Chapter 20 Lord Edward
By the time we meet halfway between our cabins, Amelia Blue’s smoking a fresh cigarette.
She’s wearing gloves, but they’re fingerless, and the skin around her nails looks purplish, not entirely alive.
I recall how cold her hand was when I shook it in the back seat of the Range Rover.
I’d felt the urge to blow on her fingers to warm them, as though I were a big brother or a father, exhibiting the sort of caretaking instinct no one ever expected from me—the baby of the family, the problem child.
“Want one?” she offers, and I shake my head. “I know,” she adds, as though I’ve said something she agrees with. “Disgusting habit.”
“Maybe they can help you kick it while you’re here.”
She laughs—loudly at first, and then, as if remembering that we’re surely not supposed to be out here together, more quietly.
“Where should we go, Amelia Blue?” I ask.
“Just Amelia’s okay, Lord Edward.”
“Just Edward’s better than okay.”
Amelia nods, and I know she only said my name to give me the opportunity to ask her to drop the Lord.
“It’s supposed to be one name—Amelia Blue, like Mary Anne. I don’t think my mother realized most people aren’t up for that many syllables.”
“You ever think about changing it?” My father’s title, the Duke of Exeter, goes back hundreds of years. The notion of changing one’s name is quite literally foreign to me, another of those American quirks I haven’t internalized, despite living almost entirely in the States since I was sixteen.
Amelia cocks her head, considering. “No one’s ever asked me that,” she answers finally. “Actually, I wouldn’t want to drop the Blue.”
“Why not?”
“I know most people think my mother named me Amelia Blue because she has a thing for color—like, her old band’s name was Shocking Pink, you know?”
I nod, but the truth is, I’ve never heard of her mother’s band.
“But actually, her grandparents were the Blaus—German for blue—before they emigrated to America and anglicized it to fit in. My mother changed her name when she decided to become famous.”
I raise an eyebrow. Having been born to fame—notoriety, at least—I sometimes forget that other people choose it.
“So to answer your question, I wouldn’t change my name. I wouldn’t throw away all that history.”
“I’m actually the eighth Lord Edward of Exeter,” I offer. “So we have that in common.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both have names that aren’t entirely our own.”
Amelia nods thoughtfully, taking another drag off her cigarette as she steps down the path. “We can’t go far,” she says irritably. “I have to be back by two for my care manager’s next check-in.”
“What?”
“Didn’t they tell you? They do bed checks all night long.”
As soon as Amelia says it, I know it must be true, despite Dr. Rush never having mentioned it.
Even if it wasn’t their official policy, it’s the sort of thing Anne would have asked for.
The idea that Dr. Rush could see me, see my body while I’m asleep and oblivious, makes me grind my teeth.
At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I can still chew my food a year from now.
“They can’t see everything,” Amelia says, sensing my discomfort. “It’s like the paparazzi, catching glimpses of our lives and thinking they can tell the world what we’re really like.”
My jaw loosens. “Luckily, years of boarding school made me an expert at sneaking around.”
“Didn’t you get kicked out of boarding school?” Amelia doesn’t pretend not to know this particular bit of my history.
“Not for sneaking around.”
“Why, then?” she asks matter-of-factly, as though it doesn’t occur to her that my family went to great lengths to conceal the real reason.
Maybe it’s the drugs blurring my edges, or maybe it’s knowing that, having also been born to famous parents, people have probably been googling Amelia her whole life as well, looking up statistics about her height and education and the trouble she got into.
Maybe it’s because her name is every bit as complicated as my own, or because she didn’t hesitate before asking the question, but I tell Amelia the secret Anne and my father worked so hard to hide: “I got drunk on campus.”
Amelia shrugs, unimpressed. “Isn’t that practically required at English boarding schools?”
“Yes, but most people don’t destroy school property in the process.”
In fact, plenty of students damage school property, but few have ever managed what I did.
Conflagrate was the word the headmaster used. Obliterate.
Then, Someone could’ve been killed.
Dad had rolled his eyes at that, not even pretending to respect the headmaster’s authority. Don’t tell me my son’s another angry young man, he said, as though the truly disappointing thing was that I was a cliché on top of everything else.
In private, Anne compared me to the sort of sociopaths who torture toads and squirrels in childhood, moving their way up the food chain one animal at a time until they got to humans.
One day it’ll be the police knocking on the door, she said, more to our father than me, to tell us about the people you hurt.
“What was the official story?” Amelia asks.
My family told the press I was failing my classes. They had no problem with the world thinking I was too thick to survive Eton.
“Let’s make a deal,” I say. “You don’t look me up, and I won’t look you up. We’ll meet like regular people, without all the ‘official stories’ to confuse us.”
“Regular people are all over the internet, too,” Amelia points out, “but deal.” She looks relieved, which almost makes me laugh out loud.
Surely the stories I might find about her are more flattering than the ones about me.
The tabloids labeled me the “Bad Boy Duke” when I was sixteen, despite the fact that my only chance at becoming a duke would be if my father, Anne, and her two sons all died.
Amelia takes another drag off her cigarette. We follow the path back to her cabin, and then she turns on her heel, wending her way toward the third cabin, the music growing louder with every step.
“What do you think they’re in for?” she asks, nodding at the noisy cottage.
“Hearing loss?” I suggest.
Amelia shakes her head. “You shouldn’t make fun of someone for having a disability.”
Spoken like someone who doesn’t have one, I think. Amelia drops her cigarette on the ground and stamps it out, then bends down and picks the butt off the ground, putting it in her pocket. I’m not sure if she’s opposed to littering or if she’s trying to conceal evidence that she was out here.
“Anyway,” she continues, “this music isn’t that loud.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not compared to what my mother used to play.”
“Usually parents are the ones trying to get their kids to keep it down.”
“Not in my house,” Amelia answers. “How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“What’re you in for?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to ask.”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to be out here in the middle of the night, either.” She stretches her arms out wide. “How big do you think this place is?” she asks, moving on to another subject agreeably. “Like the actual property, how many acres?”
“Dunno,” I answer.
“Dr. Mackenzie told me they only have three cottages. Don’t you hate how they call them cottages, like we’re at some rustic resort in the English countryside?”
“A resort in the English countryside wouldn’t have Nest thermostats.” The aristocracy loves an opportunity to prove they don’t care for modern comforts like central air conditioning and well-insulated rooms. Our Scottish estate is drafty in winter and sweltering in summer.
“There’s got to be more than three buildings to this place.” Amelia gestures behind her cottage, where at least one shadowy structure takes up space in the milky darkness.
“Could be an administrative building of some kind,” I agree.
“Right!” Amelia agrees enthusiastically, as if I’ve said something important. I get the sense that Amelia’s the sort of person who looks at the resort map before she arrives at a hotel.
Maybe Amelia wanted to be sent here. Some people ask for help rather than have it forced upon them by others who don’t have the slightest idea of what help really is.
“Alcoholism,” I say. The answer comes easily. I like that Amelia didn’t press me for not answering earlier.
“Huh?”
“What I’m in for.” It doesn’t feel like a confession. Perhaps it’s easy to say because it’s not entirely true. Anne thinks I take my medication “as directed.”
Amelia stops walking to light another cigarette. I reach out to shield the flame from the wind. My fingers brush against hers, her skin so cold it’s like being burned.
“Aren’t alcoholics supposed to spend the first few days of rehab shivering and throwing up?” She sounds genuinely curious.
“I haven’t had a drink in months.”
Amelia’s brow furrows with skepticism—what kind of alcoholic quits drinking months before entering rehab?
—but I don’t offer an explanation, though I know I’m supposed to say something more: I’m meant to lapse into a daydream as I recall the mineral taste of cold white wine on a hot summer day, the clink of ice in a glass, the ritual of raising a toast at some celebration—a wedding, graduation, even a funeral.
I ought to explain that I’ve tried to fill the hole it left behind with exercise or historical biographies or knitting or macramé.
Isn’t that what addicts do, to keep their hands and minds occupied, literally too busy to take a drink?
“What about you?” I ask finally. “What are you in for?”
“It’s complicated.” Amelia waves her cigarette dismissively, dodging my question, though her non-answer feels less like a lie than my actual answer did. “Hey, is it true you dropped cake on the queen’s shoes when you were ten?”
“Well, I heard you blew your nose on Eddie Vedder’s sleeve when you were a baby.”
“I was five.” Amelia sounds as petulant as a child. “I got lost at the VMAs.”
“He had to perform with your snot on his shirt.”
“And the queen had to wipe off your frosting.”
“You think she didn’t have people to do that kind of thing for her?”
“So it is true?” I hesitate, and Amelia begs, “C’mon, I told you mine.”
“Eddie Vedder isn’t exactly Elizabeth II.”
“I’ll tell you a Paul McCartney story later. Eddie Vedder plus Sir Paul adds up to one queen.”
“Debatable.” I sigh heavily. “There was a luncheon at Buckingham Palace. They had cake. And we weren’t allowed junk food at home.”
I can still taste the cake—overbaked and dry, turning to glue in my mouth. Not worth the calories, Anne would say.
“So I parked myself next to the buffet and had at it.”
Amelia laughs. Anne always emphasized the importance of telling a good story. No one will stop you from controlling the narrative when it’s one they enjoy.
So I don’t say how badly I wanted to hide beneath the table, or that I filled my mouth with pieces of cake, hoping to look busy so no one would talk to me.
“You try telling a ten-year-old to forgo sweets so he can meet some old lady,” I say, and Amelia laughs again, covering her mouth.
I wasn’t ten. I was fourteen, but the story’s funnier if it happened to a little kid. At fourteen, it’s sadder than it is amusing.
Anne was at Dad’s side, tall and slim and poised.
Eleven years older than I, she was already engaged to an appropriate man, nothing like the overgrown adolescent whose feet were too big for his body, whose chin was still surrounded by puppy fat.
She’d met the queen before. So had I, but I’d been a toddler at the time; her majesty was technically a cousin of some sort.
Anne would know the exact lineage, but I could never keep it straight.
When Dad gestured for me to stand beside him, there was still a slice of cake in my hand. I couldn’t put it down. When Dad calls, he expects an answer right away.
I’d practiced my bow for weeks before the luncheon.
As the queen’s eyes traveled from Dad (bow) to Anne (curtsey) to me, I knew what to do.
I don’t know how it happened. One moment, the cake was in my hand, the next at my feet.
Dad assumed I’d been drinking—the first time my drinking was referred to as a “problem”; getting kicked out of Eton a few months later was the second time.
It would’ve been more humiliating to admit I’d been sober.
“So how about that Paul McCartney story?” I ask, but Amelia holds up her phone.
“Crap—one forty-eight!” She breaks into a run. “I’ll tell you all about Sir Paul tomorrow!”
Without thinking, I jog after her. For a brief moment, it feels easy and familiar: racing back to my room to hide under the covers, avoiding trouble. But at once, a shooting pain travels up my left thigh. I stop in my tracks.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Amelia says, bouncing in place beside me as though trying to keep warm. I don’t know how she manages without a coat. “You were in a car accident this summer, right?” She looks apologetic. “I swear I didn’t look you up, but it’s hard to avoid the headlines.”
“Yeah.” I nod, clenching my jaw so hard that it’s difficult to speak. “Fucked up my leg.”
“We’re almost there,” she says, putting her arm around my waist. I lean on her like a human crutch. I expect her to collapse beneath my weight, but she remains steady.
“You’re stronger than you look,” I say.
I feel her shrug. “Yeah, well, my mother used drugs for most of my life. I have a lot of experience holding someone upright.”
The top of Amelia’s head doesn’t reach my armpit, but she’s more sure-footed than I will ever be again. “You okay to get up the stairs?” she asks when we reach my cottage.
I nod again. “You go,” I manage. I’m sweating bullets, but my skin feels like ice when the wind blows. “Hurry.”
She pulls away. I wait, watching her move across the path between our rooms. She doesn’t run so much as skip, landing on the balls of her feet, almost hopping between her steps.
Her wavy hair bounces like pigtails on a playground.
She disappears into the darkness of her room just as the music from the third cottage cuts out.
It’s suddenly so quiet that I can’t remember what exactly I’m doing outside.
Someone else might think they’d dreamed the whole thing, but the pain in my leg reminds me I’m awake.
Carefully, I limp up the stairs, going over the night’s conversation in my head to distract myself.
I’ll tell you all about Sir Paul tomorrow.
It’s been months since I wanted to do anything other than take my next pill, but right now, I want to see Amelia Blue Harris again.
I feel a pang of guilt, as if I’m betraying Harper, then remember that I can’t betray Harper anymore.