Page 32 of Thrones We Steal

Preventing a civil war is up to me and that intolerable human being across the table.

11

“Courage to Change” - Sia

It’s a good thing Davies is acting as driver as well as security, because there’s no way I have the presence of mind to make the drive home without veering off the road and into the steep embankment beside it. From all appearances, neither do my mother and sister.

We don’t speak, at least not with words.

What is there to say? If I refuse this proposition, I will single-handedly be responsible for the destruction of Wesbourne.

If I consent, it will be to the destruction of my entire life.

But just because our mouths aren’t talking doesn’t mean our bodies aren’t. I’m sandwiched in the back seat of the SUV that came as a package deal with the PPOs, and while alike in our silence, the feelings radiating off of the two women on either side of me couldn’t be more different.

Beatrice sulks on my right, looking out the window with her chin in her palm. She hasn’t so much as glanced at me since the prime minister presented Parliament’s solution for Wesbourne’s redemption. Her body screams its irritation like a siren, either at not being consulted before her boyfriend was offered up for an arranged marriage, or because she isn’t eligible to marry him herself. Probably both.

On the other side of me, the Duchess Dowager sits as erect and poised as ever. Her neat auburn French twist is the final period on her paragraph of elegance. I don’t need to guess at her thoughts either. This is the culmination of her dreams, her magnum opus. It no longer matters that her obsession over my skin, hair, weight, and education didn’t pay off in a marriage proposal from Henry when I turned eighteen. In the end, this is a close second, and she isn’t complaining. From the slight lift of her chin, it’s evident she’s already plotting, likely something to do with the wedding, or how I can shed ten pounds in the next four weeks.

From my position in the middle, I am contemplating the lure of prescription drugs as an alternative to facing this situation like a mature adult.

We arrive home to a house that won’t be ours for much longer if Parliament has their way. A family of strangers will put their own fingerprints all over it, obscuring the years my family has spent here, smudging them out as though they’re nothing. I learned to walk on these parquet floors, using the mahogany wainscot to help me balance. The door that leads into the back garden still has the nick from the kitchen knife I’d foisted at it in my desire to be a ninja when I was seven.

Bea and Rosalind dissolve into the recesses of the house, which leaves the library to me. Neither of them use it the way I do, and I’ve never been more grateful for that than I am now. There is only one person’s presence I crave. And even though I’ll never be in it again, this is as close as I can get to having him here with me.

I lift the lid of the cigar box and trap the musty tobacco scent in my nostrils. I move to the photos lining the bookcase. The room is a hodge-podge really, part cozy home library, part office and lounge, part shrine to the late Lord Theodore.

My father would have gone his whole life unobserved if it hadn’t been for his older brother’s death at nineteen and the duchy of Whitmere passing to the spare. He was happy with a life lived in the shadows, happy to contribute to the glow of his wife and daughters without needing a ray of it himself.

“What do I do, Daddy?” I say and lift one of the photos from the shelf. I’m standing next to him, the top of my six-year-old head barely reaching his elbow and my gap-toothed smile broadcasting my excitement. It was taken right after the King Frederick’s Day parade in the city. My mother had stayed home with a newborn Beatrice, and I couldn’t have imagined anything better than having Daddy to myself all day.

I can still hear the green and white flags snapping in the wind all around us, feel the encrusted pebbles on my cotton-candy-sticky palm from scooping up a handful of strewn flower petals. There was a whiff of peppermint intermingled with fried fish and crushed roses. Since then, I’ve only smelled that particular combination twice, and each time it smelled like pride.

I thought my heart would burst with it as I stood there next to my father. He was so tall I had to crane my neck to look at him. When the troops started passing on the street, I straightened until I was as erect as I could be, saluting them the way he’d shown me.

He taught me what it is to love your country. Nationalism flowed through his veins in tandem with his blood. He’d joined the military as soon as he was old enough, and had only resigned when I was a few years old. My mother’s nagging him to be closer to home finally wore him down.

He would have given his life for Wesbourne without batting an eye. He would expect no less from his daughter.

I put the photo back with a sigh and pick up another one, this one of my father before I was born, even before his marriage to Rosalind. He looks sharp and handsome in his dark green uniform, grinning broadly at the camera with the rest of his squad. I trace a thumb over the lines of the face that’s grown hazy in my memories.

What I wouldn’t give for one more day.

“I thought I might find you here.” My mum’s voice is quiet, but it startles me anyway.

She hands me a tissue, and it’s then I realize my cheeks are wet with tears. I wipe them away and turn the photo toward her.

“He looks so young,” I say.

“Only eighteen,” she says. “We met several years after this was taken.”

“I still can’t believe he resigned. He always seemed so proud of his service.” As much as I loved all of the time I had with him as a result, I’ve always imagined that he harbored a small resentment toward Rosalind for making him quit. And if he didn’t, I do.

“He changed in those last few years. He never told me about the things that haunted him, just kept them bottled up inside. It was best that he came home when he did.”

“Did he ever mention going back?”

“Not that I recall.” She claps her manicured hands together. “Now, let’s talk about what we’re going to do with the bomb Parliament dropped.”

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