Page 83 of The Heir Apparent
Blinded by my tears, I fumbled for the keys in my pocket and dropped them in the scrub.
“Is this about that guy?” I heard Jack say. I turned to look at him, the keys forgotten at my feet. “Your uncle said there was something going on. I don’t know, something about a library.”
My stomach roiled. Jack and Richard crawling through the heather together two days earlier. I had seen him lean across and whisper in Jack’s ear. “You talked to Richard about me?”
He ran his fingers through his hair again and hesitated. “He cornered me on the stag hunt. I know what he was up to—I’m not stupid. I was going to ignore it. But… is that what this is about?”
I thought of Colin, with his titles and his top hats. Granny liked him; the tabloids adored him. Being my consort wouldn’t destroy Colin’s life, or keep him from his land, or twist his family’s history of activism into something shameful. This was what Colin was born for, just as I was born for the throne.
I stooped to pick up the keys. “We should get back.”
“Lex. I don’t—”
“I’m not the girl in the barn anymore.” I wiped my cheeks with my fingertips and shook my head. “I don’t think I ever was. You were wrong about me. You should go home—it’s better this way.”
The advancing storm clouds cast us in a low blue light. There were tears in both of our eyes, but neither of us would let them fall. I knew that as long as I lived, the look on his face would never leave me. I desperately wanted to get in the car. And I desperately wanted to stay here on this cliff forever so we never had to say goodbye.
“You were never going to take a risk, were you?” he asked.
The next morning, I hid in my room like a coward. Finn knocked softly on the door and then let himself in. He sat on the foot of the bed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“You’ll take care of him?”
He dipped his head. “Who’ll take care of you, though?”
Tears spilled over my cheeks. I had lain awake all night and now I had a drilling headache.
“Oh, doll,” Finn soothed, “are you really sure about this? I know it’s complicated, but I’ve been living with you two for seven years now. What you have, I don’t think it’s easy to find.”
“You know I’d ruin it,” I said, though I was speaking to myself. I sat up and gathered him in my arms. “You’re going to make a really good surgeon.”
He smiled, but he looked mournful. “We’re going to stay friends, though, right?”
“Of course.”
He looked down at his hands. “I know I’ve always got people around me. And maybe it didn’t start that way… but you’re the first real friend I ever had.”
I smiled. “I really do love you.”
He held me again, kissed my forehead and then hopped off the bed. He was dressed in the clothes Mary had bought for him, as well as the Barbour jacket that was meant for Jack.
“Okay, we’re going to head out.” At the doorway he stopped and smiled. “And if you can’t find anyone, I’ll marry you. It’d be fun.”
I managed to laugh. “Honestly, though, maybe. It’s not such a bad idea.”
After he left, I lay back in the pillows and counted the rippling folds in the canopy above me. Then my heart surged, and I ripped back the blankets and ran down the hallway in my pyjamas. From the window on the stairs, I watched as a footman packed their luggage into a Range Rover while they stood together on the gravel driveway. Their backs were to me and I saw Finn rest a hand on Jack’s shoulder. When they climbed into the car, Jack looked up and saw me standing there, hiding in a tartan drape. Our eyes met for one last moment, that old charge still coursing between us. He dropped his head and I couldn’t tell if it was a bow or an admission of defeat. Then he was gone.
Going over it with Amira now, I told her as much of this as I could bear. She listened in silence, stroking Chino’s fur. She knew me well enough to keep her eyes averted while I told her my story. When I was done, she propped her head on one hand and gazed at me.
“I really am sorry,” she said. “I know you’re hurting, but I think you did the right thing. It sounds like he would have come here if you asked him. But it probably would have been a disaster.”
I nodded at the ceiling.
She checked the time on her phone. “Come on, let’s go have some dinner and then we can get drunk on the couch and watchLove Island.”
The day after the hospital visit, I rose early and went to the pond for the first time in months. The sun was yet to rise, and I wasthe first one through the gates and onto the frosted deck. I sat down and dipped my feet in the dark water, trying to work up the courage to lower myself into it. Scotland Yard had reassigned Rita to other duties when I stopped swimming, and I had managed to slip out through Cumberland’s gates undetected. For the first time in a very long time, I was alone.
