Page 66 of The Heir Apparent
We returned to the terrace mussed and swollen-lipped. Amira lowered her eyes and said nothing. For the next round of hide and seek, Birdie and the landowner went shrieking into the house. Once the hunters followed, we heard a shattering of glass and a proper scream. Birdie had knocked over a vase and trodden in the broken shards. As she sat sobbing among her bloody footprints, everyone froze, but Dr. Villiers kicked and thrashed back to the surface of me. The alcohol and dopamine in my bloodstream were subsumed by a rush of adrenaline, and I calmly asked Colin to find me a first-aid kit.This is who I am, I thought. Who needs desperate frottage in a library when there’s blood and chaos to mop up? The others watched silently as I tended to Birdie’s wounds, which had barely nicked the dermis. I hadn’t practised in six months, and a few minor cuts were as thrilling as the time Ben had let me perform a needle cricothyroidotomy unassisted. Birdie hiccupped and squeaked as I flushed the last remaining cut and applied antibiotic ointment, wrapping it tightly with a dressing.
“You’re alright, Birds,” I said, taking her hand. “I don’t think you need stitches, but we can check again in the morning. If it’s not quite right, we’ll run you over to A&E for a look.”
The sight of blood smeared on the slate floors brought the evening to a natural end. I sat with Birdie in her huge bed, stroking her hair like she was a child. I was too afraid to leave her since she kept reaching for the “xannies” in her purse, insisting they would help her sleep. I gently reminded her that benzos in her state would likely make her sleep forever. Hiding out in Birdie’s room also meant I could avoid any soft knocks at my door in the middle of the night.
That was so fucking hot watching you do doctor things, Colin texted the day after we all returned to London.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I called Jack.
“Come visit me,” I said when he answered. “In August, we’ll be going to my family’s house in Scotland. You and Finn should both come. I know we talked about November for the reception, but that’s too far away. Come earlier. I miss you.”
“Okay,” he said immediately.
“You can check with Paula,” I said, suddenly shy. “I know it’s pruning season and—”
“Lex, I’m coming.”
“Okay, it’s just I know you don’t love spontaneity—and that’s fine. I’m always forcing you into things, like that time I said I didn’t feel like going to the garlic festival and then changed my mind because—”
“You really wanted a squidlipop.”
I’d wanted a barbecued squid on a stick that could only be purchased at a festival two hours away, and Jack had dragged himself off the couch to go with me.
“I had to have a squidlipop, and I know that was kind of annoying—”
“I wasn’t annoyed.”
“Okay, but I’m just saying, it’s a big ask—coming to Scotland in a month. I’m around people who can just drop everything and fly around the world on a whim, so maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have actual responsibilities and—”
“Lex,” he said, “do you want me to come or not?”
And now Jack and Finn were booked to fly to London in exactly a month. I paid for the tickets myself using the substantial monthly allowance Granny provided, much to Finn’s delight. He somehow convinced Jack that I used frequent flyer points on the verge of expiring to cover the trip. Amira raised an eyebrow when I tried to casually slip my plan into conversation.
“Well, I can’t wait to meet the farmer,” she said. Then she frowned. “And his little friend.”
Our reunion loomed, but I had to get through July first, which was always busy, with Holyrood Week taking me on a tour of Scotland, a string of investitures and summer garden parties, and, of course, the tennis.
At Wimbledon, Amira and I were greeted by the chairman of the club, a bald, spectacled man who shook my hand and bowed to me, then greeted Amira with a nod. I was keenly aware in these moments that just a year earlier, Amira and Louis had breezed into this place, hands intertwined, wearing matching Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses, all camera lenses and eyes trained on them. Now she was often treated like my lady-in-waiting.
Plenty of royal women found themselves without the protection of an anointed man, and most vanished before history even bothered to jot down where they had gone. But the institution wasn’t any more ready to let go of Amira than she was to leave it. She was hugely popular in the Commonwealth, not to mention that cutting loose a grieving widow would make the family look too much like the ruthless business it was. But I knew that if I were to ever let Richard take my place, he would have us both turfed out of the palace on his very first day as heir.
After we chatted to the ball boys and girls, we met Demelza and Birdie on a footbridge leading to the Royal Box. We hadn’t seen them since our weekend away at Colin’s family seat. We exchanged air kisses and surreptitiously assessed each other’s outfits.
“Cute belt,” Demelza crooned to Amira.
As the door pushed open and we walked down the steps to find our seats, we were met with a great roar of applause. The Wimbledon crowd was always unfailingly polite. With 14,000 pairs of eyes on us, our conversation became more animated, our smiles brighter. I asked Birdie questions about her new job working as a production assistant on an action movie, and nodded as she told me she was likely to quit a few weeks earlyso she could go to Croatia with friends. Our seats were at the very front of the box, where we would have the best view of the court and the cameras would have the best view of us.
“How are your feet, Birdie?” I asked when she sat between Amira and me, preventing us from talking only to each other for the rest of the afternoon.
“Oh my god, awful, I can barely walk.” She pouted.
“One cut looks absolutely rank—you’ll have to check it for her, Lexi,” Demelza said. “I keep telling her she’s got gangrene.”
“I don’t have gangrene.”
“Daddy was very impressed by what you did,” Demelza went on. “We told him all about our little trip away.”
I kept my smile rigid, imagining all the things she’d told Richard about our weekend, and how they would be planted among the royal rota to bloom like hemlock and oleander.
