Chapter 3

Charles

Only two more days, I reminded myself.

The thought sent a thrill through me. Sure, Henry had already gone to meet with one of the models from the popsicle shoot. He hadn’t hesitated to give me all the sordid details, from their romp in Harrods to their final night in her suite. But something told me my date with Heidi wouldn’t be just another forgettable roll in the hay. Even over the phone, with every vibration her lips made against the speaker, I could feel it. The I don’t know what. The something. The difference.

Anyway, I needed to focus on the task at hand. I’d been planning this charity dinner for weeks now, and I intended it to be as successful as possible.

After all, I had a special interest in this one. Sure, I ran a handful of charities, some for endangered species, one for lupus, and one for cancer, but in none of those was I as personally invested as this one. Multiple sclerosis had taken out my grandfathers on both sides. I wanted to be the prince who eradicated it. Not just for my family and myself, but for others too. The only way I knew how was through these dinners with tickets at two hundred pounds apiece in a gala room big enough to sit one hundred and then a raffle for lunch with my parents, for which tickets were another one thousand pounds.

So far, everything was running smoothly. Other than my momentarily distracting thoughts about Heidi, I was in my element. Everyone else was too. The Zanes showed up, all seven of them dressed to the nines in their typical silvery-skinned splendor. Ronald and Helga even shown up and bought two raffle tickets each.

I forked a bite of salmon into my mouth and closed my eyes to enjoy it fully. Henry hadn’t recommended Stella Weiss for nothing. With all the dates and crazy nights out with friends he engaged in, he would know when he encountered a good cook. And Stella worked at The Lofts, the upscale eatery that was apparently booked months in advance. I hadn’t gone there myself, but if her cooking was anything like what we were having tonight, I was all in. The salmon was so crisp and tender, it broke apart in my mouth. The buttery potatoes were so good that you almost had to sigh as you ate. Not to mention the broccoli, which I’d waged a solid childhood war against but was now stealing from Henry’s plate.

“Don’t cause a scene,” Henry said sweetly as he stabbed his stolen broccoli with his fork, taking it back.

I scowled darkly at him but let go. Trust Henry to be able to throw that in my face. His good behaviour was as tentative as ever. Right now, he only had two glasses of wine in him, so I was probably safe. But any more and a good-looking female or two and we’d be in for a night.

At the sound of choking, I turned to see his face going beet red. I was behind his chair to help him when he swallowed with difficulty. I followed his narrowed gaze to the door, where much of the room was looking now too. Everyone had fallen into a hush.

There, at the door, in a simple, elegant gown of blue-and-white silk, was my mother, Queen Mary.

“Here we go,” Henry muttered under his breath.

“Can you save it, please,” I implored him as I sat back down. “I know you two aren’t exactly each other’s favorite people, but—”

“Each other’s favorite people?” he interjected, his face going even redder. “The latest I heard from Mother was that I was a family disgrace they should have shipped off to Siberia.”

“You know we don’t ship people off to Siberia anymore.”

Henry’s brows inverted in an incredulous glare. “Seriously?”

I sighed, giving him one of my glistening broccoli florets in recompense.

“Okay, so you may have a point. A big point,” I allowed, “but tonight isn’t about family politics bullshit. It’s about—”

“Supporting a good cause,” Mother said, smiling thinly as she lowered herself into a seat between us. “I didn’t miss your speech, did I?” she said, angling her steely-blue gaze my way. I shook my head, trying to think of something to say.

It was sometimes disarming to be in the same room as Mother and Henry. The tension was so thick that you could cut a slab of it and eat it—not unlike the salmon, although it would doubtlessly taste bitter as hell. Ever since he was fifteen and got kicked out of his boarding school for setting off fireworks on a stone bridge, Henry and Mother had been at each other’s throats.

Not to mention they both had the same disarmingly focused, steely-blue eyes—which were now locked in a glaring contest.

“I see you’ve been enjoying the wine selection,” Mother said blandly, her accusing gaze stopping on Henry’s empty wineglass with its thin bed of red at the bottom.

Immediately, Henry’s hand slipped to the wine bottle in the centre of the table. He poured himself another glass, watching her all the while.

There was a loud tinkle throughout the room, and I rose.

“That’s me,” I said, trying to smile. It didn’t quite work, as Mother and Henry were still busy glaring holes into each other.

“Please don’t kill each other,” I whispered before I left, not entirely joking.

One look over my shoulder a few seconds later and I found they hadn’t heard me.

Up on the podium, familiar nerves settled over me. I brushed them away with a swift shake of my head. This dinner had nothing to do with me except that I was the organizer and the paycheck. Even this speech had nothing to do with me; I was just the messenger. The important part was the message and getting it out. I was going to do my damnedest to make sure I gave it the justice it deserved.

“Thank you, everyone, for gathering here today,” I said, my gaze spanning the room. Everyone had stopped eating and was looking my way. Everyone except for Mother and Henry, that was.

Inspiration struck me. Although I had planned this speech and memorized it down to the last sentence, that didn’t mean I couldn’t improvise a bit too. Maybe add certain elements to make certain individuals in the crowd a bit more…I don’t know…open to not despising each other.

“I don’t need to tell you how much this means to my family and me. We ourselves have been ravaged by this cruel and unforgiving disease. Slow and painstaking and inevitable, MS leaves no survivors, and that’s just what we need to do to every strain of MS. Your generous donations today will help our battle against this unflinching disease, and so I thank you for that.”

I smiled a bit, thinking of my grandpa. I hadn’t known Grandpa Horace, my mom’s dad, but I had known Grandpa Philip on my dad’s side. The old king as it were. And I’d seen him decline limb by limb. He was the grandpa who’d bought me a model train set and sat down in the basement to play with me for hours as my little heart thrilled at every movement of the locomotives. He was the grandpa who read me bedtime stories when my mom or dad couldn’t. He was the grandpa who was a better man than I could ever aspire to be. I exhaled deeply, giving him a silent salute. This one’s for you, Grandpa.

“We can’t let this disease win. We can’t fold our hands and give up or let it take and rip from us what it will. We’ve already made strides toward a cure; doctors have confirmed that. Now let’s close the gap. Let’s not settle for prolonging the lives of those with MS. Let’s actually save their lives. We can only do that as one, with all of us working together as we are now. So please, even after you leave this dinner today, your bellies full and your smiles wide, remember that. We need one another for this.”

In the resounding sea of applause, the only faces I sought out were Mother’s and Henry’s. They looked in a little bit better humor.

However, when I walked back to them and sat down, my mother’s predatory nose rotated my way.

“Henry tells me the two of you visited a photo shoot. With American models.”

At my pointed glare, Henry only shrugged his shoulder as if to say, She ripped it out of me with pliers and tongs.

“We did,” I confirmed, carefully choosing my words before letting them out. “But it was an insignificant affair. Enjoyable, but nothing noteworthy.”

She nodded as though she’d expected as much.

“I’m sure your brother didn’t fail to make the acquaintance of several of the ladies, but please tell me you didn’t make the same failing.” Before I could respond, she continued. “Those American girls are something else. They aren’t raised with the same pedigree or class as British girls are. They’re wilder, more unpredictable.”

When she had said “American,” her mouth had twisted as if she’d said “Nazi” or something.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them got pregnant just to trap you and throw our whole family into a blackmailing scandal,” she said angrily, directing her comment at Henry.

His chair shrieked across the floor as he stood up.

“Shockingly, I’m no longer hungry.”

A glance at his plate found that he had finished off his broccoli, although his salmon was only picked over.

As he stormed out of the room, mother shifted her up-turned nose my way.

“When disaster strikes, just remember that I warned him.”