Chapter Twenty-One #2
“It’s lovely to meet you,” says Greyson in a posh accent very much like Kit’s, and he leans in to kiss my cheeks.
He doesn’t look enough like Kit for me to stare, but Riley is a taller, perfected version of me, as if someone photoshopped an exceptionally good picture of me within an inch of its life, and I can see the surprise on the real Kit’s face as he, too, greets Riley.
“Thinking of trading up?” I tease in his ear once the four of us start posing together for even more pictures. Kit grins down at me.
“No such thing when it comes to you,” he murmurs, giving me a quick kiss on the lips, causing another wave of screams from the fans and a blinding explosion of light from the photographers.
At last, after the four of us spend several minutes posing in every possible combination, a red-cheeked Tibby ushers us along toward the interviews.
“Time blindness is not an attractive trait,” she mutters so only Kit and I can hear her.
“Pretty sure that’s why I have you,” I say, scanning the clusters of people still hanging around. While Helene and Nicholas speak with a reporter I recognize from ITV, my mother is nowhere in sight.
Hoping that she went inside the theater, I hug Kit’s arm while Riley and Greyson break off to do their own interviews, and Tibby guides us toward a pretty blond woman and a man in a cerulean suit that matches his short mohawk.
“Evangeline! Lord Clarence!” the woman squeals, and I force a warm smile. “What a wild event! First off, let us congratulate you on the film—”
“And, of course, the real-life events that led to it,” says the man, his tone much more even. “Now that you’ve had time to settle back into royal life, how are you feeling?”
“Stunned,” I say, looking around, as if I can’t quite believe we’re here. Which I can’t, but I’m playing it up for the camera, exactly as Astrid instructed. “This is incredible. Neither of us ever expected anything like this—how could we?”
“It’s rather surreal,” agrees Kit, his arm slipping around my waist. “All we wanted was to protect the family and the people of the United Kingdom to the best of our limited abilities, and seeing what it’s turned into…”
He shakes his head, but this is a sentiment we’ve repeated again and again throughout the year, never once making the mistake of seeming like we think we deserve it.
Because we don’t. It’s all manufactured anyway, for the greater good of the monarchy, a fact that’s never too far from the forefront of my mind.
They have a few more bland questions—have we seen the film already, what do we expect, how involved were we in the making of it, and what do we think of the crowds here tonight—and I sense Tibby stepping forward to end the interview when the blond blurts out one more question.
“We hear congratulations are in order, Evangeline—an engagement between your mother and His Majesty! You must be so excited! Has a date for the wedding been set?”
I freeze, my eyes on Kit. How do they know? It couldn’t have been a press release—Doyle would never do anything to steal headlines from the premiere tonight. Did my mother say anything? No—she wouldn’t announce it without Alexander’s approval. And without warning me first.
“I…” I search frantically for something to say. Do I deny it? But what happens when they do announce the engagement? Do I confirm? How do these two random American reporters even know?
“His Majesty is focused on his recovery,” says Kit smoothly, and his hand splays comfortingly on the small of my back. “We are very proud of the strides he has made, and we know he is eager to resume his full duties as soon as he is able.”
This is such a sidestep that even I can’t blame the reporters for their crestfallen faces. But it’s the woman who rallies quicker, and as Kit starts to lead me away, she shoves a microphone within millimeters of my mouth.
“What about you two? When should we expect a big announcement of your own?” she says, clearly desperate to get something usable out of us. But while the most I can manage is a tight smile, Kit chuckles.
“When we have something to announce, we’ll be sure to do so,” he promises, and before either of them can press, he hurries me away, Tibby following at a quick pace.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she says in a clipped voice. “No more interviews. How on earth did they find out about—”
“They didn’t know,” says Kit through a wide smile, waving to another cluster of fans in the stands. “They were fishing.”
“But how—”
“My mom’s probably wearing her ring,” I realize, holding my hand up to cover my mouth so no one can read my lips. “She almost never takes it off.”
Tibby groans and proceeds to curse whichever stylist let my mother leave Windsor wearing it, while I silently curse whoever let my mother leave Windsor at all.
The only silver lining to the American reporters’ curveball is that Tibby lets Riley and Greyson deal with the rest of the interviewers, while she leads us quickly through the doors of the theater with plenty of time to spare.
As soon as we duck inside the cool, dark building, a coil in the pit of my stomach unclenches, and the urge to take off my heels is almost overwhelming.
Before I can weigh the pros and cons—mostly of what Tibby would do to me if I tried—I spot a familiar head of auburn hair in the glitzy lobby, which is slowly emptying as everyone filters into the theater for the premiere.
“Mom!”
She turns around in time for me to catch her in a tight hug, and she wraps her arms around me in return, stronger than ever before. “Evie! Look at you—you’re stunning,” she says into my hair. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. All of this…it’s because of you and Kit, every bit of it.”
I don’t have the heart to remind her that it’s all PR. “Thanks,” I say, and I mean it. “I can’t believe you’re here. I thought you were staying home with Alexander.”
“We both always planned on surprising you tonight,” she admits, finally letting me go. She touches my hair, which is in a half-up, half-down do with strategically placed diamonds that are meant to look like a diadem. “But your father is having a bad pain day, and he didn’t want to distract you.”
“Really?” I say. “Jenkins had nothing to do with it?”
“Jenkins makes an excellent mother hen, but we all know who rules the roost,” says my mom, amused. “Alex insisted I go without him, and so here I am.”
As she touches my cheek, I notice the engagement ring she is most definitely wearing, and I sigh inwardly.
At least we have our answer there. “Thank you,” I say again, catching her in another hug, even more grateful now for all the security stationed around the theater. “I’m really glad you made it.”
“We both are,” says Kit, and my mother opens her arm and pulls him into the embrace, too. It’s a sweet moment, warm and almost like we’re in our own little bubble—until I hear several clicks of a camera phone. I instantly stiffen.
“Just thought you’d want a photo,” says Thaddeus Park, who stands ten feet away, drink in one hand and phone in the other.
Maisie lingers nearby, but her back is turned to us, and I spot Gia in a slinky silver dress on the other side of the sparsely populated lobby, laughing beside a tall redhead who has the bone structure of a supermodel.
“Send it to me,” requests Kit, which is much more polite than anything I can think of to say.
“Sure thing,” says Thaddeus, completely oblivious to the tension he’s caused. “Here, let me pull them up. I took a couple.”
While he shows Kit and my curious mother the results, I join my sister instead, not trusting myself to keep my cool. At first I say nothing, and I’m not even sure Maisie’s noticed me as she stares blatantly at Gia and the actress.
“You’re certainly enjoying the spotlight tonight, aren’t you?” she says at last, breaking the silence between us.
“Mm, every bit of it,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my words. “Does Thaddeus know it’s all for the cameras?”
Maisie tilts her head. “Who says it is?”
“The way you’ve been staring at Gia is a pretty good hint,” I say. “Or are you staring at the other girl? Are you upset that she doesn’t look like you?”
“What are you talking about? She’s stunning. Of course she looks like me.”
“That’s not what I—” I begin, but Maisie huffs and stalks over to Thaddeus before I can get in another word.
“Come on,” she says nastily, grabbing his elbow as he’s in the process of typing out Kit’s number. “Let’s get seats before we’re stuck next to them all night.”
As Maisie and a baffled Thaddeus head off, I rejoin Kit and my mother, who wraps her arm around my bare shoulders. “Are you going in, too?” she says.
“I—we’re not sure yet,” I say, glancing at Kit. Now that my mom is here, maybe we should join her, but I still loathe the idea of sitting through two hours of our fictionalized trauma. “Do you have a place to sit?”
She nods. “Helene and Nicholas are saving me a seat. I didn’t think you two would want to stick around and watch.”
I’m unnerved that she knows me so well, considering we barely saw each other while I was growing up.
But I’m even more unsettled by the idea of my mom being buddy-buddy with my former stepmother.
Helene, at least, seems to have cooled it with the menacing threats now that she knows it was Ben, not me, who was responsible for the fire at Windsor. But I still don’t trust her.
“You’re sure?” I say, and my mom nods.
“I’ll let you know how it is,” she promises. “You two stay out here and protect your peace.”
She hugs us both once more before following Maisie and Thaddeus, who end up directly behind Gia and her date in the line to get into the theater.
Kit and I wait as the final warning announcement is given and Riley and Greyson are ushered inside, and finally, once we hear the rumblings from the theater begin, we seek out a small table near the corner of the bar, and a server gets us two nonalcoholic drinks and a basket of every snack they’re offering.