3. “Ghost” - Ella Henderson
“Ghost” - Ella Henderson
“What does Rosalind think?” Maisie is sitting beside me in the back of a black limousine. There are security SUVs in front and behind us.
“My mother is the last person I would go to for advice on anything pertaining to the royal household,” I say, “and I certainly would never ask her about money.” She’d never recover from that major faux pas.
“Don’t you think you’re too hard on her?”
“I’m not any harder on her than she is on me.”
I stare at the schedule for the Feed the World Foundation meeting where I’m about to make a twelve-minute appearance—just long enough to shake a few hands, take a quick tour, and present a plaque. My staff has even factored in a two-minute bathroom break.
“The duke was right,” I say. “Raising taxes is the only solution.”
“I have another idea, but you probably won’t like it either,” Maisie says. If she’s prefacing it with that, I probably won’t.
“What?”
“You have to promise not to shoot me, okay?”
I narrow my eyes.
She quickly immerses herself back into the digital world at her fingertips before saying, with what I can only assume is fake nonchalance, “You could ask Henry.”
I stare at her, waiting for the punchline, but she remains focused on the screen. “Henry?” I haven’t said his name out loud in months. Doing so now feels like pushing on a squeaky, rusty hinge. Which is embedded in my heart.
“I know the two of you aren’t speaking, but I thought—”
“If it involves Henry, you couldn’t have been thinking.”
“Celia, he could help with this. I know he could.”
“I take back what I said about Rosalind being the last person I’d ask.
At that point, I’d forgotten Henry existed.
” I flip to the next page, which contains a detailed map of the exact route I will take for today’s walkabout, where I will have enough time to shake the hands of exactly twenty-seven people arbitrarily selected from the crowd.
“Come on. You two worked so well together when you were researching Helena and her lover. Surely you can put aside—”
“Put aside what? Our differences? Our mutual dislike?” The fact that he broke my heart, drove over it with a military tank, and left the pieces to broil in the sun?
“Didn’t you say he improves businesses for a living?”
“The royal family isn’t a business, Maisie.”
“Doesn’t mean it couldn’t function as one.”
I shake my head. “You’re talking about taking a centuries-old institution, steeped in history and culture and traditions, and commercializing it. You’re out of your mind.”
“Proposing a tax hike is going to sink your image.”
“Believe it or not, there’s more at stake here than the picture the press will paint of me. Including your job.” I reach for my coffee in the cupholder. “Besides, I already submitted the request. Now we just sit back and wait for Parliament’s decision.”
“I know you don’t think it’s important,” Maisie says, “but you can’t lead the people if they hate you.”
She’s right, but I don’t have time to think about my reputation right now. I have five hundred people waiting for the paychecks I owe them. Ever since the divorce, the press has painted me as the idiot who let the catch of the century get away. What’s a little more fuel on the fire?
Meanwhile, Henry has retained his place as Wesbourne’s golden boy, despite the fact that he hasn’t set foot in the country for the past two months. A fact that proves the only thing he’s good at is keeping his word.
“The decision is made,” I say.
Maisie holds her palms up. “Okay. Fine. I just thought I’d suggest it.” She chews on her bottom lip. “What happened between you two anyway?”
“Who?” By feigning ignorance, I’m hoping to convince my heart to slow the gallop it’s currently taking around my chest.
“You and He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.”
I roll my eyes. “Nothing happened. It was a mutual split.”
“That’s the story you’re selling?”
I jot down a question for my security team in the margin of my schedule. “I’m not selling anything.”
“Celia, I’m not stupid or blind,” she says impatiently. “I know something happened between you and Henry in London. You were caught kissing in a pub.” To hear her, you’d think she wouldn’t be caught dead in one herself.
“We were married. It meant nothing.”
“So that’s why you came home with streaked makeup and a cloud of gloom the next day?”
“Maisie, believe it or not, but I actually have the ability to fire you. And right now, it’s very tempting. Where’s the schedule for the president’s state visit?”
“You can tell me if he broke your heart. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Friendly is not the term I’d used to describe us at the moment,” I say.
From the back of my folder, she plucks a sheaf of papers that I swear wasn’t there when I looked. “I don’t understand how you can throw away good things like they’re nothing.”
I lower the folder and look over at her. “Just what ‘good things’ are we talking about?”
“Well, you threw away your engagement to Beckham as soon as a better opportunity presented itself.” She holds up a hand to squelch my interruption. “And then you chased after Henry, only to walk away from that too. You don’t even realize how lucky you are.”
I’m rarely speechless, but there’s a first time for everything.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she continues.
“I know that was an oversimplification, but you have no idea what it’s like to sit on the sidelines of your life while you work your way through some of the most eligible bachelors in the world.
Meanwhile, I would love to go on a single date with a guy who can talk about something—literally anything—other than his bunions the entire evening. ”
“Bunions,” I deadpan.
“I wish I was joking.”
I snort out a laugh. “That’s awful. Truly.”
“Don’t get me started on the one who brought his mother along, because apparently they were a package deal.”
“You’re right. I was lucky when it came to dating.” Beck is the only man I’ve officially dated, aside from a few blind dates set up by friends. Even those weren’t horrific. “But just because you don’t see the pain, doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“I can understand the Beck situation. Your hands were tied. But I thought you loved Henry. Why walk away from that?”
I stare out the window as we ride through the streets of Wesbourne City. Pedestrians turn and wave when they see the flags flying from the bonnet of the car.
“Loving someone doesn’t mean they’ll love you back,” I say quietly.
I am done trying with Henry, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t nights I lie awake thinking about the sound of his voice or his hands sliding down my body.
I recognize the ache in my chest for what it is: a longing for him and what we never had.
But I’m the queen, and I can’t afford to waste my thoughts on a man who doesn’t deserve them.
Maisie’s right, though. He would be able to help me figure out a way to turn the royal finances around. He’s brilliant at solving problems, even if he’s equally brilliant at breaking hearts.
But brilliant or not, there’s no way in hell I’m talking to him.
Even if I could trust him, I don’t know where he is.
I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day he left me in his hotel room in London, other than that brief flash at my coronation.
He could have set up camp in Antarctica for all I know.
“I’m sorry,” Maisie says. I can see in her eyes that she means it.
“Good thing I’m too busy being queen to have a love life, right? I’ll have to live vicariously through you from now on.”
“Oh boy.”
“We’ll have to find you some better candidates, though. I don’t want bunions and IBS haunting my dreams.”
“How about—”
But I don’t find out what she’s about to suggest, because the sound of screeching metal tears through the air. My body lifts from the seat, and I’m hurled forward. I slam into something hard, and then everything goes black.
I wake to the cloying scent of antiseptic burning my nose. My mouth is parched. There’s something cool under my hands. When I blink my eyes open, it takes me a second to realize I’m in a hospital room and that the beeping is the myriad of monitors hooked up to me.
Panic grips me, and I begin to search for the nearest exit. I can’t be here. I cannot be in this place where death waits in the halls, ready to snatch you as soon as you let your guard down. I can’t die. I have people to lead. They may not like me very much right now, but I am still their queen.
I take several calming breaths. I can’t be dying. There’s no way death feels like this.
I do a quick assessment. I can feel all of my limbs, so that’s good, but my head is pounding like it’s recently been used as a battering ram. Whatever pain meds they have me on must be strong, because, while the pain is in check now, I can feel the monster rattling the cage.
A movement to my left makes me turn my head, which I instantly regret when the throbbing increases.
My mother hurries to the side of my bed. “Don’t move. Are you able to talk?”
“Water,” I croak.
She holds one of those nasty plastic cups to my lips. I obediently take a sip. Maybe this is death after all.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Like I’ve been run over by a very large truck.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“I remember being in the car. Everything’s hazy after that.”
“The limo struck a cement barrier. It’s a miracle you’re even here.” She brushes her hand over the sheet covering my legs, smoothing away invisible wrinkles.
“Maisie?” I squeak out.
“She’s very fortunate—minor injuries only. The car wasn’t traveling very fast. You were thrown against the privacy divider.”
I lift a hand and rub at my forehead. The IV tubing in my arm follows. “My head hurts like crazy.”
“That’s because you have a concussion and a fractured skull.” My mother tugs my hand away and places it back on my lap. “You’ll be in recovery for a while.”
“How long?”
“As long as the doctor orders.”
“I have responsibilities,” I say.
“You have a fractured skull.”