have an hour. Meet me in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at the back of the tennis court—there’s a little pavilion to keep us dry if it’s raining.” She hopped off my desk and headed to the door. “Wrap up warm and don’t leave for ten minutes.”

  Before I had a chance to argue, she’d gone.

  Even though I had an extra day to file the pleadings, it didn’t leave me with free time. I had a million things to do tomorrow that couldn’t wait.

  But I wanted to stare at Violet’s beautiful face for an hour. I wanted to be amused by her quirky take on the world and be bowled over by that brain of hers.

  I could find an hour.

  Even if it meant that I’d have to stay later tonight. Spending sixty minutes with Violet King was worth it.

  I pulled on my coat, scarf, and gloves and headed out just like I always did to collect my lunch. I nodded at someone who I’d been to school with as I headed out of New Square and across to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The yellowing leaves on the trees contrasted beautifully with the bright blue sky. I rarely noticed the changing seasons. I often arrived at work before it was light and left after dark, no matter the time of year. But today was a perfect autumn day.

  It was less than a two-minute walk to the spot she’d described. Pavilion was probably too grand a name for the place Violet wanted us to meet, but I knew where she was. I’d walked by it a few times, but it was off my main route through the Fields.

  Violet waved, her smile infectious. “You’ve come out of your cave and haven’t been struck down by lightning. Who would have thought?” She put her arms around my neck, and I dipped to kiss her on the lips. The cool air had added color to her cheeks and the light had turned her eyes the brightest of blues.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Come on. We’re over here.” She took me by the hand and dragged me under some trees.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking in the two fishing chairs covered in blankets and a cooler.

  “Lunch,” she said, grinning at me. “I wanted to say thank you for coming to the spa.”

  “There’s nothing to thank me for. I had a good time.” We both took a seat and arranged the
blankets.

  “I know, but it was a big deal for me. And after, because of . . .”

  “Gabby.”

  She nodded “Anyway, I thought it might be nice to get you out of chambers and to say thank you.”

  I leaned forward and swept Violet’s hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I should be saying thank you to you. This is . . . nice.” As much as Gabby hated me for the time I spent working, I couldn’t remember her ever having done anything like this for me. I couldn’t imagine saying no if she’d turned up to London with a picnic and asked for an hour of my time.

  “So, first thing’s first: hot chocolate.” Violet pulled out a flask from the bag beside her and produced two mugs. She handed me the hot chocolate and held the cups steady as I poured.

  “What shall we toast to?” she asked.

  Right then I wanted to toast to her, to tell her that no one had ever done anything this thoughtful just so they could spend a few minutes with me. “Autumn picnics?” I suggested.

  The corners of her mouth dropped. “Is this a terrible idea?”

  “No.” I reached across and grabbed her hand. “Quite the opposite. It would never have occurred to me.”

  “Not as fancy as you’re used to, I guess.”

  “Better.” I’d pick an hour in the November chill with Violet over a stuffy dinner with anyone else every day of the week.

  “Really?”

  I paused, waiting for her to correct herself.

  “I know, I know. You don’t say things you don’t mean.”

  “I’m ravenous, what are we eating?” She’d brought a veritable feast. And everything was boxed up in containers as if she’d brought it from home.

  “You make this yourself?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “You like to cook?”