The Royal We

by Heather Cocks

He stands up and draws me close. “You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?” he murmurs. “That you’re mine for life?”

  I nod, mutely.

  “Thank you for that,” he says. “Because I’m yours, too.”

  He pulls me in and kisses me, less of a passionate outburst and more of a rebirth, and it feels as if something heavy that had been sitting on my heart finally falls away.

  “I’m sorry,” I begin when we part, and he holds up his hand.

  “No more apologies,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I’m holding something over you. I’m not. This isn’t a favor. This is just love.”

  “I love you, too,” I say, fervently, my eyes filling with tears. “Which is why I hate to bring this up, but…”

  “The wedding,” Nick says, leaning back against the couch.

  “The PR disaster.”

  “Reality sets in.” He sighs. “I’m too wrung out from all this to think clearly right now.”

  “Listen,” I say, “if I’ve learned one thing from this entire nightmare, it’s that we need to tell our friends when we need their help.” I link my hands behind his neck, then kiss him one more time, mostly to revel in being able to do it again. “Time to call in the reinforcements.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the study looks like an Oxford night of yore, with one glaring absence.

  “CLIVE,” Bea thunders. “I could murder him.”

  “Has anyone tried Joss?” Nick asks.

  “Voice mail,” Cilla says.

  “Well, she can’t hide forever,” Bea spits. “Certainly not from her father. When Eleanor finds out what Joss is up to she’ll probably make him hang up his speculum.”

  Our other friends had still been in the garden, and responded to my mayday text within ten minutes—except for Lacey, who hasn’t answered her phone, and Gaz, who stopped by the kitchen on the way up, making the argument that crisis management of any sort required snacks. He is now pacing in front of the fireplace, gnawing on a mushroom tart.

  “I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he muses. “I can’t seem to crack it. I wonder if I could get an injunction against him. It’s the middle of the night. But it is for the Royal Family. But I don’t know what the injunction would be for.”

  “Stalking?” Cilla suggests.

  “Treason? Kind of?” Gemma Sands offers, sprawled out in an armchair.

  “Invasion of privacy?” Nick asks.

  “Unlawful scum-sucking and general psychosexual asshattery?” I offer from my perch next to him, as close as I can be without sitting in his lap. I think we’re subconsciously so relieved to be on the same side again that we’re loath to give each other any space.

  “I don’t think we have to reach that hard,” says Gaz. “Blackmail itself is illegal. But we’ve not got any proof of any of it.”

  A fly buzzes past and Bea swipes at it, irritated, then puts her hand on her hip and stops pacing and points at me. “You,” she says. “For God’s sake, Bex, I told you years ago that if you couldn’t hack it you bloody well ought to—”

  Nick clears his throat pointedly. Bea closes her mouth and tugs on her long sleeve, trying to look composed.

  “—have spoken to someone about your feelings,” she finishes, head high.

  “I know,” I say. “Trust me. But I was afraid of what you’d say.”

  “Me?” Bea places her hand on her chest. “I am supportive. Look how well I trained you to get in and out of a car.”

  “Pet, you’d have horsewhipped her, and you know it,” Gemma says pleasantly.

  “Speaking of, where is your sister?” Bea says. “I’ve a verbal horsewhipping for that girl that she’s had coming for years.”

  I put up my hand and start to speak but Freddie beats me to it.

  “Leave it out, Bea,” he says flatly, his voice stripped of its usual exuberance. “Trust me, Lacey could not feel any worse right now. She’ll have gutted herself enough already.”

  Bea takes a look at his wretched visage, as he leans against a dark corner of the room staring moodily into a scotch, and her features soften in a way that I have never seen on her. She walks up to Freddie and takes his face in her hands.

  “My darling boy,” she says simply. She stands there for a second until he reddens, and then she clears her throat. “Yes, well, if you’d asked me which of us was going to end up blackmailing another, I’d have always said Clive.” She turns on Gemma. “Bex’s judgment is obviously questionable, but I can’t believe you were ever with him.”

  Gemma wrinkles her nose. “You and I were in a fight! And it was barely dating,” she says. “If it makes you feel better, he’s a terrible kisser. If that’s what you even want to call it.”

  Bea frowns. “I have to tell Pudge. She’s still not answering her phone.”

  “What if Pudge is in cahoots with him, too?” Gaz says.

  Bea folds her arms across her chest. “Have you forgotten how brutal the Mail and The Sun and the rest of them were to her during her five-year bender? Pudge hates the gossip press. She’s only with him because she thinks he’s writing fluff, like that moronic piece about the county councillor who also sells personalized cheese wheels.”

  “She told me Clive is mainly her tantric pupil,” Gemma pipes up.

  Bea flicks her hand. “The point is, who knows what he’s got on her. My sister is a celebrity, too, of a sort.” She takes her phone out of her clutch. “I’m calling her again.”

  “And where is Lacey?” I say, frowning at my own phone. Nick squeezes my leg.

  “She’ll turn up, Bex,” Freddie says. “She’s probably with your mother.”

  “Paddington Larchmont-Kent-Smythe, your tantric pupil is a bastard,” Bea is saying into her phone. “I want you to take his laptop and run it over with your car and then call me immediately.”

  Then she takes a pencil from the gold-plated cup on Richard’s desk and jabs it through a hasty chignon, ready for war. Cilla leans over the back of the sofa and hands me a scotch.

  “Drink up,” she tells me. “It will bring you the strength of my forebears.”

  “You’re from Yorkshire,” I say, taking the glass from her.

  “I have distant family in Inverness,” she says. “It’s quite dramatic, actually—”

  “Enough.” Bea stops her. “You can lie about Scotland after we vanquish Clive.”

  “I don’t know if I think we can vanquish Clive,” I say.

  Bea slams her hand on the desk and then lifts it up to reveal the fly, crushed. “I can vanquish anything.”

  Nick tugs at his hair. “Let’s assume you can’t, and that this is running tomorrow no matter what,” he said. “What’s next?” He turns to Freddie. “What do you think?”

  Freddie is surprised. He didn’t expect to be consulted.

  “Er, well. Let’s see.” Freddie pushes off from the wall and starts wearing his own groove in the floor. “I’m not sure what good Marj could do at this point. It’s not like Clive works for the Mail. There’s no one above him to call and turn the screws.”

  “Should we give her and Barnes a heads-up that this is coming?” I ask. Through a cracked window, I can still hear murmurs from the party. There are going to be some hungover dignitaries at the wedding. Maybe they’ll be throwing up too much to check the Internet.

  “We could,” Freddie says. “But if we tell Barnes, he’ll tell Father, who’ll call Gran, and she’ll probably scare up Agatha, who will call Edwin, because if she has to get dragged into this then she’ll think he should, too.” He shakes his head. “Then we’ll all look peaky tomorrow.”

  “Unless they call it off,” I say. “I mean, to me, that’s the other issue.”

  The room gets quiet. Everyone, I can tell, is wondering which would be considered the greater ignominy: canceling the wedding, or going through it knowing the people gathering under the Buckingham Palace balcony will have read or heard my sister’s testimony and think they’re bearing witness to
a sham. I wish Lacey were here, because as much as she was the architect of some of this, it doesn’t feel right trying to solve it without her.

  “If they cancel, then I think you’re done, Bex,” Bea finally says.

  Gemma nods. So does Freddie.

  “Bea’s right,” Nick says. “It’s hard to come back from that in a month’s time and say, ‘Er, sorry about that, big misunderstanding, let’s do it all again, shall we?’”

  “Maybe we call Xandra Deane and give her a counter-scoop,” says Cilla.

  “About what?” Bea asks. “What could possibly overshadow this?”

  “Quick, somebody plant drugs on Nigel,” Gemma jokes.

  “Plant them? More like find them,” Freddie says. Then his eyes widen. “Maybe Lacey and I should elope.”

  This suggestion is met with chuckles, until we see he’s not kidding.

  “It’s not actually the worst suggestion,” Bea says slowly.

  “Yes it is,” Nick and I say, almost in unison.

  “Think about it, though,” Freddie says, coming around and sitting in front of us on the coffee table. “We can claim we were having a lovers’ tiff and so she made up all that stuff to Clive. And if we’re married, legally married, it mucks up his entire thesis that I’m snogging Bex and Lacey is furious about it, because if we were, why would she then go off and marry me?”

  Bea opens her mouth and Gemma whacks her in the leg, shaking her head sternly. Freddie has turned pale, as if saying the words I’m snogging Bex was a step too close to revisiting the inciting incident in front of everyone.

  Nick ponders this, then shakes his head.

  “No,” he says. “We’ve got a bit to work out, Fred, but that’s a sacrifice you can’t make. I won’t allow you and Lacey to be stuck like that.”

  “I’m sure she’d muddle through,” mutters Bea.

  “It might be the only thing she and I can do, though,” Freddie says helplessly, spreading his hands. “We owe you. We’ve got to do something.” He is emotional. “Please.”

  “I appreciate it. I do,” Nick says. “But even discounting all that, we just cannot use the press,” he says. “I think…I think Mum would hate it, if she knew. Don’t you?”

  Freddie nods slowly.

  “So we batten down the hatches and ride it out,” I say.

  “I do think we probably have to tell Marj,” Nick says. “I don’t know if I can countenance giving her a heart attack tomorrow.”

  “Giving her one tonight isn’t much nicer,” Freddie points out.

  “Maybe not, but I don’t want it to look like she napped on the job,” Nick says. “She might be of help. You never know. She’s got a crafty streak, that one.” He stands up. “But I do have one thing I’d like to do first.”

  He takes my hand and scoots down on one knee. “Gran is perfectly welcome to cancel the wedding tomorrow if she’d like,” he says. “But she can’t cancel our marriage. Not if we do it now.” He kisses my palm. “Marry me tonight.”

  The words give me a thrill—and, apparently, have the same effect on Gaz, who gasps and clasps his hands together. His mushroom tart falls to the floor.

  “Eleanor can have it annulled,” Cilla points out.

  “Not if neither one of us signs the papers,” Nick says.

  “She can make you abdicate your position,” Bea says.

  “I’ll call her bluff. She’d never,” Nick says. “It would turn a house fire into an inferno.”

  “Plus she’d have to bump me up a notch, which she wouldn’t, because it’s all my bloody fault to begin with,” Freddie said. “And she can’t dock us both and put Edwin two heartbeats closer to the throne. She’d rather marry Bex herself.”

  Nick turns to me. “Can I get up now, love?” he asks.

  “Oh, shit! Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry. And I just swore during this romantic moment.”

  Nick pulls me up to standing position with him. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says lovingly. “I seem to recall you using that word when I gave you the ring in the first place.”

  “Can we really do this?” I ask.

  “Why not?” he says. “We’ve got the marriage license, right?”

  He looks at Freddie, who nods.

  “And the rings,” Nick says.

  “Safe as houses back at ours,” Freddie confirms.

  “And we’ve got a whole room full of witnesses,” Nick says. “We can sneak into the chapel at St. James’s from Clarence House. We just need a minister.”

  “You can get ordained in five minutes on the Internet, though, right?” I ask. “Gaz would kill it.”

  Gaz heaves a disappointed sigh. “As correct as that is, it is my great displeasure to inform you that, in the UK, we need a proper vicar for it to be legal.”

  “This reminds me of my cousin,” Cilla begins.

  “Now is not the time,” Bea snaps.

  “My cousin, the vicar,” Cilla finishes, giving Lady Bollocks a piercing look. “He’s actually my mum’s cousin. He would’ve done our wedding, except he isn’t speaking to her.”

  “Can he keep his mouth shut?” Bea asks.

  “He has with Cilla’s mum,” Gaz pointed out.

  “Might be a tough secret to keep anyway.” Nick says. He looks at me. “Bex. My love. Once and for all, are you in?”

  I smile up at him. “I always wanted a small wedding.”

  Chapter Five

  I can’t breathe under here,” I cough. “I don’t know how I did this so often.”

  “Well,” Cilla says from above me, “you were pretty stonking drunk most times.”

  We’d gotten the green light from Nick an hour after our summit. PPO Twiggy was off on his motorbike fetching the vicar, the rest of the gang was gathering the license and rings, and Lacey responded to my all-caps text with a message saying not to do anything else drastic until she got to me. Cilla and I passed the time reverting me from Rebecca into Bex, and dissecting every conversation we’d ever had with Clive for hints at the cunning we’d clearly missed. We came up empty. Other than veiled remarks about Paris, which seemed self-pitying then and now look designed to inspire a servile pity in us, there was nothing. Clive’s poker face was expert, and we’d quite simply been had.

  “I feel almost sorry for Joss,” I’d said, pulling back on my jeans. “And sorry about her. I feel responsible. She really was so angry at me, Cil. Maybe I could’ve done more.”

  “That one was born under an irrational star,” Cilla had said as she zipped my Jenny Packham back into its hanging bag. “You can’t worry about her if she’s not worried about you. Let’s get you and Nick sorted instead.”

  And thus, I am sneaking into Clarence House in the back of PPO Popeye’s car—or, more accurately, on the floor in the back, under a very familiar, itchy afghan.

  “Like old times,” Cilla had laughed when Popeye threw open the Mercedes door to reveal my old nemesis. He’d grinned mischievously, his telltale piece of spinach clinging to his left upper bicuspid. Like old times indeed.

  “I can’t believe I agreed to this. Clarence House is basically down the street. I should’ve just walked,” I say, lifting up the blanket. A wisp of cool air comes in and I inhale it hungrily.

  Cilla, sitting in an actual seat as Nick used to do, giggles. “Can you imagine? All of these people lined up to see you and you just stroll past, merry as you please?”

  “They wouldn’t even look twice,” I say. “Freddie used to pull that in Piccadilly Circus. I don’t know if I’d have the guts.”

  “That boy always was reckless,” Cilla says.

  A question, still unanswered, bubbles to the fore. “Cil, is this crazy? Can Nick really forgive and forget?” I ask. “Can anyone?”

  The sound of Cilla breathing out through her nose tells me she’s considering this very seriously.

  “I think he has already forgiven,” she says. “As for the other, I don’t know, Bex, but maybe it’s better if people don’t forget. Because history on
ly repeats itself when they do.” She nudges me with her foot. “We’re here.”

  I feel the car turn into the drive, and think how apt it is that we’re taking our next steps at a place built and christened for another important Duke of Clarence: the eventual William IV. As Popeye comes to a smooth halt, my phone buzzes. I give a Pavlovian shudder, but it’s just Lacey: Good news. Almost there.

  Nick is bouncing with anticipation as he opens the door. Then a look that’s of unutterable comfort to me washes over his face; a mixture of love and awe and nostalgia.

  “That’s the same thing you were wearing the day we met,” he says, his voice thick.

  I glance down. I am in better jeans, and a cleaner navy-and-white-striped tee, and the Botox in my armpits prevents me from ever getting that sweaty anymore. But thematically he is correct.

  “Full circle,” I tell him. “You did just open the door for me.”

  Nick leads us through Clarence House, and out to a pass-through into the courtyard of St. James’s Palace, the most senior of them all and the official seat of the monarchy. Portions of St. James’s were destroyed in a fire, but among the bits that still stand is the rectangular Chapel Royal. When Nick pushes open its doors, I see a ceiling fresco done by my old friend Hans Holbein—it feels right that he’s here somehow—and Gemma and Bea lighting tall white tapers at the altar. Nick and I face each other with the hugest smiles. Then he takes my hand and runs a finger over the Lyons Emerald.

  “N and B,” he says. “A nice, normal wedding, just for them.”

  “I think we need to let N and B out of the house more often. And not just for the Navy, or Paint Britain,” I say. “Our lives can’t always be Marj’s show to run, or Eleanor’s. I want to be what’s expected of me, but there has to be a way to do that while also making sure we don’t lose ourselves again. Don’t you think?”

  Nick nods. “I can’t promise it will be easy, but I swear to you, Bex, I will always fight for you. For us. We’re a team.”

  “We’re a team.”

  I squeeze Nick’s hand. I am jittery with basically everything: nerves, anticipation, love, and a lurking fear that Richard will come bursting through the doors to put a stop to this.