Page 103 of The Heir Apparent
She sat up and I saw that her eyes were wet. “I’m not like you. I won’t be able to do it.”
“Yes, you will,” I said. “You’re going to go out there and make yourself a life. You’re going to have a career and friends and your own home. And then one day you’re going to meet a man, and you two are going to live together and you’re going to fight over stupid things and get through rough patches, and you’ll be disgustingly happy.”
She rolled her eyes, though tears were now sliding down her face. She smiled at me. “Like you and Jack.”
His name opened up the sucking chest wound I had been trying to ignore for four months. Even though I’d crossed hisname off the guest list, even though I’d given him every reason to hate me for the rest of our lives, I still found myself watching the door all night, wishing he would come through it. My chin began to tremble and I shook my head against the tears.
“No, I ruined that.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said softly.
I wiped my eyes, not caring about my makeup. “I’m not who he thinks I am. If he knew what I did, he wouldn’t want me.”
She pulled me into her arms, our tears dampening the shoulders of our gowns as we both cried. We held each other until the last remaining guests drifted down the stairs, until the staff dimmed the lights in the halls, and a hush fell over the palace. Amira sat back and sighed.
“Let’s go home and have a drink,” she said. “We have a lot to discuss. You need to decide what you’re going to do with your life.”
When I looked at her, she smiled and took my hands in hers.
“I want you to forget everything anyone’s ever said to you about destiny and service and changing the world. What do you want?”
“I have a duty.”
She nodded. “Yes. You have a duty to Louis. You have a duty to your parents. You’re alive and they’re not, so you must live for all three of them. Now, what doyouwant?”
No one had ever really asked me that before—except Jack. I looked up towards the glass dome in the ceiling and found that the stars over London were finally familiar to me again. Maybe I would live in this palace for the rest of my life, my hand sliding up this very banister over thousands of nights as I went upstairs to bed. Maybe I would watch that hand become speckled and frail with age, while the stars over my head would never change. Maybe I would learn to live with my secrets.
When I looked at Amira, another tear traced down my cheek. “It’s an impossible choice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
25 December 2023
The night had brought a silent snowfall, and when we woke up on Christmas morning, the world was clean again. Demelza, Birdie and I stood in the guest wing of Granny’s Norfolk home and looked out the window.
“Christ, I have to change my shoes,” Birdie moaned while pressing her fingers to the glass. “I’ll never be able to walk in these spikes.”
She raced down the hallway towards her bedroom in search of more appropriate footwear while Demelza snorted and flopped into an armchair.
“Only a trollop wears spikes to church.”
She looked regal in her bright white coat and pearl-studded headband, and when I glanced down at my own outfit, I frowned. I’d sent Mary home for Christmas and for the first time in a year, it was up to me to dress myself. I’d pulled on a heavy cream coat that once belonged to Mum and my old black Blundstones. I looked the way I did in years past when I flew to Norfolk for the holidays, slightly dishevelled and relegated to the back row of the church.
Demelza stretched and then studied me with her cool, feline eyes.
“So,” she said, “are you ever planning to move into Cumberland 3? Or are you and Amira just going to live together forever like old spinsters?”
“I’ll be moving very soon.”
She raised an eyebrow. I knew she’d already made a quiet case to Granny that the freshly renovated apartment should be hers since I obviously didn’t want it. While I continued to sleep in my childhood home across the square, Cumberland 3 had stood ready and waiting for me for six months. But the time had finally come for me to grow up.
I turned to look out the window, Birdie’s oily fingerprints marring the view.
“You know,” I said. “I’ve stayed silent about everything that’s ever happened in this family. Maybe because I wanted to be part of a family and not a collection of rival courts. I’ve never leaked anything to the media.”
“Nor have I.”
I looked at her doubtfully, but she shrugged.
