Chapter 25
I can’t breathe in this stupid dress, but I can’t seem to unzip it myself. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go to the Edinburgh Airport
wearing it. I just need to get out of here.
My suitcase is open on my bed and I’m stuffing things into it at random. I’ve never packed this way—I’m always systematic.
I don’t recognize myself tonight. I don’t recognize who I’ve become.
Who gets a setback with their dream job and settles to work retail because a hot guy tells her to? Who sacrifices writing
time to hook up with a fuckboy prince? Everything I’ve worked toward, everything I’ve planned, has been dumped for a guy who
was playing me. I’m so angry at myself I could scream. I’m so angry at him I could run him over with one of his many cars.
“Stupid, stupid,” I say out loud, sitting on my bed, a fist to my forehead.
I don’t want to cry even though the pressure of all these emotions is making my skull pound.
I judged Margaret MacIntyre for blowing up her life for a guy and then immediately did the same thing.
Even after what I went through with Dean. I hate myself. I hate myself so much.
There’s a knock at my door. I may be an idiot, but I know it’s not going to be Finn. He’s probably having sex with Beatrice
in the library by now. The library that I loved. So who’s showing up here? Maybe Caro? I can’t face her—or anyone else who may have come looking for me. Unfortunately,
the knocking continues. There’s a chance it could be an emergency. I relent and answer the door.
Tina, in her silver satin gown with matching gloves, her gray-streaked hair pulled into a tight bun, stands still on my doorstep.
I flash back to her presence when Finn’s father was all but telling me off.
“Did the king send you?” I ask flatly. “You all can relax, I’m leaving this place.”
Tina notes my haphazard packing job and pushes past me. I nearly quip, Come on in, but I don’t have it in me to be sarcastic. I’m too hollow and sad. The tears I’ve been fighting burst through, silently
streaking down my cheeks. Crying in front of Tina is not on my list of activities I wanted or planned to do tonight. Not like
it matters. I’m all out of dignity. Besides, after tonight, I’ll never see her again. I decide to ignore her presence and
start refolding my clothes so they’ll fit in my suitcase.
“I was in love with the king,” she says, her voice clear.
Proud. I stop folding. “We were young, this was long before he met her majesty the queen. Our paths crossed as the paths of certain families do. You see, my mother was the curator of the royals’ art.
My father was a driver. Back then, Augus—his majesty—was so kind and warm. ”
“Like Finn,” I murmur, despite myself. I see her nod out of the corner of my eye and decide to give her my full attention.
I sit on the bed and indicate the nearby chair in the breakfast nook. It’s my way of telling her to take a seat. That I’ll
listen.
“Yes. Kind and warm like Prince Finneas,” she agrees. She sits, her posture ramrod straight. “I was certain the attraction
was mutual. One day, we were both at a gallery where Mother was introducing the royal family to a new local artist. As they
discussed the artist’s works, his majesty and I snuck off to a quiet floor. He kissed me in front of a Chagall.”
Tina gets lost in the memory I’m suddenly anxious to climb inside and see for myself.
“What happened after that?” I ask.
She holds her head high. “What happened afterwards is of no consequence. I simply came here to tell you that I’ve been in
your shoes. I’ve fallen for someone who’s out of reach, praying that a miracle would occur, that we could ‘buck tradition,’
so to speak, and be together. I came here to tell you, Hannah, that believing in such fantasies is as preposterous as trying
to live in a fairy tale.”
Truth be told, as much as I love books and stories, I’ve never liked fairy tales. Not the original morbid ones, not the sanitized modern ones. I’ve always preferred my heroines to be ambitious and calculated. To go after what they want instead of letting life happen to them.
Before me is a woman who chose a difficult path. I can’t wrap my head around it, but I have a newfound respect for her.
“How can you work here? After everything that happened?” I ask Tina. I saw Finn kiss Beatrice and immediately decided to get
as far away as quickly as possible. Tina, on the other hand, took a job with the royal family. She’s dedicated her life to
running her first love’s household. From what Finn’s said, she basically raised him and his siblings. “Isn’t being faced with
all of this on a daily basis too painful?”
“I do it,” she says, “because it’s rewarding. I’m good at it.”
“And?” I prompt, knowing there’s more. There’s got to be.
“And I do it to remind myself that this is real life. I refuse to let my mind wander to ‘what if.’ There is no ‘if,’ Hannah, only what is. I’d advise you to keep the same perspective.” She pauses as her words sink in and
swim around within me. When she opens her mouth to speak again, the mask of indifference has slipped. There’s pain in her
eyes. “Please don’t torture yourself about something that can never be.”
It’s the “please” that catches me. For all of Tina’s stoicism, this is a woman who was hurt from love. That time she cornered me in the barn, she wasn’t merely trying to protect Finn—she was trying to protect me too.
I should have listened.
I rise off the bed and give her a hug. Reluctantly, she hugs me back.
“Thank you, Tina. You’ve been very kind tonight. I promise I’ll leave, and I won’t look back.”
As I say it to her, I make myself the same promise.