Chapter Forty-Six
Now
James started reconsidering his choice of reading material somewhere around chapter four, when the Regency duke’s brooding interiority began to read less like tortured restraint and more like he’d been concussed at a hunt and hadn’t sought medical attention.
He kept at it anyway, just to stop himself checking his mobile for a message from Tristan.
The after-party would be winding through its middle stretch. Tristan would be somewhere in it, holding his mask and being photographed beside people who wanted to stand near a winner. James wished he could have been there to watch him take it in.
James kept on reading, and got steadily more irritated with the duke, so it was a relief when he heard his apartment’s door open just after one.
Tristan appeared in the bedroom doorway in his Tom Ford suit with his tie hanging loose and the BAFTA mask tucked under one arm. His hair had lost its earlier discipline and his fringe fell across his brow.
James set the novel on the nightstand.
Tristan toed off his shoes and climbed onto the bed beside James. He held the mask out between them, letting the bronze catch the lamplight.
“Look at this,” Tristan said. “Look at what I’ve done.”
James took it from him and turned it in his hands. It was heavier than he’d expected. He ran his thumb across the brow ridge and then looked up at Tristan, who was watching him with an expression that could only be described as incandescent.
“I’ve bagged myself a BAFTA winner,” James said, and pulled him in by the lapel.
Tristan fell against James’s chest. He smelled of champagne.
“Your acceptance speech was very moving,” James murmured against his hair. “It was restrained and dignified. I do feel that you should have acknowledged how your orgasm faces throughout series one were a key contributor to your win.”
Tristan pulled back to look at him. “That’s all you, James. Every single one of those faces is sourced directly from this bed.”
Tristan kissed him, and James set the mask down on the duvet between them.
“Why’d you stop me, James?” Tristan asked.
“I was looking right at you at the start of my speech, and you put your finger to your lips. I was going to say your name, give you what I couldn’t before and let the world know about us, but I could tell from the way you were looking at me that you didn’t want me to. ”
“It wasn’t the time, Tristan.”
“Don’t you want anyone to know about us anymore?” Tristan shifted on the bed so that he was sitting upright, facing James. “Don’t you trust me to stay?”
James looked at Tristan directly, and locked eyes with him. “I trust you completely.”
“Then why wouldn’t you want me to claim you as my better half?” Tristan demanded.
“I wanted tonight to be yours, Tris.” James reached for him, and Tristan let him, though his body stayed taut under James’s hands. “Do you know what Barnaby did when Lex won his fight in Vegas?”
“Yeah. He climbed up into the ring and kissed him in front of thousands of people.”
“He did, and it was magnificent. I sat in front of my TV thinking, well, that’s the most romantic bloody thing I’ve ever seen.” James pressed his thumb into the muscle at the base of Tristan’s neck, where a knot had formed. “But you know what every paper ran the next morning?”
“BLEX headlines…”
“That’s right,” James said. “It became all about the kiss, not the fight that Lex had just delivered, or the fact that he’d just put down a man who outweighed him.
” He ran his hand along Tristan’s shoulder.
“Granted, Lex didn’t care about any of it.
Lex would happily let the entire sporting press write about nothing but Barnaby’s mouth on him for the rest of his career, and I love that man for it.
But the fight disappeared behind the kiss, Tris.
People were more interested in this big, tough heavyweight being openly gay with his waifish blond partner than Lex’s own accomplishment. ”
Tristan exhaled, slow and controlled.
James picked up the mask from the duvet and laid it in Tristan’s lap.
“This is yours,” James said. “You put in the work. You walked onto that set and gave them a performance no one was expecting from you. A room full of your peers stood up tonight and validated everything you’ve been working towards.
That needed to be the story. The focus had to be on your name and nothing else. ”
James’s hand stayed on the mask, his fingers resting against the cool metal beside Tristan’s.
“I couldn’t stand it,” James said, “if this amazing thing you’d done got buried beneath the furore over you being the perfect arse I was talking about in my voicemail. There’ll be time for that, Tristan. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure everyone knows why I was so cockstruck by you.”
“Well, as long as people know.”
James nuzzled into Tristan. “You have to understand the reality of what you’d be stepping into.
Barnaby is a marquess, and yes, he’s very fancy, and his wedding to Lex was the most photographed event of the year.
But Barnaby bringing Lex into his life has no constitutional implications.
None. They’re private citizens who happen to be titled and extremely fit, so people are obsessed with them.
But Parliament doesn’t have to be informed when Lex gets a new haircut. ”
“Does Parliament have to be informed when you get a new haircut?”
“Yes.”
Tristan stared at him. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. The Royal Mint keeps a reference profile of my face for coinage and commemorative issues. If I change my appearance in any material way, say I’m feeling frisky and want a new hairstyle, or I’ve put on a bit too much weight, the Mint has to be notified so they can assess whether the current die still reads as an accurate likeness.
If it doesn’t, they commission a new one, which requires Treasury sign-off on the production costs and a formal update to every realm that carries my profile on its currency.
I grew a beard once during a fishing trip at Balmoral and Cecil rang me on the second day to ask if it was a lifestyle choice or a temporary lapse in grooming standards. ”
“You’re telling me that if you grew a moustache tomorrow, it would become a matter of public record.”
“It would become a matter of international public record. My face is on the legal tender of fifteen countries, Tris.”
“That’s the most deranged thing you’ve ever told me, and you once explained the rules of the Garter ceremony.”
“The Garter ceremony is a perfectly dignified occasion.”
“You process through a castle in velvet robes and a hat with a massive ostrich feather on it, James.”
“It’s not an ostrich feather. It’s an ostrich plume, and it has been a feature of the Order since 1348.”
“Oh, well, if it’s been a plume since 1348, that changes everything.”
The smile dropped off James’s face. “You, on the other hand,” James said.
“You would require a formal address, which hasn’t been established for a male consort to a King, because there’s never been one.
Cecil’s going to have to draft precedent from scratch and present it to the Privy Council for approval.
You’d need a title, almost certainly a dukedom, because anything less would create a protocol gap at state dinners.
Your position in the order of precedence would need to be legislated, not just agreed.
There’s no existing provision for where a King’s husband sits relative to the Princess Royal. ”
Tristan blinked at him twice as the breadth of the changes sank in.
“Then there’s the line of succession,” James continued.
“Any children we have through surrogacy will require an Act of Parliament to confirm their place in the order, because the current legislation assumes biological descent from a reigning sovereign and a legal spouse, and the Surrogacy Provisions my father put through in 2019 still haven’t been tested against the Act of Settlement. Cecil has a working group on it.”
“James—”
“I haven’t finished. There are forty-six existing protocols governing the conduct of the consort at state functions, and at least eleven of them reference the consort as female, which means Cecil has to redraft every one and run them through the Lord Chamberlain’s office before your first public engagement.
You’ll need a private secretary of your own, separate from Benton, who will be furious about the jurisdictional overlap and will produce a flowchart outlining reporting lines within the hour.
You’ll need a wardrobe allocation, which the Treasury will audit.
You’ll need security clearance at a level that requires your father, your brothers, your agent, and almost certainly your childhood dentist to be vetted by MI5—”
“Okay, stop. You’re not exactly a booby prize, James. So quit talking like this. It’s like you’re trying to scare me off.”
James’s eyes came round to him. “I’m being realistic.”
“You’re being an idiot. You’re the catch here, James.” Tristan held his look. “There are going to be hundreds of books written, trying to work out how some American actor landed the King of the United Kingdom.”
“Royal life isn’t what it’s made out to be, Tris,” James said.
“The palaces are draughty, and the castles are worse. We work weekends. We work every holiday that matters to normal people. Christmas, the lot.” He paused.
“And you’ll have to be perfect. Not just good; fucking perfect.
They’ll pick over you harder than any woman I might have married and made queen, because you’re a man and an American, which they’ll never quite forgive.
They won’t forget that you act for a living, and they’ll pretend to find that charming right up until it suits them not to.
Maybe you’re at a children’s oncology ward visit and they think you’re overdoing it, playing to the cameras, being an actor instead of a human being.
There’ll be headlines about you being disingenuous.
I’d put the odds of that headline appearing at roughly seventy per cent within your first year of us going public.
“One day you’ll drop the ball. Everyone does.
You’ll say the wrong thing on a bad morning, or laugh when you shouldn’t, and they’ll shred you for it.
You’ll be shat on, Tris. Steadily, to the end of your days.
” James’s voice stayed flat and level throughout.
“That’s what I’m asking you to take on. I understand why you left, the first time, and wouldn’t exactly blame you if you decided to do it again. ”
His hand found Tristan’s on the duvet and tightened around it.
“So humour me. When I tell you I’m going to make it my life’s work to love you so hard that none of it reaches you, that nothing outside the two of us gets to matter when we’re in the little bubble we’ve built for ourselves, you’re to let me.
No arguing. I have to do this for you, Tris.
It’s the one part of all of it that I get any say over. ”
Tristan was quiet. “I’ll take that,” he said. “In exchange, I’ll help you build the wall between our private life and the public one. But I’m going to whine. I’m warning you now, so you can’t act surprised about it later.”
“You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t whining about something. You’re famously nervy and difficult to deal with,” James said, accepting this clause with a small nod.
“I’ll complain about the press. About the weekends spent working, about every miserable thing that comes bolted onto this life and how all of it seems designed to keep you away from me.” Tristan pressed his hand flat to James’s chest. “None of it’s anything I ever wanted for myself.”
“I’d be concerned if landing the King of the United Kingdom was part of ten-year-old Tristan’s life plan.”
“No. This was never in my Moleskine. But I’ll take all of it,” Tristan said.
“Every last draughty palace, every miserable Christmas, every tabloid arsewipe who wants a go at me. Because it means I get to be with you. I get to help you carry the job, the whole ridiculous, heavy weight of it that would’ve broken any other man years ago.
” He held James’s gaze. “I love you. And I love how much the job matters to you.”
James kissed Tristan’s hair and held his mouth there.
“Will you work on building our happily ever after with me, Tris?” he said.
“Me, Cecil, Marina, Benton, the Lord Chamberlain, the Privy Council, the Royal Mint. Will you promise to endure four hundred years of constitutional precedent that nobody’s thought to update, sit through countless planning sessions and risk management meetings, and have Cecil develop a timeline for soft launching you as my better half? ”
Tristan tucked himself under James’s arm and pulled it tight around his own shoulders. “As long as other people do most of the work.”
James smirked down at him. “Look at you. Learning to be a little princeling already.”
Tristan smirked back. “I’ve been studying Barnaby.”
James’s arm tightened around him. “We don’t get smoked out, Tris,” he said. “Not by the Mail, not by Harland, or by some bloke with craft glitter. When we walk out that door together, it’s because we chose to, and we’re doing it on our terms.”