His throat tightened, and James wondered whether he had ought to go on and get some of the crying out of the way before the dinner tonight. Sometimes that was what you had to do to hold it together. You let a little emotion out in a safe place--
You thought Ben's bed was safe, and that was just another lie.
Tinny music from across the room made James jump. That was his latest personal cell phone. He switched every few weeks to try and avoid hacking. Even so, he never discussed anything via cell that could be damaging, and only good friends and close family members ever got the number. He could do badly with a friendly voice at the moment. Fingers trembling, he answered. "Hello?"
"James?" It was Indigo. Her voice was thready and weak. "Oh, thank God I reached you."
His first terrified thought was that somehow the news had already gone public, but that was absurd. Even gossip didn't work that fast, and Indigo sounded truly terrible. Maybe she was having one of her episodes--oh God not now I can't be strong enough for us both but she needs me, she needs me--"What's wrong? What happened?"
"Grandfather's had a stroke."
James clutched at the arm of the nearest chair and lowered himself into it. "Oh, Christ."
"He's still alive, but it's bad. It's very bad. They don't know if--oh, James, you have to come home. Right away, right this moment."
This was about more than a family drawing together when its patriarch was near death. This was about the country's need to have the Prince of Wales close at hand. For all James knew, he might be king within the hour.
Which meant Ben's "scoop" would go from being a huge news story to the biggest in the world.
He shuddered, but pushed the fear aside. James's entire life had been designed to prepare him for this moment, and he was determined to be ready. "Is the news public yet?"
"Any minute now."
"All right. Good." Canceling tonight's event would be easier if he could tell the truth about his reasons. "Tell the attache to contact my travel team. I'll be on the plane in three hours and hopefully back to London by morning."
First James showered, to rinse away what evidence he could. But minutes after that, his travel team went to work in his cabin, packing everything. He phoned each member of the MSF team to personally apologize for the canceled dinner. And when the driver brought the car around for his trip to Jomo Kenyatta, someone held an umbrella over James's head as he ducked inside.
He glanced backward as the car drove off along the waterlogged road. The rain had slowed enough for James to see the outline of the resort vanishing slowly in the distance. It felt as though he had crossed a boundary, between play and irresponsibility, between fantasy and reality. Ben's betrayal was still a raw, bleeding wound, but already it felt like something that belonged to his life before.
James turned. No more time for looking back. He had to face his fate.
Chapter 2
No Place like Home
A phalanx of reporters lined every inch of the path between Heathrow and Buckingham Palace. Another car would take James's luggage back to Clarence House, but he couldn't even think of going home yet. He had to reach Indigo.
And, yes, the rest of his family. For James, however, his sister would always come first.
As the car slipped through the rainy streets, camera flashes seeming to pop at every single intersection, James was briefed by his new assistant, Kimberley Tseng. He'd hired Ms. Tseng only days before leaving for Africa, so they hardly knew each other yet; his impressions of her were thus far limited to her impressive CV, the blue-black hair that she always wore in a low ponytail, and the fact that she seemed to dress exclusively in dark sheath dresses accented with Hermes scarves. Tonight, in deference to the soggy weather, she'd draped a black Burberry trench coat over her shoulders. This was their first crisis together. At least he'd find out quickly how Ms. Tseng worked. For now he simply listened as she said, "We've had nothing new from the doctors since about 4 a.m. 'Serious but stable,' that was the report."
"Stable sounds better." James knew he was clutching at straws.
Ms. Tseng shrugged. "Better than the alternative, but the king is eighty-three years old. At his age, we can't assume he'll bounce back from any health crisis, much less one this major." She looked so sympathetic, as though James were an ordinary man afraid for a loving grandfather. The truth of the royal family was far more complicated, but Ms. Tseng had come to the job too recently to know that. She'd learn soon enough.
"Is anyone from the family with the king?" James rubbed at his temples in exhaustion. He'd become used to sleeping on planes from an early age. However, between terror about this crisis, misery about the whole Ben situation, and turbulence over the Balkans, he'd gotten almost no rest during the entire journey.
"Prince Richard is at the hospital now."
That wasn't much consolation. But to hell with Uncle Richard. His maneuverings couldn't change the fact that he'd been born the second son, or that both James and Indigo stood between him and the throne. "When should we get another briefing?"
"Any few minutes," Ms. Tseng replied, coolly ticking off items on her iPad. "You should be with the family by then."
Traveling through the gates of Buckingham Palace was always a curious sensation. When they left the press behind, and he was once again guaranteed privacy and protection, James couldn't help being comforted. Yet he visited the palace only a few times a year, so it couldn't have felt less like coming home. The family situation inside had its own hazards.
Ms. Tseng hung back as James went through the door to the most private of the staterooms, tactfully allowing space for the reunion. Not that the lot of them were likely to run out and greet him--except the one person who did.
"James!" Indigo came dashing toward him, long brown hair streaming behind her, arms outstretched. He caught his little sister in his embrace and hugged her tightly. In his ear she whispered, "Are you panicking?"
"Not completely," he murmured, muffling the words in her hair. "Are you?"
"I'm all right." And she seemed to be. Buckingham Palace might not have been a place she thought of as safe, but it was a place she could manage. It was the outside world from which Indigo needed to hide.
Those eyes saw her as a beautiful girl--easily the loveliest royal in a few generations, with her heart-shaped face, ballerina figure, and large hazel eyes with flecks of gold. She dressed more demurely than most girls her age, wearing such things as the long-sleeved sweater dress and tights she had on now. Most people ascribed this to the edict of their domineering grandparents. The truth was far darker. No one among the general public understood Indigo's vulnerability. Of the people who did, James alone accepted that she would always be frightened by the eyes of strangers.
James, meanwhile, feared the gaze of those he knew best. They were waiting for him now.
They went into the stateroom that had been set apart for the purpose of the family meeting, which was lined with a dozen low, long couches. It might have been a comfortable place for a family to gather had it not been twenty feet wide by sixty feet long. Normally James was blinded to such opulence by its ubiquity in his life, but after time away--after hours spent in a secluded cabin, warm and welcoming and seductive--he was struck anew by both the grandeur and the coldness of the palace.
His cousins moved around the room, speaking in hushed tones. For the most part, they seemed sincerely shaken by the news. No matter how aloof the king had always been, he remained the center of their lives; they thought of themselves as royals first, royals always. Their identity came from King George IX, and they would not let go of him easily. Still, from the moment James walked in, all attention turned to him, hot and bright as a spotlight. The last to acknowledge him was the queen.
The Queen: That was how James thought of her, and how she wished to be thought of. Her dignity mattered to her more than anything else, and she scorned to stoop to more human habits such as cultivating hobbies, dying her hair from its steely gray, or even being affect
ionate with her grandchildren. He'd always gotten the idea that she even found James and Indigo addressing her as "Grandmother" to be unfortunate, though unavoidable. Whereas their maternal grandmother had liked to be called "Granny" and only stopped babying them on her deathbed, Queen Louisa was made of sterner stuff.
He presumed she must have hugged him once or twice when he was a small child, but he couldn't remember it.
"James," she said as he stood before her. Her voice was rich and resonant, more majestic than anything James could summon; he'd always admired and envied it. Her steely hair had been pulled into its usual stiff chignon. "At last you've arrived. The public will be more at ease once they know you're at hand."
"Grandmother. How are you?"
She gave him a look as though he had been rude to suggest that anything could hurt her--even the potentially fatal illness of her husband of fifty-nine years. "Of course we are all waiting to hear more about the king's condition," she said, her tone icy. "We should receive an update soon."
Then she turned back to the nearest aunt, and James breathed out heavily. That went well, he thought in all sincerity.
He next joined Indigo in the corner with their first cousin, aka Prince Nicholas, Richard's son. The lifelong chill between their fathers hadn't carried down to the next generation; Indigo and Nicholas had been born within weeks of each other, had been schooled together, and were to this day intimate friends. When one of Indigo's panic attacks came upon her, Nicholas was one of only three people who had a chance of calming her down; the others were James himself and an elderly, long-suffering butler named Hartley.
Nicholas smiled as James came closer; he looked like a younger, thinner version of his father, save for the freckles across his nose and the ready warmth of his expression. "You look shattered," he whispered to James. "Hurrying back from Kenya like that? No wonder."
"We've all endured harder journeys," James said. But it was true. He was shattered. This would have been difficult enough under normal circumstances, but after what had happened with Ben--
Cold fear lanced through him again, and James had to struggle for composure. Indigo put her hand on his arm. "Are you sure you're all right?"
James nodded, though he suspected he wasn't fooling anyone. He could see a few of the others staring. Probably they thought he was more affected by his grandfather's illness than they would've suspected. The longer they had no idea what was really going on, the better.
But how much longer could that be?
From the door came the announcement: "His Royal Highness Prince Richard and Doctor Martin Okenedo."
His Royal Highness Prince Richard, Duke of Clarence, always managed to appear as if he'd just posed for his coronation portrait: graying russet hair clipped short, a suit so starched that it was a wonder he could even move his arms, and a primly determined expression. Of course, no coronation would ever come; Richard had been the late prince Edmund's fraternal twin, denied the throne by less than an hour's difference in their births. Now both James and his sister stood between Richard and the succession--and James had always suspected his uncle would shove them aside if he ever had the chance.
Richard came immediately to the queen's side. He'd always been the king's favorite child, and everyone knew it; he tried to pretend he was the queen's favorite as well, though there was as yet no evidence his mother liked him any better than she liked the rest of humanity. James had always resented Richard's affectations, more on his father's behalf than on his own, but he didn't let it distract him now. He focused on Dr. Okenedo, the king's personal physician, who looked . . . calm. Steady. That was good.
The queen said, "The king's condition?"
"Stable and improving, Your Majesty. We must of course be cautious given his advanced age. However, I believe he will pull through." People breathed out sighs of relief at the doctor's words, and James could have cheered. But Dr. Okenedo continued, "There is one critical matter that must be discussed immediately."
"What would that be?" The queen looked from the doctor to Richard.
"The king cannot speak coherently, nor does he understand what is said to him," the doctor replied. "The condition is called global aphasia. It is one of the most severe aftereffects of a stroke."
"But he's very likely to recover," Richard hastily interjected. "Recovery is often swift." Dr. Okenedo frowned; apparently he thought Richard was being too optimistic.
"Swift?" The queen's eyes narrowed. She knew better than to take Richard's word for it. "How swift?"
"Assuming that he does recover from the aphasia," the doctor said, "the king should regain comprehension within a few weeks. However, it may take far longer for him to regain speech. Also, while most patients with global aphasia do recover, at least in part, not all of them do."
"A few weeks," James repeated. It was sinking in now.
Dr. Okenedo nodded. "The general election is within five weeks. Given the unlikelihood of the king recovering fully within that time, and the constitutional necessity of the monarch's role in the formation of a new government, it is my responsibility as the king's personal physician to contact the appropriate government officials and suggest that a regent be named."
To be regent was to be king in all but name. Absent any parliamentary acts to the contrary, the regent was always the person next in line to the throne.
Richard cleared his throat. "The last act specified that I should--"
"That you should become regent if the king died before I finished university," James interjected. "Which I have. That act is no longer in force."
"Is this entirely necessary?" The queen's wintry gaze focused on the doctor, as if she could change reality by making him back down. "Surely it is far too early to gauge the speed of the king's recovery."
"True," Dr. Okenedo said, "but it is my responsibility to inform the relevant officials immediately. Whether they take this action now or later, however, is almost certainly beside the point. For the election, a regent will be necessary."
Richard's expression was positively murderous. James would have liked to glory in his uncle's displeasure, but he couldn't, not now.
The crown was suspended directly over James's head, at the very moment it was most likely to be snatched away.
*
Ben had spent the night pissed off, then just pissed, as he finished off most of the bottle of rum he and James had sampled earlier. He packed away the chess set, stripped and remade the bed, but he was powerless to keep James from dominating his thoughts. The whole evening, he raged against James's arrogance, his high-handedness, his cowardice. He fell asleep on the broad leather sofa of his suite, so as not to lie in that bed and remember James lying next to him.
The jangling of his mobile phone awakened him at what seemed to be an ungodly hour of the morning. Temples throbbing, Ben crawled across the length of the couch to palm the phone and grunt, "Dahan."
"I dare not hope for a quote, because surely you'd have had the sense to send that to us by this point, but tell me you got a snap of him dashing to the car, at least."
Ben coughed. "Roger?"
"Yes, this is Roger Hornby, your editor, your boss, the person to whom you report. I want you to report now. Did you manage to get any reaction whatsoever from the Prince of Wales about the news?"
The first thought that went through Ben's head was: How does Roger know? In the split second that followed, his hungover brain tried to create a scenario in which James had come out last night, and failed. "What's going on?"
"Jesus H. Christ on a pony, what level of cock-up is this? My man on the scene doesn't even know what's happening?"
"Obviously I've fucked up. Tell me what's going on."
"King George IX had a stroke yesterday. The prince has been called back to England in case he becomes King Whoever the Whateverth in the next few hours."
"Holy shit." Ben ran one hand through his hair. It was as though he could see James's face before him, fair skin gone even paler with shock, green eyes wid
e.
"It's not as though you would've got much chance to interview him on the subject," Roger said crisply, "but having some idea what was going on right next to you would have been a nice touch."
"I can put together an on-the-scene story on his departure." Off the sofa. Feet on the floor. Gut twisting--but he could vomit after he hung up with his irate boss. "Give me an hour and fifteen minutes."
"Oh, yes, please, take all the time you'd like contributing to one of the world's biggest news stories, which happens to be on your beat. I'll be patiently waiting to see what you come up with." Roger rang off. The worst part about his wrath was that Ben had earned every bit of it.
Ben went to the bathroom, vomited, showered. Once dressed, he ran through the mud and drizzle to the nearby lounge where James had told him he'd gone the night before. To his surprise, the staffers were all willing to go on the record.
"He actually sat down and played cards with us! And he didn't get angry when Kalonzo won." Everyone laughed.
It turned out that James had been more or less the ideal guest, appreciative of everyone's efforts and quick to praise them to their boss. Aside from the rainy-day card game, which had clearly gone over well, he had not imposed on their time. He had asked thoughtful questions about their lives and work, about their families, and (most surprising to Ben) about their opinions regarding the political issues facing Kenya and nearby nations.
"James--the prince--" Hopefully that slip wouldn't attract attention. Ben continued, "Did any of you see him leave?"
A few people nodded, and someone said, "He looked haunted. Truly devastated. The prince must be very close to his grandfather."
That was the only emotional observation offered. James's friendliness with the staff had ensured their loyalty, and so no more intimate details about the departure would be forthcoming. But Ben kept working around the margins, building the scene both from their descriptions and memory: the torrential rains, the way people had held an umbrella over James's head even though he was walking through calf-deep water.
Ben did not invite anyone to speculate on what might have been in James's heart. He already knew that, because James had guilelessly opened that heart to him for a few hours.