Page 91 of The Heir Apparent
After a polite forty-five minutes, I slipped from the reception room for some air and wandered down the hall until I found myself in the Wellington Chamber. It was a colossal space designed to intimidate whoever entered it, with a portrait of Barbara Villiers on the furthest wall. I went to see her and found that she was gazing down at me with disappointment, ermine robes around her creamy shoulders, rubies in the hollow of her neck.
What would you do?I wished to ask her.
But her violet eyes told me the answer. The House of Villiers was a ramshackle thing when she took possession of it, and she had turned our family into a stone tower that had stood for hundreds of years. You didn’t pull that off without getting a little blood on your hands. She didn’t flirt and fuck, scheme and conquer, just for me to ruin it all a few centuries later.
The doors boomed, and I flinched.
“There you are.” Mary continued to tap at her phone screen as she crossed the floor.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just needed a minute.”
Gleefully, she showed me every Instagram post and tabloid story covering the investiture. “Voguesays you’re a fashion icon,” she said.
“Cool.”
My own phone buzzed, and when I glanced down, I saw that it was James again. He texted me every day at noon, and I imagined him standing in his dark kitchen in Oatlands performing this last task before he went to bed.
Checking in, he wrote.
I angled the screen away, typing out a quick response before Mary caught a glimpse:All fine.
I was still stunned that James had found it possible to forgive me. When I called him at the pond, he’d listened to my story in silence. As soon as I’d finished, I apologised over and over.
“You can say sorry one more time, and then I never want to hear it from you again,” he said.
James had always suspected there was more to the story of how his sister died. He knew in his soul that we weren’t telling the whole truth. But he said that I was a child who did what children do when they’re frightened and alone. I knew he blamed Papa entirely, and he would not allow me to share the responsibility, no matter how much I’d insisted.
“Oh,” Mary said, still staring at her screen. “I found those contact details you were after—for the Italian man. Phone number and home address. No email. I’ll send them through now.”
My phone shivered in my hands, and there he was: Davide Rossi. He had left Rapallo and moved south for the Gulf of Poets, a crescent-shaped coastal inlet once beloved by all the creatives, from Dante to Lord Byron. Percy Shelley had drowned there when his sailboat capsized during a storm. His decomposed body had washed ashore weeks later, and they were only certain it was him because he had a Keats poem folded up in his breast pocket.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “You were discreet?”
“Yes, of course.”
“He’s an old friend of my parents. I might need to go visit him—I’m not quite sure yet.”
Mary glanced at me sideways and then returned to her phone, opening up the calendar that ruthlessly governed both of our lives.
“When? For how long? You don’t really have any time off until… March. Unless you intend to go for the day, but—”
“I haven’t decided yet,” I snapped.
She looked me up and down, a new habit she’d developed, perhaps wondering if this mystery man was the reason I’d been quiet and unreliable for months, dropping weight and spacing out during engagements, threatening everything she’d worked so hard to achieve for us both.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My father sort of… looked after him, and now that he’s gone, I might need to take over. It’s not something I’ve ever discussed with Stewart or the Queen—so if I need to go to Italy, it must be off the books.”
The vaulted ceiling was rimmed with lantern windows, letting in the drowsy autumn sunlight. Dust motes twirled and danced between us.
“Alright,” Mary said cautiously. “But you can’t go anywhere without your protection detail. And I’ll have to tell Stewart. He has your passport.”
I closed my eyes. I’d forgotten about that. After Mum went to Darfur to tell the truth about the genocide unfolding there, her philanthropic activities had been heavily curtailed by the palace. For the remainder of her marriage, she had no choice but to stand prettily at flower shows and yacht races, her passport locked in Stewart’s desk.Never, ever let them take your passport or your phone, she once told me.You’re a person, not a pet.Stewart had had my passport in his pocket by the end of the very first day.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“It’s not a big deal,” Mary said. “When you need it, I’ll ask him for it.”
I looked up towards Barbara and found that her soft, knowing smile had tightened into a sneer. In almost every portrait of her, she had posed with her chin resting in her white hand, making her look wanton but powerful. Now she just looked exasperated.
