I didn’t expect to walk in to see all the members of the Privy Council assembled around the conference table, my father at the head.
“Your Highness,” they all murmur as they stand and bow.
I nod in acknowledgment, then look back at my father, bowing. “Your Majesty.”
“Gabriel.” My father bows toward me, then gestures at the chair at the opposite end of the table. “Have a seat.”
I make my way through the room. With every step I take, the knot in my stomach grows tighter. Things must be bad if the entire Privy Council is here. I have no doubt I’m not going to like what my father has to say.
I sit, back straight, steeling myself for the proverbial bloodbath that’s about to ensue.
“I assume you know why I called you here today,” he says, as if I had any question.
“I do.”
“Then you’re already aware that the interview has had quite a disastrous effect. And not just on Nora, but also you. Hell, on the entire monarchy. There’s no other way to put it. This is a bloody catastrophe.”
“It was all a lie,” I remind him, my jaw tight. “Every single word that woman spoke was a fabrication.” I narrow my gaze on him. “And you know that.”
“What I know is irrelevant.” He waves a hand, as if it will relieve him of any liability. “What’s important right now is that this story, whether true or a fabrication, is out there. Is being eaten up by the tabloids. Unfortunately, we no longer live in an age of responsible journalism, where reporters are respected and revered for giving people the truth. The truth doesn’t matter. In this day of clickbait and social media, all that matters is what’s sensational. And Dr. Harcourt just gave the world a story that’s prime gossip fodder.”
He squares his shoulders, swallowing hard. I know this expression. Know I won’t like whatever follows. It’s the same look he wore when he called Esme and me into the library at our family home in the country and told us our uncle had died, as did our cousins. That we would have to move to the capital city of Montrose.
That I’d be shipped off to boarding school in London.
That I would one day be king.
But instead of manning up to the new responsibilities placed on me as the future monarch, I reacted like an eight-year-old boy.
I cried. Screamed. Shouted.
I knew it wouldn’t change anything, though. Knew the wheels had already been set in motion and I had no choice but to accept it.
Just like I fear is happening now, too.
“Right now, our best course of action is to come up with a plan to…” He glances to his right where Dalton Peel sits. “Save face,” my father finishes.
“Save face?” I repeat in disbelief.
It was a fool’s wish to think I’d come to my father’s office and learn he and the royal household would stand behind Nora. A part of me had hoped that would be the case. That my father would stop taking the council members’ advice simply because that’s the way things have always been done. I’ve seen first-hand what can happen when you stop doing that. The people of this country fell in love with the idea of Nora and me as a couple because, instead of appearing out of reach and untouchable, we became relatable.
But as the saying goes… You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
My father has never truly felt comfortable in his role as king, having been thrust into it unexpectedly.
As such, he continues to allow his council and the royal household to control most of his decisions. Including this one.
“Why would we need to save face when Nora did nothing wrong?” I argue. “When that woman went on national news to spread lies? Rest assured, I will be pursuing legal action against her.”
“A lawsuit will take years,” Dalton reminds me. “Threatening legal action is like putting a Band-Aid over a gunshot wound. It won’t fix the underlying problem. It will only become more and more infected until it destroys you from the inside out. If a person has an infection in a leg that could kill him, the doctor doesn’t put a bandage on it and hope for the best. You want to know what he does?”
“What’s that?”
He leans across the table, eyes narrowed slits like the snake he is. “He amputates the leg. So that’s what we need to do. Amputate the leg. Rid us of this…infection.”
“Infection?” I grind out.
“After the interview this morning, the publicity team conducted some preliminary polling.” Dalton stands from his chair and makes his way toward me, placing a folder in front of me.
I reluctantly open it, charts and numbers staring back at me. By now, I’m accustomed to this sort of thing. All of my life’s big decisions have been reduced to bar graphs and statistical probabilities.
“As you can see, the most favorable outcome for the monarchy remaining as it is would be if the royal family, yourself especially, were to distance itself from Ms. Tremblay.”
Bile rises in my throat as I flip through the pages, a half-dozen different scenarios presented, ranging from continuing on as if nothing happened to doing what Dalton suggested — walking away from Nora.
It was an easier idea to wrap my head around when I contemplated doing just that in order to save her from being saddled with a lifetime of being married to a man who may one day lose the ability to walk, to control his bladder, to make love to her.
It’s harder to consider when I’m being ordered to end things.
“Most of the interview was speculation, no concrete evidence,” I remind them, grasping at straws.
“The preliminary research indicates that a large majority of our representative sample believed Dr. Harcourt made a compelling case,” one of the Privy Council members replies. “Especially when she’d mentioned Nora had somehow miraculously walked away from that car wreck with barely a scratch.”
“Unfortunately for us, photos from the accident report were leaked and are currently circulating on social media,” Dalton adds. “Everyone’s offering their opinion, regardless of their knowledge about this topic. It doesn’t look good. For Nora. Or the monarchy.”
I run a hand over my face, shaking my head as my shoulders slump, sitting in a way that’s incredibly unbecoming of a future monarch. “She was in that car.”
“So you say, but according to records we obtained, she lived nearby. Her fiancé’s parents also lived in the general vicinity. It’s not a huge leap to assume she knew the area well. And do you want to know what I learned after doing minimal research?”
I don’t respond, knowing he’ll tell me regardless.
“That the curve where their car was allegedly run off the road is a common area for drivers to lose control of their vehicles and go over the edge, so much so that there were yearly petitions to put in a guardrail. The town had recently granted the request and were slated to begin installation the following week, another suspicious coincidence. When the police interviewed her in the hospital, she claimed to have been pulled from the wreck by a Good Samaritan, yet even after her fiancé’s family offered a reward of over $10,000 for information as to who it was, no one came forward.”
“Maybe the Good Samaritan had no need for the money,” I say through a clenched jaw.
“Gabriel,” my father warns, eyes narrowed.