The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

  “Right,” Marj said, sweeping in and dropping an iPod in my lap. “In there you’ll find preapproved music for which you are allowed to express a public affinity. Some classical, some pop, some dance, and nobody who’s ever eaten meat in front of Paul McCartney.” She sighed. “That ruled out rather a lot of them.”

  I scrolled through it. “Oh, good, I get the Spice Girls?”

  “Eleanor enjoys the frightening one,” Marj said. “Now, about your—”

  “Excuse me, Marj, if I may,” I said. “I have something for the agenda. I mean, to put on my schedule.” I showed her Maud’s message. “My old boss Maud runs Paint Britain now, and she offered me a spot on the board, and wants to seal it with an event. I’m going to do it.”

  “Are you?” Marj fastidiously removed her glasses and placed them, folded, on the desk.

  “I am.” I hoped she didn’t catch the waver in my voice. “I think I’ve been a pretty good pupil over the last several months, and I appreciate the time and care everyone is putting into me, but I’m starting to lose my mind a little. I need to produce something other than myself. And I need to show people what I bring to this family other than reformed hair and well-chosen coats. If Edwin can go off-book and mount some weird interpretive Shakespeare in Hay-on-Wye, or whatever Barnes was yelling about, then I think I should be allowed to take on some public philanthropy. Especially for a charity I started, of which Richard is a patron. It would be good for everyone.”

  Marj stared at me for a full minute.

  “We will finalize the details,” she said simply.

  Adrenaline shot though me. “And I’d like our friend Joss to pitch a dress for me to wear,” I blurted. Marj raised an eyebrow. “Please. Donna was just saying we should try to boost some smaller British designers. If it’s a mess, I promise I won’t ask again.”

  Marj closed her eyes, as if praying for deliverance.

  “Have her sketches to me tomorrow,” she said, and then handed me a folder about the history of indoor cycling in Britain.

  I opened my mouth.

  “Do not press your luck,” Marj said. “Now, velodromes. Let’s begin.”

  The Paint Britain event coincided with Nick’s twenty-eighth birthday (Marj loves a mushy PR spin), which he was spending on the waters of Someplace, presumably looking sexy doing whatever he did with weapons. Paint Britain had been my refuge from missing Nick before, and the prospect of a day doing what I loved bolstered my spirits again. Unfortunately, it was not as giddy an occasion for my old friend. A confident Joss had presented Marj with a sketch for a white dress in a cheerful paint-splatter pattern. It was lively, if a bit on the nose, but Donna instantly recognized it as a copy of a year-old dress from a high street store, which itself was questionably similar to a Chanel. If we had trumpeted plagiarism as a custom original, the press and the blogs would have had a field day—especially Bex-a-Porter, which noticed if I so much as repeated a bracelet.

  “Please let me try again,” Joss had begged me, tears running down her face.

  “Maybe this is a sign you need a break,” I said as kindly as I could. “We’ve all been there, where the pressure and stress makes your eyes cross.”

  “Right, like you know stress,” she sobbed. “My father’s jammed too far up the Royal Family’s privates to support my company. The only cash I have coming in is from my subletters, so I can’t tell them to leave. One word from you and I could have a dress that sells out all over the world, and you won’t help me.”

  “I did help you. I tried. You set me up for a scandal,” I said. “I know you didn’t mean to, but come on. I can’t ask the Palace to take that chance again.”

  “Oh yes, wouldn’t want to make the Palace cross. What if they take back that big fat rock?” Joss snapped. “I knew you never liked me as much as the others, and now it’s showing.”

  “Joss—”

  “Piss off, Princess,” she said savagely. “Clive said I can stay with him. He’s a real friend.”

  I was miserable about how badly this had backfired. I’d been so sure Lacey’s book wouldn’t fly that I’d never even tried broaching the topic with the powers that be; this favor for Joss hadn’t seemed so out of reach, and yet now we were on the outs, too. With my personal relationships looking as shaky as my mental state, I was even more grateful to be—in a sense—going back to the work that had held me together once before.

  The Tate Modern had arranged for Paint Britain to set up creative stations outside on the South Bank, the London Eye looming picturesquely across the Thames in every photo. Part of the price of getting what I wanted had included co-billing with our lofty patron Richard, and I’d dreaded spending the day with him, but I’ve never seen him so alive and kind—getting dirty with the kids as they did spin art and dug into some sculptors’ clay, and doing a lovely impromptu pencil sketch that he donated for our fundraising efforts. The two of us went head-to-head in a paint-balloon contest to see who could make a bigger splatter (he won), and one child did such a gorgeous watercolor that Richard and I got into a bidding war for the piece, and then each agreed to pay our highest offer if she would do another one and let us hang it in the Tate—an idea Richard had on the spot, which led to a permanent Paint Britain exhibition there.

  “That was awesome,” I said after we posed for one final photograph and were returning to our lounge. “You were amazing!”

  “It’s a lovely charity,” he said stiffly.

  “We should do this more often,” I babbled, high on how far Paint Britain had come from its days in the Soane basement. “You’re really talented. That watercolor you left at Cornwall—did you ever finish it?”

  Richard turned so rapidly that I almost crashed into him. “We are not friends,” he said evenly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We both love art, and you are marrying my son, but we are not pals.” He gave emphasis to the oh-so-American word. “Nor do we need to be.”

  His coldness touched a nerve in me that had first been tweaked years ago in Nick’s room at Pembroke.

  “You mean, we both love art, and we both love Nick,” I said pointedly. “Right?”

  “This conversation is over.” He continued walking, brisker this time.

  “I would like to get along, Rich—sir,” I amended, as I trotted behind him, wobbling in my wedges. “And if we did, it might go a long way toward fixing your relationship with Nick.”

  “That is none of your concern.”

  “It is totally my concern,” I said. “Because without Emma—”

  “Joining this family does not give you the right to speak to me about it,” Richard said. “Especially about Nicholas’s mother.”

  “Fine, we don’t have to talk about it, but please at least talk to him,” I begged. “That lie was killing Nick. He needed you. He still does.”

  From a half step behind, I saw Richard’s jaw tense, but I barreled on anyway. “A terrible thing happened to Emma, but now at least you can live out in the open with it, together,” I said. “You’re all free. Finally.”

  As we burst through the door of our private lounge, Richard wheeled on me. “That terrible thing did not just happen to her,” he said. “My wife spent twenty-five years out of her mind, but very happy inside her own head. Whereas I spent twenty-five years hoping someday my mother would allow me to divorce Emma and say that we had drifted apart, so I could have a life that fulfilled me. But if I do that now, I will be despised for it, and any real feelings I have for another person will be irrelevant and wasted and impossible. So I am not free. Nobody is free.”

  I found my voice, but it was very soft. “That watercolor. It was so full of love.”

  “For a twenty-year-old girl I should never have married.”

  “But you did. And you got two wonderful sons out of the bargain. Which you’d know if you ever really looked at either of them.”

  I’d gone too far. He leaned into me, eyes crackling with anger, a gaze I’d long been afraid of having turned o
n me.

  “You are here at the mercy of Her Majesty and me,” he said quietly, but with ferocity. “Nicholas wanted to join the Navy, and we agreed, on the condition that he took finding a bride as seriously as he took his military service. He did not. We set a deadline. And there you were, right before the clock ran out, satisfying the letter of our decree if not the spirit.” His lip curled. “You are wearing that ring today only because of our tolerance and your own good luck. Remember that the next time you think you understand anything.”

  And with that, he signaled to Barnes, collected his things, and left.

  Marj poked her head into the room. “Rebecca,” she said grimly.

  Right before the clock ran out was still ringing in my ears.

  “Just give me a sec.”

  “No,” Marj said. “There’s some news.”

  It was Lacey. Impeccable timing.

  * * *

  “Well, happy birthday to Prince Nicholas, eh?” the blond Sunrise host asked the next morning, crossing her tan legs and turning toward Katie Kenneth. “But the real question is how the Royal Family will handle this, isn’t it?”

  “It is, Holly, and it’s a very complex situation,” said calm, maternal Katie, who, by dint of having interviewed me and Nick, was the media expert of choice. “It’s not immediately clear whether Lacey Porter herself broke any laws.”

  “And Lacey is of course due to stand up as Bex’s maid of honor in just about eight months’ time,” said Holly, as photos of the two of us flashed up on the screen: in high school at the famed Dumpster Guy Prom; at my aunt Kitty’s third wedding, Lacey looking like a goddess and me in some ill-advised pantsuit; and of course, a variety of paparazzi shots.

  “They could’ve picked something where my hair looked better,” I mumbled to myself, before realizing I sounded exactly like my sister.

  “Any indication whether this is affecting the wedding plans, Katie?” Holly was asking.

  “None at all, Holly. The Palace won’t comment because Lacey is not a member of the Royal Family,” Katie replied. “The good thing for Rebecca and Nicholas, but I suppose a bad thing for us, is that their friends are generally quite tight-lipped, and that has held true today. But safe to say nobody slept much in the palace last night. The Queen has a very low tolerance for misbehavior, which she’s shown time and again with her own son Edwin.”

  “But Lacey Porter might be out of her jurisdiction,” Holly speculated.

  “I daren’t suggest anything is outside the Queen’s jurisdiction,” Katie said.

  I snorted from my perch on my living room sofa, where I was in pajama bottoms and a novelty London Underground T-shirt that read Mind the Gap. Dad had bought it for me when I moved back, as a way of bucking me up, and I tended to wear it whenever I needed extra Earl Porter go-get-’em mojo. Which I would require in spades, because Lacey had, metaphorically, definitely not minded the gap, and both tabloids and the more respectable broadsheets alike had leapt right on top of it. Even the London Times couldn’t resist LACEY PORTER IN PARISIAN DRUG SCANDAL, although at least it was below the fold.

  After months of guilt, confusion, and worry, being standard-issue pissed at Lacey was almost a relief, because it was so uncomplicated. Even now, my blood runs hot when I think about the whole idiotic mess. (I keep imagining Eleanor in her nightgown and curlers, crunching her morning toast over the paper, clucking, “Are young people just stupider now?”) Tony’s reputation preceded him, but the drug he hooked my sister on was status: all his flash, and the attendant flashbulbs, and so she chose to be blind to the rest. They were attending the opening of his pop-up, Versailles, which was located in a Parisian townhouse tarted up like one of Louis XIV’s mistresses. Opening night encouraged regal fancy dress, so Tony had donned full Sun King regalia, and Lacey, drunk at best in the paparazzi shots and interior photos that eventually leaked, had gone as me in a brown wig, a fake emerald, and a green dress so similar to my engagement photos that I actually checked to see if mine was gone (it wasn’t). And after that debauched all-nighter, Tricky Tony, possibly the dumbest egomaniac alive, sped through Paris in a rented Maserati stuffed to the gills with cocaine and cash. When the gendarme booked him for speeding and got so much more, it was my sister in the front seat with him, my sister who got hauled off in cuffs, and my sister who spied the paparazzi and gave them an angry middle finger.

  Paris might be out to get me. Porter women are zero-for-two there.

  Marj broke the news once she hustled me safely into the car. My mother was already en route to Paris, and Marj ordered me to stay put in my flat, where the paparazzi had immediately descended in hopes of catching Lacey skulking to me in shame, or me leaving, either cocky and defensive or bathed in betrayed tears. I shut myself in, unable to sleep or relax or even eat, waiting for word about Lacey and hitting reload on my in-box, veering between being sure Nick was too busy—I imagined him shirtless and firing cannons, for fantasy’s sake—and being afraid he was too mad to talk. As was I: Beyond Marj and, quickly, my mother, to confirm she was safely in France, I kicked every call to voice mail and ignored a novel-length text from Clive explaining that while he was a novice to television, he would gladly stave off his nerves and defend Lacey’s honor and whitewash the situation in our favor. When I showed the text to Marj in the backseat of the car, she deleted it without a word.

  “I have met Lacey Porter, of course. We went around town a bit,” Maxwell, son of Baron Something-Something, was now saying on the TV. The network must’ve begged Penelope Eight-Names to fork him over as a character witness. “Lacey is a bright young woman who I believe was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.”

  Holly frowned as best she could around her Botox. “That middle finger looked a bit defensive, though, wouldn’t you say?”

  The photo flashed up on the screen. Lacey’s face was contorted with anger.

  “Er. I really couldn’t say. She’s just, er, so bright…” Something-Something stammered, way out of his depth.

  My cell phone rang.

  “I’ve spoken to the embassies in Paris,” was Marj’s opening salvo. “She may be called back to testify, but we’ve managed to get her out without being charged as an accessory.”

  I exhaled a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d drawn. “Thank you, Marj. We don’t deserve this. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “We’ve told the press she’s under house arrest in Paris for a week, so that we can sneak her home with your mother.”

  “Maybe we should leave her there,” I muttered, feeling my blood boil again.

  “The Palace will not be doing anything further on Lacey’s behalf,” Marj said. “You understand.”

  “I do.”

  “And to that end,” she said delicately, “I’ve spoken to Her Majesty—”

  I refreshed my email. Nothing.

  “—and Her Majesty thinks it wise if your twin takes a much-diminished role in the wedding,” Marj finished.

  I had, in an early morning fit of fretting, predicted this to myself. “Does that mean she can’t be my maid of honor?”

  “Her Majesty believes a much-diminished role might be wise,” Marj repeated.

  “So, that’s a no.”

  “If that is how you choose you interpret it.”

  “But if Eleanor says…”

  “Her Majesty,” Marj said firmly, “has simply offered a gentle suggestion.”

  Sometimes it was like we were all speaking in code.

  “I’ll take her suggestion under advisement, then,” I said. “And do let her know I appreciate her, um, very reasoned counsel.”

  “One more thing,” Marj said. “And you’ll not like it, Bex.”

  My heart shuddered.

  “No more Paint Britain for a while,” she said, and by giving it to me plain, for once, it felt like she was sympathizing with me. “You’d be besieged with questions about Lacey. It would hurt the charity and drive you potty.” She paused. “This is
nonnegotiable.”

  And just like that, the scrap of myself I’d fought for was yanked away. We rang off and I looked back up at the television in time to see news footage of my sister leaving a Parisian police station, surrounded by photographers. For someone who craved the spotlight, she didn’t seem to enjoy it much as she pushed through the melee, holding her purse in front of her face. Be careful what you wish for may be both of our epitaphs.

  * * *

  Sunrise ended after a discussion with the bloggers behind Bex-a-Porter and The American’t about my style. The first, a lively blonde named Kelly appearing via satellite from Los Angeles, was complimentary, but The American’t vehemently believed my jeans were tight enough to show a panty line. This shoved me into a nasty Internet wormhole. With little else to do but wait, I devoured the comments that said I was superficial and inept and embarrassing, and composed and deleted a dozen anonymous defenses of myself (Ms. Edwina Monet thought my jeans fit perfectly). The press was blaming me for Lacey’s misbehavior—everyone from Xandra Deane to the fast-proliferating royal-watching blogs, one of which, The Royal Flush, claimed I had been specifically tasked with controlling my sister and failed. It was incorrect, but only technically. This felt like a botch job, and I felt a failure.

  At midnight, ushering in the third day of this ridiculous drama, I still had not slept. Words from The Royal Flush’s post floated before my eyes when they were open, and when they were closed, all I saw was the look on Richard’s face when he told me I was Nick’s last-ditch marital Hail Mary. I was overtired and overwhelmed and in an utterly shambolic mental state when the key turned in the front door of my flat.

  “Bex?” Lacey stuck her head around my bedroom door. She looked rough: exhausted, puffy, her hair in a lank ponytail. “Are you alone?”

  I sat up and clicked on my bedside lamp.

  “Who the hell do you think would be here?” I asked.

  “Well, Nick,” she offered.

  “Nick is at sea,” I said. “You not knowing that speaks volumes.”

  Lacey hung back in the doorjamb. When we were kids, she would have climbed in bed with me, uninvited. Of course, when we were kids, the person likely to be caught in a prank gone wrong was me.