Royal Pain (17 page)

“Probably, but I don’t—”

“What do you mean by ‘probably,’ exactly? If I am going to be a, what, a
duchess
for chrissake—which reminds me, can duchesses say ‘for chrissake’? Don’t answer that. I mean, I need to know a little bit about what’s expected of me.”

Max rolled onto his back and smiled up at the ceiling. Bronte felt an immediate chill at his absence.
Great
, she chided herself,
he
moves
three
inches
away
and
I
miss
him
. This is going to be hell. She sat up to grab some of the sheets that had pooled at the end of the bed in the midst of their lovemaking and stretched her back as she reached down the length of her legs, letting her head rest there across her knees to get a full stretch, her forehead just below her kneecaps. Max rested his hand at the small of her back.

Aah
, she thought,
contact
.

“What is it, love?” he asked quietly.

Bronte felt the tears come and made no attempt to stop them. “I just can’t be held accountable for my actions, Max. I’m going to cling to you—”

“Oooh, I like the sound of that—”

“And I am going to wonder where you are all day, and I’m going to want to screw all the time—”

“It gets better and better—”

“And it’s not
funny
,” she said with a bittersweet smile, turning to look at him, her cheek resting against her legs as the tears simply ran down and her words were spoken through strained, swollen vocal chords. “What happens to me when—” She was starting to choke on her sobs.

Max sat up quickly and held her.

“Stop, Bronte. Just stop. Ssshhhh. Look at me.” He was gentling her—just like he had said: a yearling at her first auction.

“What happens when—when you don’t love me anymore?”

There.

She said it.

Now he knew her for what she really was: a paranoid thirteen-year-old girl trapped in the body of a woman.

Pathetic. Needy. Unlovable.

“Oh, Bron. You are daft. And I mean that in the most respectful way. Maybe I will do the Times Square billboard bit, just for the hell of it. As far as I can tell, I will never stop loving you. I don’t know where you get these notions. Speaking of how you became you, I would very much like to meet your mother… perhaps we could take her out for dinner tonight.”

Oh
dear
God.
He was not getting any of this.

“Did you hear what I just said?” She swiped at the tears that were starting to abate as they left a salty itch along their path. Her despair was quickly turning to annoyance. “You are not listening to me. I will become cloying—”

“I love that idea—”

“I will become jealous—”

“Of whom? I will be with you all the time.”

“Ugh. You’re just not being realistic. You work in some very important capacities, I suspect, from the bits I’ve gathered eavesdropping on your conversations. I will want to work… don’t you want to argue with me about that?”

“No. I love the idea of you being all schoolmarmy-sexy and clicking that remote control with your little bossy jabs and all those slavering toffs knowing that you are coming straight home to me. What else?”

“Bossy jabs?”

“Well, admit it. You were a bit annoyed that I was there yesterday at Mowbray and you were a bit hard on the remote control there a few times. Right?”

She was shaking her head and smiling despite herself. “What about your mother?” Bronte asked.

“What about her?”

“What if she hates me?”

“Luckily, she is not the one marrying you, so it’s of very little relevance. What else?”

“Where will we live? What if I don’t want to move to England? You can’t very well abandon the duchy or dukedom or whatever you call it… wouldn’t that be like abdicating or something?”

Max slowly raised one eyebrow and gave Bronte his best half-smile. “Are you saying you don’t want to move to England? I suspect you are just playing devil’s advocate. But for the sake of argument, let’s spend a few years in New York if we want, or part of the year, or whatever. Keep this great apartment if we want. And as for the
dukedom
”—he nearly pursed his lips when forced to say the word out loud—“we are well into the twenty-first century, and just in case you missed the headlines when you were in grade school, the House of Lords was more or less purged in the early 1990s so, as Bertrand Russell once noted, a title is probably most useful for getting hotel rooms. What else?”

“Max, I can’t just roll over tomorrow and become a duchess. It can’t be that easy.”

“Easy? Since the moment I walked out of your apartment in Wicker Park until the moment I bumped into you on Madison Avenue, this has been the worst time of my life. I lost you. I lost my father. I almost lost my mind, for that matter. I don’t think any of this has been easy.” He pulled her back from her forward position, tucking her in close so his back rested against the headboard and she was cradled in his arms. “All of the royal obligations or whatever you are imagining are no different from your work obligations. You’ll see. You just treat it like a job to a certain extent. It can take up as much or as little time as you want. My mother has a social secretary who helps arrange ribbon cuttings and that sort of thing, but you’ll see how you want to do it. You don’t need to obsess about it. I promise. Plus, all of that is external. As long as the two of us are united”—he held her tighter—“none of it will matter in the way you think.”

She leaned into him, trying to get herself used to the idea. All of it. The idea of leaning on him most of all. Her worries about running her day-to-day life as a duchess were nothing compared to her real terror about giving him her complete trust.

“It’s not about that, though, is it, Bron?”

She shook her head no and buried her face into his strong, warm chest.

“So be as demanding, needy, craven, desperate, or jealous as you want and we can simply compare notes at the end of each day. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” He smiled at how fatuous the words sounded but lifted Bronte’s face so she was forced to look him straight in the eye. “Get it?”

She nodded and let her head fall back to the comfort of his shoulder.

“So let’s have dinner with your mom tonight, Bron.”

“Oh, all right. But we’re not getting married today. That’s just too ridiculous. Plus I don’t think my mom would ever forgive me. Let me call her about dinner.”

Bronte kissed his chest and neck a few more times for good measure, then got out of bed and pulled on a flowing kimono-style robe, tying the sash loosely around her waist. She walked through the living room and into the small kitchen to retrieve her evening bag, grabbed it, and headed back toward the bedroom, unzipping the black, beaded clutch and pulling out her phone.

She pushed the button to turn it on.

“Fuck. What the hell am I doing with twenty-seven voice mails?”

“Um. I might know a little something about that…”

Bronte looked up slowly from her phone, tilting her head slightly to one side. “What little something would that be?”

“Now don’t get upset, because I had nothing to do with it…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, what?”

“Go look at the
Post
…”

“Oh perfect. Did Sarah James get falling-down drunk and end up at some after-party getting hog-tied by Leonardo DiCaprio? Or did—” She stopped when she saw Page Six, left open on the coffee table. She sat down in slow motion on the edge of the couch.

“The Stars Were Out for CFDA,” the headline blared, listing name after name of all the nominees and winners, including Sarah James. The accompanying photo, however, took up almost a third of the page, showing Max and Bronte clear as day, holding hands like idiots and gazing at each other adoringly. “Prince Charming and Cinderella Leaving the Ball,” the caption read. It elaborated: “Bronte Talbott, of BCA, seen here leaving the CFDA gala on the arm of the Duke of Northrop. He wore Mowbray; she wore Valentino.”

“Well, at least they plugged Valentino. Sarah will be pissed they didn’t credit the shoes, but they were fucking killing me so it serves her right.” Bronte looked up from the living room and caught Max’s eye. “What?”

“Are you upset?”

“Well, surprised maybe… I’m usually the one to the left and in the shadows, so it’s more odd than upsetting, I guess. But, and I’d better get used to saying this anyway, we are getting
married
for fuck’s sake, so people are probably going to know about us. Right?”

“Oh, Bron, you are such a romantic,” Max replied with false sweetness.

“Very funny. Let me call my mother and put her out of her misery. She must be going nuts not hearing from me…”

She tapped the phone and brought it to her ear, swinging her hair out of the way, crossing her legs, and leaning back into the sofa.

“Hi, Mom, yes… I know if you… yes, they credited it correctly. Yes, he’s right here actually and he wants to have dinner with you tonight… no, with me there also, Mom. You sure you don’t need to check your calendar or anything? I’m just joking; don’t get upset. All right… right… okay… I said, okay! Relax… so why don’t we come out to New Jersey? Well I do. You don’t need to redecorate the house for fuh—for goodness’ sake—we’ll just swing by and pick you up around six o’clock tonight and then we can go to dinner at that great Lebanese place over in Hoboken. It’s perfectly fine, Mom; he doesn’t eat with the Queen every night, only every other Thursday. Well, of course he heard me say that—he’s sitting right here… believe it or not I think he likes that about me… Mom… Okay… Good, sounds great. We’ll see you at six… love you too.”

Bronte tapped the end button on her phone and looked up at Max again. He was smiling wickedly.

“I hope you are happy,” she said. “That’s one down and twenty-six to go. Who next? Carol and April…” She scrolled to her work number and brought the phone back to her ear.

“Yes, it’s me… yes, I saw it, Carol… I know, great plug for BCA, right? Well, the Cinderella stuff I could do without, but he’s pretty fucking hot, right?” Bronte winked at Max then returned her gaze to the paper. “Okay, sure… and by the way, I am taking the day off today…” After the pause of Carol’s reply, Bronte laughed, a spirited, deep laugh, and Max contemplated the happy prospect of an afternoon spent with him lying in bed watching her juggle twenty-seven ten-minute phone calls.

He settled in with a paperback and simply savored the sight and sound of her: the fabulous resonance of her voice, the pitch of her laughter, the pause of her breathing, her conspiratorial glances at him. There was nowhere else he would rather be.

Four hours later, after they had showered and called a car service, they were headed to Max’s apartment so he could change out of his Clive Owen day-after outfit. The car waited out front as the two of them went up the elevator of the beautiful prewar building on a tree-lined street on the Upper East Side.

“Why would we keep my apartment when you have this one?”

“Because I don’t own this one. It’s just a corporate flat for Mowbray. But nice, eh?”

The elevator doors opened onto a small landing with two identical doors, and Max headed to the right, ringing the bell and waiting for Lydia to open the front door. She pulled the door open slowly, with a hungover, unpleasant smile and then pulled the door wide to let them in.

“Well, if it isn’t Prince Charming returned from the ball.”

“Watch it, Lydia,” Max said with a warning glance. “You don’t look like you heeded my words of caution, so why don’t we both call a cease-fire? Isn’t it time for you to be getting back to England anyway?”

“Of course, it is time for
us
to be going back to England, Uncle Max.
We
are supposed to be going back tomorrow, remember?”

Max ignored her, walking directly down a long hallway: crown moldings over pale yellow walls; parquet wood floors that had been polished and repolished for decades; to the right, a lovely antique chest of drawers with an enormous bouquet of exotic flowers spraying about five feet into the air.

“Nice place.”

Lydia turned back after shutting the front door to face Bronte. “So you and Max had an overnight playdate?”

“Are you being rude or merely impertinent, Lydia?”

“Neither. Just trying to make conversation. My grandmother called about fourteen times today looking for him and I just let it go to the answering machine, but truth be told, she sounded a little peeved. She’s a bit highly strung, you know.”

“Really. Are you trying to head me off at the pass or what?”

“I don’t know how we got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Talbott, but I’m just trying to pass the time. Oh, hi again, Max.” Lydia smiled her best cherubic, eighteen-year-old, peaches-and-cream smile. Bronte wasn’t sure if she was a bitch or just bitchy.

Max had changed into jeans and a pale blue Oxford shirt and was reaching to put Bronte’s hand in his when he turned to Lydia and paused with his other hand on the doorknob.

“If you must know, Lydia, Ms. Talbott and I are engaged to be married, so I suggest you cut the just-trying-to-make-conversation jag and keep your trap shut. If you dare tell your mother or grandmother the news before I have had the chance to do so, I will make your existence an utter misery. I will
not
be returning anyone’s calls this evening. And you
will
be returning to London tomorrow, with or without me on the flight. You are perfectly capable of traveling on your own, and my baby-sitting days are over. Try not to make a fool of yourself if you go out this evening… and close your mouth.”

With that, Bronte and Max left the apartment and closed the door. The elevator was still on their floor, opening quickly after they pressed the call button. They heard Lydia storm off down the hall as the elevator doors came to a close.

“Maybe she’s just young and insolent, and not really mean.”

“Of course she was being mean. Her mother is mean, my mother is, well, not mean exactly, but let’s just say she tends to
participate
to the point of manipulation.”