“Joss,” Cilla said.
“Say no more.” He grinned.
“Dick bringing up the polo thing was a bit much, given the papers,” murmured Clive.
“But your speech was great,” I said. “That Louvre story is super charming.”
“And apocryphal,” he said. “Father told me we needed Warm Family Stories, and obviously most of mine are fictional.”
I started to laugh, until I saw nobody else was, and that he wasn’t joking.
“Where’s India?” I asked, changing tacks. “I’ve never officially met her.”
Nick pointed across the way. “I left her with a woman who kept asking me how I plan to defend myself in case of kidnapping.”
“How attentive of you,” said Bea.
“She’ll be all right. They’re talking about Pilates,” Nick said. “It’s awkward bringing someone to these things, but Father insisted, and I was too tired to fight it.” His gaze flickered toward me.
PPO Furrow stepped in, his signature wrinkle in full effect. “The Prince of Wales prefers you to stay with the VIP guests,” he said in a low voice.
Nick closed his eyes for a brief moment and then shifted back into work mode. “Yes, I must get back to my duties,” he said. “Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it.”
“What a piece of bloody work Richard is,” Cilla said as we peered through the crowd to see him greet Nick with a slap on the back of ostensible gaiety—but with a slightly harder thump than was strictly necessary.
The five of us spent another half hour people-watching. We weren’t so much in a crowd as in the middle of an impromptu receiving line—as if the hive mind told everyone to arrange themselves in a way that might hide their essential purpose of waiting for a touch of the royal hand—and as soon as the princes were whisked away, the alleged art aficionados disappeared along with them. They may have said they were there to support the Ashmolean, but they bolted as soon as the bar had closed.
By that point, as occurs in nearly every story from my Oxford year, we had gotten a wee bit drunk—or at least, moderately tipsy, enough so that when I insisted we be cultured and look at the manuscripts, Gaz actually booed. I didn’t care. I wanted to linger at the glass cases containing so much sloping, dated cursive on yellowing pages—the intimate and sometimes illuminatingly banal correspondence from back when people cared to do it longhand. Eleanor had very precise penmanship; her father, King Richard IV, was prone to decorating state documents with doodles of the Crown Jewels. But the best were the letters between King Albert and his queen, Georgina Lyons-Bowes, whose untimely death during World War I broke his heart and—my old syphilis joke aside—eventually his mind as well. It was that first torrent of grief that prompted him to adopt Lyons as the dynastic name, and it’s endlessly romantic to me that his progeny have reigned under that name now for over a hundred years, all because Albert really, really, really loved his wife.
“Oh, Bertie, my pet, do be a love and stay true forever and ever. You are a dear,” Clive mimicked as I studied one of Georgina’s letters.
“Don’t be like that,” I said, elbowing him. “These are amazing.”
“You look amazing.” Clive’s voice reverberated in my ear, as he reached under my coat and ran his fingers over my dress.
“I look like a lunatic.”
“A gorgeous lunatic.”
“Don’t bother me with your hormones. I’m reading,” I said playfully.
“These are so bloody formal,” Clive complained, leaning over the case, so close to me that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “Look, this one uses the royal we. ‘We do love you ever so much.’ That’s about as romantic as an appendectomy.”
“They stood on ceremony back then,” I said. “Imagine taking the time every day to write pages and pages to someone about how wonderful they are. Now people just send texts with half the right letters missing.”
Clive turned me toward him. “I solemnly swear never to use abbreviations when I text you sweet nothings,” he said, “if you will do me the honor of going to get a cocktail with me.”
He looked so eager, so sincere. Inexplicably, a memory of India Bolingbroke and Nick together at the party popped into my head. I pulled Clive toward me by the tie and kissed him.
“Let’s go. These shoes are killing me,” I said. “But just one drink. I was up late.”
As usual, one drink became three. But when fatigue set in at around eleven, I extracted myself from The Bird so I could go home and get a little work done before crashing. Clive walked me to a cab, clearly hoping I would tell him to get in after me. I sincerely needed to do some reading, but I was feeling extra warmly toward him—he’d entertained us with the latest rugby news of the brother he called Thick Trevor; rubbed my feet, swollen from being shoved under duress into borrowed stilettos; and told a great story about the time Freddie shot Nick in the butt with a BB gun—so I told him to knock on my door when he got home. With Nick, I had Night Bex, and with Clive it was Beer Bex. Everything seemed grand after a few pints.
When I got back to Pembroke, I found a new DVD of Devour from Lacey in my mail slot. This time, the enclosed note read only, !!!!!! The very sight of it sent Night Bex into a lusty tizzy. Beer Bex tapped out and she tapped in; I ripped off my heels and tore up the stairs. Nick’s door was ever so slightly ajar.