I burst through it waving the DVD in the air. “Ten pounds says the Minotaur tramples one of those judgmental panthers.”
“—completely unacceptable. I have made my decision. Respect it!” Richard was bellowing, his face an unsightly shade of purple. Spittle shot like darts onto the floor.
This was the first time I’d ever even seen inside Nick’s room. It didn’t look bulletproof, but now I know that appearances are deceiving—those old windows were actually full of special glass (and obviously soundproofed, given that I hadn’t heard Richard yelling until I’d stumbled inside). In fact, it looked mostly like mine, except Nick’s comforter was tartan, and there was a bobblehead of Queen Eleanor on the desk that I later found out was a gift. From her. That was all I could take in, though, because both Nick and Richard whipped around to face me, and I briefly went blind from nerves.
“What are you doing in here?” Richard snapped.
“Father,” Nick said in a low voice. “She’s a friend.”
“My apologies,” Richard said, not sounding apologetic at all. “I was having a private conversation with my son and you caught us by surprise. I don’t believe we’ve met.”
I immediately felt completely sober. We could eliminate drunk driving altogether if Prince Richard would just be willing to stand outside of pubs at closing time and indiscriminately yell at people.
“I’m Bex, er, Rebecca, Your…sir…Highness,” I stammered, resisting an urge to curtsy.
“Ah, yes, the American,” Richard said, studying me. “And is disrespect for protocol so ingrained that you’re in the habit of barging in on an heir to the throne?”
“I’m so sorry. No disrespect intended,” I said, trying to sound very composed. “I was just returning some, er, study aids.”
“Father, this is un—”
Richard held up a hand mere inches from Nick’s face, without even glancing at his way.
“I’m sure you can return your study aid at a more convenient occasion,” Richard said to me, his tone dipping several degrees below zero. “Nicholas and I are enjoying some father-son bonding time. I’m sure you understand.”
I peeked at Nick’s face. He was red-eyed, and not just in a tired way, although he looked that, too. Right there, as in most future interactions with Richard, I decided it was probably wisest to toe the line and escape as quickly as possible.
“Oh, and my dear,” Richard added. “I know that nobody will ever hear anything about any trifling family disagreements you may have thought you overheard.”
His voice was now bordering on pleasant, but his eyes most definitely were not.
I gulped. “Sure,” I said, feeling and sounding incredibly American in that one short word. “See you later, Nick.”
That was my first brush with just how barren Nick’s family life was. I felt a flash of gratitude for my own parents, who are frustrating sometimes, but who at least don’t issue veiled threats to my friends specifically so they will shit themselves with fear, and have never starved Lacey and me of their love or attention. It’s not entirely Richard’s fault; he didn’t become a tyrant in a vacuum. He was raised by a painfully proper mother and her army of uptight nannies, and barely knew his own long-deceased father—and thus was totally unprepared to be one. He was never comfortable with Nick and Freddie until they were walking and talking and could see reason, and when that day came, it was too late.
Holed up in my room, I felt nauseated thinking about leaving Nick alone to wilt under Richard’s wrath. I had several elaborate fantasies about storming back in and giving him hell on Nick’s behalf, but in the end, I just turned out my lights so I could feign being asleep when Clive’s knock came (which it did, inevitably, with a tapping that became slightly insistent before giving way to his footsteps creaking away). I wasn’t in the mood; Nick’s misery consumed me. I rested only fitfully before finally sneaking into the hallway to go the bathroom—just as Richard was walking out of Nick’s quarters. I dipped back and hid behind my door, but couldn’t resist watching him through the crack. He shot Nick one last look of fury, which for a split second dissolved into something else—regret?—before he put on his public mask of indifference and slipped away down the stairs.
Day Bex wanted me to give it up and go to sleep, like a rational person, but Night Bex never obeys that boring old shrew. So I grabbed a pen and the Devour DVD and crept toward Nick’s door, careful to avoid the squeaky parts of the old floor. Underneath the string of exclamation marks on Lacey’s note, I scribbled, Dear Night Nick: Take two and call me in the morning, then smoothed the Post-it back over the DVD and shoved it all under his door.
The next morning it came back under mine. Day Nick is dead. Long live Night Nick.
Chapter Six
When she was eight, Lady Emma Somers’s dog Yoghurt died, and she wept on the shoulder of her best friend Rupert at the backyard funeral while her brother murdered “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. Emma told this story herself, back when she was engaged to Richard and the press was keen to learn about the fetching, rosy-cheeked innocent who’d stolen his heart. Shortly after her wedding, Rupert became Emma’s trusted bodyguard, and the fall of my year at Oxford the Sunday Express ran an exposé in which Rupert Caulfield—promoting an upcoming book—insisted he’d fathered at least one of England’s beloved princes. The fallout was swift. The Mirror ran a photo of Emma and Rupert on the beach together as children, juxtaposed with a shot of them laughing cozily a year after her wedding. The Mail got a recent picture of Rupert driving near Trewsbury House—where the reclusive Princess of Wales was known to hole up—at a time when Richard was in London. Reporters scavenged for anecdotes that either refuted an affair or confirmed it; an anonymous maid claimed Rupert had “lain with” Emma one week after her wedding and twice monthly since, whereas Emma’s former butler swore Rupert was just a friend. Reports of DNA tests were combatted by rumors that Rupert and the butler were involved. It was, in short, a hot aristocratic mess.