9. “Seven Nation Army” - The White Stripes
“Seven Nation Army” - The White Stripes
When I walk into my office several minutes later, I find Henry and Preston already there, as comfortable as two male cats in heat.
Henry pushes away from the desk. “There you are,” he says. “I tried calling you.”
I look at him, and all I can see is Bea’s tear-stained face.
I’m rewriting everything I’ve witnessed between them during the year since she moved into the palace as a full-time royal.
The way they ganged up on me when I said I couldn’t stand Tom Hanks.
The way they always split a muffin at tea, her with the crumbly top and him with the “stodgy” bottom he dunks in his cup.
The way he always waits for her to walk through the door after me, instead of walking behind me himself the way he’s supposed to.
“Sorry. I got detained.” I consider dropping Bea’s name to gauge his reaction, but if he’s been fooling me for all of these years, I have no reason to think anything would change now.
Preston clears his throat from the other side of the room, where he’s apparently sequestered himself to get as far from Henry as possible. “I’m going to assume you’d like to discuss the story the Sun broke this morning.”
I shoot one more look at Henry. His hands are perched on his hips in that “let’s get this sorted” stance. I move around him to sit behind my desk, blocking out the memory of him stretching me across it, a smoky fire burning in his eyes as he whispered “I’ve been visualizing this for months.”
“That’s correct,” I say, ignoring the way my pulse races when Henry turns and props his hands on the desk, veins and muscles clamoring for center stage. “The paper said she wanted to remain anonymous, but is it safe to assume this is the same woman?”
I spent sixty seconds scanning the article after leaving the breakfast table this morning, just long enough to get the general gist of what we’re dealing with and make me want to hurl my phone across the room.
“You’re saying he knew about it?” Henry jerks his thumb over his shoulder to indicate Preston and sends me a glare that makes me catch my breath.
“Henry, this isn’t the time for theatrics,” I say in a hushed voice.
“I’ll show you theatrics,” he says in the same low tone.
Images of him over me instantly fill my mind.
Preston takes a few steps closer to the desk, but he’s still giving Henry a wide berth. What the hell happened before I got here?
“I would say there’s a 99 percent chance we’re dealing with the same perpetrator,” Preston says to me.
Henry scoffs and pushes away from the desk, angling his body toward Preston. “Perpetrator? Did someone try to break into the palace and steal a painting?”
Red climbs up Preston’s neck, but he squares his shoulders. “Until we know what this woman wants, it’s best to assume she is a threat.”
“Preston’s right,” I say. “Why wait so long to come forward if this isn’t an act of sabotage?”
“And if it’s not?” Henry says. “What if she’s telling the truth?”
The steel tip of a knife inches its way past my bra, just far enough to puncture the skin over my breastbone, as I consider his hypothesis. If I’m not careful, the blade will slide right on in, slicing through my heart as though it’s made of butter.
“Maybe you could tell us that,” I say, standing so we’re closer to eye level. “Did you sleep with her?”
His nostrils flare, a horse preparing for battle. “How should I know? No one has given me any information.”
I keep my eyes glued to him, afraid of what he’ll do if I look away, and not wanting to face the fact that I couldn’t look away if I tried.
“Preston?” I say. “What was her name?”
There’s a rustling of papers as he shuffles through the stack in his hands. “Uh, Elizabeth Gable. That’s all we have. Well, that and the picture of the kid.”
Henry whirls on Preston. “There’s a picture?”
Fuck.
I round the desk as quickly as I can, my goal to obtain the pages in Preston’s hands.
Henry reaches him before I do and snatches up the entire stack without exerting the least bit of effort.
Like a maniac, I try to grab it before he can see anything revealing, but he pushes me off like I’m an annoying fly trying to ruin his picnic.
He lets the stack fall onto the desk, his fingers clutching the small photograph that accompanied Elizabeth’s letter.
It feels like someone has stuffed me full of corn dogs and cotton candy, then strapped me onto a Tilt-a-Whirl and turned it on top speed.
Henry stares at the photo, his face completely unreadable.
I know what it means when he runs his fingers through his hair, when he shoves his hands into his pockets, when his lips draw into a half smile.
I know that gold flecks in his eyes equal happiness, and that their black depths only grow when he’s drunk with lust. I know that he can’t hold still under any circumstance, and that the only time he stops eating is when he’s sleeping.
I know that he sleeps in the weirdest positions known to mankind: with his head tilted back at a ninety-degree angle, or his legs hanging off the side of the bed, or on his back with his knees bent.
I know that the only food he doesn’t like is the palace’s hollandaise sauce, but he doesn’t have the heart to let the kitchen staff know.
I’ve seen him drunk off his ass on our honeymoon, when he said that in another life he’d be a mechanic working in a small-town garage, where people liked him for who he was and not for his name.
I’ve seen him cry his heart out in grief over his grandmother’s passing and in relief as his father was finally put behind bars.
I’ve seen him blissed out on love, promising to buy me a private island if I just said the word.
Watching him now, though, I am completely blocked from everything going on in that magnificent head of his. I can’t read his thoughts or his expressions. I can’t identify his tells or his fidgety movements.
I’ve never seen him stare at a picture of his child before.
The air has been robbed of its oxygen by the time he lifts his gaze from it. I’m not sure what I hope to find in his eyes, but I do know that barely suppressed anger is not it.
“I cannot believe you would keep this from me,” he says. Although his voice is quiet, there is a thread of hurt and indignation wound tightly through it.
“I was trying to protect you,” I say.
“By keeping my son from me?”
“We don’t know that he’s your son.”
“Did you even look at the bloody picture? He looks just like me, C.”
“It seemed best to keep it under wraps until we could confirm—”
“Except you weren’t going to confirm anything, were you? You were going to pretend the whole thing never happened. Just sweep it under the rug the way you do every—”
“Henry, stop it!” I shout. I don’t mean to raise my voice, but my blood pressure is incapable of remaining at normal levels around him. Taking a breath, I try for an even tone. “Let’s just figure out what we’re going to do.”
Preston clears his throat. “Good idea.”
Henry shoots me a final glare before turning the full force of his anger-laced eyes on our press secretary. “Just what do you suggest? You’re the pro, after all.” The level of mockery in his voice could detonate a bomb.
If Preston is insulted by this, he does a great job of hiding it—yet another reason he’s a great fit for the job. Between Bea’s and Henry’s escapades, the royal family would be sunk without his expert handling of the media and our image.
“The easiest way to get to the bottom of what she wants is just to ask,” Preston says.
“How would we—”
“Sounds goo—”
Henry and I both break off to exchange glares. If I didn’t trust Preston with my life, and more importantly, my secrets, I’d try harder to mask the animosity between us right now.
“We could invite her to the palace”—Preston holds up his hand when I open my mouth to interrupt—“for a private meeting. To find out if she’s willing to negotiate.”
Henry snorts. “You’re not going to buy off the mother of my child.”
A stabbing pain in my chest alerts me to the fact that the hypothetical knife is now buried several inches into my heart.
Mother of my child.
That’s supposed to be me. We’re supposed to be the ones building a family together, creating children, making memories and baking cookies and taking hikes. Not Henry and some stranger.
“And if she doesn’t agree?” I say, ignoring the pain that is leaking out of me as though someone turned on a faucet in my veins.
“I’m confident we can get her to agree,” Preston says.
Henry moves both hands to his hips, solely focused on Preston now.
I notice he’s still holding the photo of the little boy between two fingers.
“There will be nothing manipulative about this arrangement. Invite her for a meeting, but that’s it.
If that is my son, the decision will be up to me and his mother. ”
A gulping cough that sounds embarrassingly like a sob breaks free from my mouth.
Henry turns instinctively at the sound, but keeps his eyes on Preston. “And my wife.” He doesn’t meet my eyes, which is good because I’m not sure what mine are communicating at the moment.
I drop them and assume a neutral expression, and only when it’s firmly in place do I look back up at Preston. “How can we ensure this stays out of the news?” I ask.
“I will get her signature on an NDA before anything else,” he says. “If that’s okay with you, sir,” he adds, looking at Henry. There’s a cocky tilt to his chin.
“That’s fine,” Henry grumbles.
Preston turns to me. “Celia?” he asks, waiting for the final verdict.
What do I say? If I agree to this and we come to some kind of arrangement with this woman, the press will throw our family into a meat grinder, hastening Wesbourne’s demolition of a three-hundred-year-old monarchy.
But if I decline, Henry will go after it like a true-crime investigator on the trail of a serial killer.
There is no way I can stop him from forming a relationship with this child that may or may not be his.
Either we do it together and weather the storm the media throws our way, or he does it alone—a choice that will lead to the end of our marriage and leave me to deal with the media fallout from a love child and a divorce.
A second divorce.
I steeple my fingers together and take a deep breath. “Make the call.”
Preston nods like I’ve made the right choice, but was there a right choice to make? Either way, I lose. “I will coordinate with Maisie on your schedule,” he says.
A few seconds later, he’s closing the door behind him, leaving Henry and me alone in a room full of tension so thick it could clothesline you.
“Why the hell do you allow him to call you Celia?” he says.
My nerves are strung so tightly, his words bounce right off me. “You just found out you’ve got a kid out there somewhere, and that’s what you want to focus on?” I roll my eyes and sit down at my desk.
“It’s completely inappropriate.”
He leans over the desk, trying to crowd my bubble, but I pick up my phone and lean back in my chair, typing a message to Maisie. I will need her help drafting a plan for the conversation with this woman.
“Lots of people call me Celia.”
“I’m talking about staff members.”
I shrug. “Me too.”
“Name one,” he says.
I look up and sigh. “Maisie.”
Henry rolls his eyes and looks off to the side. “She doesn’t count. She’s your friend.”
“So is Preston.” I return to my text. He will not guilt me into feeling bad about my familiarity with Preston, not with the possibility of two children appearing to disrupt our lives.
“He has a thing for you,” he says.
I laugh and set the phone down. “Not everyone is trying to steal what’s yours. And don’t forget, you’re the one with a ready-made family popping up like an annoying ad when you’re just trying to live your damn life.”
Henry steels his jaw, then moves toward the exit. “I’ll take the east bedroom tonight,” he says. The door slams shut behind him.
So this is what it’s like to watch your world end in smoke.