His Royal Favorite (23 page)

“Love.” The queen pronounced it like it was some fad she was sick of. “Why is love supposed to steer the course of the entire royal family? Why is so much weight put on individual whims? I cannot understand.”

If she’d said it meanly, cruelly, Ben would have written her off as an icy old bitch not worth worrying about. But instead she said it with such complete consternation that made him realize she truly
didn’t get it
.

His eyes widened as he remembered the research he’d done back at Global Media, the book he’d read that had led to his most-circulated story since that first one about James.

The one about sociopaths.

They weren’t invariably evil, the book had explained. Pop culture made them out to be serial killers, one and all, but the average sociopath never became violent. They were simply people who felt little emotion and rarely empathized with others. They acted for their own benefit, sometimes ruthlessly, and didn’t understand why others didn’t do the same.

If Ben was any judge, he was looking at one now.

Stop talking to her about emotion. Stick to facts, rules, strategies. Anything that can be put in objective terms. Think in black and white.

“Consider it tactically, Your Majesty,” he began. “It’s to James’s benefit, and to the royal family’s benefit, that I love him as much as I do. If I didn’t—if I were only in this for publicity, as you might have thought—then I’d have an agenda of my own, ma’am. But I do love James. Therefore, I have no agenda other than his well-being, and by extension, that of the monarchy.”

He could see her almost visibly relax as she considered this. Instead of appealing to emotion, he had appealed to her reason, the only kind of argument that made sense to her. For Queen Louisa, he realized, the emotional needs her children and grandchildren expressed would have been only annoying nonsense.

She said, “You must have realized by now that James’s interests and those of the monarchy do not precisely intersect.”

“They may yet, ma’am.”
Though I hope not.
“At any rate, I know James would never wish to work against the monarchy. I will support him whether he succeeds to the throne or not.”

“You don’t intend to cause trouble, then?” The queen arched an eyebrow.

“No more than I already have, Your Majesty, and that I couldn’t help.”

“Those swimsuit photos!” The queen laughed, a sound so extraordinary that Ben almost gaped. “From the looks of things, you have more than enough trouble to go around.”

Ben laughed too. She actually had a sense of humor under there—as long as you didn’t press her for it. “Your Majesty, I do what I can with what God gave me.”

“Ha! And I suppose you couldn’t have known to be discreet back then, could you? I would have preferred greater discretion about James’s love life, certainly, but it’s not as though we’d never
heard
of homosexuality. We’ve always had gay servants, of course, and never minded that. It’s so very
middle-class
, to mind it,” she confided as a servant finally appeared, tea tray in hands. Ben could see the man’s eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them, obviously just as amazed as Ben was that these two were getting along. “Male servants mostly, though it’s easier to tell with men, as a general rule. Not that I knew about James, and you’re hardly the wispy sort, are you?”

That rankled, but Ben knew better than to let her see his irritation. “We come in all sorts, ma’am.”

“So it seems, so it seems.”

This was when James and Kimberley reappeared. James looked utterly wrung out, but he managed a smile for his grandmother. “The king seems to be doing very well. You must be delighted.”

Again, the queen frowned. She didn’t like being talked to about emotions, Ben realized; for her, it was like people insisting on speaking to her in a language she didn’t know. “The formalities have been observed. May we leave it at that?”

“We were going to leave,” James said, “unless we’d be interrupting the two of you.” The look he gave Ben made it clear that he felt they both needed rescuing.

Queen Louisa waved them off, but said, “I’m sure Mr. Dahan and I will speak again soon.”

“I look forward to it, Your Majesty.” Ben actually meant this. He didn’t
like
her—it wasn’t exactly possible to like an ice sculpture—but he thought it would be fascinating to try to understand her.

Normally James would have picked up on this unusual exchange, but he was tense, working his lips in a way that meant he was extremely agitated but fighting to control it. He simply went with them out to the car.

But as they walked, Ben’s gaze went from James to Kimberley, who was looking back at him. She gave the smallest shake of her head, and Ben knew the impossible was happening.

James was not only losing the regency, but also the throne.

***

They ate dinner that night in relative silence. James was upset, but not yet able to give voice to it; that felt like a betrayal of the discipline he’d been taught for a lifetime. By now, though, he was past the point of being able to lie about it to himself or to Ben. As he could think of nothing else but not speak what was really on his mind, he mostly stuck to his food. Ben let him do it, giving him the space.

Only when they were getting ready for bed did something crack. As James removed his tie, Ben said, “You’re angry.”

“I’m upset. Not angry.”

“I think you tell yourself that a lot, James. Doesn’t make it true. It’s me, remember? Go ahead. Let it out. Just say it, for once in your life.
You’re angry.
”

“I . . . I guess I am.” James felt as though a match had been struck, one that sparked instantly into flame. “I’m angry every friend I had at school had to call me ‘sir.’ I’m angry that I didn’t get to go to graduate school. I’m angry that I own more tuxedoes than pairs of blue jeans. I’m angry that I can count every man I’ve kissed on one hand.” His voice became louder with every word, rising nearly to a shout. “I’m angry that my love for you has cost you so much. But more than anything else, I’m angry that it was
all for nothing
. Everything my mother gave up for me, everything you gave up for me, everything resembling a normal life that I didn’t get to have—it was for the throne. For this role I never got to choose, but dedicated myself to anyway. For Indigo’s sake, so I could at least protect her. Now I don’t even have that.”

Instead of speaking, Ben simply held out his hand. James took it, sinking onto the bed by Ben’s side. They sat there with their hands clasped, while James fought to steady his breathing.

Finally he said, “I must sound like a child being forced to give up a favorite toy.”

“Not at all. You have a lot, but you’ve also given up a lot. And you weren’t given any choice in the matter.”

“I always told myself I didn’t resent it. But to have done it all for nothing—”

“It’s unfair,” Ben said. “I hate the message it sends. Still . . . is it really the worst thing?”

“Richard wins? Homophobia wins? It’s bad enough.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m talking about
after
, James. Have you ever considered that from now on your life can go in any direction you want? I’ve been thinking about this. Yes, you’ve lost the crown, but maybe you’ve also lost the chains.”

James tried to wrap his mind around it, this wholly unfamiliar idea of
after
.

Their bedroom door swung open.

Ben startled—he wore nothing but his boxer shorts—and James felt similarly exposed, even though he only had his shirt untucked and open. As the butler walked in, James stood and said, “This is highly irregular, Glover.”

“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness.” Glover looked genuinely stricken. “I received a call from one of the staff at Kensington Palace with most distressing news and thought you should be informed immediately.”

James felt the first stirring of fear. “What is it?”

“Mr. Hartley, the princess’s butler, suffered a heart attack whilst in the course of his duties,” Glover said. “I’m sorry to report that he died instantly.”

***

They were dressed and in the car to Kensington Palace within five minutes. James tried calling Indigo repeatedly at her latest mobile number—to hell with the phone hackers, if he could reach her now. But she didn’t answer.

“Oh God oh God oh God,” he kept repeating.

Ben ran his hand up and down James’s arm, strokes meant to soothe. “We’ll be right there.”

“You don’t understand. Hartley’s one of the three people she counts on most in the world, and the only one who’s with her day to day. This is like—like a bomb going off. Destroying the foundation.” Not that Indigo’s foundation had ever been the strongest.

It took them only moments to get to Kensington Palace. Ben, who had never been there before, was slightly thrown off by the fact that it was in fact a series of royal apartments, each fundamentally separate from the other, but James led him to Indigo’s. For one moment he wondered whether Indigo would react poorly to Ben’s presence in her private space; she liked Ben but wasn’t yet that close to him.

To hell with it
, James thought as he bounded up the steps.
It’s not as if Ben can make things worse. They can’t get any worse. She needs me here, and I need Ben.

“Your Royal Highness!” It was Woodley, one of Indigo’s maids. Her pale, freckled face was flushed with distress. “Forgive us for not being ready to receive you, sir.”

The servants were trying to collect themselves in his presence, though most of them were near tears. On the floor of the foyer was a shattered tea service, tray leaning against one wall, and Hartley’s torn necktie. A few strips of plastic lay about—left over from medical equipment, James realized, hurriedly unwrapped.

Woodley said, “He just fell over. Princess Amelia was upstairs, so she didn’t see, sir, but she heard the commotion. She ran down to his side. She performed CPR the entire time, Your Royal Highness, brave as anything, but when the ambulance men got here they said there was nothing to be done. His hands—sir, Mr. Hartley’s hands were already cold. Her Royal Highness held together best she could until they took him away, but then she ran upstairs and locked her suite and we don’t know what to do.”

Only Hartley had been given the authority to unlock Indigo’s door without her permission. None of the staff would break that rule, not even tonight.

“Thank you, Woodley. We’ll handle this.” James hesitated. “If you would remain near the door while we go inside . . .”

“Of course, sir.”

They might need Woodley to call the ambulance again before this was all through.

Together he and Ben went up the stairs, and James tried to open the door of the suite. “Indigo? It’s me.” No response. “Indigo? I need you to let us in.”

“Do we have to break the door down?” Ben said.

“Not this one.” James held out his hand. Woodley gave him the key she’d lacked the authority to use. He unlocked the suite door, quickly handed the key back, and hurried through.

He and Ben stopped walking at the exact same moment. Ben whispered, “Oh my God.”

Indigo’s bedroom had been trashed. She’d knocked her own artwork from the wall and splintered it into pieces. Her framed concept art had been dashed upon the floor to break the glass, then torn to shreds. Even her laptop lay in a heap of chips and metal. The satin bedspread had been slashed into ribbons. Nothing remained of the weirdly beautiful Gothic chamber she’d painstakingly created for herself. She had destroyed it as an extension of her own being.

Worst of all was seeing that the slashes on the bedspread were rimmed with dark stains. Whatever blade or shard she’d used to cut it up, she had first used on her own flesh.

Shaking, James went to her closet door, but to his surprise, it was slightly ajar. It was a relief to pull it open until he saw that she wasn’t inside.

She had been, though. The entire closet floor was spattered red with blood.

“The loo,” James said. He ran to that door, Ben just behind, but this one was locked. “Indigo? Indigo? I need you to let me in. Please, darling.”

No reply.

What if she had passed out? What if she were—?

Ben called, “Amelia, we have to open the door. If you won’t come out, I’ll have to come through. Either open the door for us or stand back, all right?”

No reply.

“Is there a key?” Ben muttered as he took a few steps back.

“Only Indigo has that one.” James had let her keep it as a sign that she had some power, some autonomy—the same reason he’d let her keep the box cutter. Now he felt like an utter fool.

“Right. Here we go.” Ben took a deep breath, then ran forward and slammed into the door with his full weight. It crashed open, lock splintering in the doorjamb.
“Fuck.”

James walked into the room behind him. The white tile was streaked with crimson all the way inside, around the L-bend that led to the bath. As they rounded it, James gasped. Indigo sat in the full bathtub in her robe, shaking, hair wet, apparently oblivious to the fact that they’d broken in. The water around her swirled dark with blood.

At least she was alive.

“Indigo, I’m here. All right? I’m here.” James sat beside the bathtub and put his arms around her. The water was cold.

“James?” Her voice sounded like an old woman’s.

“Yes, darling. I’m here and Ben’s with me.”

She whispered, “Hartley’s dead.”

“I know. I know. I’m so sorry. We’re going to lift you out now, all right?” James looked up at Ben, whose face was ashen. But he leaned over to help without hesitation.

Before Ben touched Indigo, though, he said, “Amelia, I’m going to put my hands under your arms to help get you up. I don’t want to startle you.”

Indigo was past the point of objecting. She might have been past the point of hearing.

Ben hoisted her just as he’d said he would; James took her legs. She neither resisted nor helped. Her cold, sodden body was nearly dead weight in their arms as the two of them managed to get her out of the loo and into her bed, leaving a trail of crimson footprints as they went.

“I need to look at the cuts, Indigo,” James said. Had she lost as much blood as he feared? It always looked like more in the water. “Is that all right?”