Page 85 of The Unlikely Heir

I get a meme from Amelia as I’m packing to go.

I love summer in Scotland. This year it was a Wednesday.

I have a nostalgic feeling when I arrive at Balmoral. The last time I was here was the final summer before my father died, and the whole family was gathered.

Balmoral was where Gran always seemed the most relaxed. Grandpa was beside her, and all my uncles and aunts and cousins were here, and we had picnics and played endless games of tag on the grouse moors, my cousins mocking me when I wouldn’t swim with them in the freezing River Dee.

Now the castle is empty, echoing.

My Uncle Edwin, Aunt Alice, and my cousins, Princess Chloe and Prince Frederick, have been invited to Balmoral because they were deemed to have engaged in the lowest level of offending. At least their bribery was an attempt to help the country rather than for personal gain.

Although I’m angry at them for what they’ve done to the royal family, I do feel a pang of sympathy for how the lives of my cousins have changed so abruptly. But from the conversation I have with her when she first arrives, Chloe’s biggest concern seems to be she has been forced to close her social media accounts.

Gran normally stays at Balmoral for a few months but she’s cut down her visit to a few weeks this year because of everything else going on. I’m glad she’s decided to come though. She’s been working so hard to plug the gaps in the royal engagement schedule and shore up public support for the monarchy. At dinner on the first night, the subdued lighting in the dining room makes the shadows under her eyes even more pronounced. And I get the feeling her exhaustion is being made worse by Edwin’s determination to bulldoze her into extending an invitation to the rest of the family to come to Balmoral.

“It’s our private family residence. They can’t stop you from inviting your own family.” Edwin’s jaw is set stubbornly.

“The public simply won’t tolerate Albert and James and the children welcomed back into the family fold,” Gran replies as she cuts a precise piece off her beef Wellington. “And neither shall I.”

Edwin’s eyebrows raise. “Neither shall you?”

“No.” She spears a fork through the meat.

“But, Mummy, they’re your children and grandchildren.”

“That makes it even worse, Edwin. They knew the stakes.”

Edwin’s fork drops to his plate with a clatter. “And what do you anticipate will happen in the future? Are you never going to forgive them? Are we all going to be in exile forever?”

Gran dabs the corner of her mouth with a napkin before she replies. “We’ll get the court case out of the way, and then we’ll discuss the future. But I can’t see how any of your futures can be in Britain.”

“Are you planning to banish us all?” Chloe’s voice rises in alarm.

“Callum won’t need the distraction of having family members running around reminding the public of their disgrace.”

I twist my napkin in my hand.

I didn’t know my aunts, uncles, and cousins very well before this, and I can’t hide the troubling thought that I’ve benefited the most from their downfall.

Edwin shoots a glance at me. “So, Callum’s the family’s great savior, is he? Everyone else is sacrificed to make Callum’s life easier.”

“That’s the way it works,” Nicholas speaks up. “It has always been all about the heir.” Do I detect a note of bitterness in his voice?

Edwin frowns. “But, Mummy…” he starts again, but Gran straightens her shoulders and gives him such a look of cold fury that the rest of his words die abruptly without leaving his mouth.

Amelia dips her head toward me. “Well, this is a fun family dinner,” she says in a low voice.

“It’s ranking up there with sitting in a bathtub of razor blades,” I reply in an equally low voice.

She gives me a supportive smile.

“And you realize that the monarch’s estate goes directly from monarch to monarch, right?” Nicholas is saying at the other end of the table in a loud voice. “So all of Gran’s personal fortune will go to Callum, and he’ll decide how much, if any, comes to the rest of us.”

All gazes on the table except for Gran’s swivel to me.

“That monarch-to-monarch inheritance is simply a way to avoid the private estate being whittled down by inheritance tax,” Gran says calmly.

My stomach hollows.