Chapter Twenty 5 August 2023 #2
I had asked Mary to stock Finn and Jack’s wardrobes with everything they would need, including tuxedos and kilts.
The castle was a rather treacherous place for guests.
It seemed lovely and old-fashioned and relaxed by royal standards, but every outsider was silently judged for failing the thousands of little tests the family set for them.
Not only were you expected to bring your own outdoor shoes—despite the piles and piles of wellies in every corner—your choice of brand could sink you.
Hunters were always sneered at, especially the polished black ones.
Only mud-splattered Le Chameaus were acceptable.
You should have the right clothes for fishing, hiking, church, a rainstorm, an unseasonable thirty-degree day, a black-tie dinner and a highland fling.
There was no way of telling which of these events might unfold during your stay at the estate, so it was best to overpack.
But if you brought too much luggage, the staff might also gossip about you.
If you brought no gift for Granny, you were low-bred.
If you arrived with something extravagant, you were gauche.
You absolutely had to tip your valet. You had to participate in parlour games.
You had to drink the cocktail put down in front of you.
It was no wonder Mum had started coming down with unspecified ailments every summer in the days before we were meant to head north for Scotland.
“Anyway, what should we do now?” Finn asked. “When do we get to meet the big cheese?”
We did what country estate owners always do when they have a guest to entertain and no plan: we went for a long walk.
Jack and Finn pulled on their box-fresh wellies so we could walk along the river that wove its way through the estate.
The kitchen staff, used to the whims of my family, swiftly put together a picnic that we could take with us.
“Did you notice how everyone just stopped and went totally quiet when you walked in?” Finn whispered as we left the kitchen with our basket.
I hadn’t noticed. After a few months here, I’d stopped being startled by the hush that fell over every room I entered. I wondered now if perhaps I had begun to enjoy it.
Out on the terrace, we found Amira and Chino lounging in the sunshine.
Amira grinned at Jack over the top of her movie-star sunglasses, shaking his hand daintily and looking at me as if she knew exactly what we’d been up to in his room.
In Finn, she feigned icy disinterest, though he pretended not to notice.
I still wasn’t sure exactly how much she knew, but we were all privately determined not to bring up what had happened between Louis and Finn at the vineyard.
“Would you like to come for a walk?” I asked her as Chino sniffed Finn’s and Jack’s shoes.
“Oh, I suppose so,” she sighed. “I haven’t done a single thing since we arrived.”
We walked along the river’s rocky shore, watching Chino plod through the shallows. Finn set about eroding Amira’s defences with a cascade of compliments and questions about herself. They drifted slightly ahead, and Jack and I went silent.
“How’s it been for you, being back here?”
“Strange,” I said, feeling the slightest graze of his elbow against mine as we walked. “But good. I think I needed to come back and make things right.”
He nodded, and I knew he understood. “We’ve missed you…” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
“Same.”
“Though this looks like quite a life,” he said, gesturing at the verdant hills and the castle on the horizon. “I remember when you first moved in, I didn’t really know anything about you. I spent those first few weeks googling the royal family.”
I smiled. “Did you read my Wikipedia page?”
“Yeah, I read your Wikipedia page.” He laughed. “I remember seeing this one photo of you when you were a kid. I think it must have been taken here. You were on a pony, and you were in the fanciest, frilliest dress, and I thought, What is this girl doing renting my shitty barn?”
I had never heard any of this before. He’d always seemed completely indifferent to my past, only bemused that I didn’t know how to send a package by express post, or change a vacuum cleaner bag or put wiper fluid in my car.
“I googled a lot about wine in the beginning,” I admitted. “So that I could impress you with my knowledge.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But you know a lot about wine.”
“I do now.”
He laughed again and put an arm around my shoulder, and it was like the last eight months had never happened and we were back where we should have been, before the avalanche and the helicopter and the crown came between us.
Up ahead, Amira and Finn were locked in conversation. Suddenly she turned around.
“Lexi! You never told me you delivered a baby for one of those girls who goes into labour but had no idea she was pregnant. I love those stories.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, allowing Jack to keep the warm length of his arm around my back, even as Amira and Finn looked at us and pretended not to notice. “She thought her appendix had burst.”
We sat by the stream and opened the basket that the kitchen staff had packed for us: crumbly cheddar, apples, shortbread and a thermos of tea. Amira seemed to be thawing to Finn, albeit reluctantly. He was impossible to resist, even if he had slept with your husband just weeks before your wedding.
“Are you ready for tonight, you two?” she asked.
“What do we need to be ready for?” Finn asked, intrigued.
Amira sipped her tea and threw a piece of cheese to Chino, lolling in the grass beside us. “You’re fresh meat, and this family is absolutely starving. There’s nothing they love more than having common folk like us at the table.”
“Amira, you’re hardly common folk,” I said.
“I don’t decide who’s common—they do. It doesn’t matter if you’re the prime minister or a millionaire’s daughter,” she said, and then looked at Finn and Jack.
“But don’t be scared. It took me years to understand all the insults that had flown right over my head.
You’ll be long gone by the time you figure out the slights that seemed like jokes. ”
“Amira,” I said, glancing at Jack, who was rubbing Chino’s belly but listening intently, “you’re scaring them.”
Finn laughed. “I’m actually excited—this sounds nuts.”
Amira sighed and leaned back on her elbows in the long grass. “You’re not the one they’re waiting to meet.”
I hid my flaming cheeks behind my enamel teacup. I could hardly scold her when she was speaking the truth.
“I think I can handle whatever they’ve got, Amira,” Jack said.
She smiled enigmatically behind her sunglasses, her hair tangling across her face in the breeze. There was something dangerous about her in this mood. Most of the time I felt like she was just beyond my reach, the truth of her hidden behind her duchess sheen.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said.
Back at the house, we dressed for drinks, which the staff had communicated via handwritten note would be followed by a sit-down dinner in the dining room. I’d hoped for something more casual, then realised that Granny would be unwilling to balance a TV dinner on her knees in front of strangers.
I ordered a brandy to my room to try to calm my nerves as cocktail hour approached.
Why hadn’t I taken Jack and Finn to Croatia for a week instead of this?
I put on a halterneck gown in a heavy navy silk that tied at the nape of my neck and then piled my hair on top of my head.
I applied, then removed, red lipstick. I put on dangly earrings, then took them off.
I took a sip of my brandy and stared at my reflection.
The Algarve, I thought. That’s where we should have gone.
Clams and nightclubs and beaches packed with burnt British tourists.
My phone buzzed.
You were right, Finn’s text said. We need help with the bow ties.
I made the long march through the hallway, my heart jangling as I approached the guest wing. They were in Finn’s room, standing before the mirror and murmuring in low voices, and they turned when I knocked on the open door.
“I hear you need help in here,” I said, affecting a nonchalant air that was unlikely to convince anyone.
Jack’s eyes met mine. I’d never seen him out of jeans and Blundstones before and I felt a girlish thrill at the sight of him in his suit, the black tie draped loosely around his collar.
“Oh, you look hot, babe,” Finn said, turning back to the mirror. “These things are impossible. Even an eight-minute YouTube tutorial didn’t help.”
I stood before Jack, remembering the lessons Papa used to give Louis while I sat on the bed and watched. “A gentleman must always know how to tie his own tie,” Papa would say, Louis frowning in the mirror beside him.
Jack looked down at me as I reached to take hold of the scrap of silk around his neck. It had the effect of drawing us closer.
“You look…” he whispered, his eyes wandering.
“Thank you. You too.” I cleared my throat, pushing up the collar of his shirt and allowing one finger to brush against his jaw.
“Okay so…” My hands skimmed his collarbones as I talked him through the steps.
“You pull one side down and hold it taut, fold the front… loop the loop and tighten it while holding all four points.”
I spent more time adjusting the knot than was strictly necessary, then smoothed down his collar and picked an imaginary piece of lint from his chest. His eyes never left my face as I worked.
“Not bad,” I breathed.
“Are you kidding?” Finn laughed. “We look amazing. I want to wear this every night for the rest of my life.”