Page 4 of Royally Wed
CHAPTER
TWO
Three weeks ago, when Princess Amelia Grace Amcott’s mother first suggested an engagement to Holden Beckett, the Duke of Atteberry, the idea had seemed preposterous. Beyond preposterous, really. Granted, Amelia had known Holden her entire life. But she’d always considered him more of a father figure than a potential husband.
Not that she didn’t already have a father. She did, hisnear-constant absence notwithstanding. When your mother was the queen of England, and your father was the prince consort, dear old dad had a tendency to fade into the background.
Still, Amelia had seen Holden more as a paternal presence than marriage material. For starters, he was pushing sixty. Not that sixty was ancient or anything—Pierce Brosnan was around that age, wasn’t he? And Ameliamighthave made out with him at a red-carpet event after a half dozen martinis.
Shaken not stirred, obviously.
But that was different. Pierce was James Bond, not the father of her closest girlfriend. And Amelia didn’t playdrinking games at the BAFTAs anymore. Nor did she make out with random celebrities and end up, mid–wardrobe malfunction, on the cover of theDaily Mail.
Amelia, no longerthe royal bad girl, was reformed now. She was doing her level best to be a good princess.
That was the plan, anyway. It’s just that being good was proving to be much harder than she’d anticipated, especially thegetting marriedpart.
But again, when your mother was the queen of England, a “suggestion” wasn’t anything of the sort. It was an order. Despite all the scandals Amelia had caused—andthose scandals had been numerous—she’d never been issued a direct order from the queen before.
Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t have gotten herself into so much trouble. Emphasis onmaybe.
But it was too late to ponder the myriad ways in which she could’ve saved herself. The queen had chosen the way—a royal engagement. The world loved a fairy tale, after all. And nothing screamed storybook romancelike a princess in a wedding gown.
The trouble was while Amelia could wrap her mind around being engaged—barely—she couldn’t quite picture actually walking down the aisle of Westminster Abbey in a frothy white Alexander McQueen.
Even after she’d acquiesced and posed for pictures alongside Holden with a massive diamond on her finger at the engagement announcement, she hadn’t quite believed she’dever be his wife. Surely it had all been for show.
The press would make a big fuss over the engagementand then all the excitement would die down. Did the British people really care who she married? It wasn’t as if Amelia would ever sit on the throne. She wasn’t the heir. She wasn’t even the spare. Her two older brothers played those roles to perfection. Amelia was just the extra.
Unnecessary,really.
But the excitement hadn’t ever died down. The frenzy had only grown more intense, and now it had reached staggering levels Amelia had never thought possible.
Her mind kept spinning back to something she’d read about another royal back in the eighties who wanted to back out of her wedding to a famous prince at the last minute. When she started having cold feet, her older sister told herit was too late because “your face is already on the tea towels.”
Now it was Amelia’s face on the tea towels. And the commemorative coins. And the T-shirts in the pop-up tourist stalls that had taken over every street corner in London. She’d even heard there were now Princess Amelia and Duke Holden dolls for sale, complete with their own Barbie-sized horse-drawn carriage. Although, she’d stoppedshort of confirming the dolls with a Google search, because the thought of her likeness being memorialized in such a way gave her the creeps.
She suppressed a shudder as she made her way down the Queen’s Corridor on the ground floor of Buckingham Palace, toward her mother’s sitting room. If Amelia needed confirmation that the wedding was happening, all she had to do was take a single glance outany of the palace windows that overlooked the Mall. Blue-and-red bunting and Union Jackflags stretched as far as the eye could see.
No thank you.
Less than a month was hardly enough time for Amelia to get used to the idea of marrying anyone, much less Holden. But that didn’t matter. Thanks to Holden’s nefarious brother, Gregory, the wedding was a big, fat, urgent deal. Emphasis on urgent.
Amelia might not be ready, but dear brother Gregory certainly was. As was the rest of Holden’s family. And Amelia’s mother, too, since the fate of her crown was hanging in the balance until the wedding vows were exchanged.
Thewhole countrywas ready, but Amelia couldn’t even bring herself to look at the decorated streets. Nor did she allow her gaze to stray toward the State Ballroom, where allthe wedding gifts that had been arriving from the ends of the earth were being cataloged, sorted, and lined up for her inspection.
She couldn’t avoid the room forever, and she knew it. By last tally, she had more than two thousand thank-you notes to write.Two thousand. How was that even possible?
Just this morning, James, Amelia’s royal page, had mentioned something about a leopard that hadarrived, courtesy of the king of Cambodia.
What was she supposed to do with a leopard?
Amelia wondered if the wild animal had been labeled and stored in the ballroom with all the other gifts of china, place settings, and crystal goblets.
Curiosity almost got the best of her, but the thought of facing all those ostentatious presents made Amelia sick to herstomach, so she kept her gaze gluedto the plush crimson carpet as she passed the entrance to the ballroom.
If she and Holden had been a normal couple—arealcouple—people wouldn’t be sending them leopards. If Amelia had her way, kings, queens, and heads of state wouldn’t be sending them gifts at all. She’d much rather see them donate money to a worthy charity. But this wedding wasn’t about her. She wasn’t even sure it was aboutHolden, even though he was supposedly in love with her now. The wedding was about the crown. And her mother. And apparently, her mother was pro-leopard when it came to wedding presents.
