Page 67 of The Heir Apparent
“Where do you go every morning, Lexi?” she asked. “I see you hopping in your car at dawn most days.”
“Oh, just off for some exercise,” I said.
I would not tell her about the pond for anything, even if it meant the next few weeks held for me a dozen stories about my desperate, but necessary, efforts to lose weight at a nameless gym. After six months back inside, I was still the same average-sized woman I had been the day I arrived. Even with Demelza’s boyish thighs crossed beside me, I was resisting the lure of deprivation.
“Where do you go? I do Pilates at Exhale—you should come with me one day.”
A hand on Demi’s shoulder saved me from further questioning. We turned to see Colin with a couple of men settling into the seats behind us. They were all dressed in pale, half-buttoned shirts, their eyes behind Persol sunglasses.
“Hi girls, how are we?” Colin asked. He looked at me and smiled. “Your Royal Highness, long time no see.”
I was relieved he didn’t try to kiss my burning cheeks. The photos of this exchange so far would already be enough to knockany “fab four” headlines off the tabloid front pages. Despite the near-constant gossip in the tabloids, Colin and I hadn’t been caught in the same frame since the night of the state banquet. After we left Lutton Hall, I’d gone directly to Pakistan and Sri Lanka for a tour that Papa had been supposed to take.
“Colin, we’ve just been reliving our weekend at Lutton Hall,” Demelza said.
“Oh, good, I haven’t been able to stop reliving it either.”
There was a burst of applause as the players walked onto the court, and then the commentator came over the loudspeaker to remind everyone to be quiet. I kept my eyes forward for the entire match, though I couldn’t tell you who won or by how many points. I clapped when the crowd did, I gasped at their cue, putting on the performance of my life until one of the players fell to her knees and sobbed, the spectators leapt to their feet, and it was over. Soon, the chairman of the club was by our side, ready to escort us downstairs to meet the players.
“Bye bye, Colin,” Demelza said, waving to the row of white-teethed men before she led us up the stairs.
Just as I passed, Colin reached out and grabbed my wrist. He pulled me towards him so he could whisper in my ear, guaranteeing the tabloids the tight shot they desired.
“Hey,” he whispered, “I keep thinking about the library. Text me back, okay? I want to see you again.”
I thought about Colin’s hands on my waist, his decisive mouth on mine. I managed a smile and some non-committal noises before I said, “I better go do this—they’re waiting for me.”
After we shook hands with the players and said goodbye to Birdie and Demelza, Amira and I finally climbed back into the car and headed home.
“So,” Amira said, as I’d known she would when we were alone, “if you’re trying to get him to leave you alone, ignoring him like this isn’t going to work. He loves the chase. This is probably driving him wild.”
I stared out the window.
“Really, though,” she said. “Do you like him? Are you just making him work for it? Because I totally support that.”
“I don’t know. I’m not playing games,” I said irritably.
I felt Amira roll her eyes. I knew she found my indecision intolerable. I knew that inviting Jack to London was asking for trouble, but I’d done it anyway. We had made no promises to each other; we had never even kissed. And yet, what had happened with Colin in the library felt like a betrayal.
At home, I went to my room to take off my makeup. I told myself that I would not check the news sites, that I would wait for Mary’s assessment in the morning. But once I lay on the bed with Chino beside me, I was pulling up theDaily Poston my phone. “LOVE SET MATCH? Princess Lexi whispers sweet nothings to rumoured suitor Colin Bellingham during fab four Wimbledon outing,” it read. It was a nice photo, really. We were both smiling as he looped his hand around my forearm and I leaned in conspiratorially. For someone to touch a member of the royal family in public was like releasing a written statement to confirm that, yes, you had dry humped them in a library. Mary would not be happy. Granny and Stewart, who wanted to keep the focus on the Pakistan tour, would not be happy. This was the kind of thing Mum would do after the divorce—smile at a man, walk in the vague proximity of a man—and I would hear Granny and Papa’s disappointed whispers at the breakfast table as they discussed the fallout.
My phone rang, and I expected it to be Mary. But it wasn’t—it was Jack.
“Hi,” I said in a small voice, wondering if he’d somehow seen the photos already, if he was calling to cancel the trip. “You’re up early.”
“Hey, yeah,” he said.
“Everything okay?”
It was the middle of the night in Hobart, just past winter solstice, when the air is still and cold. There would be snow on the mountain and frost on the grass. The previous winter, Jackand I had sat on the roof of the main shed one clear night to watch the Aurora Australis set fire to the sky. As a solar storm raged in front of my eyes, I felt like a speck, like a clump of cells, like stardust in a universe that neither loved nor hated me, as anonymous and unimportant as every other living creature on the planet.
“Yeah, everything’s fine. I don’t want to freak you out, but I just thought you should know that we’ve noticed a guy hanging around,” he said. “He sits outside the gates in his car and follows us to town. And he was in the waiting room at the hospital when Finn was on shift a couple of times.”
My stomach churned as I ran through the possibilities: a reporter delving into my lost years, a stalker who had latched onto those closest to me.
“Does he have a camera?” I asked.
“I don’t know, maybe,” Jack said. “The thing is, Mum didn’t realise, and he came onto the vineyard posing as a distributor. She showed him around, but he kept asking all these questions about you. I don’t think she told him anything really, and when she realised he wasn’t there about business, she asked him to leave.”
