Page 76 of The Heir Apparent
We did what country estate owners always do when they have a guest to entertain and no plan: we went for a long walk. Jack and Finn pulled on their box-fresh wellies so we could walk along the river that wove its way through the estate. The kitchen staff, used to the whims of my family, swiftly put together a picnic that we could take with us.
“Did you notice how everyone juststoppedand went totally quiet when you walked in?” Finn whispered as we left the kitchen with our basket.
I hadn’t noticed. After a few months here, I’d stopped being startled by the hush that fell over every room I entered. I wondered now if perhaps I had begun to enjoy it.
Out on the terrace, we found Amira and Chino lounging in the sunshine. Amira grinned at Jack over the top of her movie-star sunglasses, shaking his hand daintily and looking at me as if she knew exactly what we’d been up to in his room. In Finn, she feigned icy disinterest, though he pretended not to notice. I still wasn’t sure exactly how much she knew, but we were all privately determined not to bring up what had happened between Louis and Finn at the vineyard.
“Would you like to come for a walk?” I asked her as Chino sniffed Finn’s and Jack’s shoes.
“Oh, I suppose so,” she sighed. “I haven’t done a single thing since we arrived.”
We walked along the river’s rocky shore, watching Chino plod through the shallows. Finn set about eroding Amira’s defences with a cascade of compliments and questions about herself. They drifted slightly ahead, and Jack and I went silent.
“How’s it been for you, being back here?”
“Strange,” I said, feeling the slightest graze of his elbow against mine as we walked. “But good. I think I needed to come back and make things right.”
He nodded, and I knew he understood. “We’ve missed you…” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
“Same.”
“Though this looks like quite a life,” he said, gesturing at the verdant hills and the castle on the horizon. “I remember when you first moved in, I didn’t really know anything about you. I spent those first few weeks googling the royal family.”
I smiled. “Did you read my Wikipedia page?”
“Yeah, I read your Wikipedia page.” He laughed. “I remember seeing this one photo of you when you were a kid. I think it must have been taken here. You were on a pony, and you were in the fanciest, frilliest dress, and I thought,What is this girl doing renting my shitty barn?”
I had never heard any of this before. He’d always seemed completely indifferent to my past, only bemused that I didn’t know how to send a package by express post, or change a vacuum cleaner bag or put wiper fluid in my car.
“I googled a lot about wine in the beginning,” I admitted. “So that I could impress you with my knowledge.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But you know a lot about wine.”
“I do now.”
He laughed again and put an arm around my shoulder, and it was like the last eight months had never happened and we wereback where we should have been, before the avalanche and the helicopter and the crown came between us.
Up ahead, Amira and Finn were locked in conversation. Suddenly she turned around.
“Lexi! You never told me you delivered a baby for one of those girls who goes into labour but had no idea she was pregnant. Ilovethose stories.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, allowing Jack to keep the warm length of his arm around my back, even as Amira and Finn looked at us and pretended not to notice. “She thought her appendix had burst.”
We sat by the stream and opened the basket that the kitchen staff had packed for us: crumbly cheddar, apples, shortbread and a thermos of tea. Amira seemed to be thawing to Finn, albeit reluctantly. He was impossible to resist, even if he had slept with your husband just weeks before your wedding.
“Are you ready for tonight, you two?” she asked.
“What do we need to be ready for?” Finn asked, intrigued.
Amira sipped her tea and threw a piece of cheese to Chino, lolling in the grass beside us. “You’re fresh meat, and this family is absolutely starving. There’s nothing they love more than having common folk like us at the table.”
“Amira, you’re hardly common folk,” I said.
“I don’t decide who’s common—they do. It doesn’t matter if you’re the prime minister or a millionaire’s daughter,” she said, and then looked at Finn and Jack. “But don’t be scared. It took me years to understand all the insults that had flown right over my head. You’ll be long gone by the time you figure out the slights that seemed like jokes.”
“Amira,” I said, glancing at Jack, who was rubbing Chino’s belly but listening intently, “you’re scaring them.”
Finn laughed. “I’m actually excited—this sounds nuts.”
