Page 99 of The Heir Apparent
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He looked at me sideways. “Do you really want to know?”
I shrugged again. When he said nothing, I pushed back my stool and stood up to leave.
“Look,” he said firmly. “It was a mistake, obviously. I shouldn’t have done it. We got a little caught up in things for a while, but I certainly wasn’t trying to break up their marriage. But then she started talking about leaving him, and the thing is, Lou was like a brother to me. I would never do that to him, ever, and I wouldn’t want to put your family through that. I knew I had to end it. And the way I did it… yeah, that wasn’t great. But I had to shock her out of this fantasy she had. I did it for Louis.”
I nodded. I was dressed only in a t-shirt and suddenly felt exposed. “I should let you get to work.”
In the bedroom, I started searching for my clothes on the floor. She had kept secrets from me, and she’d been involved in some sort of scheme I didn’t quite understand, and yet all Iwanted to do was get home to her. Colin appeared at the door and watched me stuff things in my suitcase.
“I know you’re upset,” he said.
I didn’t look up as I pulled my dress back on. “It’s really fine. I just need to go be with my friend.”
“She’s not your friend,” he said. “That family—those people—have never been your friends. I invited her to Lutton Hall over the summer because I knew you wouldn’t come up without her, but it was only you I wanted to see. I’m done with her. It was nothing.”
I pulled my coat off the hook and slung it over my shoulders. “You’re wrong about the Shankars. I can’t get into it, but you’re wrong. Amira was a good wife to Louis. They both tried their best.”
He shook his head, looking confused. “Okay.”
“Thank you for letting me stay here last night.”
I made it to the entrance with my suitcase before he caught up to me and grabbed my wrist.
“Lexi,” he said. “Cards on the table here: I like you. I’ve liked you since we were kids. And sure, it makes a certain sense for us to be together—I’m not saying I’ve never thought about that side of things. If everything worked out, our first son would be the heir to the throne. And then we could arrange things so his younger brother becomes the Duke of Hereford and manages the land holdings. That’s a powerful pair of siblings. It would solve every problem your family has ever had with the second-born child.”
He saw my face go dark and looked briefly up at the ceiling.
“Sorry, but you know what I mean. All I’m saying is, if you stopped rushing off every time we got closer, you might find that you like me too. I know there’s some other guy, some… Australian. Demelza told me about it. But I just think this”—he gestured between us—“this makes sense.”
He took my hand in his, and I thought suddenly of the last time I’d been standing in a man’s apartment this way.You’d beincapable of living a real life, Ben had said to me. I could never explain to myself why this had hurt so much, but I understood now what he meant. It was not the world’s rabid interest in my private life that I feared. It was being truly known by the person standing in front of me.
Colin and I could merge power bases and call that a family. We could also have our own private dalliances and never ask each other probing questions. And during the decades we spent together, waving from balconies, posing for pictures and keeping our secrets, we would never really get to know each other at all.
Gently, I withdrew my fingers from his grasp and grabbed the handle of my suitcase.
“I really am sorry,” I said.
I took the lift down, and when I hit street level I walked out into the cold November air where I could finally breathe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
17 November 2023
The reception to raise awareness about obstetric fistula was held in the palace’s picture gallery, a long narrow room with an arched skylight that showed off the night sky. Dr. Esther Miloyo, the CEO and chief surgeon at the Miloyo Fistula Clinic in Nairobi, was our guest of honour. Surrounded by people, she was explaining that a donation of just £350 covered the cost of one reconstructive surgery, which would forever change the trajectory of a patient’s life. Granny and I stood by the fireplace so that guests could pay their respects, Stewart and Mary lingering nearby in case we forgot a name or a face.
That morning, when I left Colin’s apartment, I had gone back to Cumberland, but Amira wasn’t there. I took Chino to the park so he could chase squirrels among the trees. When he was spent, we sat under the bare arms of an oak and watched people rushing past in pursuit of their lives.
By the time Chino and I had returned to the house, Mary was there with the makeup artist and a silver dress on a hanger.
“Altuzarra,” she said. “The tiny cutouts at the front are a bit racy, but it’s ankle-length, so it still honours the dress code. Just.”
“It looks like armour,” I said as she zipped me into it. “Do you know where Amira is?”
“She’s getting ready at her parents’ house. The Shankars will arrive at the reception together.”
