Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Arthur
Two weeks.
That was how long it had been since the photographs had erupted across the front pages—me and Bryce caught in a sliver of light and sound, dancing as though the world weren’t watching. Two weeks since I’d last seen his face in person, two weeks of phone calls stiff with everything we couldn’t say.
I sat at my desk at Clarence Atelier, paperwork spread before me. Invoices, supplier receipts, the endless clutter of a business that wanted me practical and focused when all I wanted was to throw my head back and scream. My pen tapped a restless staccato against the margin of the ledger.
“Focus on the present,” I muttered.
But the present was intolerable.
I thought of selling it all—my half of Clarence, the sketches and fittings and the showroom Chris and I had built brick by brick.
Take the money, take Bryce, and disappear.
Somewhere remote, somewhere green and quiet, where our names meant nothing.
We could keep chickens. Grow tomatoes. Live like mortals.
Hell, I wasn’t even fooling myself with this fantasy. I couldn’t make plans with Bryce until I saw him again. Until I knew if his eyes still lit up when they met mine. Until we stopped letting the silence between us do all the talking.
My laptop chimed, interrupting my despair. A string of notifications blinked across the screen: orders, multiple orders, piling up on top of each other. Normally, my sales reps sent me one tidy report at the end of the month. This felt like a deluge.
Before I could process it, the door to my office swung wide open and Chris burst in, grinning like a man who’d won the lottery.
“Sales are through the roof!” he announced, tossing a stack of folders onto my desk. “Selfridges and Harrods have tripled their orders. Tripled! And darling, brace yourself—Thorne & Whitmore in the States have already sold out of their initial run. They want more. Now.”
He collapsed into the chair opposite me, flushed with triumph.
I tried to match his smile, but my lips trembled at the edges. I should have been overjoyed. This was the sort of news we used to dream of when we were sketching clothes on the backs of napkins. Success, recognition, expansion.
But I knew why it was happening.
My name was currency, splashed across every headline. The scandal. The photographs. Prince Arthur Phillip and the American ambassador. The illicit romance dressed up as a glossy fairy tale. People wanted a piece of me, and that meant they wanted Clarence Atelier clothes.
Chris, bless him, only saw the numbers.
He leaned forward, eyes glittering. “I’ve already started drafting a capsule collection. Influencers, celebrities—get them in our clothes now, while the iron’s white-hot. Imagine the coverage.”
I pressed my hands flat on the desk, trying not to sag into it. “Yes. Brilliant, Chris.”
He tilted his head. “Why do you sound like someone just told you that you’re being audited? This is good news, Arthur.”
I forced a brighter smile, for him. “It is. Really. I’m just… tired.”
“Of course you are.” He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s been hell for you. But look at what it’s doing for us. If nothing else, take comfort in the fact that Clarence is thriving.”
Comfort was a word that felt far away.
The door creaked open again, this time with a gentler knock. Laurence slipped in, the model of efficiency, though his expression carried the faint amusement of a man holding gossip.
“Your Royal Highness,” he said, bowing slightly. “This just came in.” He gingerly placed a thick, glossy magazine on my desk.
American GQ.
Eddie’s face looked back at me from the cover, every inch the star. Hair sculpted, jaw sharp, shoulders draped in one of Chris’s tuxedos. He looked like the future of cinema, or at least the future the magazine wanted to sell.
Chris let out a delighted squeal and practically leapt across my desk to snatch it up. “Oh, he’s luminous! Look at the cut of that jacket—my God, it photographs like a dream.” He flipped through the pages, muttering in delight at each new spread. “This will cement us. Absolutely cement us.”
I tried to smile for him again, but something cold had settled in my stomach.
Laurence cleared his throat, diplomatic as always. “There’s the interview as well.”
Chris found it instantly, flipping with eager fingers. He began reading aloud snippets, gasping at the photographs that accompanied them.
Then his voice faltered, and the grin slipped.
I straightened. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said too quickly, his eyes darting to the side.
“Chris Tennant, do not lie to me.”
He sighed, knowing he was caught. “They included… those photos.”
I didn’t need clarification. I could see them in my mind’s eye already—me and Bryce on the dance floor, his hand at my back, my laughter caught mid-flight, our joy turned into damning evidence.
Chris read aloud softly, “His Royal Highness bristled when asked about his private life—but seeing these photos, one can understand why.”
My face fell into my hands before I could stop it. “When the hell is this going to end?” I whispered.
The office was quiet except for the distant hum of sewing machines in the workshop below, a reminder that life, business, the world—they all kept turning, no matter how badly you wanted to step off.
Chris reached across the desk, covering my hand with his own. His touch was warm, steady. “Soon, Arthur. It has to. Scandals flare and burn out. They always do.”
I wanted to believe him. But two weeks had already felt like a lifetime, and every headline seemed to stretch it longer, louder, sharper.
All I could think was: I needed to see Bryce.
I lowered my hands, the magazine forgotten.
“Laurence, Chris—leave me, please. I have an important call to make.”
Chris blinked, clearly ready to protest, but something in my expression must have warned him off. He scooped up the GQ with a theatrical sigh and swept out. Laurence gave a small bow, as though I’d just dismissed him from court, then followed.
Silence fell.
I picked up my phone with fingers that trembled more than I wanted to admit. Scrolling past official numbers, past secretaries and aides, I found the one that mattered. Bryce’s private line.
I pressed it, bracing myself for his voicemail. But then—his voice, tired and warm, alive in my ear. “Hello?”
My breath caught. “Bryce… it’s me.”
A beat of silence, then I forced the words out. “We need to speak. In person. Now.”
* * *
Eddie’s flat was too quiet, the kind of silence that scraped at the nerves.
Pacing from the narrow window to the sofa and back, my chest tightened as I tried to stay steady.
I’d rehearsed every sentence a hundred times over the past two weeks.
I knew what I wanted to say—knew the shape of it, the rhythm.
But I also knew the moment he stood in front of me, all that careful language would unravel into something messy.
The knock came, sharp and decisive. My stomach lurched.
I pulled the door open, and there he was. Bryce. His eyes looked exhausted, rimmed with the kind of red that came from nights of little sleep.
Relief rushed through me. I leaned forward to kiss him, desperate for the familiar anchor of his mouth. But he turned his head, offering his cheek instead.
The refusal landed like a blow.
He stepped inside, setting his bag down with neat precision, and I shut the door behind him. We hovered in the space between the hallway and sitting room, strangers in a place that had once felt like a cocoon.
We sat opposite each other on the sofa, the cushion’s gulf between us more like a chasm. I stared at his hands folded tightly in his lap, veins standing out pale against his skin.
“You—” I started.
“I—” he blurted at the same moment.
We both stopped, startled. Bryce gave a quick, nervous laugh. “You first.”
My throat burned, and I swallowed hard.
“Bryce, I can’t take this anymore. The distance, and the incessant waiting.
The silence on the phone as if we’re both afraid to breathe too loud.
It’s tearing me apart.” My voice trembled, betraying me.
I forced myself to keep going. “We need to move forward together, not hide like fugitives. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you. And I’m willing to give up everything—Clarence, my partnership with Chris, the name that comes with my birth, all of it.
What’s the use of being a Windsor, or a designer, or anything at all if I can’t have you? ”
The words spilled out faster, recklessly. “I don’t want dinners with my cousins, or another bloody balcony wave, or a business that thrives because I was photographed in your arms on a dance floor. None of it matters without you, Bryce. I want you.”
The room throbbed with my confession, every second stretching unbearably long. I waited for him to reach across the sofa, to take my hand, to say my love wasn’t one-sided.
But Bryce didn’t move.
His eyes glistened. I saw it—one tear breaking loose, sliding down the curve of his cheek. My stomach clenched so tight it felt like it might fold in on itself. He brushed the tear away quickly, as if embarrassed.
“Arthur… perhaps we need to cool things off. Just for a while. My entire career is hanging by a thread, and I was nearly recalled to Washington over this. Do you understand what that means? Decades of service, of sacrifice, undone because I couldn’t control a headline. I can’t risk more of that right now.”
I stared at him, the words not sinking in, not making sense. “Cool things off?” I repeated, incredulous.
His jaw tensed. “When things settle down, when the noise dies, maybe then… but right now I have to focus on my job. On what I’ve worked for my entire life.”
The breath whooshed out of me like I’d been struck. “Cool things off?” I said again, louder this time, disbelief turning to fury. “I bare my soul to you, tell you I’ll give up everything, and you sit there and talk about cooling off?”
“Arthur, please—”
“No!” The dam burst. “Do you know what this costs me? To even speak like this? I’ve risked my family’s wrath, my mother’s disappointment, the ridicule of the entire bloody world.
I’ve put my name—my cursed surname—on the line for you.
And now you’re telling me I’m an inconvenience?
That my love is something you can put on hold until it fits better into your schedule? ”
Bryce’s face twisted, pained. “That’s not what I’m saying—”
“Then what are you saying?” I demanded, my voice breaking. “That I’m too much trouble? That I was a pleasant distraction until the Secretary of State got pissed off? That you regret it all?”
“Don’t,” he whispered, anguish etched into every line of his face. “Don’t twist it like that. You know I care—”
“Do I?” My voice rose, raw. “Because right now I feel like I’ve been used. Like I gave you everything, and the second it became hard, you’re ready to toss me aside.”
His eyes widened, horrified. “How can you think that? How can you believe I don’t—” He stopped, choking on the words. His hand lifted as though to reach for me, then fell uselessly back into his lap.
The silence was unbearable. My chest heaved as I forced the question past my lips, quieter now, desperate: “Did you ever truly love me?”
Tears glistened on his face. His lips parted, but no sound came. And then Bryce stood up abruptly, as if staying seated might break him in half.
He crossed to the door with quick, unsteady steps. His hand fumbled with his coat. Damn it, he wouldn’t even look at me.
“Bryce,” I pleaded, my voice shaking, but he didn’t turn. Instead, he opened the door, and slipped into the hall.
I sat rooted to the sofa, the echo of his sobs trailing behind him. The flat felt cavernous, gutted.
And the only thought hammering in my head was a question I couldn’t silence:
Had I just lost Bryce forever?