by Kate Johnson
And then there was her cousin’s new wife, Clodagh…
As Jamie’s security team let them into the walled rose garden that surrounded the little house attached to Lady Mathilda College, Clodagh opened the front door and leaned against the jamb, smiling. Her hair was its usual wild riot of curls, her t-shirt fell off one shoulder, and her jeans were ripped. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a row of gold hoops marching up her earlobe.
“Wotcha,” she said.
“Clodagh.” Eliza didn’t mean to sound so formal, but years of training were hard to shake off. “It’s wonderful to see you. Thank you so much for having us to stay. I know you’re terribly busy.”
“Actually Jamie’s on his jolly hols so for once we have time to kill.” Clodagh leaned in and kissed Eliza’s cheek. She smelled of coconut, which brought a sudden wave of nausea to Eliza’s throat. “The College takes five and a half weeks off for Easter, can you believe it? Shh, don’t tell the Family we’re loafing off.”
“I heard that,” said Jamie appearing behind his wife and slipping his arms around her. He wore a Wonder Woman t-shirt, his glasses were smudged and his hair stuck up all over the place. “And I’m not on my jolly hols, the lab’s still open, I have a report to finish and I’m way behind on my research and I still have royal duties to perform, and you keep distracting me.”
“Newlywed prerogative,” said Clodagh, as he nuzzled her neck. Her eyes alit on Xavier. “Well, hello.”
“Hi,” he said, and Clodagh mimed swooning as he smiled.
Jamie looked Xavier over and said despairingly, “Christ, Eliza, couldn’t you find a bad-looking hero cop?”
“I tried, but they were all busy. This is Xavier Rivera—”
Jamie held out his hand for Xavier to shake, cutting her off. “Jamie Wales. This gorgeous creature with her eyes falling out of her sockets is Clodagh. We’ve been married for about five minutes, and I’d really like to make it ten,” he added pointedly, as Clodagh stuck her tongue out at him.
“You know I’m in love with your big sexy brain,” she said, leading him into the house and gesturing them to follow.
“Remember that. Big sexy brains are still sexy when they get old,” said Jamie, vanishing off into the house. It smelled of baked goods, which her pernickety digestive system seemed to be deciding was a good thing.
“I thought you were the Cambridges now,” she called through. “Not Wales any more.”
“Are we? Oh bollocks, yes. Jamie Cambridge. Ugh. It’s so rhymey. Is it too late to become duke of somewhere else?”
“Ignore him,” Clodagh said to a clearly confused Xavier. “He was born with a priori knowledge of titles and forms of address. He just likes to slum it sometimes. Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee? Jamie made some brownies but they’re not ready yet.”
“A coffee would be great,” said Xavier, and Eliza kicked his ankle before he could Your Highness her.
“Tea, please,” she added. Clodagh beamed and disappeared after Jamie into the kitchen.
Xavier looked around the house, which Eliza had never visited before either. She saw him take in the old oak floorboards, the huge Inglenook fireplace, the battered leather Chesterfield and the scattering of text books on the dining table. Visible through a doorway was a study with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and Jamie’s computer equipment. The whole house would probably have fit into Eliza’s suite of rooms at Brakefield.
Most importantly, while it could hold a couple of guests, there was no room for security personnel inside the house. They inhabited the gatehouse across the lawn, and only surveilled the outside of the house.
She could talk in here without being overheard.
“So this is different,” said Xavier, looking up at the crooked beams of the ceiling.
“It’s homely.”
“It’s not a museum,” he said, and then looked like he wished he hadn’t. Right. Brakefield probably looked like that to him. What was he going to think of Buckingham? Windsor?
“Sugar? Milk?” Clodagh called through. The rooms all seemed to lead into each other, but not in the stately way they did in the royal palaces. Eliza made her way through the dining room that was clearly being used for study, into the cluttered sitting room and to the kitchen, which was warm and cosy with a scrubbed pine table.
She thought about the immaculate kitchen she’d served breakfast to Xavier in this morning. It was all for show, like that serenely paddling swan. Cook had a semi-industrial domain in the service wing, where the family rarely ventured and visitors never went.
“Just milk, thanks,” she said, watching longingly as Jamie took a pan of brownies out of the oven.
“That smells amazing.”
He grinned at her. “I have scones too.”
“With jam and cream?” Eliza asked hopefully. She was starving at the moment, which made a nice change from this morning when she’d barely been able to look at food.
“I believe it’s illegal to serve them without,” Jamie replied solemnly.
In the living room, Clodagh swept a small pile of Xbox game cases off the table to put the tea tray down.
“Help yourselves,” she said, and sat back on one sofa with Jamie, evidently more eager to cuddle up with him than to eat.
Eliza sat down next to Xavier at a more decorous distance, and noticed he took her cue when it came to pouring drinks and spreading jam and clotted cream on a scone.
“So, Detective Rivera,” said Jamie. “I should add my thanks to the ones you’ve doubtless already received for returning my cousin safely to us.”
Xavier swallowed a mouthful of scone. “I really didn’t do much. I keep telling people…”
“Oh, let them make you a hero,” said Clodagh. “It’s better than the alternative, trust me.”
“Has the Palace contacted you yet about a decoration?” Jamie asked.
“A…?” Xavier looked to Eliza for an explanation.
“Oh.” This would probably embarrass him. “A decoration. A medal, really, or similar, for services to the Crown. For valour, or bravery, or whatever they decide is appropriate. You’re definitely getting something. They just haven’t decided what yet.”
“I don’t want anything.” Xavier looked annoyed. “My captain is already putting me forward for a Presidential Medal. It’s so stupid. All I did was get you off of that boat.”
“And brought the life raft and started a fire and caught fish and stopped me going insane,” Eliza said. “You got shot for me!”
He looked uncomfortable, and not just because of the sling. “They’d have shot me anyway. You could have survived by yourself.”
“No, I’d still be on that boat if I was by myself.”
“I’m pretty sure you’d have escaped somehow. Your cousin is badass,” Xavier said, breaking the moment she hadn’t realised they’d begun, and Jamie grinned.
“I know, I remember your triathlon time. This one is fierce.”
Eliza winced.
“Triathlon?”
“Eliza competed at university,” said Jamie. “Didn’t you try for the Olympics?”
She felt the weight of both Clodagh and Xavier’s astonishment.
“Ah, no. Not really. Not seriously. And mostly I was into swimming,” she said, trying to shrug it off.
“But you could have,” Jamie said. “You were really good. I remember years ago, at Buck House, you bet us all to a race—youngest one there,” he added to Xavier, “by over a decade, and you beat us. Ed was steaming.”
Eliza just shrugged, and tried not to let the hurt come back. She had been good. Good enough to at least try for the Olympics. But professional swimming—in an all-revealing swimsuit, hair dried out by the chlorine or flattened under a cap, no make-up, her arms and shoulders overdeveloped—was not considered appropriate by her family. It wasn’t dignified, elegant or traditional. It was sweaty and ugly and hard. And worse, outside the Olympics there were all sorts of tacky sponsorship requirements. It simply wasn’t R
oyal.
She had a distant cousin who’d joined Team GB a few years ago, competing in the dressage events. But the kinship was at a strong degree of removal, and equestrian events were something that had always been associated with the Family.
“It isn’t as if there’s a Royal Windsor Swimming Show, is there, darling?” her mother had said, in a rare moment of tactlessness.
Eliza tried to shrug off the interest Xavier and Clodagh showed now. “Well, then I grew up and got a proper job. These brownies are delicious, Jamie. Did you put pecans in, or walnuts?”
“Pecans,” said Jamie, allowing her to change the subject. “What does our American friend think of them?”
“Delicious. Colour me impressed,” said Xavier with a bright smile, and allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion of the merits of adding American desserts to an English afternoon tea.
Later, after Clodagh had breezily exhorted them to choose ‘either spare room, or both’, Eliza followed Xavier upstairs and lay her case on the bed in the larger of the two rooms. He looked around, then across the hall at the other room.
“What did you tell her about us?” he asked.
Eliza rubbed her temples. Her cheekbone throbbed where the coral had exposed it. “Nothing. I said I was bringing you and… well, I didn’t know if…”
He waited, looking handsome in the late afternoon light. The truth was she didn’t know what she wanted either. If she sent him to the other room would he never touch her again? If she invited him to stay would he take it that they were a couple?
“How about we make a call later,” he said, and she nodded gratefully. Xavier shut the door, took her hand and led her to sit down on the bed. “Now tell me what the doctor said.”
Eliza swallowed. She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. “He said that five positives were pretty conclusive and made me an appointment with a midwife.” A midwife. They were really only there for one thing. You couldn’t pretend, like she had with the doctor, that it was about another issue.
“He didn’t do a blood test?”
“No. Apparently the midwife does that. I should have gone to see her a month ago, apparently. I’m already nearly ten weeks gone.” She drew in a breath. “He’s been our family doctor for years. I know there’s patient confidentiality but I’m terrified he’ll tell Mummy or Granny.”
“I’m sure he won’t. Medical stuff trumps everything. Even the law.”
“Once again,” Eliza said, “we trump that, too. It quite literally is one law for us and another for everyone else. And anyway,” she sighed. “Sooner or later it’s going to become obvious. I’ve got to make some kind of decision. We’ve got to make some kind of decision.”
Xavier’s thumb stroked the back of her hand, and headed for her ring finger. “The offer’s still on the table,” he said.
Marriage to Xavier. It seemed like an attractive proposition. He was an attractive proposition. But there were so many things that could go wrong.
She laid her head on his shoulder and he put his arm around her. This was nice. This felt good. Maybe they could make a marriage work. Maybe, after her family had accepted Clodagh into the fold, they could accept Xavier. After all, he had a respectable job and was probably going to get a medal soon. He would certainly look good in photos and it would strengthen relationships with the USA. Maybe he could be persuaded to convert to the Church of England. Or just renounce his faith.
Her shoulders sagged. Asking someone to renounce his faith sounded terrible inside her head. It would be even worse out loud.
And she still didn’t know him very well. On the drive down—as passengers in the back of a Range Rover, because apparently she couldn’t be trusted to drive herself off to another misadventure—she’d asked about his family. He was one of seven children, he had fifteen nieces and nephews, forty-two first cousins and an even wider extended family that covered half of Florida and parts of Louisiana. His Abuela seemed to occupy a semi-mythical, goddess-like position in the family, which Eliza supposed she could relate to. Abuela had travelled to the States after marrying Xavier’s grandfather and had an even bigger extended family back home in Puerto Rico.
Forty two first cousins. Eliza had seven, and that was counting both sides.
“Look,” Xavier said now. “Why don’t you talk to Clodagh? She must have been through some of what you’re feeling right now.”
Except that Clodagh’s problems had been compounded by being fifteen and living on a sink estate with a boyfriend who was on remand by the time her test turned blue. Eliza, no matter what kind of decisions she made, knew her baby would always be cared for, at least in the material sense.
“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t want to be a downer. Did you see how happy they are?”
“They’re newlyweds,” Xavier said. “They’re in love.”
But we wouldn’t be, Eliza thought bleakly. Three months after her marriage to Xavier, would she be snuggling on the sofa with him and making jokes about other men, or would they have already descended into chilly politeness and, that ghastly phrase, co-parenting?
“Do you guys need anything?” Jamie called up, and in the background Clodagh giggled something Eliza couldn’t catch.
“They think we’re a couple already,” Xavier said. “Would it be such a bad idea?”
Yes. No. I don’t know.
“Let me talk to Clodagh,” Eliza said, in the tones of a woman facing her doom. She tapped her fingers on her thigh. “Look, I’m sorry about my outburst the other night. I wasn’t thinking straight. I kind of yelled at you.”
“Hey,” said Xavier. “I’d have been more worried if you’d taken it all calmly. Yelling is probably the appropriate reaction.”
“Well, I strive at all times to be appropriate,” she said dismally. “Right. Well, I’m off to tell my new cousin-in-law that I got knocked up by a foreign Catholic cop. Yay me.”
“Uh,” said Xavier, as she stood up, and she sat back down again.
“Uh?”
“Look, this shouldn’t mean much more, really. Because it’s way in the past and—”
“Oh God, you don’t have a criminal record, do you?”
He gave her a deadpan look. “Yeah, because we love signing up criminals to be cops in Florida. It’s how I gain all my insights. Five years in San Quentin.”
“Don’t even joke,” said Eliza, because if this ever got to the national press then they’d find every bloody parking ticket he’d ever had.
“No criminal record. But when I was fourteen Officer Kowalcic saw me drop a soda can on the ground and threatened to tell my mom if I didn’t pick it up.”
“You’re funny.” She stood up again.
“I’m divorced.”
Eliza froze.
“It was five years ago. We were married for, like, five minutes. It was a rush, because I was about to be given my first undercover assignment that would take me away for several months and she said she didn’t want to wait so I kinda went along with it…”
Eliza turned back to him and folded her arms. Xavier’s head hung. He looked more embarrassed than anything.
“I shouldn’t have left so soon after we got married. I shouldn’t have married her so fast. But she was all… well,” he said, cheeks reddening, “she was pretty, um, persuasive. In the bedroom.”
“You don’t have to draw me a picture,” said Eliza, who already had a depressingly graphic image of some sultry temptress beckoning Xavier into her fragrant bed.
“Anyway. Long story short. She found solace in the arms of another man, so I came home to a Dear John letter.”
“Wow. Seriously?”
“Yep.”
Xavier looked up at her with those beautiful eyes of his. “She was a hot mess. She got me bedazzled. What can I say, I was stupid enough to fall for everything she wanted. Of course, if I’d stuck around I might have found out she was a drama queen sooner rather than later. She was addicted to telenovelas. You know, those overblown Mexican soap o
peras? Thought her life was one, or ought to be. Manufactured drama if things got too boring…”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” said Eliza reluctantly.
“Yeah. You know what, I’m glad I got out when I did. She’s probably on husband number five now.”
Eliza fiddled with her sleeves. “You haven’t seen her since?”
“Only in court. It was messy and unpleasant but it’s over now.” He sighed. “Are you going to tell me now there’s some rule about Royals not marrying divorcees?”
There wasn’t, not exactly, but Eliza had a strong inkling it wouldn’t go in his favour. Not with her family, at least. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it personally.
“Your Henry VIII remarried after divorcing, didn’t he?”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “Yes, but he was the king. And it was five hundred years ago. He also had two of his wives beheaded.”
“You, uh,” Xavier looked askance, “you don’t go in for that any more, do you?”
“We do not.” Eliza didn’t tell him about the grey area that existed around high treason. There was still some fuzzy legislation as regarded undermining the line of succession. “But we also don’t go in for unmarried mothers.”
She hesitated. Last night she’d looked up the charity Clodagh had set up to give advice and support to pregnant teenagers. It gave somewhat frank details on abortion and adoption, as well as the reality of raising a baby by yourself without the financial or emotional means to support it.
She knew what the sensible course of action was. But could she do it?
“I’ll talk to Clodagh,” she said.
Xavier had met three princesses now, one of them so royal she even had it in her official title, but Jamie was his first prince. And, rather like Eliza, he wasn’t quite what his title suggested.
“I can never get them chewy enough,” said Prince Jamie of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, as he regarded a brownie quizzically. “Xavier, you’re American. What’s the secret?”