Her Royal Christmas (Her Royal Bodyguard #6)

Chapter 1

ALEX

The helicopter shuddered as it cut through another bank of snow, the rotors thumping so loudly that even inside the cabin it was more sensation than sound—a steady vibration in Alexandra’s bones, a tremor in the soles of her boots.

“Hands in your laps, please,” Erin said for what had to be the sixth time.

Three small pairs of hands obeyed for exactly three seconds.

Matilda’s fingers crept toward the window latch.

Florence’s hand hovered over the little strip of LED lights along the bulkhead.

Frank had somehow found a way to poke an entirely innocuous piece of plastic with the kind of intensity that made Erin’s eye twitch.

Alexandra watched them from her seat and felt something soften in her chest. This, she thought, was what everyone had failed to warn her about—that motherhood would be equal parts terror and helpless adoration, and that no amount of protocol could make it neat.

“Matilda.” Erin’s voice cut cleanly through the rumble, a tone Alexandra knew from a thousand security briefings and late-night crisis meetings. “Leave the latch alone, sweetheart.”

“I’m just looking,” Matilda protested, wide-eyed and unrepentant. “I’m not touching.”

“You are very much touching,” Erin said, leaning over from her harnessed seat opposite to gently redirect their daughter’s hand away from the window. “We do not open things in helicopters.”

“We’re not going to fall out,” Matilda said confidently. “Because Mummy Erin would catch us.”

Alexandra bit down on a smile. That much, at least, was true.

“Mummy Erin,” Frank repeated, delighted. “Mummy Erin can fly.”

“She can’t fly in a blizzard while holding three wriggling children,” Alexandra said mildly, and carefully didn’t look at Erin’s face when she said it. “We’re going to let the pilot do his job, all right?”

“He has a name, you know,” Matilda muttered.

“So he does,” Alexandra replied. “What is it?”

Matilda deflated a little. “I forgot.”

“That’s because you were too busy touching the latch instead of listening during introductions,” Erin said, but the edge had worn out of her voice, replaced by an exhaustion so familiar to Alexandra it ached.

Erin rested her gloved hand lightly on Matilda’s small knee, thumb rubbing absent circles through the thick navy wool of her tights. “He’s called James.”

“James,” Matilda echoed obediently.

“James the Pilot,” Frank decided.

Florence leaned forward, her nose almost touching the tiny oval port as another swirl of white rushed past. Her breath fogged the glass. “It looks like we’re inside a snow globe,” she said softly.

Alexandra’s heart squeezed. Florence’s voice always did that to her—soft, observant, slightly off to the side of the chaos, as if she saw a world no one else did.

“It does,” Alexandra agreed, looking past her daughter’s messy blonde fringe to the world outside. The snow was thick and drifting, clouds hanging low over the Cairngorms. Somewhere beneath them, the great dark shape of Balmoral waited, shrouded in white.

Her childhood memories of the estate were stitched with contradictions: the rigid choreography of royal holidays, the scent of wet dogs and peat fires, the sharp sweetness of cold air in her lungs. The sense of being remote and somehow freer, even when surrounded by traditions older than she was.

This time, it felt different.

This time, she was coming as Queen.

As wife.

As mother.

“We’re beginning our descent, Your Majesty,” James’s voice crackled over her headset. “Ten minutes to landing. It might be a little rough at the end, but we’ll set you down safely.”

“Thank you, James,” Alexandra replied.

Erin’s eyes flicked to her, then to the children, then to the windows, calculating everything.

Alexandra didn’t need a headset to hear the checklist running behind that gaze; she could almost see it scrolling: angle of approach, security footprint on arrival, snowdrift depth, visibility, escape routes.

Alexandra reached out and gently covered Erin’s hand where it rested on her thigh. Through the gloves, through the layers of fabric, there was still the familiar warmth.

“Hey,” Alex said quietly.

Erin’s gaze snapped back to her. Even with the bulky ear defenders, the flight jacket, the harness, she was still that woman Alexandra had fallen so inconveniently in love with all those years ago—the one who had stood a step behind her and a little to the left, ready to take a bullet and utterly unprepared to take a kiss.

“Hey,” Erin replied, and for a second something soft flickered there behind her intense green eyes. Then Florence squealed about seeing a tree through the snow, and the moment vanished, swallowed up by the roar of the rotors.

Alexandra let her fingers stay resting over Erin’s, and tried not to dwell on how rare that contact had become.

Five years. Five years of babies, little children, and sleepless nights and constitutional crises and school choices and NHS reforms and three small people who always—always—seemed to know when their mothers were about to sneak in a moment alone and considered it their life’s mission to interrupt.

She could barely remember the last time she and Erin had made love without one of the children knocking on the door or a private secretary calling with an “urgent” document that could just as easily have waited till morning.

She felt it as a hollow space under her breastbone, a nagging ache.

Not just the lack of sex, though that was its own sharp frustration, but the sense of something fraying at the edges.

A distance that had crept in quietly—not a chasm, not yet, but there in the way Erin sat a fraction too straight, the way her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

This Christmas, she thought, watching Erin scan the snow and clouds. We’re going to fix that. We’re going to find our way back to each other properly. No matter how many spreadsheets Vic has ambushed us with.

Vic was organising Christmas. And everyone was more than a little concerned by that.

The helicopter dropped a little, a controlled fall that made Matilda shriek happily and Frank grab at the air as if he could catch the altitude with his bare hands.

Florence just sighed contentedly, leaning back against Alexandra’s side. “My tummy did a funny thing,” she reported.

“That’s the helicopter,” Alexandra said, wrapping an arm around her. “It’s saying we’re nearly there.”

“Nearly there,” Frank repeated, bouncing in his seat. “Is there snow? Is there a castle? Are there reindeers? Mummy Alex, are there reindeers?”

“We’re in Scotland, darling, not Lapland,” Alexandra said. “But Vic did say something about animals, didn’t she?”

“She said Christmas is going to be ‘fucking immaculate,’” Matilda said, the words delivered with horrifying precision.

“Matilda! Language!” Erin scolded.

Alexandra laughed, horrified. That sounded like Vic.

“Yes, well,” she said. “Auntie Vic has… big plans.”

“Big, scary plans,” Erin muttered under her breath.

Alexandra turned her head, catching the tension in the line of Erin’s jaw.

There were fine grooves at the corners of her eyes that hadn’t been there five years ago—worry etched into skin by long nights and longer days.

Her dark hair was a little shorter, a little more practical.

There was a faint scar along her knuckles from some incident Alexandra hadn’t been present for, and that still bothered her more than she’d admit.

But she was still her beautiful kind Erin. Still her anchor in every storm.

“Just think,” Alexandra said, half teasing, half sincere. “No London, no meetings, no red boxes, no protests outside the palace gates. Just snow, and fires, and family.”

Erin huffed out something that might have been a laugh. “And Vic. Don’t forget Vic.”

“Oh, I never forget Vic,” Alexandra said dryly. “It’s physically impossible. She leaves a trail of glitter and chaos wherever she goes.”

Florence perked up. “Is there glitter?”

“There is always glitter when Auntie Vic is involved,” Erin said grimly. “Check your pockets before bed, or you’ll wake up sparkling for a week.”

“I want to sparkle,” Matilda said.

“You already sparkle,” Alexandra told her, kissing the top of her head. “All three of you do.”

Frank seemed briefly conflicted about whether sparkling was suitably macho, then shrugged and decided it probably was.

The helicopter banked gently, and suddenly the snow outside broke enough for Alexandra to glimpse the ground: a swathe of dark green trees dusted white, the silver ribbon of a river, and then Balmoral itself rising into view—a solid, grey bulk, towers and turrets softened by snow.

Whatever else she felt about the place, the sight of it tugged at something deep and complicated in her.

This was where her grandparents had retreated from the world.

Where she’d run in wellies across soaked lawns as a child, against the backdrop of ancient stone and older expectations.

Where she’d stood stiffly in black a lifetime later, the cameras trained on her face as she pretended not to tremble.

Now, she was coming here to try and put herself back together again. To put her marriage back into focus.

The thought made her straighten a little, as if she could will herself into resolve.

“Seatbelts checked, everyone,” Erin said, her body snapping into that precise, alert posture Alexandra knew so well. “We’ll be landing in a moment. Feet away from the base of your seats, please. No touching anything unless it’s your seatbelt or Mummy’s hand.”

Matilda deliberately took Alexandra’s hand and then stuck her tongue out at Erin, who rolled her eyes but looked faintly relieved.

The helicopter skimmed over the grounds, its reflection flickering briefly in one of the frozen ornamental ponds. Alexandra could see cars in the courtyard below, staff hurrying out with coats and umbrellas and the efficient bustle of people who had done this many, many times before.