His Royal Favorite (19 page)

“May I make a suggestion, Your Royal Highness?” Kimberley leaned forward. “I should like to commission a private poll. In-depth, confidential, results for our eyes only. We only glean so much information from various news organization surveys. What we need to know more about are the roots of people’s objections. How those who resist you as head of church and state really feel, and how we might persuade them to feel differently. That would give us something more substantive to work with, sir.”

James considered it, then nodded. “Excellent idea. Let’s get to it right away, though. Word has it the king is feeling rather spry again. The remaining length of my regency can probably be measured in weeks rather than months.”

He didn’t have to say the rest. Kimberley understood that once he was no longer head of state, he would become far more vulnerable.

What if it all falls through?
James thought, as he always did when he allowed these fears to claim his conscious mind.
What if the public’s acceptance doesn’t stretch far enough to accept a gay king? What if I never succeed to the throne?

Then the words came through his mind again, not in fear but in hope:
What if I never succeed to the throne? Then Ben wouldn’t have to choose. Then we’d be free.

After a while—probably a long while, but still,
eventually
—James and Ben would become less of a priority for the tabloids. Yes, the fascination would never entirely vanish, but a future king was a far more tempting target than a never-king. Ben might be able to bear a few more years of this if he knew a change would someday come . . .

But no. If James lost the throne, Indigo would be next in the succession. How long would she retain her position? A month? A week? The public had no faith in “Mellie,” believing her to be an addict. If Indigo wouldn’t speak to a counselor about her problems, certainly she would never confess the truth about her mental health to the general public. Richard would be right there, urging her to step aside—not even only out of his own ambition, as rapacious as that was, but also because he would be so smugly sure neither she nor anyone else could handle the role of monarch.

Indigo would believe that too. She’d surrender the throne in her turn, and from that moment on—no matter how much James or anyone else tried to convince her otherwise, she would always, always believe herself to be a failure. Her self-worth was already so fragile and tattered. After stepping down, would she have anything left?

James couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t spin lovely daydreams of a free life for him and Ben to share, not if Indigo had to pay the price of that freedom.

Besides, given how his relationship with Ben was going, they might not even make it long enough to find out whether James would survive a challenge to his succession.

So James put it aside, as he did with so many things. The possibility of a post-royal life with Ben remained in his mind . . . but buried deep, its potential still as silent as a seed beneath the snow.

They arrived at the Anne Frank House, which James had somehow never visited before. A lifetime spent at war memorials and visits to refugee camps had steeled him against showing too much emotion in public, but it was hard for him to stand in the room that had been hers and see the pictures of movie stars she’d pasted to the wall—innocent pleasures, the dreams of a girl just old enough to have crushes and aspire to glamour.

He would have to tell Ben about that, about the way the film stars on her wall got to him more than anything else—

But would Ben be there to tell?

James kept forgetting that. No, not forgetting. It was impossible for him to forget the pain that kept ripping him up inside. But he couldn’t seem to adjust his thinking to accept that someday soon, Ben might not be there to talk to. Already it seemed as if his life only half existed until he’d told it to Ben.

***

Two days until James’s return, and Ben still didn’t know whether he’d be at Clarence House when James got back. Thus far he hadn’t asked security to take him to his place in Islington; he hadn’t gone out at all, even allowing Glover to take the dogs for their walks.

Come midmorning, the most constructive thing Ben had done was tug on a T-shirt and sweatpants before pulling up old episodes of
Top Gear
on his laptop.

As Jeremy Clarkson drove a MINI Cooper across India, though, the door to the private suite swung open.

Ben startled. By now he knew when the servants were likely to appear and when they weren’t, and this was the latter. Besides, he’d asked not to be disturbed. His astonishment only grew when he saw who it was. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“I,” said Lady Cassandra Roxburgh, “am taking you to lunch.”

They stared at each other. She wore a pale pink Chanel pantsuit and enormous sunglasses pushed up on her head; he looked like a man who had neither dressed nor bathed in two days, which was precisely what he was. Ben thought bemusedly that it was as though they’d been handed different scripts.

“Can you just walk in here like this?” he said. “Doesn’t the palace have security?”

Cassandra folded her arms across her chest. “James gave standing orders years ago that I was to be given full freedom of the palace. Every royal order is followed faithfully unless and until the royal person in question lifts it, which James hasn’t gotten around to yet. In other words, ducks, your house is my house, and I’ve come to my house to get you off the damned sofa.”

“I appreciate the thought,” he lied politely, “but I’m not going out today.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What, is your schedule too full up with all the body odor and self-pity?”

Ben stood up. “You should go.”

“I’m not walking out of here without you,” Cassandra replied, “and at least half a dozen tabloid photographers outside saw me coming in. They’ll wait there until I emerge, whether that’s half an hour from now or two days—and I can wait two days, believe me. I’ve my own room here, remember? So unless you want tomorrow’s tabloid headlines to turn into frenzied speculation about whether you and I are shagging each other behind James’s back, I suggest you pull yourself together.”

God damn the woman!
With a sigh, Ben turned toward his room. “I need to shower.”

“I should say you do,” Cassandra said behind him. “Don your best.”

He showered, shaved, and put on the good suit again. The hot water and steam from the shower made him temporarily light-headed, and Ben realized he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Yesterday he’d skipped lunch, more or less. Getting a proper meal—well, aside from the company, he wouldn’t mind it.

As he and Cassandra walked toward the door that would lead to the drive, she said, “I like my driver, but I don’t trust him absolutely. In the car, we should chitchat about something completely innocuous. The weather, say. We can indulge in the age-old English pastime of being surprised by the ghastly weather.”

It was rather gray out. “Fine.”

“We’ll be dining in a private room at the restaurant—Spencer will meet us there, by the way. So once we three are seated, we can more or less converse normally, except when the waiters appear. On the way into and out of the restaurant, though, you and I will be seen and overheard. Every syllable will be reported. On the way in, I’ll rave about how good the food is. Pretend to be fascinated. On the way out, you can tell me how right I was.” Cassandra suddenly smiled. “And I
am
right about the food, incidentally.”

“You’re very practiced at this.”

“Are you just now noticing that?” They were strolling out toward the car now, and her driver appeared to open the door for them. As he did so, Cassandra turned to Ben and said, “Doesn’t look like a very sunny day, does it?”

“You never know.” Ben took up the game in turn. “Sometimes the sunshine will burn it off after a cloudy morning.”

They played it Cassandra’s way the entire trip.

Ben hadn’t been in public without James since before the coming-out, not counting his job when he’d had it. Even a restaurant seemed strange and new at this point, though this one was so posh Ben would have felt out of place no matter when he’d first visited. As they strolled across cream-colored rugs, past long skinny mirrors and tables full of wide-eyed, murmuring guests, Cassandra blithely said, “You’ve heard me raving about the lobster bisque, I know, but the vichyssoise! Just as brilliant.”

“I can’t wait to try it,” Ben said, wearing the most innocuous smile he could manage.

Upon their arrival in their private room they found Spencer Kennedy waiting for them, at which point things became markedly less awkward. Spencer turned out to be witty and engagingly blunt. When Ben asked him about the telecom industry, the conversation quickly went from the polite-and-general to the intensely detailed. Ben had done some research on Chinese and Korean telecom companies abandoning the West as a source of future profits, turning totally toward Asia as the number-one growth market; this turned out to be something Spencer was intensely interested in, weighing whether or not to try the Asian markets as an outsider.

For the most part, Cassandra simply listened and nodded, save for a handful of questions sharp enough to reveal her intelligence. Yet she remained content to listen more than speak—until the conversation took another turn toward sport, at which point Ben was astonished to see just how violently a polished aristocrat in Chanel could swear when talking about bad referee calls.

By the time the three of them were walking out, Ben was in a genuinely good mood. “You were right about this restaurant,” he said on cue as they went back through the crowd. Cassandra gave him a grin, and just like that, it was a joke they were both in on.

Spencer went back to his office. Cassandra returned to Clarence House with Ben, claiming, “I do so long to spend some time with Happy and Glo. Greedy little beasts.”

Once they were alone in the private suite again, and Cassandra was cheerfully allowing her designer suit to be shed on by two corgis, Ben said, “Thanks. For lunch, I mean. I needed to get out.”

“Indeed you did, and you do.” Her eyes flickered up to his, but only for a moment. “James has told me you’re unsure about—well, this life. Not that I really needed him to tell me so. It’s obvious.”

Ben sighed. “I don’t see how you put up with this for years.”

“I played a role, and I played it well. Remember how they all called me the pantomime dame? If you’re going to stay with James, you’re going to have to create your own role. You want him to be king? Well, then, time to start acting like a king’s consort.”

“It’s a very fake way to live.”

Cassandra snorted in a very unladylike way. “Oh, yes, and everyone else walks around being utterly sincere every moment of every day. Hardly. All of us engage in some degree of artifice, even if it’s just putting on makeup or answering the question of how we are with ‘Fine, thanks.’ The few people who don’t are usually mentally ill; I’m being entirely factual about that. Armoring ourselves against the world—it’s the first step toward psychological health. Your position just requires a great deal more armor than most.”

Ben weighed her words. He knew she wasn’t wrong, but he also knew she was oversimplifying things greatly. “I don’t know that it’s as easy as that.”

“Neither do I. After all, I fucked it up well enough.”

After a moment, he dared to ask, “Why do you care? I’d think you’d be rushing to set James up with someone more suitable, not keep me around.”

“I love James. That’s all there is to it. What he wants, I want for him, even if that’s an ill-tempered foreigner who roots for all the wrong football clubs.”

Ben had drunk a glass of wine with lunch, which helped make that amusing instead of offensive. “If that was the worst the tabloids said about me, I’d count myself lucky.”

“No such good fortune for you. Ben, you must understand—the people of Great Britain love James. They loved him when he was a smudge on a sonogram. They loved him when he made his first balcony appearance at eighteen months and waved to the crowds with both arms. No, they’re not thrilled he’s gay, but they’ve loved him too much and too long to turn on him now. So the anger they feel about their thwarted expectations must go somewhere. It goes straight to the dashing foreigner with the murky past who seems to have corrupted their perfect prince. You’re the temptation. The
homme fatal
. You, they’re ready to hate. So stop giving them so much fuel for the fire, would you?”

“You didn’t mind fueling their hate when you were pretending to be his girlfriend.”

“I couldn’t help it, really. Not without staying a virgin forever, and I’m sorry, as much as I love James, there are limits.”

“He says sometimes he tried to convince you to marry him, but you never considered it.”

“Oh, I considered it,” Cassandra replied, startling Ben. “Sometimes very seriously, and especially after a couple of my worst breakups. But I knew if I ever said anything to James, he would want to act on it right away. So I refused to speak unless I was certain, which thank God I never was.”

“You really would’ve married a gay man?”

She shrugged. “I would have married my best friend. James would have allowed me to date on the side, were I discreet about it, and vice versa. We could’ve had children, either through reproductive technology or old-fashioned determination—though in that case, he would’ve been the one lying back and thinking of England! And I’ve always believed James would be a wonderful father. My firstborn child would have become monarch, and the others would have been as physically and economically secure as it is possible for children to be. People have made worse bargains.”

It was all so clear, so vivid, that Ben felt surprised it hadn’t come to pass. Had James told Ben that was his plan in the earliest days of their relationship, Ben would have cynically accepted it. He might have taken a place in the shadows of James’s life, bordered by the edges of the bed they shared, while never realizing how much more they could be. “But you waited for Spencer.”

“He’s marvelous, isn’t he?” Cassandra’s grin was infectious.