“Go on, a nice young lady like you?” he said, sitting up against the baroque carved headboard with a grin that could charitably be described as shit-eating.
I leaned over the bed and socked him hard in the other arm.
“Easy, Killer!” Freddie yelped. “Where are my PPOs when I need them?”
“Where are mine? No one even stuck his head in to make sure there wasn’t a murderer in here,” Nick said, tossing me some sweatpants from an ornate dresser. “You’re lucky she didn’t punch you someplace less polite.”
“I would have,” I told them, “but I think it’s treason to break the Crown Jewels.”
Freddie shot me an appraising look. “Funny,” he said. “And pretty. Natural. Like a toothpaste commercial. I don’t know why Father was so sprung on you and old India Boringbroke, Knickers. Must have been her massive—”
“I’m sorry, Bex,” Nick interrupted. “I’d like to tell you that he’s not usually this crass.”
“It’s true,” Freddie said cheerfully. “I’m much worse.”
I smiled as I tied the drawstring on the sweatpants. I couldn’t help it; that’s Freddie’s charisma at work. Nick sank down next to him on the expansive bed—the future king, dwarfed by his king-size.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Father’ll have your head if you’ve skived off your job.”
“At least I have a job,” Freddie taunted Nick. “What’ve you been up to? Staring blankly at the Times cryptics? More juicy trips to the library?”
Nick’s face darkened. This was a sore subject. To Nick’s endless envy, Freddie had joined the Royal Navy immediately after Eton, and was training to be a helicopter pilot at a Fleet Air Arm base near a town called Yeovil that sounded more like a medicine than a place. But Richard, in a move I suspect was to keep Nick under his thumb, ordered Nick to bypass military service for the moment and instead divide his time between a postgraduate course in global development through Oxford, and reams of outside reading so he could converse fluently with farmers, politicians, dock workers, even bookmakers. Essentially, Richard was guiding Nick toward both an actual master’s and an unofficial graduate degree in all things Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This was useful, but because it primarily involved staying indoors, it also had the press calling Nick a layabout when, in fact, I’d never seen him work so hard.
Freddie must have regretted his comment, because he abruptly sprang up from the bed and saluted me. There was a hole in the armpit of his T-shirt.
“Madam, I’m Frederick Wales, pilot in training, at your service.”
“Bex Porter,” I said. “Hired thug.”
“Oh yes, Nick’s told me all about you,” Freddie said, moving to a wingback in the corner of the room and gesturing for me to sit next to Nick. “Although I’m now the second Lyons you’ve met without wearing any trousers. What’s going to happen when you meet our father?”
I glared at Nick as I climbed onto the bed and stretched out my legs. Nick shrugged sheepishly and then crawled over and rested his head on them.
“You cannot blame me for telling my brother about the adorable American running around in a hand towel,” he said, blatantly trying to suck up.
“To be fair, that was the second time we met,” I corrected.
Freddie nodded. “Of course. The first time you went on about sexually transmitted diseases.”
I flicked Nick’s earlobe gently. “If you know all that,” I said to Freddie, “then surely you heard I already met Prince Richard. Sort of.”
Freddie rubbed his hands together. “I can’t believe you left out this part, Knickers.”
“It wasn’t exactly one of our better memories,” Nick said.
“No, that’d be Windsor, wouldn’t it?” Freddie said with a mischievous gleam.
I fully pinched Nick’s ear this time, but I was laughing. “Jealous we beat you to it?” I teased Freddie.
“Who says you did?” Freddie fired back. “Rebecca, I’ve got secrets that would curl your hair and cripple the monarchy. And you know horny old Henry the Eighth sullied every one of those antiques with his great greasy bum.” He smacked his hands on his thighs. “Right, let me guess: Prince Dick was screeching at Nick and you overheard and he got all growly and menacing.”
“Got it in one,” I said.
The words were barely out of my mouth before Freddie jumped up and walked to the window. Freddie is nearly always moving. He’s athletic enough that it doesn’t come across as fidgeting—more like he’s a very handsome perpetual-motion machine. He pulled apart the thick silk curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing a gray, foggy morning, then fished a thin silver cigarette case out of his track pants pocket and pushed open the top half of one of the windows.
“Freddie, don’t smoke in here,” Nick said as a cold draft blew into the room.
“Too bloody freezing anyway,” Freddie said, slamming the window closed and tossing the engraved case onto the floor. “You win this one, Knickers.”
“Please pick that up. When did you start smoking again?” Fatigue and strain crept into Nick’s voice, as if a lifetime of being forced to nag his brother was wearing on him all at once.
“It’s just every so often.”
“It’ll kill you, and so will Gran.”
“Thanks, but I already have a mum,” Freddie snapped.
An unsettling current passed between them. Nick looked away. A flicker of something like guilt crossed Freddie’s face, before he turned to me.
“So, you were saying Prince Dick was a complete fuckhead to you,” he said.
I laughed, despite wanting to be irritated on Nick’s behalf. “I did not say that.”
“And is old Dickie just thrilled about this romantic development?”
“Is he ever thrilled about anything?” Nick countered. “We don’t discuss it.”
“Which means his army of spies has skulked around and reported back all manner of sins,” Freddie concluded. “Run while you can, Killer, before they tell him you chew with your mouth open and have been seen sniffing around Aunt Agatha’s collection of Fabergé eggs.”
“I can’t run,” I said. “I’m really gunning for those eggs.”
Freddie nodded approvingly, then checked his watch. “Stay for lunch, won’t you? Surely there’s something decent knocking about in the kitchen.”
Something decent proved to be cheese, salad, a standing rib roast, Scotch eggs, and four different kinds of potatoes. It was the first of many such meals where the three of us would take refuge and stuff our faces. We ate this particular one in the second, smaller dining room, which has a view of the public park that used to be the palace’s front yard. Compared to some of the other state holdings, Kensington Palace looks the most like a regular old manor: The careworn, faded brick main building houses a museum, and fronts a village of well-concealed, sprawling private apartments for a variety of royal relatives. And given that the green space around it is now royal parkland, gawkers get a whole lot closer than you’d expect. Imagine if you could walk right up to the White House lawn and sunbathe topless while the president looked out of his window. It wouldn’t happen, and yet right now there was a girl in Kensington Gardens stretching in the most perfunctory of shorts.