The Heir Affair

blonde in the flowered dress who’d been steering us through the palace with helpful details.
“Annie!” he said, hugging her. “What’s it been—fifteen years? I didn’t know you were going to be here!”
She beamed. “I wasn’t meant to be! But I’m consulting for the facility in Manchester that worked on this, and their regular PR lad got a kidney stone.”
“How’s Shanghai?” he asked.
“Dubai, and it’s lovely, but Artie’s liver is acting up, so we’re home for a bit,” she said.
The two of them slipped into merry, familiar chatter as I stood off to the side, forgotten and craving a Diet Coke.
“Annabelle Farthing,” Freddie said in my ear. “Married to some hopeless old marquess with a huge pile in Somerset. Her father’s friends with Agatha so we knew each other as kids.” He nudged me. “You know that bit in Bridget Jones where she played naked in Colin Firth’s paddling pool? It’s like that.”
“Oh, and how often have you seen that movie?”
Freddie fidgeted. “Well, you know, it’s Marj’s favorite. Ah, they’re ready for us,” he said. “Let’s go play happy families again.”
“Right,” I said to his back. “Happy families.”
So I was already feeling out of sorts when it happened. As we were passing back through the long hallway outside the room where the tapestries lived, I caught sight of something in my periphery and whipped my head around—and felt crushingly sick.
“Are you all right?” Freddie asked, grabbing my elbow.
Nick dropped his conversation with Annabelle and snapped to my side with concern. “You’re green,” he said.
“You were right in Catherine Howard’s path,” Annabelle said, nudging in and guiding me to a window seat ten feet away. “That’s where she was standing when she found out Henry was sending her to the Tower. I don’t really believe in ghosts, but you do hear of people feeling ill here.” She studied me. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen it.”
Nick knelt beside me. “Do you need to lie down?” He looked up at Annabelle. “Could someone get her a glass of water?”
“No, she’s right, I feel much better over here,” I said. But what I couldn’t admit, or even know for sure myself, was that it might not have been Catherine Howard’s lingering psychic devastation that felled me. Because I could have sworn I saw a face as familiar to me as my own shuffling out with the press pack, bent over a notebook, jotting down details with his poison pen. I thought about the prospect—or threat—of Clive showing up at every event I did for the rest of my life, always only a hundred feet away from me and Nick and our fragile happiness. It suddenly felt as if no matter what show we tried to put on, we’d never escape him.
So yes, maybe I had seen a ghost. Just maybe not the one they meant.

CHAPTER SEVEN
A NEW HEIR-A?Clive Fitzwilliam on Britain’s Tricky Trio
It was meant to be a pretty picture of sibling stability, and the casual observer may have been happily hoodwinked. But take it from me: Yesterday’s Hampton Court farce proved the opposite.
The Duke of Clarence takes dynastic precedence, but once again his brother showed nobody can dazzle like he does. Prince Frederick was quick with his quips, charming the crowd and making the future King look dull as dishwater by comparison. Even the darling Duchess, his erstwhile lover, appeared to go weak at the knees just from standing near the magnetic majesty that is Flashy Freddie. The photo outside the palace was as palpably pained as Prince Nicholas’s pride, knowing his brother is the spark that lights the fire, and he’s the sand that snuffs it.
Perhaps, in the wake of Queen Eleanor’s unprecedented passing over of Nicholas to make his younger brother a Counsellor of State, the Duchess of Clarence believes she gambled on the wrong brother.
Reviews of the Great Tapestry Unveiling were not all as negative as Clive’s. The American’t—the most critical of the blogs chronicling my every move—miraculously didn’t hate my dress (though the author did write, “Her shoes are the most boring thing to come out of Kensington Palace since her face”), and the Mirror gave me a solid three and a half stars, docking marks because I looked peaky in the group photo, which it cited as proof of my romantic indecision about the two brothers. Heat debuted a feature called “The Heat Index,” in which a motley panel of comics and psychologists analyzed the photos and decided whether Nick and I were still banging. (The verdict: maybe.) In general, it seemed expectations for decorum were so low—and for gossip, so high—that the press was either relieved or disappointed that Freddie hadn’t tried to mount me right there on Henry VIII’s dining table. But Clive was the worst of it, and he was brutal.
Annabelle Farthing had overseen the press passes and confirmed to Nick that none had been produced in his name. Then again, every detail in his piece could have come from video and wire photos, with the lone exception of Freddie aiding me when I felt faint. But any number of spies could’ve fed that to him, including whomever The Sun did send. We had to accept that Clive was free to hear whatever he liked, and draw whatever conclusions he could, from the comfort of his desk. And if Marj had her way, he’d be doing so all summer long: Her plan was to load us up on group outings to bludgeon Great Britain into believing that there was nothing to believe. Freddie, Nick, and Bex were officially open for business.
“I’ll be glad when this crisis management stuff is over,” I grumbled to Lacey over the phone. “It’s stressful. Let’s skip ahead to actual work.”
“Hmm, yes, work,” Lacey teased. “What is a duchess’s job, exactly?”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I have no idea. My main responsibility used to be etiquette training, and now it’s Look, Everyone, We’re Not Acting Awkward. No one has told me what the next phase is.”
“Popping out a