Chapter Two
Christopher Abbott-Montgomery, Earl of Clarence and one half of the most hated couple in the world, was spotted leaving the college of Christ Church this afternoon, where he was accompanied by a leggy blond who is most certainly not the Bonnie to his Clyde.
The pair was seen making their way down High Street together before parting ways inside their student accommodations with a lingering goodbye.
The nephew of the Queen was, according to an eyewitness, eager to escort his companion to her dormitory for some time away from the limelight, but she coyly fended him off, no doubt unwilling to get entangled with a suspected terrorist.
While the whereabouts of Evangeline Bright remain unknown, the trusty hounds of Fleet Street have been dogging Lord Clarence’s every step as he joins the new term at Oxford University after his alleged participation in the bombing of the Modern Music Museum in London.
Suffice to say, when his lesser half gets ahold of him, no doubt she’ll have as many questions as we do about his chosen company as of late.
Will he follow his ball and chain all the way behind bars?
Or has Lord Clarence finally seen the light and distanced himself from His Majesty’s illegitimate—and degenerate—offspring?
Click below for a gallery of Lord Clarence’s former flames, and check back in tomorrow, when we’ll have an exclusive interview with Jasmine Jay, with whom he had a whirlwind romance in the days before Evangeline’s arrival in England last year.
—The Regal Record, 31 January 2024
I’ve been back in the flat for five minutes when a key jangles in the lock, and I watch from the dining table as the door swings open and a red-faced and breathless Kit trudges into the tiny foyer.
“Bloody parasites,” he mutters, dropping his satchel on the ground and raking his fingers through his dark waves. “They tried to follow me inside the dormitory this time. Security got involved, and I had to slip out the back.”
I frown. One of the many levels of subterfuge we’ve had to implement is the fiction that Kit is living in the dorms, when we’re really staying half a mile away, in a building that’s crawling with undercover agents and personal protection officers.
“We should get you a coat that turns inside out,” I say through a mouthful of cereal, because making light of the situation is our only real option anymore.
“That way, if you ever need to make a quick escape, all you have to do is flip it around, pull a hat on, and no one will know it’s you. ”
Kit joins me at the table and cups my face, his lips brushing mine. “Genius,” he murmurs, and I can practically feel his bad mood melt away. “Though they’ll still find me somehow. They always do. May I?”
I hand him my spoon, and he takes a giant bite of cereal with the kind of hunger that makes it clear he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Another wave of guilt washes over me.
He should be able to buy a sandwich like any other student, but the few times he’s tried have ended with a dozen cameras being shoved in his face—or worse, like when a barista refused to serve him, which made headlines around the world.
“Ben posted again,” he says as he tries to hand the spoon back to me, but I offer him the rest of the bowl. “Apparently I’m cheating on you with a leggy blond.”
“Are you?” I say with only mild interest, and once he takes the cereal, I pull out my phone—my real one, not the one MI5 gave me for emergencies—and navigate to the Regal Record, the royal gossip site Ben secretly runs, which is now solely dedicated to tearing me and Kit apart.
It’s surreal to see the pictures that Ben has somehow already posted of Kit’s short walk between the college and his supposed dormitory, accompanied by a tall girl in full makeup. “She looks like Helene.”
Kit wrinkles his nose at the mention of his aunt—or, more likely, at the insinuation that comes with their similar appearance. “She’s in one of my lectures—Vivianne Blanc. She was waiting for me by the door.”
In almost all the pictures, she’s smiling and glancing at the cameras, clearly basking in the attention. “Maybe you should ask her which she thinks is more effective, TNT or dynamite.”
“Don’t be silly,” he says. “Everyone knows it’s C-4.”
He presses his lips to my cheek in a milky kiss, and warmth spreads through me as I continue to swipe from one photo to the next.
But without warning, that heat turns cold as the gallery of Kit’s afternoon is replaced by pictures of him before we met, stumbling out of nightclubs with Ben or Maisie or a group of raucous aristocrats I don’t recognize.
And every single one features a different girl on his arm.
I’ve seen evidence of Kit’s former flings before.
He has a type—tall and willowy, with stunning bone structure and the kind of beauty only a life free of any real hardship can achieve.
Ben has been posting batches of so-called throwbacks over the past few weeks, amplifying the cheating allegations and clearly determined to drive a wedge between us. And I refuse to let it work.
That doesn’t mean seeing Kit with his eyes unfocused and his arm wrapped around a different girl each night isn’t uncomfortable.
But he didn’t know me then. And I’m not about to hold his past against him, even though it’s hard to ignore the part where I’m definitely the weed in the otherwise expensive bouquet that is Kit’s love life.
Kit watches me closely now, cereal temporarily forgotten. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” I say, exiting the site and setting my phone aside.
“The rubbish Ben is posting to get a rise out of both of us.”
I shake my head. “I know what he’s trying to do, too,” I say, my voice a touch too tight.
Kit’s gaze doesn’t waver from mine, so intense that I have to fight the instinct to look away. “I remember every detail of the night we first met,” he says. “I know you had other things on your mind—”
“Not really,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. “Just, you know, getting hauled across an ocean to meet my deadbeat father, whose face happens to be on your money.”
“Tale as old as time,” says Kit, and the corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “But the moment you looked at me, I felt like my entire world shifted off its axis, and it would never be the same again. And I didn’t want it to be.”
Heat rushes through me, and I hook my little finger with his. “Is this your way of saying that you haven’t thought about those other girls since?”
“Not even for a moment. I was in a dark place when those photos were taken, but you gave me a reason to fight my way out. And by loving me, you give me permission to love myself again, too. That’s not something I’ll ever find at the bottom of a glass or in a club surrounded by strangers.
Nothing like it exists for me, except right here with you. ”
Before I know it, I’m kissing him again, slow and lingering this time.
His fingers thread through my hair as he deepens the kiss, and I want to crawl into his lap, to wrap myself around him knowing I’ll never be safer or happier or more loved than I am when I’m with him.
But as I shift my weight, a sharp knock echoes through the room, and the front door bursts open.
“Shit.” I pull away from Kit, nearly losing my balance as a tall man wearing a gray tailored suit strides into our flat. “Singh? What are you doing? We don’t have a meeting until—”
“It was bumped up,” says Agent Suraj Singh of MI5 on his way to the kitchen. While he must notice that we’re both disheveled, he has the decency not to say anything. “Haven’t you told her, Lord Clarence?”
“Told me what?” I say, glancing at Kit. He focuses on the cereal instead, his cheeks as red as mine feel.
“I received a…er, text this afternoon,” says Kit, and he clears his throat. “From Dylan.”
My nails dig into the edge of the table. Dylan is—was—one of Kit and Ben’s friends from Eton, and when he ended up in the same course at Oxford alongside Kit, he and his girlfriend, Aoife Marsh, pressured Kit to join Fox Rex.
That alone is more than enough reason to want nothing to do with Dylan.
But Dylan is also the one who, with Ben’s help, sneaked onto Sandringham grounds on Christmas Eve and hunted Kit and me down like prey.
Kit was grazed in the arm, and the same bullet hit me in the chest, barely missing my vital organs.
We should be dead. If Ben and Dylan had their way, we would be dead. And while Ben has never physically attacked me himself, I’m positive Dylan won’t hesitate the first chance he gets.
“What—” My voice catches, and I try to adopt a casual tone. “What did he want?”
I can tell from the flicker in Kit’s dark eyes that he isn’t fooled, and he wordlessly hands me his phone. A text thread from an unsaved number is already on the screen, and I scan it, a knot of fear forming in my throat.
How does it feel to be a modern-day Prometheus, Kitters? Bring freedom to the people, and the gods will make sure you’re punished for eternity.
Kit
You know I had nothing to do with the bombing, Dylan.
And yet your family has thrown you to the wolves.
Kit
What do you want?
The pleasure of your company.
Kit
No.
Are you really going to turn your back on the only friends you have left?
Kit
We have very different definitions of that word.
Aoife fooled us all, Kitters, including me. She took it too far, and she’ll pay the price, but her choices aren’t mine, and they aren’t the club’s.
Kit
Are you saying you had no idea you were dating a terrorist?
I had no idea the Abr existed until her arrest. She lied to us all.
Kit
And how can you be so sure that the accusations against me aren’t true?
Because you and Evangeline were inside when the bombs went off, and you’d rather carve out your own heart than let anything hurt her.
Kit
Then how am I supposed to trust that you weren’t part of it, too?