22. “Paper Crown” - Alec Benjamin
“Paper Crown” - Alec Benjamin
I’m due at Olivia’s apartment in fifteen minutes. Normally, I look forward to the break and the chance to catch up. Today, my stomach is a pit of dread.
What do you say to your mother-in-law when your husband is no longer living with you, can’t even bother to tell you what it is he wants, and just expects you to sit back and wait patiently while he sorts through his life?
I don’t know how much Henry has told her—if he’s told her anything at all. I’m walking into the situation blind, and I’m placing the blame squarely at his feet, where it belongs. I may have made some mistakes that led us to this place, but he is acting like a coward by running away.
For five minutes, I debate blowing off the meeting, but when Maisie sticks her head into my office and asks if I remembered I’m seeing Olivia, I decide not to risk it. The more I stick to my normal routines, the easier it will be to sell the story that Henry is simply away on business.
“I’m on my way,” I tell her, grabbing my handbag from beneath my desk.
Olivia’s suite is on the third floor of the residential wing, and like many of our private apartments, has several entrances.
I use the one right off the private kitchen, where I know the powder room is.
I’ve been at various engagements all morning, and I forgot to use the restroom before heading over here.
Slipping inside, I finish my business, then inspect my face in the oval mirror over the sink. Daphne has been doing a good job hiding my puffy eyes. If she wonders about them or the half of the bed that hasn’t been slept in, she has yet to say anything to me.
I smooth the bodice of my dress and pinch a little color into my cheeks. By the time I’m done, even I can’t notice a difference from my usual appearance.
Assuming Olivia is in the kitchen preparing tea, I head in that direction, but when I walk in, the room is empty. The kettle is cold, and there are no cups sitting next to the stove. Did she forget? I haven’t seen any signs that her memory is failing.
Then it hits me squarely between the eyes. Henry told her. And like any adoring mother, Olivia chose to take her son’s side.
Should I confront her or leave before she discovers I’m here?
I’m still frozen with indecision when voices float over from the other side of the apartment. Following them, I walk through the dining room and stop when I get to the living room doorway.
Inside, sprawled on the floor, are Henry and Axel. Henry is wearing a pair of jeans that hug his backside so nicely, my nipples harden on principle. He’s propped up on his elbows, arms straining at the sleeves of his shirt. Axel is directly across from him, mimicking his posture.
A dozen Hot Wheels are scattered between them on the rug. The whole scene is punctuated by booms and crashing noises as they push the toys around. Axel drives a car over Henry’s arm, and Henry pretends the motion fatally wounds him, which sends Axel into a fit of giggles.
There’s a pang in my chest, something I’d normally call longing, but I certainly have no desire to get down there on the floor and smash cars into anything, so I don’t know what it is.
Henry reaches over and tickles Axel’s stomach, which only makes the boy laugh harder. They roll around on the floor, Axel’s shyness at their first meeting completely gone.
Henry is happy. Blissfully happy. The thought lands in my gut like a punch. I haven’t seen his face light up like this for ages. This is what he wants, what he needs. He needs to know that he isn’t the man his father is. That he could never be that man.
I shouldn’t have doubted it. Of course he won’t turn into William. There’s no way in hell the man I love could become that kind of monster. In the few short weeks he’s known Axel, he’s been more of a father to the boy than William ever was to him.
I long to reach for him, to tell him I was wrong and that I’m sorry. That I messed up by letting my fears get the best of me.
A movement from the sofa reminds me where I am. Olivia moves to the doorway, her eyes fixed on the two boys still wrestling on the floor. Laughing at their antics, she asks, “How about some cookies?”
A high-pitched “yay!” pierces the loud cacophony of masculine sounds coming from the mass of limbs.
Realizing that Olivia is headed my way, I scoot back into the kitchen before she spots me. Unfortunately, I’m not fast enough.
“Celia. Is it . . . ?” Olivia halts in the doorway and glances at her watch. “Oh dear, I had no idea it was already this late.”
“It’s fine. I have a lot of things waiting for my attention, anyway.” Heat flares across my face as I head for the back door.
“Celia, wait. Come here.” She crosses the kitchen and pulls me into her lavender-and-cookie-dough-scented embrace.
She’s the only royal I know who bakes her own cookies from scratch.
Hugging me tighter than you’d expect for such a small woman, her collarbone digs into my shoulder.
It should be noted that she doesn’t eat the cookies she bakes.
I know she’s offering me comfort, and as much as I love her for it, and for all the ways she’s been the mother to me that my own mum wasn’t, I don’t allow myself to relax in her embrace. I can’t, not knowing what Henry must have told her and what this all looks like from the outside.
She reads my stiffness and pulls back. “Come sit down so we can talk.”
“I should be going. I don’t want to intrude,” I say.
“Nonsense.” She bats away my objection as though it were a fly. “They didn’t even notice I was in the room. Besides, I have something for you.”
She retreats into the kitchen, leaving me no choice but to follow. A quick glance toward the living room confirms that Henry is still unaware of my presence.
Olivia pulls a small bowl from the refrigerator and sets it on the table in front of me, along with a spoon. I pop the lid off.
“I know you prefer the dough,” she says with a smile.
Olivia’s cookie dough has always been the best, and even when I was a kid, she would save me several spoonfuls.
The small gesture cracks something inside me.
She could easily have chosen to shun me over whatever story Henry has told her, but instead she’s saving me dough and letting me hide in her kitchen.
“Thank you,” I say quietly, spooning some out.
She uses a spatula to move cookies from a baking tray to a hand-painted china plate. “Let me just take these to them before they come to hunt me down.” At the doorway to the dining room, she turns back. “Please stay. I would really like to talk. Just for a few minutes.”
I bite my lip as she walks back to Henry and Axel. I briefly consider fleeing, but I can’t, not after that look she gave me. This is Olivia we’re talking about. It would be like kicking a kitten. I pull out a chair at the table and take a seat.
When she returns a few moments later, I watch over her shoulder to make sure Henry isn’t following her. The last thing I need is him throwing me out of his mum’s apartment.
I can’t tell if Olivia’s surprised to find me still here. I incline my ear to the living room, hoping to hear what they’re doing in there, but it’s quiet.
“Munching their cookies, I’d imagine.” She keeps her voice lowered. He can’t have told her everything if she’s willing to keep my presence here a secret.
“He asked if I wanted to meet Axel,” she continues. “As if I could ever say no to meeting my grandchild.”
That grandchild should have been Henry’s and mine, but I don’t think she’s intending to be cruel. “What do you think?” I say. “Of Axel?”
She beams and begins stacking the rest of the cookies in a tub. “He’s a darling. So handsome and sweet, just like his father.”
I murmur in agreement and shove another spoonful of cookie dough into my mouth.
“I know how difficult this must be.” She reaches across the table for my hand.
Do you? I want to say. As far as I know, William never had any former lovers claim to have had his child, although the thought isn’t far-fetched.
“It isn’t fair that everything happened this way, when you haven’t been blessed with a baby of your own, but don’t give up, love. It can still happen.”
I blink at her. So he didn’t tell her everything. At least not the part where I’ve been taking birth control for the better part of two years while letting him believe I want a baby as badly as he does. “I’m not so sure,” I say.
“Of course it will. Perhaps if you slow down a little, maybe take a vacation. The tropics always help me relax.”
“Did Henry tell you that we—” The right words vacate my head.
“He mentioned that this has all been very hard on you.” She looks at me thoughtfully. “I did notice your color’s been a little off recently.”
So Daphne’s makeup jobs aren’t quite good enough to fool the former queen. I can’t even make an accurate guess as to whether I’ve been more pale or flushed recently. I seem to alternate between the two with alarming regularity. “That would be an understatement,” I mutter.
Olivia sets down the spatula and massages her wrists. “This has all been hard on him, too. He’s been struggling for a while.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to. I’ve watched him change little by little over the past few years.”
I pick at the hem of my dress. “Isn’t change good?”
“Sometimes. But not when you watch the light go out of someone you love.”
An ugly fist knots itself around my stomach. “Is that what you think? That I stole his light?” I can hardly bring myself to ask the question.
Her eyes dart up to find mine. “Not at all. But I think watching you become someone he didn’t know you were has changed something in him. It’s not easy for a man to play second fiddle to his wife.”
I drop my eyes to the wood grain in front of me, remembering the day Henry and I sat at the table in the Green Drawing Room with our families, listening to our worlds get turned upside down.
When Parliament presented their idea of an arranged marriage to us, they intended for us to reign together as king and queen.
But that’s not the way fate left things.
“I don’t know how to change that,” I say.
“No one expects you to, least of all him.” Olivia waits until I look up. “But give him a chance to be the man you deserve. The man you know he is.”
I want to shout at her that I’m not the one who left, I’m not the one with the secret past and the secret lover and the secret child. I’m not the one who is threatening to blow our family and our reputation sky-high with dynamite to cater to my own whims.
“Mum?” Henry’s voice comes from the living room, sending my blood hurtling through my veins at breakneck speed.
I jump up from my chair and dart from the room. He can’t know I was here.
Olivia stops me as I’m closing the door. “He loves you, Celia. It’s breaking his heart to see you hurting like this.”
I nod and force my lips into a tiny smile that feels more like a grimace and head down the corridor.
I want to believe her words, believe that this is nothing more than a blip on the radar of our marriage, that fifty years from now we’ll look back at this time and roll our eyes at how ridiculous we were.
But regardless of how badly I want to believe her, I can’t.
Because she doesn’t know everything.
She doesn’t know that I’ve been faking infertility for years or that I lied to Henry about it. She doesn’t know that I let my press secretary kiss me. She doesn’t even know that Henry moved out.
So how could she possibly know if he still loves me?