by Avery Wilde
There was that desire for contradiction again…but was it really such a contradiction?
For a moment there, in a bar in New York, I’d really thought that Drew Ellis might be that elusive contradiction, that he could be sensible and stay-at-home, while at the same time being thrilling and unpredictable. Perhaps it had only ever been a dream, and Drew Ellis was nothing more than a construct in my head, extrapolated from an hour’s casual conversation into my ideal man.
With a strange shock, I realized that I missed him. This man who’d never really existed but had been a baited hook to get me into the sack had been the closest thing I’d ever met to my dream guy.
Jeez, wasn’t that just a bit depressing?
Perhaps that was why I’d taken a vacuum cleaner to the Prince’s hangover on my first morning here, and why I’d done so with such vengeful glee. He’d robbed me of something that had only previously existed as a shining idea in my mind. He’d robbed me of a perfect man, and of a future with that man. He’d robbed me of Drew Ellis. For that, he had to be punished, and it’d been petty as hell, but he totally deserved it.
I couldn’t help thinking back to a conversation I’d once had with Sarah, not long after we’d met. I’d asked if there’d ever been anyone special in Sarah’s life, assuming that there couldn’t have been, given her man-eating ways. But Sarah had become strangely quiet and answered in a few awkward words: ‘Yes. He got away. I guess I never really got over that. Hence....’
That ‘hence’ said a lot. In the absence of the man she’d loved, any man would do, and that was Sarah’s life. Don’t get me wrong; she loved her life…but that one loss blighted it, and I wondered if that was how I might end up, following the loss of a man who’d never even existed.
I’d been thinking these things whilst strolling down the servants’ staircase, and I emerged, if my memory of this part of the house served me correctly, near the Long Gallery.
There it was.
I beamed—I was actually starting to settle into this thoroughly intimidating place. I was a little early for my meeting with the Queen, but given our meeting yesterday, I knew that the genial monarch wouldn’t mind if I let myself in to look at the paintings for a few minutes before she arrived, so I strolled over to the door and opened it.
“What do you think you are doing?” Prince Michael had a voice that cut through the air like a diamond through glass.
“I was just…” My earlier confidence rattled by Michael’s sudden shout, I found myself floundering.
“You shouldn’t be here. You have a job to do.”
“I—”
“Don’t answer back! Don’t you know who I am?”
“Yes, but I—”
“You just don’t know when to leave it alone, do you? Now tell me, what are you doing here?”
“So you do want me to answer?” I asked.
In hindsight, that was probably not the smartest thing I could’ve said. On the other hand, I’d done nothing wrong. Prince Michael was behaving like a grade-A jerk, and the sight of his face turning red as he sputtered with over-boiling anger was worth whatever consequences might result.
I guess I’d recovered some of that lost confidence.
“How dare you speak to me like that!” he snapped, not waiting for an answer before continuing. “What are you doing here?”
“Her Majesty said that I could see the pictures in the Long Gallery.”
“Poppycock!” he said. It was hard to make the word ‘poppycock’ sound threatening, but Prince Michael more or less managed it. “Sneaking around in places where you shouldn’t be, then telling lies about it. I suppose I shouldn’t expect any different from my brother’s little plaything.”
Whatever sharply witty rejoinder I might have planned, it died on my tongue at those words. His brother’s little plaything? What the hell was he talking about?
“I…I’m not…”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Michael said, delighted to have regained the initiative and found my weak spot. “You think it’s a secret? Why else would my brother hire some clueless American bitch as his personal maid? It’s not like it’s the first time he’s done it. You’re not from here, and as a result you obviously haven’t got a clue how to do the job you were hired for, but you’re happy enough to give him the ‘job’ he really hired you for. That’s my brother all over, too lazy to go into town to visit his latest whore, so he installs her under the same roof.”
Browbeaten, shell-shocked and with no idea what to say, I could only suffer through the Prince’s words. For all I knew, it could be true—or at least, that could’ve been Andrew’s intention at some point.
“So I ask again,” Michael continued in acid tones. “What are you doing here? Are you meeting him? Got bored of his room, did you? Is that it?”
“She’s meeting me.”
The sound of the Queen’s voice, redolent with regal authority, made both Michael and I jump. Her Majesty really did have a way of creeping up on people unheard. Prince Michael’s mouth first hung open, then snapped shut, then yo-yoed up and down with uncertainty of what to say next.
“Keira and I had an appointment to view the paintings in the Long Gallery,” Queen Constance continued in level tones. “She may be a maid, but she just so happens to have a degree in fine arts, as I discovered yesterday, and I wanted her to educate me on a few things…if that’s quite all right with you, Michael.”
Prince Michael’s face turned scarlet. “Yes. Yes. Gosh. Quite all right.”
“Oh, good,” the Queen said, her voice now thick with sarcasm. “I’m glad. Now perhaps you’d like to apologize to her?”
“Er…of course.” Michael turned to me, his expression a mixture of anger and forced congeniality that made him look as if unseen hands were pulling his face in different directions. “Sorry,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“That didn’t strike me as particularly heartfelt,” the Queen said.
He gritted his teeth. “I’m very sorry.”
“Nor did that, but I suppose it will have to do. Now, Keira and I are already running late and I don’t wish to deny her the tour any longer, so we’ll be getting along.”
“Yes, of course,” said Michael, clearly relieved that this was apparently the end of the matter.
“But you and I will be discussing this later.”
“Yes, of course.” Suddenly Michael looked a whole lot less relieved. “How—if you don’t mind me asking—how long were you standing there?”
The Queen didn’t answer but merely walked past him to the door of the Long Gallery. “Come, Keira.”
I followed her, and the door closed behind us.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I apologize for my son,” she replied, looking quite irritable.
“It’s fine. He didn’t know I had permission to be here.”
“You didn’t tell him?” asked the Queen.
“I…how long were you standing there, your Majesty?”
The Queen arched an eyebrow. It wasn’t quite as effective as Rogers doing it, but still made its point well. “I’d like to know why both you and my son seem so keen to know the answer to that. And I suspect that when I find out I would rather wish that I hadn’t asked. Are you going to tell me why it’s so important?”
“I think I’d rather not,” I replied quietly, not wanting to lose an ally in the Queen but not wanting to report rumors about Andrew either.
“And if I ordered you?”
“Are you ordering me?” I asked, tentative and anxious.
“No,” she replied. “I think I trust you. I also think that you are protecting my son. Although why you’re doing so, I cannot imagine—he won’t thank you for it.”
“I think he said some things in the heat of the moment that he didn’t mean and shouldn’t get in trouble for that.”
It seemed as good an explanation as any.
The Queen inclined her head. “He’s in trouble anyway. Makes me wonder what wor
se things he might have said. But I will respect your wishes. We all have to live together after all, and it is nicer if we can do so in harmony. We all say foolish things from time to time. God knows I wouldn’t want to be judged for what I’ve said in anger. Anyway, shall we return to a more pleasant subject?”
We began to look at the paintings. Like so many art lovers and students before me, I’d always been fascinated by the ‘below stairs’ pictures of Velazquez. Great artists painting status symbols for the great and good, and particularly the monarchy, was all very common, but they so rarely used their gifts to portray the under-classes of their time—presumably because there wasn’t much money in it . Velazquez’s paintings of some of the servants of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain were well known, but these similar paintings of servants working for the British monarchy of the time were fantastic, and I hadn’t even known they existed until now.
“We have art historians here to look at them from time to time,” the Queen said, when I asked why I’d never seen these pictures before, “but they all say the same thing: don’t move them. There are some paintings, held in galleries throughout the world which I think will never leave the rooms in which they are now housed and are destined to be seen by only a few. The argument being that they are too precious to risk moving them. I always think that if they are not being seen, then really you might as well break them up for firewood. But I suppose in the future perhaps…who knows. A Queen is not supposed to have an opinion on these things. It can be most frustrating at times. Ah, here is something a bit different.”
At the end of the gallery was a much later painting, and though it did not have the quality or innate fascination of a Velazquez, I was still glad to see it, as it portrayed the current royal family.
“Photographs are all very well and no doubt an art form in themselves,” the Queen commented. “But I do believe in keeping up old traditions like official portraiture. And really, if a woman who rides around in a horse drawn carriage can’t keep up outdated traditions, then who can?”
Her eyes sparkled with good humor, and I smiled before craning my neck to get a better look at the portrait.
If it lacked the patina of an old master it was at least a good representation, capturing accurately the likenesses of the Queen and her two sons, and I found my eyes straying of their own accord to Prince Andrew. The painter had certainly caught his good looks and also the swagger in his bearing—even in a two dimensional painting, Andrew’s cock-sure attitude seemed to leap forth. But there was something else too; a weight seemed to rest upon the shoulders of the painted monarch-in-waiting, a seriousness that lay behind his eyes and a decency that shone from his features.
All of this was a lot to read into a picture, and I knew why. I’d read in a volume of art criticism that the paintings we really love (not necessarily the best, but the ones that most capture us) were the ones to which we brought something. The more a painting appealed, the more worlds a viewer was able to read into it, and the more it seemed to speak to them personally. To put it another way: it was possible that everything I read into the painting of Andrew was stuff in my head that I was projecting onto it. And yet I still saw it clearly.
In my long study of the picture, I’d almost forgotten that I wasn’t alone in the gallery, and I jumped slightly when the Queen spoke.
“You like it?” There was a curious look in her face as she asked. She was a very perceptive woman, and I hoped she hadn’t noticed exactly where my stare had been directed.
“I…yes,” I replied. “He’s definitely captured something.”
“Perhaps.” The Queen seemed less certain. She turned her own eyes to the painting for a few more moments. “I daresay one is always overly critical when it is oneself on the canvas.” She looked back to me, that curious expression back on her face. “How are you finding it, working under Andrew?”
I swallowed uncomfortably, somewhat disconcerted by the Queen’s choice of words. Had she overheard Michael’s accusation? Was ‘working under Andrew’ her way of asking if I was sleeping with her son? Whether it was or wasn’t, it seemed clear to me that the Queen had noticed my preoccupation with the Prince in the portrait and was pursuing it. Honesty seemed the best policy, because during our very brief association, I’d come to like and trust her.
But honesty with a side order of discretion, perhaps.
“We got off to a bumpy start,” I said, which was an understatement but largely true. “But now I think it’s fine. He was quite apologetic about…about the bumpiness. And perhaps I wasn’t completely blameless either.”
Andrew’s sleazy, jerkish reaction yesterday might have been uncalled for, but I was willing to admit that the vacuum cleaner at eight in the morning had been wholly malicious in its motivation, seeing as I’d heard Rogers mention that Andrew had been to a charity soiree the night before.
“Good,” Queen Constance replied, though I could tell that this answer had by no means satisfied her completely. “He is respectful?”
“I think so,” I said. At least he had been this morning. He’d been looking at me rather oddly, but not in a sleazy way; not like yesterday, and he’d even apologized when I noticed.
“It was always going to be a little awkward because—I don’t know if he told you—we’ve briefly met before,” I continued. “When he was in New York. That’s where I’m from.”
The friendly nature of our relationship and the trust the Queen seemed to place in me had motivated me to tell the truth—I didn’t wish to keep things from my boss and saw no harm in it. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw her stiffen, and I realized that I’d made a huge mistake. It was one thing for the Queen to break rank enough to enjoy an afternoon of art appreciation with a servant, or even to discuss the problems in her own family, but there were lines, and I’d apparently crossed one.
“In New York, you say.”
It was not a question but a bald statement. The Queen seemed a different person from mere moments ago; then she had been a person, now she was the sovereign, retreating behind the crown.
With a shock, I suddenly recalled all the pictures of Andrew that had been in the papers and magazines and plastered across the internet, from his time in New York. Pictures of him with one girl or two girls, or a whole crowd outside the bar where we’d met for that one ill-fated drink. All the girls were anonymous conquests, and the idea that any might pursue her son for some claim to him had clearly panicked the Queen.
I hastened to explain that I wasn’t one of those tabloid girls. “Oh, your Majesty, I don’t want you to think that—”
With a silencing hand gesture, the Queen interrupted me. “Please, I do not wish to know the details. I am aware of my son’s life choices but I have no desire to hear about them. Perhaps that is cowardice in me, and perhaps my inability to face it is the reason he runs as wild as he does, but there it is.”
“But what I meant to say is that I’m not one of those girls from the gossip columns,” I said. “We didn’t….it was different.”
I’d thought that the Queen might be angry, but instead she met my statement with an almost inexpressible sadness in her eyes. “I know, my dear. No one ever thinks they’re one of those girls. They’re always ‘different’. But they never are.”
A cold streak of doubt passed through me. If it hadn’t been for those girls outside the bar, then I definitely would’ve gone back with Andrew, and we definitely would’ve slept together, and then…what? I would’ve been just another one of those girls? Another notch on his bedpost? On the night, I’d tried to convince myself that that was all I wanted; my first one night stand. But even then it had been wishful thinking; I’d really liked Drew Ellis and wanted more, and naïve as I was, I’d thought he wanted the same. And who could say how many other girls had been in that very position with him?
And yet…no. I was different, at least in one way. I hadn’t slept with him, even though I’d had the chance to. And for all the strangeness of the last few days
, there was something between us. For all that I tried to impose distance and professionalism on our relationship, there existed a spark, a tug, a something that drew us in a way that went deeper than mere attraction. It was impossible to explain, but it was there, and I felt it burning deep within my body every time I pictured him.
“Your Majesty, I think I might’ve given you the wrong impression,” I said, speaking more passionately than I’d intended. “It wasn’t…”
Her hand went up again, and I snapped my mouth shut without even thinking about it. Though her façade had cracked again for a moment, the Queen was all business again.
“I think it best for all concerned if you have no further contact with Andrew. Please go about your duties for now, and I’ll have Rogers reassign you from Andrew’s service soon.”
“But…”
“Are you arguing with me?” All geniality was gone, replaced by icy, regal hauteur.
I demurred. “No, of course not, your Majesty.”
“Then go.”
“Of course, your Majesty. Thank you for allowing me to see the Long Gallery.”
She nodded, and I turned and hurried for the door. For a moment, I thought that I saw something like regret pass fleetingly across the monarch’s marble features, but perhaps I’d just imagined it.
Good job, Keira, I chastised myself as I headed down the hall. Only my second day on the job, and I’d really screwed up.
No…I’d royally screwed up.
Chapter 8
Andrew
As part of my mother’s new drive towards her sons, getting us to pull our socks up and assume some more of the responsibilities of our station, I’d spent the afternoon at a special school for blind children in West London. I’d been shown around classrooms, joined in with the choir and tried my hand at blind football, in which the ball had a bell in it and at which I’d been utterly useless, much to the amusement of the kids. I hadn’t been looking forward to it at all, but to my surprise, it had been a good day. No doubt this was not representative of all the duties a King—or King-in-waiting—had to perform, but it was still an eye-opener. All the stuff which I’d been shirking, skiving and hiding from for years was not as bad as it might’ve once seemed.