Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Bryce
Urgent.
There were very few reasons Paula Brooks used that word. All of them were catastrophic.
My stomach went cold. “Shit,” I said, louder than I intended. Arthur looked up from his tea, the cup halfway to his mouth. His face softened with concern first, then sharpened when he saw the way my hand shook.
I called Paula before my brain could sprint into worst-case scenarios. She answered on the first ring.
“Bryce? Have you checked the news yet?” Her voice was clipped.
My mind leapt to the war. “Oh God,” I groaned, pressing my palm to my forehead. “What did Russia do now? Tell me they didn’t escalate in Albania overnight—”
“It’s not Russia,” she said. “It’s you.”
For a second, I didn’t understand. Then my blood ran hot. “Me?” I asked, careful, like the word might explode. “What the hell does that mean?”
I mouthed to Arthur, Get your phone. He set his teacup down and reached for his mobile. The lock screen bloomed awake with a wall of alerts. He gasped, and my pulse ticked up.
“Paula,” I managed, “what’s happening?”
“Look at the news and call me right back,” she said, voice gone to iron. Then the line went dead.
I stared at my phone for a moment, then opened the BBC app.
The headline punched me in the sternum.
U.S. Ambassador Bryce Lewis Caught in Intimate Embrace with Prince Arthur Phillip!
Beneath it, a photograph. Strobe-lit. Crowded with moving bodies and neon haze.
Me and Arthur on the dance floor, his arms looped around my neck, my mouth near his cheek, laughter caught reckless on my face.
The moment looked tender and private—and like evidence.
The caption might as well have been a charge sheet.
My lungs forgot how to work. Next to me, Arthur swiped, and the phone buzzed like an angry hive in his hands.
“God,” he whispered, colour draining. “Bryce—listen.” His voice shook as he read, each sentence another blow:
“Breaking: Prince Arthur Phillip was seen last night in a tightly embraced dance with U.S. Ambassador Bryce Lewis at an exclusive London venue. Onlookers describe the pair as ‘indisputably intimate,’ sharing whispered exchanges and lingering touches. Palace sources declined to comment on whether the encounter contravenes expectations of royal conduct for a senior member of the family. Diplomatic experts warn the optics could complicate Lewis’s nascent tenure and raise questions about royal impartiality. ”
He looked up at me with eyes too bright. “They said senior member. I’m not a fucking senior member of anything!”
I swore—fast, vicious, useless. The word hung and fell; nothing changed. I swiped, and another headline slid into place.
The Firm Under Fire? Palace Braces as Prince Arthur’s Late-Night Dance Sparks Constitutional Hand-Wringing
The first paragraph used that careful British tone that reads like a scolding.
While the Duke of Clarence has cultivated a modern public image—business-savvy in British fashion—this new association with America’s top diplomat invites scrutiny of the Crown’s commitment to political neutrality.
Officials declined comment on whether guidance had been offered in advance regarding private socialising in public venues.
Guidance. As if Arthur needed chaperoning. As if we hadn’t already lived our lives under a microscope.
“I never saw a photographer,” Arthur said, voice pitching upward. “Bryce, I didn’t see a single lens.”
“Neither did I.” I couldn’t stop staring at the picture. In the picture my hand was circling his waist, and how stupidly, gloriously happy we looked. “We were so absorbed in each other that we didn’t notice.”
His phone chimed again: another alert, another wound.
He scrolled, throat bobbing. “Here,” he said hoarsely. “This one’s… worse.” He swallowed and read aloud from a tabloid, the words oily and sure of themselves:
ROYAL RUMBA OR DIPLOMATIC DISASTER?
Exclusive images obtained by the Daily Crown show Prince Arthur Phillip pressed close to U.S.
Ambassador Bryce Lewis on a pulsing dance floor in the early hours.
Witnesses say the pair were ‘all over each other’ and ‘didn’t care who saw.
’ According to a club insider, security was ‘stretched’ as the men ‘moved like lovers.’ With the Prince’s mother, Princess Anne, known for her strict sense of duty, palace watchers are already asking what consequences may follow.
Sources suggest the Palace is in ‘lockdown mode.’ As for Ambassador Lewis, questions swirl stateside: can he credibly front America’s foreign policy while stirring an international scandal of the heart?
Arthur’s mouth trembled. He put a hand to his chest like he was checking his heart was still there. “They’re dragging my mother into it already.” He sounded both incredulous and resigned; he’d grown up with this—he understood exactly how fast the machine spins once it’s fed.
A new tremor took me. Not just at the thought of the Palace, but of the State Department. Of Washington at its righteous worst. Committees. Calls from “friends.” Comments about “judgement,” “optics,” “traditional expectations of conduct.” Language built to conceal the knife.
“I need to—” I started, then stopped, because I didn’t know whether to call Paula or crawl under the bed and scream.
Arthur got out of bed and began pacing, hair wild, and the veneer stripped from his voice.
“Mummy’s private secretary will recommend I remain unseen, which is jargon for house arrest. They’ll ‘advise’ me to cancel any appearances.
And they’ll say it in that chilly way they’ve perfected since the Tudor court. ”
A bitter, unsteady laugh roared up my throat and died there. “They’ll advise me to resign,” I said before I could temper it.
He spun on me. “They won’t.”
“Arthur—”
“They bloody well won’t.” Arthur’s spine drew up. “You haven’t done anything illegal. You went dancing. With me.” His voice softened at the end, and that nearly undid me.
The BBC page refreshed again with clinical cruelty:
Palace: ‘No Comment’ on Duke of Clarence Nightclub Photos; State Department Says ‘We’re Gathering Facts’
Gathering facts. The gentlest possible prelude to a public execution.
I scraped a hand across my face. “Damn it,” I said, the word collapsing into the space between us. “We got careless.”
Arthur flinched as if I’d thrown the word at him. “We were careful,” he said, then corrected himself. “We tried. Do you want me to apologise for dancing with the man I—” He stopped, every muscle in his face fighting the sentence. “For dancing with you?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked, and for a moment the Prince was gone and the boy was there, the one who’d learned too early that joy is a public hazard. “Because I can hear it—under the words. If only we’d behaved. If only you weren’t royal, and if only you weren’t fucking the ambassador.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. Shame—then anger at the shame. “That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,” he said, and the line cracked on this.
“They will strip me threadbare for this, Bryce. They’ll say I’ve endangered the Crown’s neutrality, that I’ve made myself a partisan object—do you understand what that means for a Windsor?
The papers will splash my name beside words like scandal and impropriety.
This could kill Clarence Atelier. And my mother—” He exhaled, eyes bright.
“She’ll be deeply hurt. She believes in service to the nation like it’s oxygen. ”
Guilt stabbed under my ribs, irrational and total. “I’m sorry,” I said, because sorry was the only language left when the house was already on fire.
He shook his head once, hard, as if to fling off pity.
“And your people will haul you over the coals. The fucking president will decide if you’re an asset or a liability before lunch.
Your boss, the secretary of, shit, whatever it’s called, will say it’s a ‘conversation.’ You’ll sit in silence while they dismantle your bloody life. ”
“We’ve got to think more rationally, because…”
“Where were the bloody cameras?” Arthur asked almost to himself. “I don’t understand. We were careful at the door, careful inside—”
“Phones,” I said. “Everyone’s a camera. And we were…” I looked at the photo again and wanted to weep for the happiness on my face. “We were happy.”
He let out a small, broken sound that wasn’t a laugh. “They’ll call it reckless. They already have.”
Another article surfaced—The Times, sober font, sharper scalpel:
Optics and Obligation: When Private Affections Meet Public Duty
While the Duke of Clarence is not a direct heir, he remains a royal with obligations to maintain neutrality; the ambassador, meanwhile, is America’s public voice in a volatile moment.
The question is not whether they’re entitled to private lives, but whether last night’s public intimacy suggests poor judgement in an age of instantaneous scrutiny.
Poor judgement. The phrase lodged like a fishbone in my throat.
“Look at me,” I said.
Arthur did. For all the royal blood in his veins, right now he looked very young. Not fragile—he’d never been fragile—but flayed.
“We can’t turn this off,” I said. “We can’t rewind it. Only we can decide what we do next.”
“What we do is hide,” he said flatly.
“And what if we don’t?” I asked, surprising myself. “What if we manage it?”
We stared at each other, and somewhere in the building, a boiler clanked. My phone vibrated again—Paula. “I have to go to the embassy.”
He nodded, then shook his head as if disagreeing with himself. “They’ll say you shouldn’t be seen leaving my flat.”
I leaned in and kissed him.
“I never wanted to hide you,” I breathed, and the words came out raw.
* * *
Even before the SUV pulled up to the embassy, I saw the wall of cameras—lenses like rifle barrels, microphones thrust forward like bayonets.
“Stay tight,” my lead agent murmured.
The vehicle stopped. Doors opened. A roar went up.
“Ambassador Lewis—”
“Is it true—”
“Are you and the Duke—”
“Does the Palace approve—”
Questions hurled like stones, each one heavier than the last. Flashbulbs detonated in my face, so fast it felt like strobe lighting.
The security detail closed ranks, a human barricade.
I kept my head down, letting them form a wedge around me.
My shoes hit the pavement. Hands reached out, and microphones grazed my coat.
“Move, sir,” one agent barked, muscling a cameraman back.
I walked forward, heart hammering, until the heavy glass doors swallowed us. The sound outside muted to a distant storm. Paula was waiting just inside, ramrod straight. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were sharp. She didn’t speak as I fell in step beside her.
The embassy corridors felt different this morning—too quiet. Staffers at their desks pretended to be busy but glanced up anyway. A few smiled thinly, apologetically. Most simply stared.
My cheeks burned. I kept my spine rigid, and my face neutral. A mask I’d worn my entire life, only it felt heavier now.
At last, we reached my office. Paula opened the door and stood aside. “He’s waiting,” she said crisply. “Secretary Kirk. Place the call now.”
Her words landed like a prison sentence.
She closed the door behind me, leaving me in silence. The air was stale, and the drapes were drawn. I crossed to my desk and could almost hear my pulse echoing off the walls.
Kirk.
I dreaded him more than the reporters. More than the gossip rags. The administration had never hidden its discomfort with people like me, but it had never been an issue before, until now.
I hit the call button, and the screen blinked. Kirk’s face appeared, and he was scowling.
“Ambassador Lewis,” he barked, no greeting, no pretense. His forehead shone under harsh D.C. lighting. “Do you know the magnitude of the crisis you’ve caused?”
“Mr. Secretary—”
“Spare me.” His lip curled. “Your reckless indiscretion has compromised your position, endangered our credibility, and jeopardised U.S.–U.K. relations. Do you understand what’s at stake?”
I clenched my hands in my lap and kept my voice measured. “Sir, I—”
“Compromising photographs splashed across every major outlet in the Western world,” he thundered. “Of you—our representative—entwined with a Windsor, for God’s sake. And he’s a man! Do you have any idea how this plays in Moscow? In Beijing? Do you?”
His voice rattled my desk.
“I take full responsibility,” I said, though the words tasted like sand.
“You’ll take more than responsibility.” His eyes narrowed, pale and pitiless. “You’ll rectify the situation. Immediately. If you don’t, you won’t need to worry about Moscow or Beijing—you’ll be on the next plane home. Recalled. Effective immediately.”
The threat dropped like lead. My stomach knotted.
He leaned forward, close enough that the camera warped his face into something grotesque. “Tell me, Ambassador Lewis—do you really want your job?”