by Avery Wilde
“Her Royal Highness, Princess Alexandra of Sweden!”
The liveried footman on the door bellowed the announcement to the room and I turned, almost unwillingly, to look at the woman my mother wanted me to marry. I remembered Alexandra as a very pretty girl my brother and I had played with on continental holidays, but that memory couldn’t have prepared me for how that pretty girl had grown up. Princess Alexandra of Sweden was, by any objective measure, stunning. Her skin was clear, her hair like spun gold, her eyes sparkled with girlish vivacity, and her whole face was as pretty as a picture. While wearing a royal gown, it wasn’t easy to look like anything other than an extravagant meringue-based dessert crossed with a fairytale castle on a cloud, and yet Alexandra managed to make it look good. Somehow that gown contrived to be appropriate to the occasion and yet also leave the viewer in no doubt that the body inside was spectacular. She radiated an angelic beauty and yet her every movement exuded a molten sexuality that had every man in the room adjusting his dress pants.
Right at that moment, I would’ve given her a two and a half out of ten. Maybe three as she’d clearly made an effort with her appearance. There was just no space in my mind for anyone but Keira, who was a perfect ten.
“Hi, Andrew!” There was an energy to Alexandra that made her seem to exclaim everything she said in bright, faintly accented English. “It has been too long!”
I nodded, privately wishing that it had been considerably longer. “Indeed. Are you looking forward to dinner?”
Alexandra leaned closer and the girlish energy in her voice was replaced by something more mature and husky. “I’m looking forward to everything.”
Jesus.
With that, and what might have been a wink, she moved on. I watched her go. It occurred to me that this would’ve been so much easier if Alexandra was just going through with it for the sake of duty, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She seemed to actually want me.
Shit.
***
It had been inevitable that I would be seated beside the Princess—I’d known that, and yet still resented it. Still, I knew that she was good company, or at least she had been as a girl. We’d really clicked as children, both filled with a boisterous desire to do everything we weren’t supposed to do: to climb the highest tree, to throw things at the greenhouse, to steal from the gardener’s shed. Sometimes I looked back on those halcyon days and thought about what a shame it was to have to grow up.
Which was perhaps why Alexandra hadn’t bothered…
“And then we ran out and they chased us, and we found a motorbike and they were still chasing us, and they caught us and we crashed the bike (don’t know whose it was) and they were all like ‘oh my God, it’s the Princess’ and we were like ‘yeah bitches’ and they were like ‘whaaaat?’. It was awesome! I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
“I asked how your fish was,” I said. I’d been sitting and listening in frozen horror for the last few minutes. Any lingering belief that I was some sort of royal rebel had now been well and truly dispelled—I couldn’t hold a candle to Alexandra’s insane antics. It had never occurred to me that I might be seen as a steadying influence on someone, but I guess that’s why the Swedish royal family had agreed to set something up with my mother. They wanted Alexandra to settle down just as much as my mother wanted me to settle down, if not more.
“After this, after this, after this,” Alexandra had a habit of repeating a holding phrase until she decided what to say next, just in case anyone else tried to say something, “we should do something. Have you ever peed off the tower?”
“No,” I said. “I might hit someone.”
“Yeah, that’d be cool! Let’s do it!”
“I’m not sure I…”
“I bet I can hit that old lady with my bread roll.”
“That’s my mother. The Queen.”
“Cool! You can have first shot!”
I felt a sudden and unexpected rush of sympathy for my brother—it was hard work being the mature, sensible one.
“Maybe later,” I said, suggesting that hurling bread rolls at the monarch was perhaps more of an after dinner activity. “Don’t you think there are other things we should be talking about?”
“Oh, I like that idea.” The more sultry side of Alexandra’s divided nature suddenly flared into existence, and I felt a hand sliding up my inner thigh with one destination in mind. Was this how girls felt when I was a bit forward with them? Tonight was turning into a horribly revelatory experience about how the other half lived. After dinner, I might look up some names in my little black book and make some long overdue apology calls.
“Please stop,” I said, removing the offending hand before it reached ground zero. “That’s not what I meant; not at all.”
“I’ve got double Ds, you know,” Alexandra replied, somewhat misinterpreting my intent. “You can’t really tell in this dress.”
“Oh, really?” I said, trying to sound as bored as possible.
She waved her hand. “Oh, don’t play innocent with me! You’ve been looking, haven’t you? Naughty boy!”
Her hand dived down again to squeeze my thigh, and once again I moved it before it could do any serious damage.
Alexandra pouted playfully. “You’re such a tease. Good thing I like that. But I’m not going to wait forever, you know.”
“Alexandra, I’m really not even slightly inter—”
I was cut off by a familiar feminine voice.
“More wine, your Highness?” asked Keira, her smile a rictus of clenched teeth. She was one of the maids who’d been assigned the dinner duty tonight.
“Thank you!” said Alexandra before hissing to Keira, “I think he’s trying to get me drunk.”
I watched the suppressed emotions battle for supremacy in Keira’s face as she filled Alexandra’s glass, and I sent her a silent message with my eyes. I love you. She managed a smile, and her eyes conveyed her own message of affection back to me as Alexandra picked up her refilled glass.
I couldn’t help thinking that the one thing my dining companion really didn’t need was more alcohol—she was bad enough sober. I wondered how many times people had thought that about me, and I idly batted away another attempt by Alexandra to squeeze my thigh.
“Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen!” The footman with the impressive voice rapped the floor with a staff for silence and it descended across the hall. “Her Majesty, the Queen.”
I watched my mother get to her feet. She had an innate understanding of how these events worked, an intuitive restraint that had seen her through long years in the thankless role of monarch. To look at her, you could not tell that she’d had an argument with me only hours ago, nor would you ever guess how much was riding on this event or how important it was to her.
“It is my great pleasure to announce the upcoming betrothal of my son, Prince Andrew, and his lifelong friend, Princess Alexandra of Sweden. May they know half the happiness that my late husband and I knew.” She raised a glass. “The beloved couple.”
What the hell?
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Even though she’d made it clear she wanted an engagement announcement by the end of this royal visit, I’d told her she wasn’t getting one, so she’d obviously taken it upon herself to try and guilt me into one by announcing our supposed ‘betrothal’ first thing at dinner. I glared at her, but she ignored me and kept her glass held high with a thin smile on her face.
The room rose to its feet, lifting glasses in well-meaning salute. “The beloved couple.”
I was about to tell everyone it was a load of shit, but then I saw Keira’s face from across the room as she stood there, holding a tray. She shot me a warning glance, then shook her head, so I sat back down and raised my glass with everyone else, playing along with the charade. Keira was right to have stopped me. If I got up and humiliated my mother by calling her out on her crap right here at the dinner table, then the story of the drama would be all over the tabloids by tomorrow
morning—courtesy of one of these gossip-mongering guests—and that was the last thing we needed to have happen, seeing as we were trying to figure out a way to make things right for everyone.
With my hand otherwise occupied and unable to stop her, Alexandra made her move, and I nearly choked on my drink as a small hand grabbed my crotch and gave it a squeeze. The room sat back down and Alexandra leaned over to me to whisper in my ear.
“So the stories are true.”
“Alexandra, stop it,” I hissed. “I’m not interested in you. Not even a bit. This whole thing is a sham.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled her hand away. “Sure. You know, I’ve heard about what you’ve been up to in the last few years, Andrew. Any hole’s a goal, huh?” she said. “Well, no other beautiful high-society woman in her right mind would ever marry you, but I’m willing to. So you can think of me as your final goal. The only goal.”
“Does this rambling speech with the poor sporting analogy have any sort of point?” I asked.
“I suppose what I’m saying is….this engagement is no sham. The wedding is happening whether I have to drug you and drag you down the aisle or not.”
She gave me a sickly-sweet smile, and I narrowed my eyes and turned away.
It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 18
Keira
Although a conveniently placed table setting hid Princess’s Alexandra’s inappropriate groping from most of the room, I could hardly have been more ideally placed to see it. My blood boiled and my arm automatically moved to draw back the now empty tray I was carrying, ready to whack the Swedish princess sturdily about the head with it. But, fortunately for my future employment prospects, I didn’t follow through. It wasn’t good sense that stopped me—the sight of that hand tightening on Andrew’s crotch had sent any good sense I might’ve had straight out the window—it was Andrew himself.
More specifically, it was Andrew’s reaction. The old Andrew might’ve been startled but would’ve still welcomed the overfamiliar intrusion. He would’ve enjoyed it and then made the excuse that he was a man and couldn’t be expected to control how his body naturally responded to a beautiful woman touching up and down his crotch. But instead, he’d exhibited extreme discomfort, and not just from shock; he simply didn’t want this woman touching him. He removed her hand and, when they sat back down after the toast, placed a napkin over his lap in an attempt to protect himself, to some small extent at least, against future attacks. Most importantly, he did all of this without knowing that I was still watching his every move. So he wasn’t doing it to keep me happy, he was doing it because he didn’t want Alexandra’s attention. Maybe it sounded arrogant, but I knew the reason why, and I felt a smug warmth drift through me.
He was my man.
To my further delight, when the incident was over, Andrew happened to glance back and notice me still standing there across the room. The situation being what it was, there was little he could do in the way of public displays of affection, but he shot a smile at me. It was just a smile, but then again it wasn’t. To me, there was so much contained in that simple smile. They say that couples who have been together for years lose the need for speech, and can communicate together without a word ever passing between them. Andrew and I had been together for hardly any time at all, and yet already, a look could convey a world of meaning. In this case, it said ‘I love you, and I would rather be curled up with you on a sofa eating day-old pizza than at a banquet with anyone else.’
I hoped that the look I replied with expressed my own feelings just as clearly.
The banquet seemed to last an age, but when it was finally over, the guests quickly filed out to have nightcaps in a sitting room, Andrew included. By the time the tables were cleared, the floors swept and the servants finally dismissed, I found that I wasn’t really tired. Even though I’d been working for hours, it’d been quite an occasion, and I was still wide awake and full of energy. I decided to go to one of the Castle’s galleries. Looking at beautiful paintings always calmed me, and a half hour spent gazing at works of art would get my system in a much better state for sleep.
Unlike the galleries in Richmond, those in Wellington Castle were open to the public almost daily, so I didn’t need any special permission to go and look, provided I didn’t look too closely as infra-red alarm systems guarded the precious items. There’d been something very special about having access to the more private and less widely-seen collection at Richmond Palace, but that did nothing to detract from the works on show at Wellington—for all their familiarity, they were still old masters that equaled anything in the great galleries of the world.
I strolled in and let the gentle silent ambience of the gallery flow over me and calm my buzzing mind. All the problems of the world seemed to fade when I was in a gallery, my own concerns drifting away in the happy firmament of art. Time had no meaning here, and I couldn’t have said how long I’d been standing and viewing the paintings when a sound caught my attention. I turned to see a figure silhouetted in the open doorway. The darkness of the gallery contrasted with the light from the hallway left the figure’s face obscured, but I knew who it was as soon as I heard the slightly accented voice.
“They said that I might find you in here,” Princess Alexandra said.
It was no secret amongst the other servants that I was addicted to art and spent a lot of my downtime in the galleries.
“Is there something you need, your Highness?” I asked in my most respectful tone. I might not like this woman, but serving her was still my job, and besides, it wasn’t Alexandra’s fault that her family had been trying to marry her off to the man I loved, who happened to be the father of my unborn child.
When I thought the whole thing out like that, I realized that my life had really started to sound like a soap opera.
“Do you think I am blind?” she replied.
It was swiftly becoming clear to me that the Princess hadn’t been looking for a maid to help her find her room or bring her a late night cup of cocoa. She’d been looking for me specifically, and clearly for some personal reason.
“Your Highness?” Although I had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was going, I decided that being dumb was probably the best way to play this, for the moment at least.
“I’m sorry, perhaps it is my English. I said; do you think I am blind?” Princess Alexandra enunciated the words with efficient threat.
“No, your Highness,” I said, still sticking to deferential servant with a side-order of dumb. “And your English is excellent.”
“How kind of you,” she replied with a smile that was anything but friendly. “But since you do not think that I am blind, I must ask another question: did you think that I would not notice what is going on between you and Prince Andrew?”
My mind raced. Even though I could’ve guessed that this was coming, I hadn’t figured out how to deal with it and was now left floundering between honesty, which was bound to make the Princess angry, and lying, which she probably wouldn’t believe. Neither way looked good to me.
Perhaps saying nothing was an option?
“Don’t bother denying it!” Alexandra said. “I saw the way he was looking at you and the way you were looking at him. Do you think I’m blind?”
“No,” I replied; my answer to that question had already been established.
“You are having an affair with him, yes?”
“No!” I blurted out. Panic seemed to have made the decision for me. “No. I’m just a maid.”
Alexandra snorted derisively. “As if that matters. We’ve all done it. There is a footman back in Stockholm who I....and a maid as well, actually. And a stable boy—my goodness, that stable boy! Put him and the horse side by side and you’d barely see a difference in the size of…but that’s not important. Stop trying to sidetrack me!”
“I’m not. And there’s nothing between me and Andrew.” I knew it was an error as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
&nbs
p; “Ha!” The Princess sprang on the mistake. “You called him Andrew! Servants do not speak of royalty in such a fashion. None of my servants would even dream of calling me Alexandra. They call me Princess Alexandra or your Highness. Even the stable boy calls me ‘your Highness’ while we fuck, it’s a bit of a turn-on actually.”
Even through my fear and uncertainty, I couldn’t help wondering at the workings of Alexandra’s mind; it must’ve been like a roller coaster in there.
“We knew each other before I came to work here,” I said, deftly weaving fact into fiction in the hope of coming up with something halfway believable. “We met in New York. We were friends before I worked for him. So yes, sometimes I forget myself and slip into old habits. And maybe that’s why you misinterpreted any looks that might have passed between us. I wasn’t aware of any, but we’re such good friends I guess it might have happened.”
For a moment Princess Alexandra was silent, and I believed that I might’ve got away with it, but this was merely the calm before the storm.
“Liar!” The word echoed and re-echoed about the empty gallery.
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are!” Suddenly the Princess’s mood seemed to change again. “Something is strange about this.”
“That’s because it’s not…”
“Quiet!” She might’ve been a little unhinged, but Princess Alexandra really had the sense of royal authority figured out. “I came here because I thought you were Andrew’s—how do you English say it…crumpet?”
“I don’t know about the English but that’s definitely not how we Americans say it.”
“I thought that you were his sex toy,” she said, finding a less ambiguous term than ‘crumpet’. “I do not want any husband of mine with a toy. All the sex is for me! But now I find that you call him by his first name, and you lie to defend him. You love him.”