"Today? Nothing. I wrote. I watched it rain. Repeat that a few times, and you've got it. Suits me well enough."
"Wrote?" James smiled. "I was thinking you looked a bit like a clean-shaven Hemingway."
Well, that was charming as all hell.
Whatever shock Ben had felt upon finding the Prince of Wales on his porch was quickly giving way to a more complicated set of emotions. This could be an opportunity: Make nice for a bit, ask a few harder-hitting questions, and perhaps get an exclusive interview that might be worth reading. Or if James slipped up, said something ludicrously elitist or racist (and surely he would), Ben could write the "gotcha" piece of all time.
On the other hand, he had the sense that James had shown him a certain courtesy by not standing on protocol. Not only courtesy, but also trust. Ben could be aggressive in his reporting, but there were lines he didn't want to cross.
And most surprisingly, James's eyes were just as green in person as they were in all the photographs. Ben had always suspected Photoshop, but no. Every bit as vividly green as emeralds. Lips just as genuinely, deeply red. Faint freckles dusted across his cheeks and the backs of his hands. The prince was even more handsome face-to-face.
Maybe Ben could just--relax and enjoy the view for a while.
*
Ben was a Cat.
James and Indigo had named the "types" together back when they were children, which was why they were mostly named after house pets. Most people were Dogs. This wasn't an insult--James and his sister liked dogs--but a way of categorizing how people behaved toward royalty. Dogs were delighted to meet you, whether out of rapturous adulation (Labrador retrievers) or merely because it would be a story to tell (Corgis). Some of them had expected to be unmoved at first, but wound up being thrilled despite themselves (Bulldogs).
However, a few people were Cats. The Cats were not one bit impressed by you. Some Cats honestly meant to be polite but could not conceal their boredom (Persians). Other Cats would attempt to remain within decorum while still being unmistakably rude, so you would know how very not interested they were in your title and fame (Siamese). Occasionally Cats actually had it out for you and would try to trip you up at their next opportunity (Panthers, which were rare, but deadly for PR).
James wasn't yet certain, but he thought Ben was the rarest of the Cats, a Lion. Lions actually wanted to take your measure as an individual.
Usually the best policy for dealing with Lions was to move along swiftly. James didn't have time to be himself with most people he met. Nor did he often have the energy, because being "on" at appearances was far more tiring than it appeared. Lions sometimes struck him as arrogant; you came to public events for the public, after all, and yet Lions believed you ought to be theirs to monopolize.
But today, James thought he'd like to win Ben over. Not many people did, he suspected. It would be a challenge. And whatever was fueling Ben's curiosity, it wasn't arrogance.
Besides, it was a rare treat, getting to go where he wanted, when he wanted. To chat with a total stranger, without his security services in the way. To enjoy Ben's rugged good looks--broad shoulders, square jaw, beautifully defined muscles, and ink-black hair that complemented his dark eyes. In a resort this cloistered and carefully protected, he could act like any other man . . . more or less.
"So, did you come to Africa to get the right atmosphere for your novels?" James said as he settled back in the cane chair.
"I live in Africa, actually, though very far from here. Cape Town."
"Really? Your accent doesn't sound South African."
"It's a tricky one," Ben said. Those deep brown eyes glinted with amusement. "Not many people can place it."
James considered. "There's some American in there, I suspect--and is that German?"
"Good work. You got closer than most. I've lived in both the United States and Germany. By birth I'm Israeli, though I moved away in my childhood. I've also worked in Australia and the Far East. The accent's a mix of it all, I suppose."
James had visited about fifty countries so far, but he would never be afforded the chance to actually live abroad. He felt a small twinge of jealousy. What must it be like, to be able to go wherever you wished, whenever you wanted? "I imagine you have some stories to tell."
Ben's grin was fierce. "Or not to tell, as the case might be."
"You have the advantage over me. I'm not allowed much mystery." Besides the one great secret of his life, James's entire existence had been tabloid fodder since his birth--or really, before it, as one paper had bribed a nurse to release a sonogram of him at eight months.
"There must be something about you that isn't known to the whole world."
"Are we trading?" James said lightly. "Secret for secret?"
"Why not?"
"I suspect your secrets don't come cheap."
To James's surprise, that hit home. Ben glanced downward, as if taken aback. But when Ben looked back up at him again, he smiled, and the smile was warmer now, more real. "I'll trade one if you will."
James was not fool enough to blab anything too personal, but that didn't mean he couldn't share a small confidence. "All right. I'll go first. Though I fully and wholeheartedly embrace my duty as England's future king, et cetera et cetera, I wish I could have another lifetime to spend as a scientist."
"A scientist?"
"I studied biology at Cambridge."
"I remember that," Ben said, which surprised James; he wouldn't have thought this Cat read up on the royal family. Then again, James had heard that people got bored at airports, in hair salons. "But I thought . . ."
"What, that they gave me the degree out of polite deference to the Crown? You've sadly underestimated the Cambridge dons. They're not in the habit of handing out merit badges."
"Then why didn't you just become a scientist?"
"And give up my rights to the throne?" James laughed, as if he hadn't spent most of his Eton years dreaming about doing just that. "I'd just shove the job onto my sister, who . . . well, she'd hate being queen. Also, as I said, I enjoy being Prince of Wales. I expect to enjoy being king. It's the job I've trained for my whole life. But I suppose it makes me wistful, thinking about the road not traveled."
Ben took a sip of his rum, considering that. "I hadn't really thought of that. The fact that the job doesn't go away, even if you do."
"The job is forever. Come on, then. Your turn."
For a few moments Ben considered. James was content to stare. First of all, the weather was so horrid that it had come around again to being spectacular; the sheets of rain rippling around them seemed like something out of a film rather than real life. Sitting out here, shielded from the storm but able to watch it, felt more luxurious than anything else in this resort.
And second, Ben was delightful to look at. He didn't possess the prettiness of Hollywood film stars; his was a more rough-hewn allure. James liked that quality. He also liked the way Ben's pale blue shirt hung on his shoulders, and his wide, long-fingered hands--
"My turn," Ben said. "I studied to be an economist. At the University of Chicago, where they also aren't in the habit of handing out merit badges. Got top grades, interviewed at the best graduate programs, and then flamed out my last semester. Ditched it all just after graduation. Backpacked around Southeast Asia for a few years and started writing. Never regretted it."
James thought very carefully about what he'd heard, then sipped his rum before he spoke again. "It sounds wonderful to be so free. But I suspect anything you describe as 'flaming out' didn't begin happily."
"The stress. The pressure. You know."
"Academia?"
Ben opened his mouth, clearly to agree, but then he hesitated. "Yes. But not only that."
Instead of asking another question, James allowed the silence to do it for him. For a few moments they were surrounded only by the sound of the rain.
"My parents died when I was fairly young." The words came out awkwardly; Ben didn't tell this story often. "Wh
en I was thirteen. After that, I was adopted by distant relatives in Germany who were professors, and I wanted to impress them. To earn my place. Not that they were ever unkind; it was pressure I put on myself. But finally I reached the point where I stopped worrying about what they wanted and asked myself what I wanted."
The expression on Ben's face was difficult to read. James thought perhaps Ben had never fully understood that about himself until now. He knew better than to press Ben further; they needed to lighten the mood somewhat. James glanced around and saw just the thing.
"Do you play?" He gestured to a marble chess set on a table just inside Ben's cabin.
"Yes, though I'm out of practice."
"Well, that makes two of us." James smiled. "Come on. Unless you're scared to admit you've been outplayed by--I'm going to guess your usual terminology--an inbred twit?"
Ben laughed out loud. "I never called you a twit!"
"But inbred? I thought so! Well, it's a fair cop, guv'nor. Let's play."
*
Damn it all to hell, he was about to be outplayed.
Ben didn't mind that so much now that he understood James was no silly aristocrat, but was in fact extremely intelligent. But he was disconcerted to realize that he wanted to impress James. That he needed to win a contest between them.
That he was making the chess game stand in for a different kind of match, one that would never happen.
Probably.
He glanced over the board, just in time to meet James's green eyes. They both smiled, but looked back down immediately, as though the jolt that had gone through Ben at that moment was entirely mutual.
Was it wishful thinking on Ben's part? Or were his instincts telling him the truth?
My God, he thought. The Prince of Wales is gay.
It wasn't as though there had never been rumors, but they were few and generic, the exact same rumors that flickered at the edges of the fame of virtually any handsome single man. A friend of mine heard/I know this guy who went to university with him/etc., etc. Most of the time such rumors were meaningless, and the majority of people realized it. So far as the gossip rags told the tale, they claimed that James had spent years slavishly in love with the uninhibited, unworthy Scottish noblewoman Lady Cassandra Roxburgh. People usually adored him and hated her, though in recent years there had been impatience for James to break off his bad romance already. She'd been dubbed "Randy Sandy," and a few tabloids proclaimed "Jamie's Whipped!"
But Lady Cassandra was only a beard. Ben felt almost certain of that now.
Time to raise the stakes of the game.
"We should have a price on the pieces," Ben said, as if idly.
"We can if you'd like. Shall we say fifty pence a piece?"
"Big roller."
James arched one of his sharply angled eyebrows. Surely he knew how well that set off his green eyes. He had to know. It was indecent if he didn't. "You really don't want this game to get too rich for my blood."
The Crown received something along the lines of fifty million pounds a year from the government--staggering to imagine. But Ben didn't let himself get distracted. "I was thinking of an entirely different sort of wager."
James hesitated. That one moment's hesitation turned Ben's doubt into certainty. "I don't know what you mean," he said, suddenly almost formal again. But he wasn't backing down.
There it was, that sensation Ben lived for: the knowledge that he'd seized the advantage. Whenever he encountered it, he savored it.
He grinned at the Prince of Wales. "I mean secrets. You keep yours close; I keep mine. But I'll trade a secret for a piece, if you will."
"Interesting." James squared his shoulders, like a man preparing for a fight. "All right, you're on."
He wanted Ben's secrets, and he didn't want to give up any of his own. Ben understood this because he felt precisely the same way.
This was going to be a very good game of chess.
They elected to ignore the pawns because a few of them had already been taken. That meant Ben had to play more aggressively than usual, which paid off within a few minutes, as he palmed one of the white bishops. As he took it in his hand, he said, "Where's my prize?"
"Hmm. A secret. Let's see." James smiled. "When I was a little boy meeting a new head of state for the first time--the King of Tonga, as it happened--I was so determined to do it well that I made myself nervous. Nerves worked their evil on my guts. So, at the key moment, as I took the king's hand, I farted more loudly than you've ever heard in your life."
Ben laughed long and hard as James joined in. But when he could speak again, Ben said, "Oh, come on, now. A real secret."
"What do you mean? That was humiliating."
"But hardly secret, if you've described the decibel level accurately."
James shot him a look, though he was still grinning. "Hush."
"I'm beginning to think you aren't taking this game seriously." Was it too soon to lean forward across the board? Not if he leaned just a little, just enough to bring him closer than any casual acquaintance would usually come. James's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't move back. Interesting. "That was a pawn's secret at best. Give me a secret worth your bishop."
"Can I rely on your discretion?"
Ben smiled. "Best not to rely on me. Best to win more pieces. Get more on me than I get on you."
If he were going to scare James off, this would be the moment. But James only considered that for a long moment before saying, "You can't hold back."
"I won't."
Which was a mad thing to say. Ben had spent his life holding back. He'd learned his lessons young and never forgotten them. However, if it meant getting the prince to talk, he could manage. It wasn't as though he'd ever see the man again.
James returned to studying the chessboard, never looking up. "When they came to tell me my parents had been killed in the plane crash, I was drunk. Not 'a couple of beers' drunk--like, getting sick in the rubbish bin, hardly able to stand up. That kind of drunk. It was the first time I'd ever had that much, or anything like that much. University, first term, you know. But it made it all so much worse. That night I couldn't quite believe anything I heard was real, and ever since then . . . I don't think I'll ever think of it without shame. I was pounding back pints of Guinness while my parents drowned in the Coral Sea. At that very moment."
This was only supposed to be a game.
Ben must have paused a moment too long, because James said, "You were the one who wanted higher stakes."
"So I was." He paused. "You realize you weren't doing anything wrong, that night."
"I know." With that, James moved his rook.
Within minutes, Ben had lost a knight. And he couldn't phone this in. He had to match James's courage, or at least the value of his wager. "I lost my virginity at sixteen. I wanted it. I thought I was in love. The man I slept with was almost twenty years older than me. At the time I thought age didn't matter if you cared about each other. Looking back, I know it wasn't rape by any means, but it was still . . . taking advantage. He should have known better."
If James had any reaction to Ben's homosexuality, positive or negative, he showed no sign. "He should have been arrested."
There were many other reasons Warner Clifton should be in jail, but Ben didn't feel like getting into them right now. Besides, remembering Warner killed the mood.
And the mood building between him and James as they leaned together over the chessboard, surrounded by the rushing sound of rain, was one Ben wanted to last.
A white rook fell. James said, "I sympathize with the republicans more than they'd ever guess. If they abolished the monarchy tomorrow, I'd accept it. Well. Not tomorrow. I mean, give a man a chance to pack. But you get my meaning."
The second black knight, gone. Ben's turn. "I always say that my parents died in an accident. The fact is that they were protesting the demolition of Palestinian settlements in Gaza. The military moved in to put down the protests, and my parents were accidentally kill
ed by their own government. When I left Israel to go live with my relatives a few weeks later, I swore I would never set foot in that country again. And I haven't."
Each secret felt like something was being torn away, from him and James both. At first Ben thought this was closer to torture than to flirtation, and wondered why the hell he'd tried to gamble his way into a prince's confidence--or into his bed.
But as more and more was torn away, Ben increasingly felt as though nothing was left to stand between them. Nothing save decorum, and a chessboard that became barer by the minute.
*
Now twenty-nine years old, James had had precisely three lovers in his life.
Ridiculous, really. The Prince of Wales had always been and would always be, by default, the most desirable man in the whole United Kingdom. This had held true in eras when the holder of that title had been dramatically overweight, or possessed of a sunken chest, or sporting a jawline so weak it seemed to melt into the neck. He who would be king could have almost anyone he wanted. James knew full well that his security services and his butler would have been utterly private about anyone he took to his bed, female or male. Probably he could've got them to smuggle up a goat, were he so inclined, which he was not.
However, while his staff's discretion could be all but guaranteed, his partners' could not. James had been ratted out by "friends" his whole life--schoolmates who would trade tall tales about his behavior to any paparazzo for either a few pounds or just the satisfaction of having gotten one over on the schoolfellow they had to address as sir. The higher the value of the secret, the less people could be trusted with it. Sexual secrets were the most valuable of all.
So instead of sowing the usual wild oats of a crown prince, James had only three partners to reflect upon.
One of them, Andrew Lord Brackley, probably didn't even consider himself James's lover. They'd fooled around together as teenage boys in the stables where they both rode, or sometimes in an unused butler's pantry in the Brackley summer residence; that was where James had had his first orgasm from another man. But other boys used their hands on each other, rubbed off against each other, and didn't think of it as anything other than a lark. Andy had never shown any sign he considered it significant. The helpless adoration James had felt had obviously been unrequited, enough so that James never attempted to explore further intimacies. Andy had married a Sloane Ranger named Lettice four years ago, to all appearances out of sincere love. James had attended the wedding with a smile on his face.