Page 66 of Lone Spy

"What?" I ask.

"We have two hours before dinner."

It dawns on me. "Oh." I let my cheeks heat and cast my eyes to the rug—tartan again.

"They are very much in love," Omar says, leaning back into the big armchair.

"They do seem happy."

"As happy as royals can be, I think."

“It's hard to be happy as a royal?" I inject a note of teasing into my tone, but also curiosity.Tell me a joke, or a truth about yourself.

“Royalty is not a choice. And if you don't have choices in life, you're less likely to be happy, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes." My stomach knots and I swallow the anxiety that tries to close my throat. All the choices Grand has stripped from people, and the ones he craves to steal, turn my tea to acid in my gut. I sit forward to place the half-empty cup on the table next to the platter of crustless sandwiches.

"Victoria was lucky she fell in love with a man who was acceptable and prepared for the lifestyle.”

"Right," I say, sitting back, tucking my feet again. "Though how many opportunities did she have to meet men who weren’t?"

"She could have fallen in love with the chauffeur." His tone is light, but his point is clear.

"Of course." I laugh at myself. "I was thinking of some tattooed biker, forgetting an honest working man would not do."

"It would be a good story though," Omar says, sipping his tea. "If she'd fallen for a member of the staff. Insisted on marrying him."

"Would her family have disowned her?" I ask, my tone still humorous—as if love being conditional is a laughing matter.

"Possibly. Hard to say in this modern age.” Omar shrugs, casual. We are just bantering here. Nothing serious. “It used to be there was nothing more unacceptable than the wrong marriage." He smiles.

"I'll admit, my knowledge of the royal family is limited."

"You don't follow the scandal rags?" he asks, smiling.

"Only the ones I'm featured in."

He laughs. "King Edward the VIII had to abdicate his throne to marry the woman he loved."

"How romantic," I say. "And sad."

"Turned out he was a bit of a Nazi, so the old rules on royal marriages did the country a favor."

"A bit of a Nazi?" I say, trying to keep my voice light. Trying not to think of how the Nazis murdered my grandmother's entire family and left her broken, bitter, and incapable of love. But I can’t keep the faded numbers tattooed onto her arm from flashing across my mind's eye.

"A sympathizer for certain," Omar says. "I think Hitler hoped to install him as a puppet king. Historically, nothing was as unacceptable to the British royal family as the wrong marriage partner. Next worse thing would be cozying up to a dictator. I suppose they felt that a supreme leader should be installed by lineage, not violence.”

I don't let my respiratory rate increase. I smile like we are still flirting. As if we have not strayed into the exact conversation I was sent here to have. “You said historically; is that no longer true?”

“The queen is a traditionalist.”

I can’t ask about the future king. It’s too obvious. Too blatant. “What about Jordanian royalty?" I ask.

Omar drops his gaze to his now-empty teacup. "The difference between a traditional monarch and a dictator is somewhat opaque." His gaze rises to mine again, his smile almost sad. "One inherits their power, the other takes it through force—or lies. Usually a combination of both. But in either case you end up with a leader who has absolute power."

The fire is suddenly less cozy, more suffocating. The heat coming off of it is scorching. The tea and whiskey in my stomach war with the light lunch I ate on the flight. "That was a nifty way to avoid the question," I say with a smile as if I don't care about his answer. As if this entire conversation is just foreplay.

He grins, his expression wicked. "I'm sure my father would not stand for any member of his family creating close ties with our enemies. As the Nazis were to Britain."

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