Chapter 8
CHRISTMAS DAY
I sighed, leaning back in my chair and surveying the office before me.
I took in the antique desk, the finish on the edges worn smooth from decades of hands trailing across them.
The bookcase to my left, the shelves filled with a mixture of books and trinkets I had picked up on my travels.
The plush armchair in the corner by the window that had served as my favorite thinking spot.
It was hard to believe that soon, this space would no longer be mine.
In just one week, in the hours following my coronation, palace staff would move my belongings into my father’s office.
As much as I knew that the coronation ceremony was the official moment I would become king, I wondered if it would feel real before I saw all of my things in the room that I had always connected with my dad.
I wondered how long it would take for me to stop thinking of it as “Dad’s office” and to start thinking of it as my own.
I stretched my arms overhead, rotating my shoulders back and down as I stood, walking to the window that overlooked the grounds.
I could see Knox and Birdie’s cottage in the distance, the warm light pouring out of their living-room window onto the snow.
Though Knox would most certainly be putting in overtime hours this upcoming week to get the grounds ready for the coronation—his final project before he took on his new position as my Chief Counselor—I knew tonight he and Birdie were most certainly reveling in the newness of their engagement.
Celebrating their engagement that morning over Christmas breakfast had absolutely been a joyous occasion, though it hadn’t fully distracted me from the anxiety of my own impending proposal.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose as I considered the public proposal planned for the next day.
As Crown Prince, I was required to be engaged by my coronation on New Year’s Day.
If I wasn’t, the crown would pass to Rosie, who would be expected to marry once she came of age, all thanks to my brother abdicating in September.
The competition for my hand hadn’t truly been a competition in the strictest sense of the word, more of an expedited courting process for me to find a wife—something I never thought I would need to do in such a short time.
The whole thing had felt a bit ridiculous, but in the end, I supposed that it wasn’t completely pointless. After all, it had led to Knox meeting Birdie—an American woman our friend Vince had sponsored for the competition, who ultimately was a far better fit for Knox than she was for me.
And now, with the conclusion of said dog and pony show, it was time for me to choose and propose to the future Queen of Wexstone.
No pressure.
I swore quietly, cursing my great-grandfather for implementing the law that required the ruler of Wexstone to be married.
He himself had inherited the crown from his unmarried uncle, who had nearly driven the country into ruin after sixty years on the throne.
Soon after his coronation, my great-grandfather established laws preventing any King or Queen of Wexstone from ruling for more than thirty years or from ruling without a partner by their side.
Which was how I found myself here, on Christmas evening, contemplating my own coronation and upcoming engagement, despite having been second in line for the throne and single just months ago.
A cold chill skittered up my spine. Perhaps there was one thing I wouldn’t miss about this office.
The heating in this room had always been a bit temperamental, despite Knox’s best attempts to keep the centuries-old palace up to date.
Dad’s office, on the other hand, always stayed at a steady, comfortable temperature even on the coldest winter days.
I tried yet again to picture myself as king. I’d been trying to imagine it since the day Xavier had abdicated, but even months later the concept still felt foreign to me. I supposed that thirty years of being the second in line would be hard to override.
As I leaned my head against the trim of the window, watching shadows dance across the snow, I let myself think back to that late September day when my world had changed in a matter of moments.
I shuddered again, this time not at the cold but at the memory of the look on Dad’s face when Xavier, Knox, and I had entered his office the morning after the school’s gala fundraiser.
Our father was a kind man and a good king, but he had a hardness to him that had nearly always been directed toward Xavier.
It was hard to know if it was because Xavier was the born heir or because of Xavier’s antics over the years—or if Xavier’s antics over the years were a result of Dad being harder on him than the rest of us.
Either way, the look he gave Xavier as we walked into the room had chilled my blood.
“Xavier, last night was the last time you will behave in such a manner. You embarrassed the crown, you embarrassed this family, and you embarrassed Ms. Levy by disrupting the gala. As the heir to this throne—”
“I no longer wish to be heir to the throne. I am renouncing my title as Crown Prince. Give the crown to Oliver.”
I closed my eyes, remembering the way the air had left my lungs as Xavier turned on his heel and strode from the room, slamming the door behind him. He may as well have punched me in the gut as he passed me.
And that was it. Of course, our parents tried to talk him out of it, but he hopped on a plane and refused to answer his phone, instead replying with a few short text messages to say that he was sure of his decision and would return in a few weeks.
It was the decision that set into motion the competition to find my future wife, set to culminate tomorrow afternoon with a public proposal followed by an exclusive televised interview with Warren James, Wexstone’s most famous TV journalist.
A knock at the door pulled me back to the present. I turned, and—as if I had conjured him with my thoughts—Xavier entered the office.
“Hey,” I said, furrowing my brow. Xavier’s presence and communication with the family had been scarce over the past few months; I hadn’t expected to see much of him until the coronation ceremony.
“Hey. Can I come in?”
I nodded and Xavier closed the door behind him, taking a seat in the armchair. I moved aside a stack of papers and perched on the edge of the desk. His copper hair was in disarray and dark circles shadowed his eyes; he looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“What’s up?” I asked as he slumped back into the chair, looking defeated. Anxiety twisted in my stomach. Whatever he had come here to say, it wasn’t going to be good.
He rubbed his jaw, a habit we shared when we were thinking. “I uh…I’m not really sure how to say this.”
“Then just blurt it out. We’ll start from there.”
“I’m going to be a father.”
I blinked. Well, that’s not where I thought this was going.
“You…what?”
He sighed. “Do you remember the movie that filmed here in July?”
I nodded. I had nearly forgotten about it, given all that had happened in the months since, but I did remember stopping by the set to welcome the cast and crew on their first day of shooting.
“Well, the lead actress and I…well.” He cleared his throat.
“She’s pregnant. I found out in early September.
I’ve been trying to work out a way to keep this from reflecting poorly on the family or somehow spin the news before it came out.
The American press caught wind of the pregnancy about a month ago and they’ve been speculating on who the father is for weeks.
But I’m afraid they’ve figured out that it’s me, and that news is probably about to break. ”
Xavier sighed again, running a tattooed hand through his disheveled hair. His shoulders relaxed, as though speaking the words aloud had lifted a weight from them.
“You’ve known since September,” I said, more a statement than a question.
Xavier nodded. He had known when he walked away from the throne.
“And she’s an American actress.”
He nodded again.
I thought for a moment, trying to grasp something hazy in my memory. Oh my God. My eyes widened. “It’s Alexandra Campbell, isn’t it?”
Xavier’s wry smile told me I was correct. “I didn’t think you’d put it together so quickly; you aren’t usually the one to keep up with American celebrity gossip.”
He was right. The only reason I knew that Alexandra Campbell was pregnant was because of an inane conversation I’d gotten trapped in with Renata Raines shortly after the news of the pregnancy broke. Renata had prattled on for what felt like hours speculating on who the father might be.
I shook my head, dismissing his unspoken question of how I had known. “You said you believe they have identified you as the father. What makes you say that?”
“She came to visit me earlier this week. I thought we were being careful, but we were papped this afternoon as she left.”
Fuck.
I ran my hand over my jaw. “Have you told Mum and Dad?”
“No. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
I wanted to feel honored by that, but I had a feeling there was more behind the gesture than pure brotherly love.
“I wrote them a letter explaining everything. I need you to give it to them.”
Ah, there it is.
I raised my eyebrows, a silent question.
“I’m flying out tonight. I’m going to be with Alexandra in LA.
I’ve done enough damage to this family to last a lifetime; you don’t need me around for your engagement or coronation.
I’ll just be a distraction. And Alexandra needs me; we’re going to raise the baby together.
And I need some time and space to figure out where I fit within this family and the crown. ”
I stood, anger and hurt replacing the dread that had filled my chest the moment he had said the words, “I’m going to be a father.”
“You’re leaving? You’re going to miss the engagement and coronation?
” Although it was perhaps the least of our publicity problems, it was the part that wounded me the most. Xavier—the brother I had idolized as a child—had left me to clean up his mess when he abdicated, and now he wouldn’t even be there to watch me choose my future partner or be crowned in his place.
“It’s for the best, Ollie,” he said, using the childhood nickname I so rarely heard these days. He approached, holding out a sealed envelope. When I made no move to take it from him, he stepped past me, placed it on my desk, and turned toward the door.
“So that’s it, then?” I didn’t know what else I wanted to hear him say. An apology would have been a nice start, but that was hardly Xavier’s way.
He looked over his shoulder as he opened the door. “You’ll make a great king, Oliver. A much better one than I would have been.” And with that he left the office, the door quietly clicking shut behind him.
I sank down onto the rug, lowering myself onto my back. The ceiling seemed to spin above me as I stared up in shock.
As a boy, I had often laid on the floor when I was overwhelmed, not quite understanding in my young mind that it was a way of literally grounding myself.
Now, my boyhood habit kept me from crawling out of my skin as my mind whirled.
Shit, shit, fuck, shit, fuck.
The last three months had been one long exercise in undoing the publicity damage Xavier’s unexpected abdication had caused, and this news was set to upend all of that.
The Wexstone tabloids were not nearly as brutal as those in the United Kingdom, but with the American media in the mix?
There was no way this wasn’t going to become an absolute shit show.
I flipped through our family history in my mind, trying to recall the last time someone had publicly had a child out of wedlock and coming up empty.
It might be the twenty-first century, but us royals were held to a different standard than everyone else.
There was no doubt in my mind that the news of this baby—especially when the media inevitably tied it back to Xavier’s abdication—would upset quite a few people.
I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. It seemed not that long ago that I had simply been a working royal.
Not carefree, exactly, but leading what was, all things considered, a relatively quiet life.
Now here I was, taking the throne in a matter of days and responsible for managing the fallout of my brother’s choices. And, you know, leading a country.
It had been hard not to resent Xavier over the last few months, and that resentment was only becoming harder to suppress. We had never been close in the way that Knox and I, or even Rosie and I, were, but I couldn’t see how our relationship would recover after this.
Shaking my head, I contemplated my next steps, my mind returning to my expected engagement in—I checked my watch—fifteen hours.
I knew who I wanted to propose to. Fuck, I had known deep down who I wanted to propose to from the moment she was announced as a participant in the competition. It wasn’t just that she would make an incredible queen, though that was certainly an indisputable fact in my mind.
No, the truth was that she had held my heart for years. She was the woman I had subconsciously compared all others to for nearly a decade.
But getting her to agree? That would be another hurdle entirely.
I stood up, grabbed my coat, and formulated a plan as I slipped out of my office.