Not Your Prince Charming: a Royal Wedding Romance (Royal Weddings Book 2)

by Kate Johnson

  Later, as they were driven to the penthouse suite Eliza’s team had reserved for her, he said, “You did great. I know they can be overwhelming.”

  Eliza pressed her fingers to the inner corners of her eyes. He’d noticed she didn’t touch her face when she was out in public, but this was because of the industrial amount of make-up she wore. She’d mentioned off-handedly that she’d trained as a make-up artist when she left university, after getting fed up of relying on other people waking her up at ‘sparrows fart’ to make sure she looked presentable.

  It was something else the press like to make fun of her for, and something else he thought was awesome about her.

  “They were nice,” she said.

  They were a headache. “Once Abuela had accepted you. I know it seems crazy—”

  “Xavier,” she said in exasperation, “have you learned nothing? There is no more matriarchal family than mine. You didn’t think it was a coincidence I left my Spanish until all seemed lost, did you?”

  He gaped. “You weren’t actually going to leave? How much did you understand of what she said?”

  Eliza shrugged, not quite hiding her smile. “Un poquito.”

  Xavier shook his head in amazement. “Just when I think you’ve surprised me enough,” he said. She shrugged modestly. “Do you have any idea how amazing you are?”

  Pink stained her cheeks. “I’m more amazing when I’m with you,” she said.

  The hotel was extravagantly decorated, with leopard print and red silk dominating the room. It reminded him of the time Anita had wanted to decorate her room in a Moulin Rouge theme.

  Eliza, unexpectedly, loved it. “It’s a little bit like Granny’s place,” she said. “All the gold and bling. Look at the chandelier! Ooh, and the view. Ah, look at the tiny little bathtub they call a pool.”

  Access to that tiny little bathtub was worth about fifty grand a night. Xavier could barely comprehend the extravagance.

  “The last place we stayed in was so unspeakably bland,” Eliza said, sprawling on a tiger print sofa. “There was even a yoga mat. It was all ‘wellness’ and ‘mindfulness’ and ‘at one with nature’. So dull. I’ve done ‘at one with nature’: it left me dehydrated, sunburnt, and covered in coral cuts.”

  She looked up at him, the late sun spilling over her tousled hair and pretty legs.

  “But it also left me with you, eventually, so I suppose it’s not all that bad.”

  Marry me. He wanted to say it right now, but there were other people around, her staff trying to check the place out and the hotel staff trying to earn their tips, and he didn’t want to do this in front of them.

  Instead, he nodded at the baby grand piano situated to overlook Miami Beach. “Do you play?”

  “Alas, no. Haven’t a hope of being able to read the music. My parents and Drina do, though.”

  Xavier quirked his eyebrows at her. “Did I find something you can’t do?”

  “There are lots of things I can’t do.”

  “None of them worth the bother.”

  She smiled at him, and bounced to her feet. “Let’s go out onto the balcony.”

  The hotel faced the ocean, but the balcony wrapped around enough for them to see the sunset. It was bright pink, vulgar and splashy like the city he knew.

  Eliza leaned against the balcony rail, looking at it for a while. The light turned her skin rosy and burnished her hair.

  “Strange, how quickly twilight comes here,” she said. “Lasts for a while at home.”

  “We’re much further south.”

  “Yes. Of course, if we were at Balmoral now we’d have yonks to go until the sun went down. The shadows are longer. Sun never gets quite as high. In winter it feels like it will never come up. But that’s why we go there in summer.”

  “Balmoral is the one in Scotland? Quite far north?”

  “Yes. You’d hate it,” she teased. “Cold and dark and the accents are impenetrable.”

  “I’d survive,” he said, moving closer and bracketing her body with his arms. “Especially if I had you. Keeping me warm, being bright, making everything make sense.”

  Eliza sucked in a breath. “That was very romantic.”

  He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “It was meant to be. Eliza—”

  The door opened and he cursed her damn team again. “Your Highness, would you like to eat in your room?”

  “Oh, good Lord no, I can’t eat another bite,” she said. “Xavi, are you hungry?”

  “Ah, no. Maybe a snack later,” he said.

  “Of course.” The door shut again, but Xavier knew they were all there.

  The bedroom seemed to be the only place no one invaded, and even then Eliza had to make it clear she was done with them for the night. Xavier had grown up in a large, close family, so he was kind of used to a lack of privacy, but how Eliza coped with a bunch of near strangers all up in her face he had no idea.

  He supposed he’d better get used to coping with it, too.

  He watched Eliza emerged from the lavish bathroom—with its own ocean view—in her sexy unicorn-print pyjamas, and pad over the bright rug towards the bed. This was his chance. Xavier cleared his throat.

  “Xavi, can I ask you something?” she said, fiddling with the hem of her shorts.

  “Sure,” he said, biding his time.

  “It’s a bit personal.”

  “We have no secrets,” he assured her. “Ask and I’ll tell you.” He meant it. He’d bare his soul to her.

  “Well, all right then.” Her foot twined nervously around her other ankle. “It’s just, I was wondering if you’d… I was wondering if you’d marry me?”

  Xavier heard what she said, replayed it a few times, and totally forgot how words worked.

  “You’re kidding me,” he said. Panic overcame her face. “I mean—no, I was just… Eliza, I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  Her face lit up. “You were?”

  “Yeah. All day, I’ve been trying to… well, not all day, but pretty much since you sassed my grandmother.” Eliza groaned. “I am so in love with you,” he said, moving forward and taking her hands. “Will you marry me?”

  And she laughed and threw her arms around him and cried, “Yes!”

  Chapter Twenty

  RoyalGossip.com: She changed her mind pretty fast!

  Forty-eight hours after telling love-rat Xavier Rivera he was beneath her (see video), Princess Eliza has been seen cosying up to him at a family barbecue. These candid pictures, uploaded by Rivera’s niece, seem to show the princess laughing and smiling with the oldest and youngest members of his family.

  Hah! We’re not taken in by a couple of staged photos! This is clearly damage limitation: see how Rivera is looking away here and the princess is frowning in the background of this shot? We’ll believe there’s a reconciliation on the cards when we see a ring on the royal finger.

  “Holy crap,” said Xavier as the car glided through the famous gates.

  “What, did something happen to the place?” Eliza said, looking up in mock alarm, but Buckingham Palace was still the same. It hadn’t changed since she was a child, and she didn’t expect it would change for decades more.

  Xavier tugged at his collar. “I mean, holy crap this place is so much… more than it looks on TV.”

  It was huge, and imposing, and grand, but then that was the point of it. “It’s meant to make you feel small,” she explained as they passed under the side arch. “Humbled. Inferior. So that you can better understand the majesty of the Crown.”

  “Well, it’s working.”

  It always worked on Eliza too, not that she usually let it show. The car took them into the inner courtyard, under the portico, and uniformed men opened the doors for them.

  “Thank you.” The place did something to her voice, too. She sounded like a parody of herself.

  Xavier straightened his suit and tie, lifted his chin, and said, “Okay. I’m ready. I can do this.”

  “It’s no
t a baseball match,” she reminded him. “It’s meeting my Abuela.”

  They began up the steps into the Grand Hall. “I take it I shouldn’t call her that?”

  “It’s probably for the best.”

  Xavier looked around at the gold and the marble and the giant portraits. His eye fell on the Victorian insanity of the Grand Staircase and his step faltered, but he went on determinedly, “I was thinking something informal. Lexy, maybe? Sandra?”

  “I believe Grandpa calls her Lexy-loo sometimes,” Eliza giggled.

  “Please tell me you made that up.”

  “Of course I made it up! He never calls her anything in public. Imagine if people overheard.”

  “Okay, you know what, now I have to meet her imagining her husband calls her Schnookums in private.”

  “Xavi, don’t!” Eliza bashed his arm. “You’re making me laugh.”

  He grinned at her. “I’m trying.”

  He looked almost irresponsibly handsome in a suit. Eliza had seen him in casual clothes, the garb of an English country gentleman, and absolutely nothing at all, but a suit definitely did something for him.

  They were led through the Marble Hall with its deep red carpets and classical sculptures, and up the Minister’s Staircase, where Xavier seemed reluctant to touch the gilt balustrade. To her relief, instead of being taken to the State Apartments—which would have meant Granny was out to really intimidate—they were taken to the private apartments, the audience chamber where the Queen met with the Prime Minister and other people not important enough to bother impressing.

  They were shown in, and the doors closed behind them.

  “There’s no one here,” Xavier said, managing not to gawp at the room. Eliza looked around critically. It wasn’t one of the grandest. The walls were pretty, in periwinkle blue with white mouldings, and there were various paintings around the place Eliza had cut her teeth evaluating.

  But then again, Buckingham Palace’s version of ‘not grand’ still came with an eye-watering amount of gold, marble, and priceless antiques. Just as well they hadn’t been taken to the White Drawing Room, which had four layers of gold friezes, or the Blue Drawing Room with its thirty columns the exact colour of madness.

  “No, the Queen always arrives last. Just be calm and polite, and don’t talk too much.”

  “Like an interview,” he said. “I mean, when I was a cop—”

  He was cut off by the doors opening on the other side of the room. Eliza had coached Xavier, who gave a neat bow when she curtseyed, and then her grandmother invited them forward.

  “Your Majesty, may I present Xavier Rivera, lately of the Miami-Dade Police Department.”

  “Lately? You are no longer a police officer?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Xavier was injured when we were rescued from the island, ma’am,” Eliza explained. Yes, her grandmother knew this, the Queen was choosing to make them explain. “He was put on inactive service, which didn’t really suit him. He’s planning on training people how to survive hostile situations.”

  “Such as a desert island?”

  “Yes, ma’am, or maybe the Scottish Highlands,” Xavier said. “Although I would have to go to the Scottish Highlands first,” he added with a smile that would have slain a woman less resistant to charm.

  It was rumoured that in her unmarried years, Queen Alexandra had once been propositioned by a young John F Kennedy, and managed to turn him down. What on earth she’d made of dear old Grandpa after that, Eliza could never work out.

  “Indeed,” Her Majesty said now, apparently just as impervious to Xavier as she had been to the future American president. “It is always wise to learn the lie of the land. Do sit,” she invited, which was a relief.

  Clodagh had said when she was invited to meet the Queen the first time, she was kept standing and Jamie was stuck on the other side of the room, unable to speak unless the Queen addressed him first.

  “I have never visited Miami,” said the Queen, perching on a sofa that Eliza knew to be twice as uncomfortable as it looked, her spine like a steel rod. “Very hot, I understand, and there are alligators?”

  Xavier smiled again. “Rarely in the city, ma’am. Out in the Everglades though, sure. Plenty of gators out there.”

  “Yes. We saw crocodiles bathing on the Nile. Such large creatures. So like dinosaurs. Somewhat unnerving. I understand you are divorced?”

  She did this, Eliza knew. Rather like a crocodile herself, she lulled you into a false sense of security, then snapped.

  “Uh. That is, yes, ma’am. I am.”

  “For how long?”

  “Five years now. Nearly six.”

  “On the grounds of adultery? And there was a child?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Her adultery, not mine. And her child, not mine.”

  “For whom you still pay child support?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you have established you are not the biological father of this child?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How extraordinary.”

  “Florida law, ma’am.”

  “Hmm.”

  The clock ticked. It always seemed terribly loud in this room.

  “To what extent would your remarriage affect this arrangement?”

  It wasn’t a surprise that she knew. Whilst Eliza hadn’t announced the engagement to anyone, even her parents, the fact that she’d formally requested to present Xavier to the Queen was a pretty strong indication of her intentions. After the scene she’d made in Nassau, she’d expected a bollocking from her family and from the press, but whilst the latter had wildly speculated, the former had been entirely unsurprised to see her hand-in-hand with Xavier again.

  “It would affect it very little, ma’am,” said Xavier calmly.

  “Hmm.”

  Eliza put her hand over Xavier’s. This wasn’t actually going too badly, considering.

  “We were most upset to hear of the tragic events of May,” said the Queen eventually, and Eliza took a breath and let it out evenly.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Of course, while the loss of a child is always a terrible event, the following scandal was not to be preferred.”

  Well, shit. It had been going well.

  “We were intending to get married—” she said.

  “This is the first I have heard of it.”

  “We were going to speak to you the next week. Honest. When we came to Windsor. We were just… getting people used to the idea of Xavi being my boyfriend before we announced him as my husband.”

  “If things had gone to plan—” Xavier began, but the Queen cut him off with a look he was sensible enough to pay attention to.

  “Plans mean little when they don’t come to pass. We do not have unmarried mothers in this family.”

  “You don’t have one now,” said Eliza bitterly, before she could stop herself.

  She’d been trying not to look at the date. Trying not to think how far along she’d be now. Not to remind herself that if everything had gone to plan she’d have a ring on her finger and a shortlist of baby names by now.

  Xavier put his arm around her, which was a terrible breach of protocol on this kind of occasion. Eliza nearly shrugged him off, but then she figured, what the hell, she was already disgraced.

  “You are intending to marry now?” asked the Queen, as if her granddaughter wasn’t canoodling with a divorced ex-cop in front of her.

  Eliza took Xavier’s hand and straightened her back. “Yes. We are.”

  “And you have come to ask my permission?” the Queen prompted.

  Eliza opened her mouth to say yes, and then that little voice that had been murmuring to her since the cabin in the Bahamas, whispered, Have you?

  I just want to not be a princess for a day.

  She glanced at Xavier, who gave her a warning look in reply.

  “I’m not sure I have,” she said slowly.

  The clock ticked.

  The Q
ueen smoothed her powder-blue skirt. “Please explain.”

  “Ma’am—” the time for ‘Granny’ might never come again, “—Xavier is Catholic. I don’t think it’s right that I should ask him to give up his faith, which is so important to his family, because of the rules our family have. I know it’s important that you’re the Defender of the Faith and everything, but I’m fourteenth in line, and every baby born puts me further down the list. The possibility of me actually ruling with a Catholic husband and putting a Catholic heir on the throne is so remote as to be laughable.”

  “And yet it exists,” said the Queen crisply.

  “If you refuse permission to marry Xavier and I do it anyway, what would happen?” Eliza asked bluntly.

  The Queen looked slightly taken aback, which wasn’t something Eliza had ever experienced.

  “You would be removed from the Succession.”

  “And?”

  “And what, young lady? You would no longer be in line for the throne.”

  I wouldn’t be a princess any more. “I know. And Aunt Georgina would move up a place.” She felt very calm explaining this. “It would be all right. I barely do any royal duties at all, and I don’t take anything from the Privy Purse. I’d stop using the title if you want me to.”

  “The title was in my gift. By tradition, they don’t pass through the female line.”

  “I know. We were lucky. Thank you. But Drina and I… especially me… I’m not a useful member of the family. Would it really matter to anyone that much if I dropped out?”

  The Queen rose, and automatically, Eliza did the same. Xavier followed a second later.

  “Young lady, this is not a… college course, for you to drop out of. This is the Royal Family.”

  “Yes, it’s not the Hotel California!”

  The Queen blinked. Eliza wondered if she’d even get the reference.

  “And what is your opinion on this?” Xavier was asked.

  He took his time answering, taking Eliza’s arm and folding it into the crook of his own. The material of his suit was smooth against her skin. Granny hasn’t mentioned my scars.

  “Ma’am, I love your granddaughter. It is my honour and privilege to be her intended. I would love her if she were a princess, or a lady, or a miss. I’ve loved her since she figured out how to make fresh water on that desert island and I will love her for the rest of my life.”