by Avery Wilde
I didn’t stay to listen to any more of his conversation with the Queen, and I walked away from the yellow drawing room and headed for home, stopping at a drugstore on the way back. I bought a pregnancy test, and as soon as I got back to my apartment, I ripped it open and headed for the bathroom, my heart numb. Just this morning, I’d been worried about my possible pregnancy, but I’d been happy at the same time….and I’d been utterly deluded in being so pleased. If Andrew knew about this, he’d probably view the pregnancy as an unfortunate accident and nothing more, and I must’ve been crazy to think otherwise.
The pregnancy test instructions said that I had to wait five minutes for the results to show up properly, so I sat on the toilet and waited, my heart hammering like crazy in my chest as my mouth dried up in fear. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl, and I honestly felt as if a thousand years had passed before my watch finally told me that five minutes was up.
I closed my eyes, turned the test over in my hand, and then I opened my eyes again, my breath catching in my throat as I looked down at the little display window.
Positive.
Of course it was.
Chapter 15
Andrew
I woke up happy.
That wasn’t unusual, because I was a prince, and however structured that life might be, it was not an arduous one—I had very few worries. But I fancied that there was a difference to the happy state in which I woke these days to that in which I’d woken for the better part of my adult life. Happiness, I now recognized, should be an active state—there should be some cause for it. Without realizing it, I hadn’t really been happy to this point, I’d merely been carefree, which was like happiness but was a passive process—it simply required nothing to be wrong. Prior to meeting Keira, there’d been nothing wrong in my life and so I was carefree, but since meeting her, I had a reason to be happy.
Very fucking happy.
I rolled over, and I was vaguely aware of a figure in the room with me. “Morning, Margo!” I called cheerily.
“Good morning, your Highness.” The figure bobbed a curtsey.
I sat up in bed and contemplated the day before me. The only thing that really mattered was that Keira was working today. Seeing her was always a challenge as we needed to meet in secret, but I was now thinking that the time might have come for that to change. True, we hadn’t known each other all that long and had spent a disproportionate amount of that time having sex, but I saw that as a plus. To have known someone for so short a period and yet learned so much about them, to have gained such a good impression of them, to have recognized them as the person with whom you might just want to spend the rest of your life—that was something to say on so limited an acquaintance.
I knew for certain that Keira was my future, and when you realize that about a person for the first time, then you want that future to start as soon as damn possible. The time would come when I had to break the news to my family (and I hoped that they would take it better than I feared), and there seemed little point in delaying the inevitable. After all, my mind was already made up on the subject—I loved Keira.
There, I damn well said it.
I loved her.
My mother’s ridiculous plan regarding Princess Alexandra would be an inconvenience, of course, but it wasn’t like anything was set in stone. Arranged marriages fell apart every day, and this one was going to as well, just like the last three supposed ‘arrangements’ my mother had tried to make between me and other women. It was all a scare tactic she used to try and convince me to settle down. I’d played along with her whenever she’d chatted to me about it, purely because I couldn’t be bothered getting her all riled up, but if she actually thought I was going to go along with any kind of stupid arranged marriage, then she was dreaming. It wasn’t the damned seventeenth century, and I wasn’t going to be told who to marry or when.
The only woman I wanted to marry was Keira…although I might’ve been getting a little bit ahead of myself there. I hadn’t even told her I loved her yet, and that was a huge step for me; to share such an intimate conversation with someone.
But dammit, I wanted it all from her, and I couldn’t wait to have it.
As distracted as I was by these thoughts and happy anticipations of sharing my life with Keira—I could just imagine her face when I finally told her I loved her—I still noticed what was going on in the room.
“Are you off, Margo?” I asked. The maid was already headed out the door.
Margo managed a slightly fractured smile. “Yes. With your leave, your Highness.”
“Of course, of course.” I dismissed her and Margo hurried out in what seemed like extreme relief. That was odd. As was the brevity of her stay; she usually took a lot longer about cleaning the room. She’d also seemed oddly nervous when I woke up, and I wondered if she had problems at home. I’d have to ask—I liked to take an interest in those in my employ.
Once I was showered, dressed, and had eaten breakfast, I hurried off in the direction of the stables. I was accustomed to taking a roundabout route that would not let anyone guess my true destination, and I started on such a route today before checking myself. What was the point? The time for such ruses and misdirection had passed, and I had no further need of them. Today, I would walk directly to the stables, and if anyone asked me where I was going then I would say ‘the stables’ in a proud, clear voice. And if that person were to press further and ask me why, then I would reply, ‘to see Keira Valencia’.
In the event, not only did no one ask me where I was going or why, but my passing seemed to excite no interest whatsoever in the people I passed, which was a relief, and yet also somewhat disappointing. But not nearly as disappointing as what I found when I arrived: there was no sign of Keira in the small tack room. That was not so unusual in itself, because she had other duties around the stables, and I hurriedly set off to look for her. But a quick circuit of the complex provided no more signs of her than the small tack room had. I thought about asking someone, but even with my newly found pride in our relationship, I decided that might be a step too far; I didn’t want to get her into trouble after all, and it seemed as if my presence here was already drawing a few glances.
In fact, my presence seemed to be drawing more glances than I would have usually anticipated. I enjoyed riding and wasn’t an unfamiliar face at the stables, so why should it be a surprise? But there was no doubt that the stable staff were looking at me and then looking hastily the other way when I tried to meet their gaze. They all had a look on their faces that I’d seen once already this morning on the face of Margo as she left my bedroom. Rightly or wrongly, and with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I began to mentally connect this curious behavior with Keira’s absence.
I headed for the servant’s notice board. I hadn’t wanted to be so blatant about this, at least not before I’d had a chance to talk to Keira herself, but this seemed like the only way to find her. But yet another disappointment was awaiting me, and this one came edged with shock.
Keira’s name had been removed from the board.
I stood staring for a moment, allowing the horrible possibilities to crowd in upon me. Had our relationship gotten her fired? But then surely she would have called me. Did she blame me? Or perhaps I had misread the whole situation; perhaps she’d never really liked me as much as I liked her, and now that we’d started to become closer, she’d decided to leave me.
I had to know, and I hurried back outside, hastily fumbling my phone from my pocket as I went. My call got no answer and my texts were likewise ignored. Of course, if she was at work somewhere else, then she might not have time to answer, but the whole affair was leaving me in a deep morass of uncertainty. I was now sure that something was wrong, that something had happened, but I had no idea what.
I tried to get a handle on myself enough to think clearly and realized that there was one person who might be able to clear this up.
“I’m afraid that I cannot help you,” said Rogers as we s
at in his neat little office ten minutes later.
“One day she worked here, the next she’s gone,” I replied. “You’re in charge of the staff here, you must know why!”
Rogers said nothing, nor even moved his head, but his acknowledgement of this fact was none the less clear.
“Has she been fired?”
“No.” That much, Rogers was apparently willing to say.
“Then she quit?”
A flicker of tension passed across Rogers’ impassive features—he was the ideal of his profession, the most dedicated and devoted of servants, and to not answer a direct question from one of his royal masters was painful to him. But he was also responsible for the wellbeing of his staff and he wouldn’t betray their trust either.
“I could order you to tell me,” I said with steel in my voice.
“Yes,” Rogers replied. “You could, your Highness.”
I gritted my teeth. The man was not going to make this easy for me. “And if I did?”
“Then I would very much regret my inability to give you the information you are requesting,” said Rogers.
“Inability or unwillingness?”
“In this case, I feel the two go hand in hand.”
“You mean, you know something but you can’t tell me.”
Rogers said nothing.
“I don’t see why you have to take this attitude,” I said. “It’s perfectly obvious that everyone around here knows what’s going on—knows where Keira has gone and why. I’m the only one who doesn’t! I could order any one of them to tell me!”
“I would prefer it if you didn’t do that,” said Rogers.
I slumped back in my chair, the bluster gone out of me. I didn’t want to be an asshole who made everyone uncomfortable, so I’d have to find out what was going on another way. “I won’t,” I finally said.
“Thank you, your Highness.”
“And I won’t order you to tell me either.”
“I appreciate that very much, your Highness. There are times when this sort of thing is necessary, but it goes very much against the grain in me to refuse the wishes of the family.”
I said nothing for a long while, my mind racing and yet going nowhere. Finally I spoke again. “You may not believe this, Rogers, but I care about her very much. And if there’s something that I’ve done to hurt or upset her, then I wish she’d spoken to me about it. But perhaps the fact that she didn’t means something in itself. Perhaps it means that I’ve misread the whole situation between her and me. Perhaps she never cared for me at all and that’s what you are shielding me from. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I feel like my guts have been ripped out. I don’t know why it’s happened—except that it seems to be my fault—I don’t know how to fix it, or if it’s fixable, or where to find her if it is and I could. And I can’t talk to anyone about it because no one is supposed to know.”
Rogers listened in stony-faced silence, perhaps appraising my sincerity, or perhaps just waiting for me to finish so he could return to his own duties. It was impossible to tell with his face.
“I was going to tell her that I loved her.”
The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them. I wasn’t sure I even would’ve stopped them if I could. It wasn’t the sort of thing that a prince was supposed to share with the help, but there was no one else, and besides, I’d known Rogers all my life. I trusted him and knew that anything I said to the man in confidence was as safe as if it was locked in the Tower of London. “I was going to tell her, and then my mother. And then there probably would’ve been some unpleasantness, and some more of the usual media rubbish, but I would’ve weathered it all for her. Do you believe me, Rogers?”
“Yes, your Highness.” His expression did not change and his voice remained flat, but perhaps, somewhere in those grey eyes, there was a flicker of compassion.
I stood up and cleared my throat. “Probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway,” I said, although I didn’t mean a single word of it.
“Almost certainly not, your Highness,” said Rogers. “These things seldom do.”
“Do you think we put too much importance on class in this country, Rogers?”
Rogers’ left eyebrow flicked up a half inch. “No, your Highness. Perhaps at one point we did, but these days I rather think that we have reached a point where we respect it, but do not consider it the measure of a man. A man may be nobly born and yet devoid of humanity and worth, or he may be born without a penny to his name and yet filled with decency and honor. And, of course vice versa.”
I nodded, wondering just how much more intelligent than me Rogers was. I turned to leave.
“Your Highness?”
I turned back.
Rogers was silent for a final beat of consideration before speaking. “Valencia was not dismissed, but nor did she quit.”
“But that must mean that she’s still here, and she’s not on the board.”
“I fear you must make the last step on your own,” he replied.
I left the office and headed for my room, wracking my brain. She hadn’t been fired, she hadn’t quit, and yet she wasn’t here. Then where the hell was she? She couldn’t have been reassigned. She’d been reassigned once before but her name remained on the board, as with all the staff in this house…wait. That was it! In this house.
My direction changed and I sped up. There were times when I truly despaired of my own lack of intelligence, but at least I got there in the end.
***
It was a long drive from Richmond to Wellington Castle, but to me, it seemed an interminable one. I’d decided to drive myself because it invited fewer questions, but I soon found that this had been a mistake. My natural instinct was to put the pedal to the metal to get me to my destination as fast as possible, and I was then forced to rein myself in as I realized that one thing guaranteed to make a bad situation worse was a bunch of headlines about the reckless prince getting a speeding ticket. That would hardly put my mother in the right frame of mind for me dropping other bombshells on her.
There was also the problem that I found it hard to focus on driving because my mind kept going to other places. Once I’d realized that Keira had been reassigned to one of the other royal houses, it’d taken only a few quick phone calls to find out which and my problem seemed to have been solved. But the question remained: why had she asked for this reassignment? The long drive was made longer by the possibilities that kept digging knife-like into my brain.
Arriving at the Castle, much to the terror of its staff, who hadn’t expected a royal visit today, I quickly set about finding Keira, and I discovered her making beds on the third floor.
“Hi.”
Keira started a little at the voice from behind her and then nearly jumped out of her skin as she saw who it belonged to.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Well,” I said with a shrug, “I do actually live here, you know. As well. And other places too. I know it’s confusing—and I guess a little extravagant—but there it is.”
“How did you find me?” she asked.
Shit, she really didn’t seem pleased to see me.
“I figured it out.”
“That doesn’t seem at all likely.”
“Hey, I’m smarter than you give me credit for.”
“Are you?” she asked, her voice filled with unmasked disdain.
“Well, maybe not book smart. But street smart.”
A half-smile flickered across Keira’s face at that, though she tried hard to suppress it. “You really aren’t street smart.”
“Would you like to hear me rap?”
“Oh dear god, no.”
I crossed the room towards her but she moved away, putting the bed between us. A few days ago that bed would have been an irresistible temptation; now it just seemed like it was taunting me.
“Keira, what happened?” I asked. “I thought we had something.”
“We did,” she replied. “We had se
x.”
“We had more than that. I know we did.” I was sure of it and, despite Keira’s actions, I was sure that it was mutual.
Keira met my gaze and I could see tears starting to swell in the corners of her eyes. “I thought that too. But then I heard you and your mother having a little chat about your upcoming wedding.”
She practically spat out the last word, and the bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach as I heard her.
Fuck.
She’d overheard us yesterday, and now she really had the wrong idea.
Shit, shit, shit, I should’ve told her about my mother’s ludicrous plan, and I shouldn’t have bothered playing along with my mother to avoid a big dramatic argument yesterday. I should’ve just acted like a man and told her the truth—that it bloody well wasn’t happening, and that was that. I’d been trying to avoid conflict by completely avoiding the issue and waiting for it to blow over like it usually did, but all I’d done was create more conflict.
“Keira, let me expl—”
“A Swedish princess?” Keira interrupted, trying and failing to sound blasé. “And a pretty one too. I Googled her. She sounds ideal for you. I hope the two of you will be very happy together.”
“Look, it was my mother’s idea.” I knew how pathetic it sounded. “She told me about it a while ago. Of course I was never going to go through with it. I was just humoring her during that chat yesterday. No one can tell me who the hell to marry, so she needs to mind her own damn business.”
“That may be true, but you didn’t even respect me enough to tell me about it. You’ve had ages to tell me. I heard her say you’ve known for months. Seems kinda suspicious that you haven’t brought it up at all, right?”
I sighed, holding my palms up in defeat as she glared daggers at me. “Yes, but I thought it didn’t matter. It doesn’t. She doesn’t. This is what happens in royal families: these things get set up and they fall through. My mother was worrying because I hadn’t settled down yet, so she went and made arrangements behind my back to try and make me worry about settling down, that’s all. She’s done it three other times before now, and it’s never worked out because I didn’t want it and neither did the other girl. I assumed that’s what would happen with Alexandra,” I said before pausing for a deep breath. “But now none of that matters anyway, because I’ve found someone I really want to be with. And it’s not Alexandra, believe me. It’s you. You’re the only person who matters in my life, and you know that.”