Chapter Fifteen #2
The King of the United Kingdom was standing thirty feet away, near the marble fireplace at the north end of the room.
He was holding a glass of what looked like sparkling water and listening to an older woman in a dark green dress who was making a point with considerable emphasis by way of hand gestures.
James was nodding at her. His posture was attentive, but his eyes were on Lex.
The gaze held for two seconds. Long enough that Lex was certain it was deliberate. James’s hazel eyes were steady and assessing. There was nothing of the polished warmth from the receiving line in them. He extracted himself from the conversation and moved to cross the room.
He stopped first at the canapé table, which happened to be six feet from where Lex was standing, and when he arrived there he selected items from a tray and placed them onto a plate. He sidled up casually to Lex, and held one of the canapés out to him. “The salmon blinis are excellent.”
“Cheers,” Lex said, and took it, because when the King of the United Kingdom handed you a canapé, you ate the canapé. He put it in his mouth. It was identical to the one Barnaby had fed him ten minutes ago.
“I’m relieved you took that from me by hand,” James said. “I wasn’t prepared to have it eaten from my fingers.”
Lex’s chewing slowed. James’s expression gave him nothing. The line had been delivered with the same pleasant warmth as everything else he’d said before it, and yet it landed like a brick wrapped in velvet.
“They’re Bash’s favourites,” James said. He bit into his own, chewed, swallowed, and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
Lex’s brain snagged on the name. “Bash?”
“Barnaby.” James picked up a second blini from his plate and examined it. “I’ve known him as Bash since we were thirteen.”
The room continued around them. Waiters circulated. Athletes laughed. A Cabinet minister was holding forth near the grand piano. None of it touched the space James had carved out for just the two of them.
“Bash turned up at Eton a term after me,” James said.
“A tiny pale blond kid. Looked like he’d been sent to the wrong school by accident.
He got absolutely pummelled on the rugby pitch.
In every sport, actually. He couldn’t catch, couldn’t tackle, couldn’t throw.
” James picked up another blini and examined it.
“He was B. Ashworth on the register. So someone started calling him Basher, which was funny, because he categorically was not one. But it stuck. We were Basher, Jams, and Vidal.”
James turned to face him. The shift was subtle, just a quarter-rotation of his shoulders, and a fractional lift of his chin, but it changed the geometry of the conversation entirely. They were no longer two men by a canapé table. They were two men in a negotiation, and James was setting the terms.
“He had a hard time at school, Lex. Until I made sure he didn’t.” James’s voice was quiet and level. “I don’t like it when Barnaby has a hard time. I don’t like it when he’s hurt. You understand, don’t you? How Bash should be treated?”
“I hear you,” Lex said.
James studied him for a beat. Then his expression shifted, not softening, but recalibrating, the threat filed and the point made. “Wonderful. Because The Crown doesn’t have any opinions, or hold to any sentiment Mr Murphy,” James said, his voice pitched for Lex’s ears alone. “But Jams does.”
The last statement sat between them with the weight of a closing argument.
James held his gaze, and Lex understood with absolute clarity what was happening.
This was the shovel talk. This was the King of the United Kingdom, standing in his own palace, telling Lex exactly how deep the connection ran between himself and Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester.
“This is most excellent. Now, on an entirely separate note.” James picked up another blini and ate it.
“I’ve been looking at your work with the youth boxing programme in Barking.
It’s impressive. The Palace has been discussing King’s Trust ambassadorships for athletes who are doing meaningful community work, and your name came up.
I’m going to have my private secretary get in touch with your people to set up a meeting. ”
“That’s…yeah.” Lex blinked. The tonal whiplash had the precision of a combination. Jab to the body, cross to the head, and now they were shaking hands at the centre of the ring. “That would be brilliant. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We’ll be putting you to work as one of the faces for the King’s Trust, Mr Murphy.” James’s mouth curved. He extended his hand, and Lex shook it.
Then James placed his hand on Lex’s shoulder.
The touch was light, brief, and entirely public.
Anyone watching would have seen the King offering a sportsman a collegial pat on the back.
Lex felt the pressure of each finger through the bespoke navy wool that Barnaby had chosen for him.
Then the King lifted his hand, turned, and walked back into the fray.
Lex stood where James had left him and let the room settle back into noise around him.
He’d just been threatened by the King of the United Kingdom.
Not with fists, or with any of the methods Lex had grown up understanding as the way men made their positions clear.
James had done it with a childhood nickname, a salmon blini, and a smile that never once dropped below pleasant.
In Barking, if someone had a problem with you, they told you to your face or they waited for you outside.
Here, they fed you canapés and told you stories about boarding school, and the knife went in so clean you didn’t feel it until they’d already walked away.
He looked across the room. Barnaby was with the eventing squad, one hand behind his back, his jaw set in the polite line that meant he was in full performance mode. Then his gaze drifted sideways, found Lex, and his mouth pulled at the corners.
It was that half-smile that decided things for Lex, the way Barnaby wouldn’t let himself have it in a room full of people, but couldn’t quite stop it happening when he looked at Lex.
He could learn this world. He would learn it for Barnaby, because he had no intention of being anywhere else but in that man’s orbit.