4. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Eight days later, I was pacing outside my mother’s solarium, waiting to enter.
This was just one of a thousand dumb things about royalty.
Waiting outside a greenhouse to be announced.
Most normal people’s kids just walked into their parents’ rooms—sometimes when they shouldn’t—or, when they got older, knocked and then entered after an all clear.
Not here. Here I stood in the hallway like a moron, twiddling my thumbs, as some staffer in livery went inside to announce my presence.
I could do the same by calling under the door, but that wouldn’t be fitting for a member of the royal family.
It was all horrendously archaic as well as preposterous.
Pageantry also fit. Vanity and pomp to impress whom exactly?
The two security guards at the end of the hall? The cook? The maid dusting off the bust of my great-great-great aunt, who, horrors of horrors, died a spinster in a flaming speedboat crash at the ripe old age of ninety-two? Mother liked to say that I had inherited Aunt Bulga’s daredevil gene.
Losing what little patience I had, for I’d wanted to find Rani to say hello, beautiful, I was about to just walk in when the door opened.
“Her Majesty will see you now, Your Highness,” the footman announced with a bow for me, which I acknowledged with a soft thanks.
Strolling into the sunny room filled with urns of ferns, vining flowering plants, and a tiny fountain burbling in the corner, I found my mother and brothers gathered around a glass-topped wrought-iron table.
They all glanced up from the platters of scones laid out before them.
“Holy fuck,” Frode, the eldest son and crown prince, blurted out. The others all gaped at me as if a unicorn in a kilt had just clip-clopped in.
“Language,” Mama chided automatically, the spoonful of clotted cream drifting from the scone on her plate to somewhere left of center. “Harold, what have you done to your curls?”
I walked around the table, saddened not to see Alva here, for that would have brought Rani into the room to take notes. My brother Ivar stared openly, mouth slightly open, as Frode tipped his head left then right like a dog.
“Good to see you, Mama,” I earnestly said, bending down to kiss her smooth cheek.
“And you, my sweet,” she whispered, reaching up to pat my sandy-blond, straight hair. “This is certainly a surprise. What led you to do this? Please, sit. Cook Margit made the cranberry scones just for you, Harold.”
“You look like that portrait of Grandfather in the main portraiture hall. The one where he was painted sitting on top of that damn polo horse of his,” Frode commented, the astounded look gone from his handsome face.
“Language,” Mama said once more. “He does look more like your father’s side of the family with the lighter hair. What led you to do this, Harold?”
“I wanted a change,” I said, lowering my backside into a nicely padded chair as the sweet aroma of Mama’s beloved plumeria wafted around me. She studied me closely but merely nodded. The woman was used to a shock to the system. “Where are your lovely wives?”
“Home sick with a grisly head cold,” Frode replied while dropping a spoonful of clotted cream onto his scone as the tea steeped in his cup.
He was quite exacting about his tea, much like Lady Alva, but she was British, and he grew up in a castle where coffee ruled the roost. “Even the nanny has it—nasty bug—the baby is miserable. Snotty and teething.”
He sneezed. We all gave him dark looks.
“And Alva? Is she here?” I enquired nonchalantly while lifting a warm scone from the tray with silver tongs.
Always best to seem unconcerned so as not to appear overly interested.
First rule of royal snobbery is to be placidly dull and composed.
Something I generally failed at but was able to pull out of my childhood lessons when needed.
“She is, yes. She’s having some trouble with her courses, so she’s taking a nap.” Ivar rooted about on the platter for a maple-oat scone then coated it with cream before dropping a glob of jam on top. Proper Devon method taught to him by his lovely lady wife, I was sure.
“I didn’t know she had returned to college,” I said.
Ivar looked as if he were chewing on the wrong end of a skunk.
Then it hit me. “Her courses? Good Lord, Ivar, have we just dropped into an episode of Bridgerton?” I asked with a snicker while piling on my jam first and topping it with cream.
Just to be contrary. Frode took note of my Cornish scone dressing with a cocked eyebrow.
“Next thing, Mama will be wearing stays and fanciful wigs.”
“Like fuck,” my mother mumbled.
“Language,” we three boys chided, which got a snicker and a blush from the queen.
“Can’t you just say she’s got cramps or whatever womanly ailment is plaguing her?” I asked as Ivar turned the same shade as the raspberry jam.
“Personally, I appreciate Ivar not being coarse.” Mama eyed my scone with a sigh but carried on in the face of the sacrilege I had just committed.
God, I wish Anders were here. He’d be just as prone to mangle his scone as I was.
“I’m sure Alva will be present for dinner.
As will your father, so we must tend to the harvest festival details with speed.
Harold, do you want tea or shall I ring for someone to bring you coffee? ”
“No, don’t run the staff for one cup of coffee. Tea is fine.” I turned from Mama to Ivar, sipping his tea silently. “Will Alva be staying for a few days?”
He lowered his cup, eyebrows tangled, to stare at me. “Why all the interest in my wife?” I opened my mouth to reply, but Frode leaped in as was his way. Crown prince and all that.
“Can’t I be curious as to the welfare of my lovely sisters-in-law?
Perhaps I’m merely interested in life in Kensington or the latest gossip from the United Kingdom.
” I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my tea while visually daring the crown prince to say something snide.
Which, of course, being Frode, he immediately leapt to the wrong conclusion.
I loved my brothers, truly I did. They were quite liberal for the most part and grand allies for the LGBTQ community as well as other causes near and dear to my heart, but sometimes Frode could slip back to pompous future king with frightening ease.
“Harold, please don’t tell us you’ve gone and gotten tangled up in that affair with Duke Cardigan-Marchmont?” Frode asked, making Mama glance my way with crinkled royal brows.
“No. Why would you even assume such a thing?” I was rightfully offended.
“Shall we say that your reputation for scandal precedes you?” Frode flung out.
“Oh. Well, yes, I can’t argue that in the past I’ve been known to get into a few tiny mishaps now and again, but—”
“Tiny mishaps?” Ivar chimed up now that his embarrassment over saying the word period had fled. Nothing eases discomfiture like being able to flay your younger brother. “You’ve been caught in a number of risqué situations that the crown has had to rush to rectify.”
“You’re a rectify,” I grumbled, and that was when Mama stepped into things.
“Enough, boys. Harold, perhaps if you took time away from your social schedule and returned to ?stermon periodically, you would be better informed of how your sisters-in-law and nephews are doing,” Mama stated with a directness that meant she was serious now.
As if I didn’t know she was speaking about me even though she was cutting into her scone with delicate precision.
“They don’t live in ?stermon, Mama. Ivar and Alva live in the UK most of the year. Frode and his happy brood reside in Denmark,” I hurried to say as I pointed my jammy knife at my brothers. “And Anders is in the US, so my being based in Norway seems to be in line with what the others do.”
“Frode lives in Denmark for the skiing season. Then he returns to ?stermon for the rest of the year to serve the crown as the heir. His sons will be educated here as you boys were until they reach college age, then they will matriculate to a good university somewhere in Europe. As for Ivar, he lives in the United Kingdom due to Alva’s inheritance of her father’s earldom but returns home every other month.
” Mama gave me that look that said ‘top that, you little brat’ then returned to cutting her scone into small bits.
I shot Ivar a glower. “Ass kisser,” I whispered.
“Language,” Mama said, lifting her sight from her scone to me.
“Now, may we please return to the matter at hand: the autumn festival. This is our two hundredth festival, which in and of itself makes it important. The final day of the harvest fete is also your father’s and yours,” and here she pointed her fork at me, “birthdays. Your father will be seventy this year, so I wish to have a grand party here at the castle as well as to arrange a fitting countrywide celebration.” I sighed while eyeing my scone.
“Harold, there’s no need for such dramatics.
Sharing your birthday with your father is quite special. ”
“He dislikes me,” I reminded her.
“No, Harold, he does not dislike you. He dislikes the things you do and the splashy way you seem to revel in being a charming turd.”
My brothers tittered into their tea. Asses. “Fine, fine, I’m not going to argue about it. I didn’t fly here to fight over Papa’s sourness toward Anders and me for simply being who we are.”
Mama sighed this time. Laying down her silverware, she turned to me to speak when someone slipped into the solar. The same footman who had announced me.
“Sorry to interrupt, Your Majesty, but Princess Alva has sent her personal assistant to take notes as she is temporarily indisposed,” he told Mama.
“Send him in,” Mama said, her gaze flitting to me.
Rani entered before she could return to dressing me down.
My eyes drank him in as he bowed to Mama and then to each of us.
His hair had grown out into a tangle of wild curls that I instantly adored.
He was wearing a slim-cut, navy blue Brioni suit that hugged his narrow shoulders and lean waist. My mouth watered as I rose from my seat to greet him.
All seated at the table—as well as Rani—gaped up at me as my napkin fluttered from my lap to the floor.
“Your Highness?” Rani queried me. Royals did not stand when staff entered the room. I knew that, and yet my ass had left my seat as if I’d sat on a hornet.
“Leg cramp,” I lied, shaking my right leg out and taking my seat again as my gaze lingered on the beautiful man in the fashionable suit.
Rani always dressed impeccably. If memory served—and it did quite well—he looked just as good if not better out of his designer suits.
“Good to see you, Rani. Your hair is different.”
“As is yours, Your Highness,” he countered politely yet coolly.
As he should, given his station, but damn, the spark in those dark eyes told of a more passionate man just below the wool jacket.
Rani Adhikari was a barely contained blaze.
Suddenly I found myself needing the heat that only he seemed to possess. “New stylist?”
“No, no, still Gus. Just a new attitude,” I tossed out and frowned at Frode and Ivar, who were snorting in disbelief. “Would you like to join us?”
“That’s why he’s here, Harold,” Ivar said as my mother eyeballed me closely.
“I know, Ivar,” I lamely fired back. Lord, what was it about Rani that made me feel like a randy rooster while simultaneously reducing me to an eight-year-old with no grasp of snide comebacks?
He flustered me. Always had. Which is why I had bolted after our brief but incendiary affair. “There’s a bench behind Mama.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Rani replied, taking a seat to dig his notebook from a slim satchel on his shoulder and fire it up.
He crossed his legs and lifted his gaze to the table.
I smiled at him. He frowned just slightly.
Mama cleared her throat. Her own secretary arrived a moment later, sitting beside Rani on the stone bench, and I was forced to stop being a turd, as my mother had lovingly called me, and focus on a month-long celebration of all things ?stermon.
Didn’t mean I couldn’t sneak peeks at Rani typing away.
He would glance up and catch me staring then scowl as darkly as he dared.
It hurt. He was so close I could smell the subtle woody scent of his Valentino eau de toilette, but emotionally so far away he might as well be back in Kensington. Did I mention that distance hurt?