Chapter Thirty-One
Back then
The call came up from the gatehouse at twenty past eight, while James was still in his dressing gown and losing a war with a bag of oranges.
“Sergeant Jenkins, Your Majesty. Apologies for the hour, Sir.” Jenkins was ex-Coldstream Guards and incapable of sounding anything other than parade-ground crisp, even on a Sunday morning and in spite of two decades of service to the Royal Family.
“I have the Marquess of Ashworth at the gate. We’d ordinarily wave him through to the apartments, Sir, only…
he appears to be in something of a state. ”
“A state,” James repeated. He had an orange in one hand and a citrus press in the other, and Tristan was perched on his stool at the kitchen island, chin propped on one fist, watching the juicing operation’s utter failure. “What sort of condition is he in, Jenkins?”
“Agitated, Sir. Quite severely. I wouldn’t normally trouble you with the observation, but the Marquess has driven himself here unaccompanied, and he’s — well.” Jenkins cleared his throat. “He appears to have sustained significant sun damage, Sir.”
“Send him up.”
James set the mobile down and looked at the wreckage he’d made of the kitchen.
He had been trying to produce fresh orange juice for Tristan, with results that so far included three mangled orange halves and a puddle of juice that had overshot the glass entirely.
Tristan had offered to take over twice. James had declined both times, on the grounds that a man ought to be able to operate the press in his own castle without outside assistance.
“Barnaby’s here,” James said, abandoning the press and reaching for a tea towel to mop up the counter. “And Jenkins has described him as ‘in a state’, which, from Jenkins, means Bash is probably frothing at the mouth.”
Tristan slid off his stool and took the tea towel from James’s hands, finishing the job with considerably more efficiency. “Should I make myself scarce?”
“Stay exactly where you are. If Bash is agitated enough to drive himself to Windsor unannounced and unexpected when he’s supposed to be holidaying, I’d rather have someone ready to help restrain him.”
Barnaby’s footsteps preceded him up the corridor. James heard the sharp double rap at the apartment door and went to open it.
The sunburn covered every visible inch of Barnaby’s face and neck, rendering him a shade of crimson so vivid that he looked as though he’d been lightly boiled.
His nose was peeling in long, translucent strips, his forehead had begun to flake at the hairline, and stamped around both eyes, where a large pair of sunglasses had shielded him from the Spanish sun, sat a pair of perfect white ovals that looked like the markings of a raccoon.
Otherwise he was immaculate; his shirt was pressed and his shoes were buffed.
Behind him, James heard Tristan draw in a careful breath and hold it.
Barnaby bowed. “Your Majesty.” His grey eyes were incandescent. “The wedding is off.”
James stepped aside to let him through. He met Barnaby’s eye. “Bash. I can see you’re upset, and we’re going to talk about this. But we both know that nothing at this point will stop that wedding from happening. You fully committed the moment you agreed to the two-cake treaty.”
Barnaby’s jaw flexed. The peeling skin on his nose shifted with it, and Tristan pressed his knuckles to his mouth and turned his attention to the ceiling.
“Where’s Lex?” James asked.
“In Spain.”
“You’ve left your fiancé in Spain?”
Barnaby’s chin lifted. “He can stay there forever, for all I care. He can stay there and rot in that sun.”
“Bash.” James shut the door. “You are going to message that man right now and tell him you’re here with me at Windsor, safe, so he’s not out of his mind wondering where you’ve gone.”
Barnaby crossed his arms and shook his head in a single tight movement.
“Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester!”
The invocation of his full name had no effect. Barnaby stood there with his raccoon eyes blazing. James retrieved his mobile and resisted the urge to pull up his camera and record Barnaby in his current state for posterity. Instead he typed out a message to Lex.
Bash is here at Windsor. He’s safe, he’s furious, and he’s doing his best impression of a stop sign. I’ll keep him for the day. Don’t worry. I’ll watch out for him.
Lex’s reply came back in under a minute.
Thanks. I’ll be there in a few hours myself.
James pocketed his mobile and steered Barnaby towards the table, where the evidence of Tristan’s morning industry lay in a sorry line on the serving board.
The waffle maker had been James’s doing.
Tristan had mentioned, early on in the Windsor weekends, that he missed having waffles for breakfast, and had endured a full fortnight of James ordering the kitchen to produce them before confessing that all he actually wanted was the cheap, slightly rubbery sort you made yourself from batter in a countertop machine.
James had sourced one from John Lewis the following afternoon.
The waffles Tristan had produced that morning were not his finest work.
Three of them lay on the board in varying states of collapse, their surfaces more cratered than golden.
James’s own plate held one of the better specimens, and it was this that Barnaby pulled towards himself as he claimed James’s chair for his own.
“That’s mine, Bash.”
“I need food to recover from my second-degree burns.” Barnaby collected a knife and fork from the stand at the centre of the table and set about cutting the waffle into uniform squares. He brought the first piece to his mouth with care, chewing slowly and turning his head as little as possible.
Tristan was already at the counter pouring fresh batter. “I’ll make more. Barnaby, do you want syrup or jam?”
“Jam.” Barnaby’s attention stayed on his food. The raccoon eyes lent every expression a manic edge. Under better circumstances James would have said so. But right then, Barnaby’s dignity was hanging by a thread, so he let it go.
James took the chair opposite. “All right. Tell me what’s happened.”
“Lex is going to Florida.”
“Florida,” James repeated. “For?”
“Training.” Barnaby’s lip curled at the word.
“He’s found a sparring partner. Some left-handed Argentinian who supposedly fights like the second coming, and who is, apparently, only available for the next six weeks.
So Lex and Malik have torn up their perfectly good arrangement with a partner here in England and decided that he needs to fly halfway across the world instead. For six weeks, James. Six weeks.”
Behind them, the waffle iron hissed as Tristan closed the lid.
“He dropped this on me over dinner,” Barnaby went on.
“On the last evening of our holiday. He’d been sitting on it for days, apparently, working up to it, while I was out there burning alive on a sun lounger like a fool.
” He stabbed at his food like he was imagining it was Lex’s face.
“He kept saying that this Argentinian hadn’t been available before, so he and Malik had settled on someone local, and now the man’s schedule has opened up, and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up, and he’s very sorry about the timing. ”
“And the timing is bad because?”
“Because it’s the height of wedding planning, James!
” Barnaby’s voice climbed a full register.
“We’ve got the final tasting in three weeks.
The venue walk-through with the florist. The order of service, the seating chart, Caroline’s reading.
She still hasn’t confirmed which sonnet.
There’s the photographer to sort, the string quartet, the second cake.
I said yes to his dreadful red velvet cake.
I capitulated. I am going to have to go to a bakery and taste the samples on my own, James, because my fiancé will be in Miami getting repeatedly punched in the face. ”
Tristan slid a fresh waffle onto a plate, set it down in front of James, and gave him a flat stare.
“First of all, Bash, you’re starting to sound an awful lot like Vidal.”
The comparison landed. Barnaby’s mouth shut, and behind the raccoon eyes James watched him set his own volume and intensity against the benchmark of the most theatrical man either of them knew, and arrive somewhere chastened.
“That’s unfair,” Barnaby said, in a considerably quieter tone of voice.
James pointed his fork at him. “Second. You know how important Lex’s career is to him, because you feel exactly the same way about your eventing.
He wants to be at peak condition for his fifteen-million-dollar punch-up with Perez-Monton in Vegas.
You’ve heard the man go on about his plan.
He’s twenty-nine, at the top of his game, and he wants to go all out until he’s thirty-five.
A training camp with the right sparring partner isn’t a holiday.
It’s his equivalent of you spending a month holed up at Chatham preparing Meridian before Badminton. ”
Barnaby pushed a piece of waffle through the jam with his fork.
“He didn’t need to drop it on me like that,” he said.
“He could have mentioned it weeks ago, when he and Malik first started discussing it. Instead he waited until the final evening of our holiday and then just announced it. As though six weeks apart is something you spring on a person over a nice suckling pig.”
James watched Barnaby mince his food into ever-smaller squares. “You know the man is half terrified of you, Bash. I think he gets off on it sexually.”
Barnaby’s fork paused. Then, to James’s horrified delight, he nodded. “He does like to be told off while I’m holding my riding crop and in my tall boots.”
James held up both hands. “I don’t need the specifics.”
Tristan set a second helping in front of Barnaby without being asked, along with the pot of jam and a clean knife. Barnaby regarded the offering, then Tristan.
“Thank you, Tristan. This is very good.”
Tristan’s eyebrows climbed, and James caught the quick dart of his gaze — did he just thank me? — before Tristan busied himself with the batter again.
“You know,” Tristan said, leaning against the counter, “my cousin got married a few years ago, and the whole planning phase was chaos. Vendors pulling out, the florist ghosting her for a week, tablecloth drama you wouldn’t believe.
” He shrugged. “The thing that actually saved it was having people around to give second opinions. Someone to go along to the tastings and tell you the fondant’s too sweet, or the centrepieces look like something from a funeral home.
So if Lex can’t be there for the walk-throughs, maybe your mum goes with you.
Or James, or Caroline, or Vidal. You’ve got a long list of people around you with great taste, and who’ll drop everything to help you and Lex out, Barnaby. Use them.”
“Vidal does know his flowers,” Barnaby conceded.
“And I know my fruitcake,” James pointed out. “I’ve attended fifteen weddings in the past two years, Bash. Between the three of us, we’ll make yours the finest this country’s seen since the last one I went to, which was dreadful. We’ll have a marvellous time.”
Barnaby’s eyes took on a glint that James recognised from long acquaintance. “If Lex isn’t going to be there for the tastings,” he said, in a tone of dangerous calm, “then I see no reason to accommodate his preferences.”
“Bash.”
“Fuck Lex’s Nando’s-style Portuguese chicken.” Barnaby dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “The poultry meal option will be roasted quail with bread sauce.”
James pushed his plate back and squared his shoulders. “I want it on the record that I am fully prepared to spend six weeks helping you plan this wedding, Bash, but I refuse to be complicit in a campaign of aristocratic revenge catering.”
“It isn’t revenge.” Barnaby’s fork made a precise circuit of his plate, collecting the last of the jam. “It’s simply that Lex chose to absent himself from the decisions, so now I have to make them unilaterally.”
James’s mobile buzzed in the pocket of his dressing gown. He fished it out under the table and glanced at the screen.
you HAVE to take me to a tasting. your friends lives play out like gay extremely petty downton abbey
James locked his mobile and slipped it back into his pocket. He caught Tristan’s eye and nodded.