The Heir Affair

but at the bottom, there I was. Allegedly. It was really a random brunette in one of the royal Range Rovers, her face obscured by giant sunglasses and a copy of the Times. I wondered how much she knew. And how much her silence cost.
The teaser next to it caught my attention. “Yikes, Freddie and Richard did an event together again? What’s that, six now?”
“Seven.” Nick shuddered. “Better him than me. That’s a lot of Dick.”
I nearly choked on a piece of what seemed like chicken.
“Imagine having to spend so many days in a row with Father, talking about God knows what,” Nick continued, not noticing. “I can think of no worse punishment.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Freddie’s face, which smiled up at me underneath the headline, APOLOGY (TOUR) NOT ACCEPTED. I searched it for a sign of what he was really feeling, whether his smile was real, or—as was so often the case when the brothers were around the Prince of Wales—wilting at the edges, merely pasted on top of a lifetime of resentment. Suddenly, I burned to know if he was okay.
I forced myself to push the paper aside. “So. What’s on for this evening?”
“I thought I might get my hands all over some dirty dishes,” Nick said. “Then, I don’t know, coffee and biscuits, perhaps a quiz show?”
“Wow, we’re really starting our married life with a bang,” I teased.
“This is, in fact, a perfect start to our married life,” he said with a contented sigh. “I had a long chat with the greengrocer today about courgette, and then walked to the chemist to buy dandruff shampoo. In person. I’ve never been able to do that.”
I grinned. “And your nearly adequate food is far superior to anything I’ve ever made.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nick said, raising a piece of pie on his fork. “Your toast is exquisite.”
We clinked forks. It was quiet again for a bit, interrupted only by the sounds of my chewing. I noticed Nick was spearing the same pea over and over again, so I fixed him with an expectant look and waited for him to meet my gaze.
“Bex,” he began, staring at the table.
“Nick,” I said. Then I lowered my voice. “Steve.”
He giggled. “I do love the way you say that,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m my own evil twin.” He looked up at me. “We need to talk about what happens when our week here is up.”
“It’s so unfair. We just got here.” Every tick of the walnut carriage clock on the bookshop desk, its glass so fogged that the sound was our only proof it still told time, reminded me that this domesticity had an expiration date. “On to the next, I guess?”
“That’s just it.” Nick leaned toward me, a flush in his cheeks. “Maybe not. Maybe we don’t even have to go anywhere,” he said. “Picture it: you, me, a thatched roof, a garden in the back with tomatoes and plenty of room for you and an easel, me and my knitting…”
“You’re knitting now?” I asked.
“I read a very interesting book about it yesterday at the shop,” Nick said defensively. “How hard can it be?”
“Okay, well, that aside, this all sounds idyllic,” I said, “but how is it going to work?”
He scooted to the left and strained to grab his laptop from the nearby counter, then woke it up and turned it to face me. There it was: a thatched roof, a garden, a modest bedroom with a surprisingly big lead-paned window, a warmly shabby kitchen, a sitting room with a TV nook. I leaned closer.
“Is that an antenna on that thing?” I asked. “Can you live without satellite TV?”
“No,” Nick said. “I shall attend to that. But as for the rest…what do you think? It’s down the road near the edge of town. The owner hares off to Lisbon every year and it’s wide open.” He pushed the laptop away and took my hands. “We’ve been on the go for weeks, Bex. What if we just…stop?”
“Stop,” I echoed, turning the word over in my mouth and the concept over in my mind. We hadn’t stopped since we’d left the palace. This flat was the first time we’d even bothered to unpack our suitcases. A moving target would be harder for Queen Eleanor to hit, and the weight of her fury had been so crushing that I wasn’t keen to relive it. “Stopping feels like a mistake. Like we’re going to be found out.”
“I don’t think so. Certainly not now that I’m planning to let myself go.” He patted his stomach. “No one looks twice at us here. If they do, it’s to wonder how that crispy blonde snagged such a foxy continental toy boy.”
I snorted. “Be serious.”
“I seriously am,” Nick deadpanned. “Look, we’ve pulled it off, Bex. We’ve spent weeks being whomever we like, with no one the wiser. And now that we’ve managed to get lost up here, I want to relax for a bit. I want a slow pace and a kitchen full of groceries and a routine. I love you, and us, and this, and I want to focus on that. Don’t you want that, too?”
As I searched his face, considering what he’d said, suddenly I was back at Nick’s long-ago birthday party at Buckingham Palace—an event where he’d backed out of introducing me publicly as his girlfriend—and I was looking into the eyes of my father. I really do love him, Dad, I’d said then, my way of promising that the pain of loving Nick in secret was made right by the sincere depth of our feelings, and that the oddities of his life, of this life, were worth bringing into mine. My dad died before I got the chance to prove it. He’d missed my happiest hour, but also my lowest—the day I let myself get so lost that I nearly turned that promise into a lie.
The bizarre turns of the last few weeks had in so many ways brought me