Battle Royal

by Lucy Parker

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Not everyone in my family is happy. With me, with my engagement. Or in general.” She briefly pressed her lips together. “I’m not sure what I would do without Johnny at my side. Through all the pressure, all the press, all the . . . dissent, he’s been there. He’s on my team, all the time. Just this morning, he saw I was about to blow my fuse and he took me out to the mulberry tree in the palace gardens. Patrick’s thinking spot. It’s the only part of my home where I feel like I can truly breathe.”

  Her words had dropped to a whisper, as if she’d forgotten Sylvie was there; but her eyes focused again. “When I met him, it was like something out of someone else’s life. Some people couldn’t understand it. They don’t see him. I saw him,” she said simply. “And he saw me. The way I felt, I’ve never experienced anything like it. When I was growing up, I didn’t have . . . Daddy and my mother . . .” Rosie trailed away circumspectly on that point.

  The body language between the Duke and Duchess of Albany did not speak of an immensity of love. In every photo, every video clip, it resonated with total indifference. It was fairly common knowledge that the duke spent more time with his horses than with his wife.

  “It was a total game changer for me. But it isn’t easy for him.” Her voice went through a lightning hitch. She stopped. Cleared her throat twice. “There have been moments lately when he’s been preoccupied. Distant—”

  “Your Highness.”

  “Rosie.” The princess set her teeth.

  “Rosie,” Sylvie said softly. “I’ve struggled to deal with the tiny notoriety of a television show. I can’t even begin to imagine the pressures on your relationship. But if I may say so, it’s very, very evident how you feel about each other. It’s a privilege to be involved even this far with your wedding, for that reason alone.” In this instant, she was talking only to a very stressed, not particularly happy woman. “I truly don’t think you need to doubt that Johnny is where he wants to be. I expect it’s where he needs to be.”

  Rosie’s jaw worked. “But is it fair to him?” In anyone else, that might have been a passionate outburst, yet the very soberness of the princess’s response was all the more powerful. “Is it fair to him?” she repeated, and that bleakness was back in her eyes. “I’m sure you’ve seen the press lately. I’ve had it since the day I was born, and I’ll be dogged by it until I die. But Johnny—he doesn’t have to live like this. He doesn’t deserve any of it. He’s enduring it because of me. For me. I love him,” she said with sudden fierceness. “I love him more than anything. So much more than myself. And yet I’m pulling him into a way of life that’s going to make him miserable.”

  “Rosie—”

  “It happened to Patrick.” Suddenly, there were tears in Rosie’s eyes. “It happened to Patrick, years ago. He loved someone desperately. But she’d seen how his previous girlfriends had been treated. She knew what her life would become, the moment they went public. And in the end, it wasn’t a path she could walk.”

  Sylvie reached out and took her hand, and Rosie gripped on to her very tightly.

  “He loved her all his life,” she said, rubbing her back of her free hand under her wet lashes. “There was never anyone else, ever again. He—he mourned her, all his life.” She turned a stark look on Sylvie. “But he never blamed her for the decision she made. He said . . . He said, so simply, ‘She was the light. She was everything that was beautiful and kind, and she would have struggled every day, for the rest of her life. I would have caged a bird that was always meant to soar. I had to let her go.’ I’ve never forgotten the way he said it.” Another tear slipped down her cheek. “I think his spirit—the Patrick he would have been then—went with her and never returned. He was the light in my life, until I met Johnny, but he carried his sadness with him.”

  She looked down at their joined hands, and Sylvie had a suspicion that very few people had ever reached out and held on to Rosie. “In the last days before he died, he wrote a final piece of music. I have it in my dressing table. I’ve never told anyone else about it. I’m not musical, so I’ve never heard it played.” A faint smile that spoke more of grief than pleasure; and not an old grief. Sylvie heard in the princess’s tone anticipated grief, and she tightened her grip. “I suspect it would make me cry, though. And the laundry is probably already wondering why I’m going through so many hankies.” She lifted her gaze back to Sylvie’s. “He wrote it for her. It’s called—”

  Even later, Sylvie wasn’t sure exactly why she was so certain in that moment, as she saw in her mind that small glass globe and the simple inscription that encompassed—everything. “Jessie.”

  If nothing else, it shocked Rosie out of the dark spiral that obviously had icy fingers on her, pulling her down. Sylvie knew what it was like, those moments when it felt as if you were drowning in the absence of light.

  The princess stared at her, lips parted. There was a dead silence, before she said, “As far as I know, there isn’t another person living who knows about Jessie. Either you found something at Abbey Hall, or you’re way more qualified than I thought to spend your nights hovering over a cauldron.”

  Sylvie reached into her bag and pulled out her phone. Bringing up the photos she’d taken in the archives, she passed it across to Rosie, who looked down at the inscription on the glass globe.

  Immediately, a new sheen appeared in her blue eyes. She flipped to the envelope with its intimate little sketches, zooming in, tracing her fingertip over Patrick’s handwriting. “Jessica Maple-Moore. I never knew her full name. Patrick only ever called her Jessie. And he was typically circumspect about any private details.”

  Sylvie waited, watching Rosie’s face as she turned to the last image. The other woman went very still as she looked down at the photograph of her uncle and Jessie on the steps at Primrose Cottage. The pure love and absolute happiness in both of their faces.

  After a full minute in which they sat in silence, Sylvie asked quietly, “The originals are at Abbey Hall and I think they’ll be returned to you, but in the meantime, do you want me to send you that photo?”

  Rosie nodded wordlessly. She finally looked up. Her eyes were drenched, and there was a deeply sad twist to her mouth, but she was smiling.

  “Thank you,” she said, through her tears. “I’ve never seen him like that. That light in him—he brought so much happiness to so many lives, I’m so glad to know that at least for a short time, he knew that sort of joy.”

  And then her face crumpled, and Sylvie leaned forward to put her arms around her.

  Eventually, Rosie lifted her wet face from Sylvie’s shoulder and took a deep breath, swiping at her cheeks. She exhaled heavily. “I have to go out there and be Princess Rose. Quick, tell me something lighter. A joke. Ask the most inane question you can think of. Something.”

  Because Sylvie’s brain was frequently a complete twat, what popped into her head then was a limerick she’d heard at her local pub. It involved both Rosie’s grandfather and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s penis, and might as well be subtitled “How to Hand Dominic This Entire Contract in One Smutty Poem.”

  In lieu of that option, she went with Thought B. “Our initial meeting was understandably kept well under wraps. And very separate.”

  She emphasized the last word.

  Rosie had pulled out a hand mirror and was dabbing face powder under her reddened eyes. “As you noted, my schedule is busy. This was more time-efficient.” Despite her residual sniffles, her voice was back to very calm Trained Royal. She looked straight at Sylvie—then, fleetingly, her gaze flicked over to the adjoining door, where the others had gone. “And now, somehow I don’t think you mind having to share the space.”

  Pollyanna couldn’t have presented a more innocent front.

  Even the busy, beleaguered, worried princess appeared to have noticed Sylvie’s increasing desire to climb Dominic like a fireman’s pole.

  Marvelous.

  Before she left the little meeting room to
rejoin Dominic and Pet, Sylvie hesitated with her hand on the door and looked back at Rosie. “Rosie. It’s going to be okay.”

  Rosie had fully adorned her armor now. She nodded slightly, her chin held high, eyes very straight.

  But in their depths, buried beneath protocol and pride, remained something small and scared.

  As Sylvie walked with the De Veres back out into the wind-tossed rain, Dominic looked at her with a frown. “Everything all right?”

  She turned and looked up at the pretty stone building, the tinted windows, the guards at the door. “I hope so.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Starlight Circus

  Round two.

  The clowns are multiplying.

  This time, the doorway into hell set off a crescendo of fox screams. Darren Clyde was mixing up his playlist.

  He’d also switched around the décor. The glowing stars on the ceiling were now purple, the previously white rug on the floor had turned pink and shaggy, and he’d put red bulbs in the floor lamps. Behind the counter, an oversized Union Jack hung from gold chains.

  The whole room was overheated, the temperature immediately bypassing comfortable warmth and raising sweat along Dominic’s neck.

  “If you ever wondered what Austin Powers’s sex dungeon would look like,” Sylvie remarked conversationally at his side, “ponder no more.”

  He snorted, his hand going to her back without prior decision. He played absently with the end of her plait, running it through his fingers.

  She moved slightly into his side. “Brace yourself,” she informed him solemnly. “Your best buddy has a gal pal.”

  Dominic had already seen that particular horror. Wherever Clyde had obtained his demonic clown, the evil had spawned a companion. Same leering face and wide hypnotic eyes. Distinguishable by its earrings and painted-on spikes of mascara.

  “It sort of looks like a possessed Betty Boop,” Sylvie said. Accurately.

  “Let’s get these bloody drinks and get back to work.”

  It had been almost four by the time they’d left the meeting with Rosie and Johnny, so he’d told Pet to clock off and dropped her near Oxford Street at her request. He and Sylvie had plans for the remainder of the day that involved a takeaway service at the Starlight Circus and another round of flavor trialing.

  When they joined the line to place their orders, Sylvie suddenly swore. Her expression evolved from deeply meditative to wrathful. “Unbelievable. He’s mocking up a whole new menu on the . . . the fucking fruits of thievery.”

  In a new glass cabinet, an array of desserts now included a so-called Midnight Elixir cheesecake.

  “And I expect he’s used my Sorceress emulsion in that, too.”

  “I’d imagine so.”

  She spun on her high-heeled boots. “He’s profiting off my work. Is that acceptable?”

  “It is not.”

  “It’s outrageous. It’s probably illegal. He’s done this one too many times now.” She raised a finger. Not the one she’d undoubtedly like to direct at Clyde. “And do you know what I’m going to do about it?”

  Leaning against the mechanical bear, Dominic crossed one ankle over the other and regarded her with great interest. When she poked him lightly in the chest for emphasis, he caught her finger, hooking it with his own. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Sylvie glared at him, before she yanked her hand back with an exasperated gesture. “Nothing. I am probably going to do nothing about it, because at the first sign of confrontation, I generally fold like a bad round of poker.”

  They’d reached the front of the queue.

  Without a pause, she said very politely to the server, “Eight Midnight Elixir drinks and two slices of Midnight Elixir cheesecake to take away, please. And if you could package that order in two halves—four drinks and one cheesecake each—that would be great. Thank you.”

  Then she again looked at Dominic as if he were responsible for every ill that ailed her and snapped, with extreme crabbiness, “My treat.”

  It was probably slightly perverse to feel that growing warmth in his chest as she directed her list of grievances at him.

  And yet here they were.

  The more Sylvie stared daggers at him, the more inclined he was to pull her in.

  For a fucking cuddle, no less.

  She was increasingly bringing out parts of him he’d thought were long gone.

  “We’re actually eating the cheesecake?” he asked mildly, tapping his fingers on the mechanical bear’s head.

  “Clearly, you’re still not one hundred percent on the makeup of my Sorceress emulsion, and I’m missing one ingredient that you’re smugly keeping to yourself. Maybe it’s more obvious in the cheesecake version.” Sylvie hunched her shoulders and muttered ominously to herself. Stick her in front of her cauldrons and it would be like a Weird Sister from Macbeth had gone walkabout in twenty-first-century London.

  Confirmed: increasing instinct to cuddle.

  He could be disingenuous and wonder what the hell was going on with them, how things had come to this—but he’d never spouted naïve bullshit, even to himself. He hadn’t been living in a bubble. It might not have ever happened before, but it was pretty fucking obvious what was starting to happen to him now.

  It had been over thirty years now since he’d put out a hand and had it impatiently pushed away every time. He had very low tolerance for irrational behaviour and he considered it a complete waste of time to dwell on regrets. Which was exactly why he’d always despised the fact that the small creeping shadow of that early lesson had burrowed so deep. That he’d let people who’d long since lost his respect, let alone any chance at love, leave even the smallest scar. And that he couldn’t deny it had chipped something away from even the most casual of his other relationships.

  That voice when he was with her? Not gone. But so quiet right now as to be almost negligible.

  When he actually had time to sit and breathe and let his mind and body properly settle, the significance of that was patiently waiting, ready to sink in hard.

  He accepted the boxes of cheesecake that the staffer passed over the counter. “I’m not sure where you got the image of yourself as a timid rabbit who bolts from confrontation. Five minutes after we met, I copped a lecture on empathy and public relations before you wandered off humming ‘Frosty the Snowman.’”

  A fractional pause.

  “That was different.” A frown flickered between her brows. More quietly: “It’s always been different with you.”

  It was a day for some ruthless home truths. “Likewise. Apparently to a far greater extent than I realized.”

  Their eyes met. Held.

  Dominic’s hand tightened around the cardboard boxes. “Sylvie—”

  Behind her, the door to the kitchens opened and a young woman came out. Speaking of timid rabbits . . . The stranger’s very large eyes widened, and he was surprised her nose and ears didn’t twitch before she turned tail and shot back into the kitchen.

  He frowned. “What was that about?”

  “What?”

  “A woman I’ve never seen before in my life, who just took one look at me and scarpered.” He turned back to her thoughtfully. “Or one look at you.”

  “Probably a viewer,” Sylvie said sweetly. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Well, well.” The kitchen door had opened again, and a blond man walked out, green eyes and provocative grin fixed on Sylvie. He was probably midthirties. Muscular build. A uniquely punchable face. “The head of the coven herself. In my humble little establishment.”

  Not so long ago, Dominic would have said that Sylvie thoroughly disliked him. Clearly, that wasn’t the emotion directed at him now. The exact degree to which her feelings had changed, he didn’t know. But she’d never looked at him with the loathing she turned on this prick.

  “‘Humble’ is not a word I’ve ever associated with you, Darren.” Her gaze flicked dismissively around the gold-standard example of st
aggeringly bad taste. “Nor is it the first descriptor that comes to mind in this place.”

  “Always my biggest fan, Sylvie.” Darren’s smile didn’t remotely touch his eyes.

  “And apparently, you’re still mine. Since half my menu seems to show up here. In a remarkably poor reflection.”

  “And yet you appear to be buying from my sad shade of a menu.” Darren’s mocking stare swung to rest on Dominic. “I am honored today. Dominic De Vere.” He extended a hand. “Darren Clyde. Owner and proprietor. Your fellow judge and I have a history. Instant pals in class, weren’t we, Sylvie?”

  “Well, you did copy my answers on the very first quiz,” Sylvie said. “Nobody can say you’re not consistent.”

  For a person who kept insisting she lacked assertiveness, she was taking swipes with the same skill she applied to her sugar sculptures, verbally whittling Clyde down to reveal the little cockroach within. Dominic had developed an apparently endless supply of protective instincts where Sylvie was concerned, but absolutely none of them were currently required. It actually pissed him off that she would have had to curtsy at St. Giles, because this woman needed to bow to no one.

  He didn’t so much as glance at Darren’s extended hand. After a moment, the plagiarizer’s fingers curled and fell away.

  “Funny.” Darren divided a cool look between them. “I had the impression that you two weren’t exactly fast friends. How deceptive TV can be.”

  Dominic scanned the other man from head to boots. “So this is the talentless twat who’s been stealing your recipes.”

  Bristling, Darren stood taller, straightened wide shoulders.

  “The one you offered to punch,” Sylvie agreed chirpily, picking up the toss with effortless ease.

  “He’s a little bigger than I was expecting,” he noted, and the rigidity of her body relaxed into a sudden bubbling of laughter in her eyes. “But I’ll give it a go if you like.”