Page 38 of The Heir Apparent
I looked at the clock. Everything was happening too fast, and my excitement morphed into panic. Yesterday, I was fully prepared to walk into this meeting and ask them to draw up the paperwork so I could go home. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“I should get dressed for this thing,” I said. “I can’t really keep the Queen waiting.”
She smiled again and nodded. With the mourning period officially over, it was time to emerge from our black garments.Mary presented me with a boxy blazer and matching trousers in a deep hunter green. It was the colour of Mum’s eyes, the colour she wore almost exclusively for her first few years as a royal woman.
“Now, I know we’re staging a quiet revolution here,” Mary said, kneeling on the floor to dig through the suitcase of shoes. Her voice had transformed in the few moments we’d been speaking, so it was not quite so soft, no longer unsure. She was like the little mouse who roared. “But fashion is power. If you dress the part, they’ll accept you. Once we’re on the inside, that’s when we change everything.”
She held up a pair of tan suede heels and squinted at them. “These are perfect.”
The meeting was held in Granny’s private apartment, which overlooked the East Terrace Garden. I had expected Papa’s lawyer, Antony Eastaughffe, to be there to read his last will and testament. Instead I found Granny seated at the head of the table, with Stewart on one side and the prime minister on the other. After tea was poured, Stewart spread his fingertips on the papers before him, as if divining their message by touch, and looked at me over the rims of his glasses.
“Now, ma’am,” he began. “You’ll understand that your father, the Prince of Scotland, was bound by the custom of male primogeniture in writing his will.”
I looked at Jenny, who managed to keep her face neutral. I knew she was pushing for a law to remove the last hereditary peers from the House of Lords. She had also called for the toppling of the monarchy when she was nineteen, in a video that resurfaced when she ran for office. What must she think of us, this family that played with expensive toys that didn’t belong to us?
“Your stepmother, Annabelle, the Dowager Duchess of Exeter, will receive your father’s possessions—his estate in Scotland, his jewellery and watches, the collection of lithographs, as well as the antique gramophones. Elton Park was boughtwith revenue from the Duchy of Exeter, so it therefore remains property of the duchy,” he said, his eyebrows rising and falling the way they did when he was working up to something.
“It’s okay, Stewart, I know he didn’t leave me anything.”
All three of them glanced up at me, surprised. A part of me hoped Papa might have thought of me when writing his will. He was far too traditional to leave me anything of value, but, against my better judgement, I had a fantasy that there was some souvenir from our past that would show he truly did love me, that he had forgiven me, that he was my father. I had no idea what this object would be. I could not think of a single thing that might hold deep significance to both of us. And that, perhaps, was the trouble with Papa and me. We were father and daughter, and we were also strangers to one another.
“That’s right, ma’am,” Stewart said slowly. “It is the way things are done, as you know. Prince Louis’s portion of your mother’s trust now goes to his wife, the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, when she turns thirty. We also thought it best if perhaps Cumberland 1 remains hers for as long as she wishes.”
Mum’s divorce payout had been close to £18 million, though she had burned through almost all of it to cover her exorbitant security costs in her final years. No longer a working royal, she had been stripped of her taxpayer-funded protection, leaving her out in a world that hated her as much as it exalted her. I was fairly certain there had been only about £10,000 for Louis and me to share by the time she died, although it was a relief Amira would always have a place of her own.
“That’s good,” I said. “For Amira, I mean.”
“Yes, ma’am. Depending on your own intentions, Cumberland 3, which is just across the quadrangle, is undergoing renovations that will be completed by spring. It would make a fine home for you.”
He glanced at me, but when I said nothing, he returned to his papers.
“Now, on the matter of income. I am sure you’re aware the Duchy of Exeter is reserved only for the monarch’s eldest son and heir,” Stewart said, his eyebrows furrowing again. “This is according to law. With your father and brother gone, you are the monarch’s heir, but obviously not her male child, so the duchy—and its considerable profits—can never be yours.”
Granny met my gaze. I wondered if they had strategised beforehand, deciding who should deliver which strange bit of news. The Duchy of Exeter was set up nine hundred years ago to ensure that the king’s son enjoyed a lucrative income while he waited to ascend the throne. Those who lived on the duchy’s prime southern land—whether they were pensioners, the owners of sprawling farms, or big corporations—were expected to pay him rent. With more than 100,000 acres of land, as well as a few savvy investments, the duchy was today worth about £1 billion. The arrangement meant that Papa, with zero effort, had earned an annual income of £20 million to buy all the lithographs his heart desired.
“The duchy goes back to being administered by the crown estate?” I asked.
As children, Louis and I had been required to sit through weekly constitutional history lessons with a private tutor. I had only vaguely paid attention, knowing none of it would ever be my problem. But a £1 billion parcel of land that would never be mine, under any circumstances, purely because I was a girl, was a fact that had stuck.
“Her Majesty the Queen will support you financially—if you choose to stay,” Stewart said. “But yes, the revenue from the duchy will flow back to the government.”
“Well,” I said, looking at Jenny, “congrats to you, I guess?”
She laughed a little, then stopped when Stewart shot her a look. Her face sobered as she turned back to me.
“We’re at the point where we must discuss your future, ma’am,” she said. “You are now first in line to the throne. Do you intend to wear the crown when it comes to you?”
I looked at their weary faces, these three people who made momentous decisions behind closed doors. I had spent the last eleven years believing the crown should be quietly tossed into a city dumpster like a murder weapon. It had turned siblings against each other, triggered wars, broken up marriages, enslaved millions, destroyed civilisations. What did it say about me that I would now consider bearing its weight?
“She doesn’t know,” Granny said. Everyone turned to look at her. It was the first time she had spoken since I’d come into the room. “She simply doesn’t know.”
She rose from her chair, so we all stood too. We watched as she wandered over to look at the garden through the window.
“I wasn’t sure either, to be honest,” she said. “Though I was never given a choice. I was just a girl. Everyone believed it was God’s plan, and who would question such a thing? But the world feels like it’s on a precipice, doesn’t it? The next monarch’s reign is likely to be the hardest in our family’s history.”
She left the window and walked back to the table to prepare herself another cup of tea, waving Stewart away when he tried to help.
“The greatest challenge for my successor will be guiding this family through whatever lies ahead. I’d like to believe this planet isn’t doomed, but there will be sacrifices to make and people will be afraid. I’ve lived through wars. When people are scared, they can become… irrational. The next monarch could be a symbol of hope, a great unifier, a stabiliser,” she said, sipping from her cup. “But if they fail, they’ll be tossed on the scrapheap.”
