Page 106 of The Thing About My Prince

Okay, now I’m done with this particular variety of the bullshittery Flora and I were talking about earlier.

“I’mluckythat you will allow the woman I love to travel in the wedding party at all?” Lexi’s hand clenches around my arm. I think it coincided with my use of the wordlove, but I’m so furious with my mother it’s hard to tell. “What would you prefer she did? Get the bus?”

My mother shrugs. It’s only a tiny action. But the contempt it displays, as if that’s an excellent idea she hadn’t thought of, is like yanking the pin from a grenade that’s been rolling around inside me.

“Do you not think that you should treat Lexi with the respect her place in my life deserves?”

“I think, Oliver, that we shouldn’t be making room in an important family and state occasion for one of your whims.”

Where the fuck do I start with that ludicrous sentence?

“First, this is not a state occasion. We’re going to the local village church, not Westminster fucking Abbey. We are not the side of the family that matters, remember?”

The way my mother visibly bristles at my words makes the penny drop. Oh my God. Is this where all her problems stem from? That her brother is the heir to the throne? That his kids are in the line of succession and hers are not? That they get all the state occasions and we don’t?

“Second, Lexi is not a whim. She’s the love of my life. The woman I want to spend the rest of my days with.” Okay, that might be over-egging the pudding a little, but the sentence naturally fell out of my mouth and it helps me make my point of principle, so there we are.

“The only person that matters today, Oliver”—Mother pauses to sniff and clear her throat—“is your sister. Now stop making a scene on the steps and clear the way for her to come down and meet your father.”

She gestures over my shoulder, where Dad is chatting with the violinist from the string quartet, then continues herjourney down to where a man in full livery is standing beside the open rear door of the first black car behind the bride’s white one.

“Lexi comes with me.” I lead Lexi down the steps, following my mum, who spins around, her shoes crunching the gravel, and stares at me with a face of stone.

“There is no place here, and certainly not in the photographs, for someone whose breasts have been seen by the entire nation and who will be in your life for only five minutes.”

Then she climbs into the car.

Lexi releases my arm, and instantly there’s a cold patch in the crook of my elbow where her hand had been.

“Let it go.” Her voice is quiet, her smile soft, her eyes full of support tinged with regret. “Mainly because your mother’s right.”

And she heads off toward the back of the line of cars, the fabric of the burgundy dress falling perfectly over her perfect ass as she wobbles slightly on the gravel.

It’s like standing on the deck of a sinking ship and watching the one and only life raft float off into the distance.

Now I’m alone with my mother and all the trappings and traditions and protocol of the institution I thought I’d escaped.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

LEXI

My car turns into a quaint street lined with historic row houses, all decked out with colorful window boxes, some decorated with red, white and blue pennant flags. But the greatest sight is up ahead, where Oliver is standing on the sidewalk in front of the most adorable little stone church I’ve ever seen.

My belly flips, knowing that he’s waiting for me. And the knee-jerk reaction I’d had to his mother the moment I met her—of thinking she was an inexcusable bitch—fades into sorrow for him that this is the hand life has dealt him.

She will clearly never change. And I don’t understand how she can treat me the way she does despite her son telling her repeatedly how important I am to him.

The first time Oliver said he loved me, to make a point in front of Giles, it threw me for a loop. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever saying that about me, so to hear it from a world-famous member of the British royal family was the most jarring thing imaginable.

But a minute ago, when he described me as the love of hislife, I didn’t flinch one bit. While I know it’s all part of the roles we’re playing for our own ends, it felt almost…normal.

A natural, easy, of-course-that’s-how-it-is, kind of normal.

Perhaps that’s because we’ve become incredibly comfortable with each other this last week. Not comfortable in a boring old-slippers kind of way, but in all the exciting, meaningful ways that fulfill me mentally, emotionally, and physically.

From the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep at night, we’re talking and laughing. Well, apart from dinnertimes with his parents. Those rank high on my personal leaderboard of unfun times.

If they ask me one more time how we do or say such-and-such in America, as if it’s another planet where we do and say things in an otherworldly way than Earth humans, I’ll have to start stabbing my thigh with a fork to keep from saying something that would let down Oliver.