Chapter 23

Charles

I drilled my fingers against the leather seat. Beside me, Mario looked as tense as I was. I hadn’t told him anything, just given him the address I needed him to get me to ASAP. The way his Adam’s apple was throbbing, I thought he understood.

Right now, this was do or die.

I didn’t have to wonder what Heidi would do when I got to her flat. It would probably be déjà vu of the last time I’d arrived unannounced. Hopefully anyway. As much as she had resisted talking to me and agreeing with what I’d said last time, she had eventually come around. She had to come around again this time, didn’t she?

My jaw tightened as I dismissed the notion of anything else. Mother was not going to ruin this for me. She was not going to ruin what I knew more every day was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure in what capacity or how I would even pull it off, but I knew what I would choose for Heidi if it came down to it.

When I’d returned to the ballroom seconds after Mother had made every threat in the book, Heidi had been a distant wraithlike figure. All the guests’ noses had finally descended into their rightful places as their eyes remained trembling saucers and their lips curled from the ghost they’d seen. The ghost had left one shoe toppled over, sadly emblematic of all my hopes for that unfortunate night.

The limo stopped, and I got out. All that wouldn’t matter soon enough. All I had to do was get Heidi to listen to me. I shifted the bouquet of roses from one hand to the other. For some reason, these roses represented the preservation of our relationship to me. Maybe I just liked to think that I could control this too.

Going up the old rickety elevator to their flat was like déjà vu too. It occurred to me that maybe I was too late already. Maybe Heidi had somehow booked a last-minute flight out of here. Maybe I’d be confronted once again with her ghost.

The thought caused me to tighten my grip on the paper-wrapped stems of the roses. There were two of them for the two amazing months we’d spent together. Initially I’d gone full speed ahead with sixty roses, but as it turned out, they weren’t as easy to carry as you’d think.

Anyway, now here I was.

After my curt knock, there was silence. Two more curt knocks brought Liza to the door. She almost looked like she was the one who’d been publicly humiliated at the ball. The Daily Mail had taken the story in its eager jaws and ran full throttle with it. They’d somehow managed to capture a terrible picture of poor Heidi sprinting for dear life out of the palace, then later interviewed an anonymous informant who’d been on the scene. I was pretty sure it was my Aunt Hilda taking revenge for Henry breaking her antique vase on a family visit a few years back.

Liza looked at me with an expression that was neither surprised nor friendly.

“You know I can’t, Charles.”

Her voice sounded with certainty we both knew she didn’t have. Not yet. I held the door open with my palm.

“And you know I can’t leave here until I talk to her.”

Liza gathered herself to her full height, her lips knotting into a determined squiggle.

“Let him in,” a familiar and tired voice said from inside.

Liza paused as if she were thinking better of it. Then, with a step back, she mutely let me pass.

Heidi was sitting on her orange couch, staring off at nothing in particular. The sight floored me.

Liza lingered, but Heidi said, “Give us a minute, please.”

These words were as emotionless as the others had been as if she didn’t really care whether her friend eavesdropped and commented or left.

Luckily, Liza left, although I would’ve said what I had to say in front of anyone it took to get Heidi to listen to me.

“You know why I’m here, Heidi.”

I sat beside her, so close that we were almost touching. Almost.

No response. A glance over found her body had settled into the lines of the couch easily, as if part of her hoped to become a part of it.

“And you know why I can’t agree to stay.”

Her words contained all the quiet certainty I’d feared so much.

Seizing her hand impulsively, I declared, “You don’t understand. I don’t care what Mother says. I—”

“I do,” Heidi said simply.

As her face crumpled, I saw the truth of her words. In my hand, hers felt like a hard-boiled egg, like there were nothing alive or vibrant inside the shell.

“Heidi…”

She shook her head firmly.

“That is the queen you’re talking about, Charles. Your mother is the queen, and even if she weren’t, knowing both your parents would not only be against us but hate me—”

“Not both my parents,” I said quietly. “Anyway, you didn’t even hear what I came here to say.”

She only nodded, like she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. My words were just words to her now, inconvenient things she could fold up and shove in her pocket so she wouldn’t have to look at them.

Before I could speak, however, she said, “I’ve decided what I want to do, though. I’m going to tell everyone it was just a false alarm, that I was just an American girl looking to make headlines and that I’m very sorry.”

There was a single warble in her throat as she said “sorry.” It sent me flinging my arms around her.

“Don’t you dare.”

Heidi’s limbs were so cold and stiff, it didn’t feel like they were Heidi’s at all.

“We both know it’s best,” she said decisively.

“We certainly do not!”

My voice was more forceful than I had intended, almost like Mother’s, except what I was suggesting was as far from what she had demanded I do as humanly possible.

“Damn the press, damn my title, and damn my bloody mother,” I said heatedly, squeezing her hand as if it could pump her back into believing in us. “I’m not abandoning my own flesh and blood and the first girl I’ve liked since…”

With a single wrench, she threw her body to the other side of the couch. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Please, just don’t.”

Her sad voice wasn’t one about to cave. It was one that knew the futility of further argument.

“Just give me a few days, will you? A few days to see if I can even make the first steps toward fixing this.”

“There is no fixing this.”

Her pitched voice contained all of the rage I hadn’t heard up until now.

“Just a few days,” I repeated more forcefully.

She said nothing. Part of me wanted to stay, to hear her say she would wait, give me the few days I needed and deserved. But I figured the frown on her face was as good as an acceptance as I was going to get. The longer I stayed here, the worse we were fighting. Better to leave when I was ahead.

When I stood to leave, her whole body seemed to sigh with relief. I paused for a minute, hovering over her.

Powerlessness tore at me from all sides. There were so many things I wanted to do, and yet instinctively, I knew couldn’t. I would only make things worse. I wanted to seize her in my arms, twirl her around, and give her a kiss for the grand finale. I wanted to hold her so tightly in my arms that she could feel how supported she was, feel it radiating from her every pore. I wanted to kiss into every inch of her skin the knowledge that I wasn’t going to abandon her, not ever.

Heidi would’ve come around to that. Heidi would’ve understood.

But the hunched-over woman in front of me, the one Mother, the tabloids, and these horrible, horrible circumstances had created, she was not Heidi. There was no reasoning with that woman at all.

All there was left to do was leave, so I did.