Page 52 of The Thing About My Prince

I was smiling? And was it because the melons thing amused me or because it also reminded me of the sounds ofLexi’s moans and groans and made me wonder if that’s how she sounds when she’s on the edge of the orgasm of her life.

“Oh, I promise you, any signs of happiness around here are only ever an accident,” I say. “But God forbid we should learn from the mistakes of what happened to Mum. Best we make sure to hand them down to the next genera?—”

My mother’s eyes dart to something she’s seen over my shoulder.

I turn to find Lexi standing clean and wet-haired in the doorway. Dane had brought her around the back so she could come in via the kitchen and not drip mud all through the entranceway. Then Flora had provided her with a bowl of warm water to wash her feet before she made her way upstairs to our room and the shower.

Our room.

That phrase does the same thing to me asmy girlfriend.

“Sorry,” Lexi says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting anything.” I dash to her side and give her a peck on the cheek like it’s the most normal thing in the world. In return, her lips brush my face.

She smells all clean and fresh, and I can’t help remembering my joke about soaping her up. What would it be like to get to do that?

“You must feel better now you have all that mud off you,” Dad says.

“Yes, we saw the pictures.” Mum approaches and stands behind Dad’s chair. Now it’s her turn to use the furniture as a shield, to protect herself from the horrors of the woman I’ve brought into her home. “You must feel rather embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed?” Lexi looks up at me, her brow furrowed with confusion, then returns her gaze to them. “Why would I be embarrassed? I thought I was doing a good thing. Showing that someone associated with the royal family can—I think the bogmeister used the phrase—‘get stuck in’ with the locals.”

“One of the points of us is that we do the opposite of that.” My mother sniffs. “Clearly we should have given you a full briefing before allowing you out into the world.”

“Allowing meout into the wor?—”

“Or sent Giles with you,” Mum says, steamrolling over Lexi’s outrage.

“I’m a journalist who gets sentout into the worldall the time to deal with difficult and sometimes dangerous situations. I think I can cope perfectly fine with a local village bog tradition thing.” After a second, she adds, “Ma’am.”

Mum winces. “TheAmericanpronunciation of ma’am. Oh, how I love it.”

“What did I do wrong this time?” Lexi asks me.

“Spoke with your own accent, I think.” Talk about gratuitous unpleasantness from my mother.

“Tea?” Flora is right behind us with a clinking tray.

“Good God, yes,” my father says, getting enthusiastic about something for the first time today.

Lexi and I step aside to let Flora through.

I move to follow her, but Lexi catches my sleeve.

“Could I show you the pictures of potential dresses for the wedding that Sofia’s sent me?” Her eyes are doing that pleading thing again that says she needs to speak with me in private and it’s nothing to do with dresses.

It’s a tiny difference that no one else in the room would notice, even if they weren’t one hundred percent focused on a tray of tea and digestive biscuits.

“Of course,” I say.

“I left my phone in our room,” she adds. “We’ll have to go upstairs.”

“Of course.” I turn to follow her.

“I assume we’ll see you at dinner,” my mother calls after us. “Unless you’re planning to run riot in the village fish and chip shop as part of thisgetting stuck in with the localsthing.”

Thankfully, Lexi’s back is already some distance along the hallway and she might not have heard.