The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  “And maybe we can collaborate on something for you,” Joss said, brightening.

  “I will try,” I said. “I don’t get a lot of…”

  “You picked out what you’re wearing today, didn’t you?” Lacey asked, watching me as she poured cream into her tea.

  “Well, sure. To go to Marks & Spencer, and then here,” I said.

  “Were you photographed?” Lacey pressed.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Wrong. The press would briefly dub me Princess Penny Pincher. I had just needed socks.

  “So you have some freedom,” Joss prompted.

  “It depends,” I hedged.

  “On what?” Lacey asked.

  I felt like she was increasing the target on my back rather than helping erase it.

  “On whether my twin sister has already stolen what I was supposed to wear,” I said as good-naturedly as I could manage.

  Lacey looked at herself. “This? I thought you didn’t want it.”

  “Yes, but Marj needs to return it,” I said. “What’s mine can’t be yours if it isn’t actually mine to begin with.”

  Lacey bit her lip. “I’ll pay for it, then. It’ll look great with the booties I got for when Tony takes me to Paris.”

  “Tony the Drug Dealer?” Joss asked, the thrill of gossip cutting through her depression.

  “That was all extremely exaggerated,” Lacey said smoothly.

  When the New Year dawned without any sign of Freddie, Lacey had glommed onto Tony. He’d evaded jail time for Club Theme’s alleged extracurricular activities, but I still thought he was crooked, and I’d hoped Lacey would figure that out and tire of him. But instead, they’d been in the paper with increasing frequency. The press now compared the members of the old Ivy League instead of coupling us; every time Lacey got dinged for her hair or her tan or the length of her skirt, she redoubled her efforts (and possibly her credit card bills) to look flawless the next time. Barnes and Marj were grumping about it to me, but I was not about to dive into Lacey’s personal life.

  “Mind that Tony,” Cilla warned Lacey. “He’s all about the game.”

  Lacey waved her off. “He’s changed, Cilla,” she said. “He’s so driven, and he knows absolutely everyone. He wants to take Club Theme overseas, and wants me to help.” She turned to me. “You and Nick can come to the opening! It would be great PR.”

  That made it the second time in under a minute that someone had traded on our relationship to ask me to do something for their own personal gain.

  “Let’s talk about happier things,” Cilla interrupted smoothly. “I haven’t had this much insider dish on a royal wedding since my fourth cousin Ramona objected to that obvious farce in Liechtenstein. When does the planning start?”

  “I’m sure a binder for it was born the same day Nick was,” I said. “He’s on the ship until summer, so the ceremony probably won’t be until next year. Marj started listing off all the details we need to lock in between now and then, but I blacked out somewhere around choosing which carriage we’re going to ride in afterward.” I grinned at Lacey. “My maid of honor will have her hands full with me.”

  “Of course,” Lacey said. “When I can,” she added, not entirely meeting my eyes. “I might be up for a promotion at Whistles, and this Paris trip—”

  “Lacey,” I said. “I can’t pick out a dress and a tiara and wedding shoes without you. I can barely pick out my own jeans.”

  Lacey looked uncertain. “The Palace might not let me weigh in that much.”

  I thought back to everything Freddie said about feeling like the spare, and about how much Lacey and I had already lost this year. I would hold on tight if it killed me.

  “I’ll make them,” I said wildly. “You’re my sister. This is our adventure. Period.”

  * * *

  “What is the difference between a baron and a baronet?” Lady Bollocks asked, pacing in front of me, tapping her riding crop in the palm of her hand.

  “The last two letters,” I joked.

  Bea cracked the crop onto my coffee table. I pitied her horse.

  “I am not doing this for my health,” she said. “Who is the premier marquess in the peerage?”

  “Um.” I rubbed my forehead. “Hereford. No! Shoot. That’s the viscount. Dammit.”

  “How do you pronounce this honorable surname?” she asked, handing me a piece of paper that read Crespigny.

  “Wait, aren’t you going to tell me any of the other answers?” I asked.

  “No,” Bea said, poking me with the crop. “Because you ought to know them like breathing. Figure it out. I am not here to coddle you. Now name the heraldic tinctures.”

  The first months of Nick’s deployment were a learning curve whose slope rivaled the Alps we’d skied in Klosters. The business of renovating Bex into Duchess Rebecca had kicked into high gear, and the Palace made it clear that, like a puppy, I couldn’t be taken out in public until I was properly trained.

  “Her Majesty knows that the Soane museum and Paint Britain value your contributions,” Marj had told me at my first private meeting with her without Nick by my side. “But perhaps the time has come for your positions to become opportunities for a person who does not have so many new responsibilities.”

  Translation: resign, and begin the uphill journey to ladyhood that Eleanor clearly thought would be an even more demanding full-time job. Marj’s desk was stacked so high with binders and agendas, and revisions to the binders and agendas, that I once walked in to see her and walked right out again because I thought she wasn’t there. Everything had a painstaking timetable; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Marj was charting my ovulation. She micromanaged my appearance and comportment, assessed the curve of my back in my natural stance, weighed and measured me weekly, drafted nutrition plans, and diagrammed what about my personal grooming needed to change and how fast. My eyebrows were filling in, and now it was my head’s turn: a nominal number of extensions were bonded to my insufficient hair, with more added every two or three weeks for maximum subtlety, until we reached the desired level of luxuriousness.

  Most of that I’d known was coming, at least in the abstract, although I admit I’d assumed the contents of my stomach were my own business. But the raft of reading, tutoring, and tests, like some kind of High Society High School, were a surprise. I thought Lacey might get a kick out of helping—she was always better at making flash cards; she even color-coded them—but it was Cilla who pointed out that Bea, as the actual titled lady in our circle, was the perfect candidate: a ruthless taskmaster who never pulled a punch and loved dining out on her superior breeding.

  I tried folding Lacey into Project Bex in other ways. I arranged best man and maid of honor confabs for her and Freddie, figuring she would appreciate a sanctioned excuse to be in his orbit, but each time he produced a reason to beg off, ranging from legitimate (a Navy search-and-rescue) to slender (planning a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show) to apocryphal.

  “I can’t right now, Killer,” he’d told me on my last attempt. “I’m in the middle of the Master Cleanse.”

  I had been unable to suppress a very loud snort.

  “The Master Cleanse is no snorting matter,” Freddie said very seriously.

  I knew Lacey was taking this personally, beyond her general disappointment at Freddie having given her tractor beam the slip—how could she not, when she’d allegedly been bumped below bloat and bowels on Freddie’s priority list. So I sought out the next best thing for her: shopping. Marj handed down an edict to spiff myself up even if I was just dashing out to the drugstore, along with a monthly wardrobe budget triple the size of my rent, and when I invited Lacey to help me spend it I got the first hug she’d initiated in months. But Marj had other ideas, assigning me a facilitator—Eleanor loathed the Hollywood air of stylist—and my own concierges at Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges (the Queen also thought personal shopper sounded too spendthrift). That long-ago day trying on gowns in Harrods’s private utopia
became my normal shopping experience, thanks to Donna, a smartly suited brunette who’d guided eight starlets into adulthood without once falling into a vortex of transparency and tube tops. She adeptly meted out the budget and had a knack for suggesting alterations that gave an expressive pop to something I’d never have glanced at twice. She knew to strategize sewing weights into any hem, if a dress inhibited the way I had to sit or stand, could weather a traffic jam, or would look discordant with any of Nick’s blue suits. And she didn’t need any help.

  Lacey responded with that dog-with-a-bone mentality that helped her pass algebra when we were in middle school and got her to med school (if apparently not through it) and even into Freddie’s bed. As we slowly stockpiled outfits for any occasion that might arise, Donna bumped up against Lacey at every turn, pushing the boundaries, desperate to make her mark.

  “I like this one for an evening event,” Lacey said, pulling out a sexy gold strapless dress.

  Donna made a polite noise and put it back on the rack. Lacey turned to me and examined the suit I was trying on, for my eventual first meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  “That skirt could be a bit shorter,” she said. “You’re not eighty.”

  “The Palace prefers to abide by certain rules,” Donna said pleasantly. “Rebecca’s nice long legs make any length work.”

  “But it’s so off-trend,” Lacey complained.

  “The Palace prefers not to bow to trends,” Donna said. “Rebecca has to look timeless.”

  “But look at this day dress,” Lacey said, pulling one off the rack. “It’s so mumsy. That neckline. Bex is flat-chested so she can wear something low-cut without it looking vulgar.”

  “The Palace prefers not to involve a lady’s sternum,” Donna said, calm but firm. I wondered if Marj had handed her a list to memorize.

  “Well, fortunately, I have some accessories that will help,” Lacey said.

  “The Palace prefers a minimum of fuss,” Donna said.

  “The Palace prefers a minimum of fun,” Lacey groused.

  I tried to make whatever concessions and conciliatory gestures I could, but I caught myself deferring to Donna more and more because, frankly, she was right. There were certain parameters I was not free to wiggle around, or at least, not during what was essentially my rookie year. After two full days of push-pull, Lacey retreated to the couch, giving only one-word answers and perfunctory smiles. Then she bailed and never returned. I tried tempting her with outings that had nothing at all to do with me or the wedding, but Lacey found conflicts with them all. By May, our conversations were just laundry lists of items she’d bought, restaurants she’d gone to, or men who were secretly in love with her, and she never, ever asked me anything. Not about how I was doing, or how Nick was, and not even razzing me about my thickening hair. Lacey was as finely attuned to my scalp as musicians are to their instruments, and she was the one person I’d counted on to tease me about the six hours I would spend letting Kira fuse bundles of a vegetarian Indian girl’s hair to my own inferior head. It was tedious and weird—before they were trimmed, they came down to my elbows, making me look like a cut-rate reality-TV star—but I didn’t want to bring it up for fear of looking like I was all me, me, me.

  And yet, even without its emotional stalwarts, Team Bex was bigger than ever. Marj drafted a phalanx of expert strangers who diagnosed me as a Neanderthal hunchback with Clydesdale tendencies, and began shepherding my way through Duchessing for Dummies. No longer could I clomp from point A to point B. I had to glide, each leg crossing slightly in front of the other, my foot going heel-sole-toe at exactly the right smooth pace. I was taught to don and doff coats without them hitting the floor; to use only my left hand to hold drinks at official events so that my right would never be damp or clammy for handshakes; and accordingly, that I’d be better off never taking an hors d’oeuvre, lest I be forced to shovel it into my mouth. Before sitting, I learned to bump the chair ever so gently with my calves to be sure of where it was without glancing behind me. I must only cross my ankles, never my legs, and when getting up from that position, it is a discreet ballet of scooting to the edge of the chair and then standing quickly while uncrossing things. I am not uncoordinated, but that tripped me up six times the first day. In flats. Marj made my instructor sign a second confidentiality agreement on the spot, and then suggested some off-hours practicing. It’s a wonder it took me as long as it did to hire Cilla permanently, because her suggestion to bring Lady Bollocks into my Duchess for Dummies training was a masterstroke. There was a reason Bea was so successful in Thoroughbred competitions that rewarded obedience.

  “No, Bex,” groaned Bea on a hot May afternoon. “You look like you’re sitting on the loo.”

  I tried again.

  “Rebecca, we cannot literally glue your knees together,” she scolded me.

  “They barely came apart,” I protested. “It was a sliver.”

  “A sliver is all they need.”

  I groaned, smacking the car, then ducking back into it. “This is way harder than it looks. Ow.” I had forgotten to, per my crib sheet, place a gentle hand on the doorframe so as not to crack one’s head.

  Barnes had implied that the only transgression that would rain down greater hellfire than a photo of my underwear would be getting pregnant, especially now that there was at least one paparazzo on Crotch Patrol trying to nab the upskirt shot that would set him up for life, and an entire website called The American’t dedicated to shots of me embarrassing myself. And so, in the privacy of the Larchmont-Kent-Smythe manor’s gated driveway, I practiced Remedial Vehicular Entrance and Egress with the dedication I once applied to practicing fastballs.

  “Brilliant. Does that one come with a complimentary Pap test swab?” Bea crabbed after my umpteenth try.

  “It could not have been that bad,” I said, sinking back into her parents’ Bentley. “There is no way I’ve spent my entire life flashing people every time I’ve gotten out of a car.”

  “Believe whatever you like. Go again,” she said. “Oh yes, marvelous. Now you’ll go down in history as the American who can’t keep her bits to herself.”

  “When will people stop caring that I’m American?” I grumbled, sliding back into the car.

  “When you give them something else to talk about,” Bea said blithely. “Which had better not be your cervix. Come on, go again.”

  “Can I at least have a glass of water first?” I fanned myself.

  She checked her watch. “It has to be quick. I have a date with my mount in an hour.”

  “You can just call her Gemma.” I couldn’t resist.

  “I assume that is your concussion talking.”

  “I’m just teasing, Bea,” I said. “Cheer up.”

  “I will do no such thing,” Bea said, stomping toward the front door, her riding boots aggravating the gravel into crunching protest.

  All complaining aside, there was something perversely soothing about Bea cracking the whip on me, as if she believed I was perfectly capable of being correct the first time and was simply pretending to be inept. But that it took so much work to make me presentable in the first place felt like another item on The Firm’s long list of my flaws, right above “pre-cellulite on the upper rear thighs”—never mind that the only person who ever saw my upper rear thighs had already agreed to marry me—and “inability to distinguish fish fork and oyster fork.”

  “What’s got you frowning?” Bea asked, steering me into a seat in her parents’ rustic country kitchen, and passing me a depressingly sensible snack of fruit, crudité, and raw almonds.

  “That,” I said, nodding to my plate. “I was hoping for scones.”

  “No cheating,” Bea said. “There will be no royal muffin top, and you cannot get spots.”

  “Fine.” I grudgingly bit into a carrot. “I’m doing all right, I think. I hate that Eleanor made me quit the Soane. I miss it. My boss actually cried. I think I’m the only person who listened when she explained why ecru tis
sue paper is better than eggshell.”

  “I did warn you that being with Nick is a job in and of itself,” Bea said.

  “Yes, Bea, you were right, as always,” I said, and she very nearly smiled. “Honestly, I don’t begrudge it, but it’s a real mindfuck to give up a job that made me feel like me in order to take a job that’s all about making me into someone else.” I scrunched up my face. “And I miss having somewhere to go that isn’t my living room, or Marj’s office.”

  “Wrinkles,” Bea said, smacking me on the hand.

  “I am allowed to have facial expressions!”

  “Debatable,” she said. “When is Nick back?”

  “Next month,” I said. “Finally. I can’t wait.”

  “Excellent. Then Joss can push off back to Fulham and stop trying to guilt you into letting her design something for you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to do about her,” I said. “I got home the other day and found her wearing my clothes. She said she was studying them. Do I just give in? I’m worried she’s losing it.”

  “Stop talking nonsense,” Bea said. “You cannot give everyone the pleasure of your patronage, Bex.”

  “It’s stressing me out, though,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  Bea leaned back in her seat. “Why isn’t Lacey helping you with this? The least she could do is take Joss off your hands.”

  “They barely know each other. And it’s been weeks since we really talked,” I said glumly. “If she even knows I quit working, it’s because she read it in the Mail. Sometimes I think she’s avoiding me.”

  I’d called Lacey the minute I’d taken that large, sobering step away from what I still thought of as my real life, but I’d hung up on her voice mail, and the window to tell her unprompted slammed shut. She’d have to ask. And she hadn’t.

  “Snap out of it,” Bea said, poking me with her nail. “You have too much on your plate to worry about Lacey.”

  “That’s rich, coming from someone who spent years stressed about Pudge,” I said.

  “And did that work? No,” Bea said. “In fact, it was once I stopped bothering about her that she pulled herself together, and now look at her. Norway is obsessed.”