Chapter Seventeen
Now
THREE’S A CROWN
Inside the ‘royal throuple’ frenzy as the bookies slash their odds on the man who left our King in floods of tears
The hunt for the mystery man who reduced King James III to a sobbing wreck on that leaked voicemail has taken a deliciously dirty turn, and every last clue points straight back to the playing fields of Eton.
Royal-watchers are now convinced the King, 27, was weeping down the line over none other than his oldest chum, the Marquess of Ashworth, the willowy Olympic horseman the internet has taken to its heart as “Bonny Barnaby” of kebab-shop fame.
The blue-blooded pair have been thick as thieves since their schooldays, where, one source claims, the future monarch and his dashing classmate were “completely inseparable, in and out of the dormitories.”
There is just one rather large complication. The marquess is already very much spoken for, having wed boxer Lex Murphy last summer: the 16-stone heavyweight out of Barking whose two Olympic golds and granite jaw have made him the nation’s favourite bit of rough.
Which leaves the chattering classes asking the question now on everyone’s lips: has His Majesty muscled in on a married marquess, or is the boxing champ a willing third in Britain’s poshest love triangle?
“James and Bash were each other’s first, weren’t they,” sniffed one well-placed pal. “Lex turned up late to that party. He’s a lovely lad. But in that little arrangement, he’s the spare.”
A Palace spokesman has declined to comment.
? ? ?
The flat cap and Barbour jacket got him as far as the lift, where the doorman called him “mate” as he passed, before returning to scrolling on his mobile. Then James was rising thirty-two floors with the morning’s paper still folded in his pocket.
He’d come without Cecil’s blessing and without Benton at all, which he would answer for later. But after the throuple article, he couldn’t just sit at Kensington and do nothing.
The lift opened straight into the flat. Barnaby was waiting in the hall, and he didn’t lean in for the cheek-kiss he’d have given James on any other morning.
“Your Majesty.” He bobbed his head into a bow. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m being supported through it.”
“Small mercies.” Barnaby turned and led the way deeper into the flat, into the room where the whole eastern wall was glass and the city sat spread out below it.
Lex was on the sofa, the paper open on the glass table in front of him, the THREE’S A CROWN article face-up. His jaw was set. James clapped a hand onto a shoulder built like masonry anyway, as he always had.
“You all right?” Lex’s smile was strained.
“Yes. And you?”
Lex shrugged.
Barnaby climbed into Lex’s lap, knees folded up small against all that bulk, and put his face in the crook of his husband’s neck. Then he reached back, took Lex’s wrist, and pulled his heavy arm around himself like a blanket before he went still.
Barnaby didn’t do this. Affection from him came out sideways, in fleeting touches and unexpected compliments, never this overt display of ownership.
“My lovely Lex,” Barnaby murmured into his neck. “My man who treats me so well.”
Lex’s hand came up into his husband’s soft blond hair, and his other moved across Barnaby’s back, his fingers spanning half of it.
“I’m so sorry for drawing you into this. You absolutely don’t deserve any of this,” James said.
Lex didn’t look away from Barnaby. “No,” he said gruffly. “We don’t. But James, mate. We’re proud of you. It’s about time, yeah? I wish it hadn’t been forced the way it has been, but now that it’s out there, you can see this through as it should be.”
Barnaby’s head came up. “That’s right. Don’t apologise to us.
You didn’t write the thing or talk to that sphincter of a reporter.
” His left ear had gone pink, the way it did before the politeness dropped away.
“I’d dearly like to know which of our acquaintance described my husband as the spare, though, so I can have them struck off every social list I’ve any influence over. Which is most of them!”
Lex pressed kisses all along Barnaby’s face, gathering him in close, murmuring at him. James watched them. He was the reason that fucking paper had taken the best thing in these two men’s lives and called it into question.
“What can I do to make this better for the both of you?” James asked. “Just name it and it’s done.”
“You can stop apologising, for a start.” Barnaby stayed in Lex’s lap. “Never complain, never explain. We carry on. That’s the whole of it.”
“There’ll be photographers on your door for a fortnight.”
“Then we shan’t open the door.” Barnaby shrugged.
“Lex and I will stay in. We’re in our cosy era, as it happens, and it suits us enormously.
” He gestured down the length of himself, draped in a soft grey knitwear set that James hadn’t seen him wear before.
“I’ve bought loungewear online. I quite like it. ”
“He’s bought half the internet, mate.” Lex landed a slap on the curve of Barnaby’s arse. “The concierge had to bring the last lot up on a trolley. I’ll be fighting into my forties just to keep him in cashmere.”
Barnaby sniffed. “You mustn’t talk about money, Lex. It’s awfully crass.”
“So it’s fine to spend it, just not to talk about it?”
“Yes.” Barnaby took Lex’s hand and ran it up and down his cashmere-clad leg as payment in kind for the cashmere enablement.
“Well,” James said, smiling. “I think that’s me at the end of my apology tour, then.
I’ve grovelled to everyone the recording touched, and no one has even tried to throw me out of a window.
Abigail was gracious. Cecil was Cecil. BLEX, you’ve been amazingly supportive.
” The pair had stopped listening to him entirely.
Lex had hiked Barnaby’s shirt up and was running a palm over the small of his back.
“And Tristan and I have even started trading texts again.”
Barnaby came off Lex’s chest like the sofa had bitten him. He scowled at James and slapped Lex’s hand away from him so hard that Lex swore.
“James. No. Absolutely not! What could you possibly have to say to that man other than fuck you? And not in a good way.”
“It’s nothing.” James rushed in before Barnaby could build the case any further.
“He just called to check in because he’d figured out that I’d meant to call him.
It was all very civil. He told me he liked the courgette photo, and then I told him how we’d watched Better Half together that night.
He’s back in the UK soon, funnily enough. Shooting the next season.”
Barnaby’s posture went ramrod straight and he fixed his grey stare on James.
“I don’t want to be cruel, James. But that man absolutely gutted you.
You offered to blow up your whole world for him, to go official, and give everything you had to making the two of you work, and it still wasn’t enough for him.
He wanted to be famous more than he wanted to be with you, and that says everything you need to know about him and his priorities. ”
Barnaby only aimed for the soft places when he was frightened for someone.
“I don’t think it was the fame he was after, Bash. If he had been, surely the easiest way into the tabloids would have been to be the first openly gay King’s official boyfriend? He could have gone public any time he pleased and been on every front page in the Western world. Yet he didn’t.”
“Only because he landed on a gold mine with Better Half, James. If he hadn’t, he might’ve had to resort to it.”
“Barnaby, I trust him.” James let that statement stand.
“What we had didn’t work out, but it still meant something to both of us.
He’s told me he’s got no intention of making trouble for me, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.
The one black mark against him is the fake-dating business with Caroline, and we both know whose scheme that was. ”
Barnaby was the one to look away first. He breathed out through his nose, the fight leaving his shoulders if not his face.
“You’ll do whatever you’ve already decided to do,” he said. “You always have. And as always, the rest of us will be here to manage the wreckage if or when it goes wrong.” Barnaby reached for Lex’s arm and drew it around himself again.
“Would it really be so bad, Bash? If there was a rapprochement?” He’d drafted the message a dozen times since the texts started up again: fancy a drink when you’re back? or I think we should catch up and deleted every one before he could send it.
“It’s easy to fall in love with the sunny, happy sort, James. I know, because I’ve got one of my own.” Barnaby tapped Lex’s cheek. “They’re a joy when things are good. The test is the first bad patch, and what they do when it comes.”
He put his hand to Lex’s jaw. “This one made a catastrophic hash of things early on. He hurt me, so I ended it. But he refused to give up on me, James. He made it impossible for me to stay away from him.”
Lex pressed his mouth to Barnaby’s temple.
“Tristan ran, James. The second you asked him to make a frightening decision, he was gone,” Barnaby said. “That’s the difference. That’s why I don’t think you should get within sighting distance of him ever again.”
? ? ?
It was past one when James gave up on sleep. Barnaby’s verdict had been turning over in his head since he’d lain down in bed, and he was no closer to one of his own.
He opened the thread he’d kept pinned to the top of his messages all week.
You’re going to love this, he typed. I’m to visit a bee conservation research site in the morning. Give me your worst line to try out.
He sent it, then set the mobile on his chest and stared up at the ceiling. James pressed his hands hard against the mattress and told himself he wasn’t watching for a reply. He was trying to sleep.
James picked the mobile back up thirty-five seconds later.
easy, Tristan wrote. you thank them for their tireless service to the nation’s pollinators. then, just as you’re heading for the door, you turn back and tell them the whole operation is the bee’s knees. land it on the knees. you’ll be escorted off the premises by your own men. for your own safety.
James laughed, alone in the dark, and reached over to turn his bedside lamp on.
So much for staying out of sighting distance, he thought, and started typing back.