Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Bryce
I stood beneath the lightning-bolt sign of The Thin White Duke and wondered if I was walking into a date, or just a friendly evening with a prince and his entourage. The distinction mattered more to me than it should have.
My lead agent lingered half a step behind me, a shadow in a dark suit. The street glistened from a recent rain, taxis dragging streaks of yellow across the wet pavement. Inside, I could hear the muffled thrum of bass and the low murmur of voices.
“Sir,” he said, voice pitched for my ear only. “We’ll take the table with you.”
“No.” I didn’t raise my volume. I let the ambassadorial cadence do the work. “You’ll hold the door and the corner across the street. If I need you, you’ll know.”
“It’s a tight space,” he countered. “We can be unobtrusive.”
“You’re excellent at many things,” I said, hand on the door, “but unobtrusive is not one of them. That’s the brief.”
A crackle of radio static, then a nod. “Understood.”
Inside, the room was narrow and warm, kinder than the day I’d had.
Bowie’s black-and-white stare looked down from the walls.
The backbar glowed like a stage set: bottles aligned, citrus under glass domes, a stack of coupes waiting for their turn beneath the slow-rotating disco ball.
Blue velvet banquettes stitched privacy into the corners.
The air smelled of gin, orange peel, and a faint thread of smoke that didn’t come from cigarettes.
I spotted them immediately. Arthur sat tucked into a shadowed corner—the seat I would have chosen myself for discretion.
His posture was composed, his profile calm, the kind of stillness that isn’t inherited but trained.
On his right: Chris Tennant, already half rising.
On his left: a man whose face tugged at recognition, like a melody I couldn’t quite name.
Arthur saw me, and his expression lit up, the smallest change but enough to loosen something in my chest.
Chris slid easily to the other side, trading places so the empty chair beside Arthur was clearly mine. “Evening, Ambassador,” he grinned. “Saved you the better side.”
“Thanks,” I said, and took the seat. Arthur rose just slightly, our hands meeting in the space between us—too formal to be a touch, too human to be protocol. And for a split second, Strathmore replayed itself: the almost-kiss, the interruption, the stubborn memory of wanting and not having.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, voice even, but his eyes were saying something else.
“Thank you for choosing a place that understands decent lighting,” I answered. “I owe you for that alone.”
The other man turned toward me, and recognition landed. Eddie Gray. Actor. Famous, but with a smile that behaved like an invitation rather than a performance.
“Mr. Gray,” I said. “A pleasure.”
“Eddie, please,” he said. “Lovely to meet you.”
A server in black appeared, notebook at the ready.
“Martini,” I said. “Gin. Icy cold, with a twist.”
“White wine,” Arthur said. “Dry.”
“Champagne,” Chris declared. “Why be shy?”
“Negroni,” Eddie added. “Stirred.”
The server vanished. I placed my phone face down on the table. The day—drone incursions, terse cables, Nigel Thorne’s veiled commentary about my weekend—receded by a few inches.
Arthur angled toward me, his knee finding mine under the table, resting there. “Do you want to talk about your day?” he asked softly. “Or shall we do our best to forget it?”
“Forgetfulness,” I said. “Hence the martini.”
“Excellent.” Chris leaned back. “We’ll supply distraction.”
Eddie gave a small smile. “I had a fitting this afternoon. Chris asked whether I preferred to breathe or to look extraordinary.”
“What did you choose?” I asked.
“I’m attempting both,” he said wryly. “Compromise is fashionable.”
“It is,” Chris said. “Especially where seams meet egos.”
Arthur’s mouth tilted. “He says after negotiating with six egos before lunch.”
“Seven,” Chris corrected, arching a brow. “One was mine.”
The drinks arrived on a tray that caught a net of light from the disco ball. My martini stem was icy; the lemon twist unfurled its sharp perfume. One sip, and the day loosened another notch.
“To forgetting,” Arthur said, touching his glass to mine.
“To excellent designs,” Chris offered.
“To cameras,” Eddie added.
We drank.
Turning to Eddie, my curiosity slipped through my reserve. “I should confess,” I said. “I’ve roped Chris and Arthur into making several suits for me. Mostly for embassy functions. Palaces demand a different wardrobe than what I brought from Washington. What is Chris making for you?”
Eddie’s eyes sparkled. “A tuxedo for the Emmys,” he said, smiling. “I’m nominated this year. Best Actor in a Drama—The Violet Hour on Hulu.” He gave a practised shrug, the kind that looked casual only on people used to red carpets. “It’s all absurd, really. But I suppose that’s the game.”
“Absolutely deserved,” Chris said.
Eddie tilted his head, studying me, then glanced at Arthur. “You know, Arthur once stayed a week with me in Los Angeles. Endured kale smoothies, the paparazzi, and one of my premieres without strangling anyone. He was very devoted back in the day.”
Arthur flushed, setting his glass down carefully. “Eddie and I were involved once,” he said, voice steady but quieter. “A long time ago.”
A sharp, unbidden pang hit me, and I prayed it didn’t show.
Jealousy. Ridiculous, but real. Why would a prince who had dated someone like Eddie Gray—glittering, celebrated, adored—want to kiss me? Perhaps Strathmore had been nothing more than my imagination, an indulgent dream.
Eddie seemed to catch the shift in me. He leaned forward. “What’s it like being an ambassador?”
I hesitated, fumbling for words. “Mostly cutting ribbons. Smoothing ruffled egos. But here—at the Court of St. James’s—it’s more complicated.
The so-called Special Relationship means every word, and every gesture, weighs more than it would anywhere else.
It’s political theatre as much as diplomacy. ”
“Sounds exhausting,” Eddie breathed.
“Exactly,” I admitted.
“Enough,” Chris cut in, wagging a finger. “Bryce came here to forget. You are not allowed to talk about work.”
Before I could reply, Eddie’s phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at it and let out a squeal that startled the nearest booth. “Oh my God, Chris! My manager just texted—I’ve got the cover of Esquire!”
Chris gasped, eyes wide. “UK Esquire or American?”
“The bloody American Esquire!” Eddie cried, throwing his arms around him.
They hugged, already off into delighted speculation—photographers, stylists, what to wear when you were the one everyone else would be dressing.
In the middle of their whirl, Arthur’s hand slipped gently over mine on the table.
I froze, caught between instinct and desire.
Then I looked straight into his eyes. The weight of his hand on mine seemed both feather-light and impossibly heavy.
I could have sworn my pulse had relocated from my wrist to the exact place our skin touched.
This was absurd. I was Bryce Lewis—career diplomat, survivor of more late-night negotiations than I cared to count, a man who’d dined with monarchs and presidents and made it through all of them without flinching.
I’d stared down political adversaries with the entire world watching, and I’d won more often than not.
Yet here, in a narrow London bar beneath the painted gaze of David Bowie and a flickering disco ball, one prince had me trembling like a schoolboy who’d just been noticed for the very first time.
I forced myself to breathe slowly, though the effort felt like trying to tame a wild animal.
My eyes met his—clear, unblinking, impossibly steady—and in that gaze was the memory of Strathmore, of the kiss that never happened.
The air between us still buzzed with that unfinished moment, and now more than ever I wanted to taste him.
Then I noticed it. The faint flush just above the opening of his shirt collar, warmth spreading across his skin. My heart stuttered. Was it the heat of the bar? Or had I unravelled his composure the way he unravelled mine?
He ran his tongue across his lower lip—soft, full, unbearably inviting—and my body answered with a sharp tug low in my belly. My knee locked against his under the table, as if my body had decided it was done waiting for my permission.
His voice came low, a whisper meant only for me. “I wish we could be alone.”
The words hit like voltage, rattling through me, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. Then, more fragile, his tone cracking despite his poise: “I rarely meet a man who intrigues me as much as you do.”
My breath caught altogether. A frozen beat, then a gasp of air, as though I’d been underwater and only now broken the surface. I inhaled, then exhaled, the sound too loud in my ears. And just when I might have leaned in, lips meeting his in reckless abandon, Chris’s voice cut through the moment.
“There’s a marvellous underground club with no name over by the Savoy,” he announced grandly to Eddie, as though unveiling a hidden treasure.
Eddie laughed, then tossed his phone into his pocket. “Then let’s go. God forbid we miss a night like this.”
He rose in one graceful motion, Chris bounding after him, both of them practically humming with conspiratorial glee. Their goodbyes were casual on the surface, but their eyes flicked knowingly between Arthur and me. They weren’t just leaving—they were gifting us privacy.
And then, in a flurry of laughter, they were gone.
The room seemed to change temperature in their absence, the edges of sound dimming until only the music and my heartbeat remained. Arthur turned back to me slowly, his expression unreadable—until his hand lifted and brushed along my jawline.
My whole body quaked at the touch. The ambassador, the diplomat, the man of practised restraint—he vanished. What remained was someone stripped down to desire, trembling with it.
Every hesitation dissolved. I wanted this. Wanted him. It had been so long since I’d let myself want any man at all, let alone so fiercely. Arthur wasn’t just a prince. In that moment, he was a man—stunning, magnetic, and achingly close.
His thumb traced my cheekbone, and I nearly leaned into it like a supplicant. My breath hitched. Arthur must have felt it, because his smile curved with the tiniest edge of triumph.
The clink of glass pulled me back: the server, suddenly at our side, his tray balanced like nothing in the world was at stake.
“Shall we have the check?” Arthur asked smoothly, his hand retreating as though nothing had happened.
“Yes, sir,” the server replied, vanishing again.
The loss of his touch left me reeling, but the echo remained, as though his fingers had branded my skin.
When we were alone once more, he leaned in, his voice calm, certain. “You’re coming home with me.”
I should have resisted. I should have thought of the cables I’d be expected to read before dawn, the security protocols I was meant to uphold, the fine line between personal and professional I’d sworn to walk.
But the pull of him was stronger than all of it. Inevitability wrapped around me like a current, dragging me where I already longed to go.
His eyes held mine, unwavering, daring me to refuse. I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Something unspoken passed between us, an agreement as binding as any treaty I’d ever signed.
And then he asked, voice dropping to a husky murmur that twisted heat through me, “Bryce… are you prepared to let me ruin you tonight?”