The Palace fic: a sorta fairytale [abigail & richard, t]
a sorta fairytale {or, five ways the story might go for abigail thomas and king richard iv}. the palace, t, 3222 words.
She does not think with a clear-sighted sort of sadness, if he were any other man, then maybe we’d have a chance-
{one:}
She quits, starts up her own PR firm and does a bit of freelance writing on the side.
It’s a good life. Abigail’s clever enough to manage it well, pays off both her mortgages and builds a reputation for herself and while she and the king don’t move in the same circles, exactly, there is the odd occasion where their worlds overlap-like tonight.
Maybe she’s giddy from the champagne and listening to him speak, maybe it’s the summer heat and the dizzy feeling of being back in this place after all this time-but she’s actually enjoying herself, isn’t tense and wary of bumping into him with all the awkward weight of their shared history. Everyone around her laughs; she focuses her attention back on him as he smiles, wide and cheerful. He’s done well, in these past years. He seems to have settled into his skin and his role, with his pleasant, pretty little wife and his baby girl. He seems happy.
He looks up and meets her gaze.
Abigail holds her breath without noticing that she’s doing it. A muscle in his jaw jumps, and he raises his eyebrows slightly, then tucks away his notes. She lets herself grin at him; somewhere in the shadows, his APS is going spare over what he’s doing, but he’s the same as ever: he will try to wing it, no matter how much time they spend trying to rein him in.
His lips twitch, and he continues.
Later, when she slips her shoes back on and pulls the sleeve of her dress up over one goose-pimpled shoulder (and she must remember this, when it’s done: even in the worst heat wave London’s seen in two decades, the king’s bedroom is cool and fresh and smells like cucumber and clean laundry), he asks her how she enjoyed his speech.
She leans back on one elbow, feet dangling off the bed. His hair falls across his forehead, just like it did when he was that charming idiot boy, though it’s touched with silver now and fine laugh lines are forming at the corners of his eyes. “A bit of an ungainly introduction, but I thought you carried it off nicely by the end,” she says.
“I thought you’d enjoy that-like I can’t still hear you and Iain in my head, moaning about me getting political and going off-message.” He taps her hand. “I’ve never found anyone as good as you, you know.”
“Well,” Abigail says uselessly, then adds, “The queen seems quite lovely,” to fill up the empty space between them as she sits back up and fumbles with the fastenings of her gown.
Richard nods. “She is,” he says, and she can tell he means it. He comes around to her side of the bed, zips her up with steady competent hands. “Penelope’s a wonderful girl, and Charlotte-”
“She has your eyes.”
“Yes.” He smiles and sits beside her. “That’s what they all say. No DNA tests there, hopefully.”
“No,” Abigail agrees, and turns away so that he doesn’t see the faint tremble in her lower lip. It doesn’t work: he rubs her arm soothingly, tucks away her short sleek hair.
“Abigail,” he says, and she shakes her head.
“Your Majesty,” she says with forced levelness, the brief bubble of happiness that rose up earlier in the evening irrevocably burst. “Don’t. Please.”
Richard doesn’t say anything for a moment; when she flicks a glance to the side, she can just see his face in the soft yellow light, lashes lowered. He nods. “But I want you to know I meant every word of it. Back then. When I told you I loved you.” He doesn’t answer the question hanging in the air, doesn’t tell her whether he means it still, just pauses and continues, “Peter will take you out the back way-”
“I remember how it works, sir,” she says, and he nods again.
“Of course you do.”
The kiss he presses to her hand is kind and affectionate. It makes her want to be sick all over the Persian rug, but she turns and does not look at him as she walks away.
{two:}
Two months after he’s crowned, he abdicates in favour of Eleanor.
The next morning, he manages to give the media the slip and shows up at Abigail’s flat. She’s been sitting on her couch glued to the telly for about a day straight, and is still in her pajamas when the knock on the door comes before six.
“Sir!” she says, and bobs a clumsy curtsey, astonished. Peter pushes past her to do a sweep of the place; Richard is playing at his version of going incognito, with his hood pulled down low over his eyes and his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.
“Can I-can I come in?” he asks, looking ridiculously young.
“Yeah, yeah,” Abi says, standing back to let him in, with only time to pray God, please, I’ve been good, let me not have anything embarrassing strewn about the place, but she thinks it’s probably too much to ask.
Her toes feel conspicuously bare, and she pulls her dressing gown closer; tongue-tied and stupid, she casts about for something to say as he pulls off his hood and scruffs one hand through his hair, but he interrupts her thoughts, saying, “Oh, hell. I know it’s early, but tell me you’ve got something to drink around this place. I need to get pissed.”
While she’s rummaging about for the beer, he catches sight of the telly in the other room, Eleanor’s brilliant smile of triumph in glorious technicolour. Slowly, Abigail crosses the kitchen, and passes him the beer; he shakes his head in disgust, at his sister or himself, she can’t quite tell.
“The worst of it is, I’ve let her win,” he says, cracking it open. He won’t meet her eyes, but laughs bitterly: “Which is stupid, right? I mean, I did it on my own terms, I get that; I didn’t want it, I’d never wanted it, and the guilt, Abigail, the guilt: you really shouldn’t have the head of the bloody C of E a doubter, can you? I’m glad. I think I am. I’m glad I gave it to her. But she still got her way.”
Peter gives Richard the nod and leaves, pulling the front door ajar but not closed.
Gaze fixed on him, Abigail says, “You did the right thing, then.”
He shakes his head again, mouth bitterly twisted-but he meets her eyes properly now, really seeing her for the first time. “I’ve missed you, Abi,” he says. “You look good.”
Abigail looks down at herself, puts a hand through her frizzing curls. “Thank you, sir,” she says wryly. She pauses as he drinks, and adds, “You could have given the throne to George, you know.”
He snorts.
“Or Izzy. I’m sure she’d jump at the chance.”
“Yes, and abolish the whole system in the first fifteen minutes.” He shrugs one shoulder. “She was the one who got me thinking about it, you know. That speech on her birthday. She’s thrilled to bits, she’s already been begging me to share a flat with her. But no, the people will love Ellie. They already do. The institution will thrive under her, I know that.”
“And it rankles.”
“Yeah, a bit.” He takes a long drink of beer and looks around the kitchen, eyes scanning for something else to be cross about, then flicks his finger at a half-crumpled can of Coke as he balances his bottle atop a stack of newspapers and says finally, “My God, don’t you ever clean this dump?”
Abigail bursts out laughing, and after a minute Richard smiles bleakly. “Oh, Lord,” he says, leaning back hard against the fridge, “What have I done, Abi?”
“Shut up,” she says, holding out a hand, “and come here.”
He does.
{three:}
She stays on staff at the palace.
It’s been a mad couple of days since the coronation and Abigail hasn’t had more than thirty seconds alone with the king since their talk in that great echoing drawing room. He finds her, finally, walking down the empty hallway on her way out; it’s after midnight and she’s exhausted and her feet are aching in the glossy red heels that look a hell of a lot better than they feel, but when he catches her hand and turns her around her heart thuds like it might burst from her chest and she grins at him like she’s a silly schoolgirl with a crush, which in all honesty she really, really is.
“Were you planning,” he says, tugging her folder out from the crook of her arm and letting it fall to the floor in a flurry of white paper, “on leaving without saying goodbye?” There’s a devilish smile on his face as he takes her other hand and backs her slowly against the wall where she collides with a table, roses trembling in their delicate antique vase.
“Ouf,” she says, and adds, “I hope you intend on picking up my papers, because I’m bloody well not-”
And then he kisses her into silence, and she forgets what she was going to say anyway, one thumb hooking in his braces, fingers curling in the knot of his silk tie as she pulls him closer and her teeth scrape across his lower lip. Flushed and breathing hard, Abigail draws back a bit with a glance at the imposing white bust looming out of the darkness on the opposite wall, and whispers, “Your ancestors are judging me.”
“Charles the Second? Judge us?” He throws his head back and laughs; anxiously, she muffles his mouth and darts a look over his shoulder down the hall, half-expecting to see Ruby come loping up the hall brandishing a feather duster. “I think it’s safe to say that’s fairly unlikely, Abi,” he says more softly, breath hot against the skin of her palm, and she lets her hand slide through his sleek hair as he leans in to kiss her again
“Oh, like you’re the history expert all of a sudden,” she says, and laughs around his smiling lips, kisses him back frantically when his soft touch down her spine sends a shudder through her body that throws her flush against him. She finds herself on the verge of sighing his name into his mouth but stops herself at the last minute, seizes up and pushes him back even with her fingers lingering in his hair and smoothing over his cheekbones.
“What?” he says, eyes wide and serious, and she shakes her head, something hard and unspeakable lodging in her throat. What’s she supposed to call him? Your Majesty? Is she supposed to call him sir and let him have his wicked way with her, like they’re playing out some sick submissive fantasy? Because she’s never called him by his name, never called him Rich like his family, his friends, like she has the right-she’s never crossed that line, and what’s worse, she doesn’t know if he wants her to.
She won’t lie: the thought chills her.
But it’s hard to remember that when he kisses his way up her throat and behind her ear, and with a shiver Abigail bites her tongue and closes her eyes, hands slipping down his neck. She does not think with a clear-sighted sort of sadness, if he were any other man, then maybe we’d have a chance-
{four:}
Eleanor, in one last act of malice before she’s shipped off into exile, leaks her copy of Abigail’s manuscript to the Times.
Abigail stares numbly at the headline. She hasn’t been able to read the article yet; the first glimpse of the front page was like a slap across the face that buckled her knees and clouded her mind, and the paper remains a sick blur of black and white that refuses to resolve itself into clarity.
She knows what it means, though, knew the minute her phone began ringing before dawn. Her line’s disconnected now, her work mobile switched off. It’s not like she needed Sir Iain’s tones of measured fury telling her there was no need to come in today and that someone would be by with her things to understand that she was finished-but she did pick it up and he did say it anyway and it did drive the blade in even deeper.
Simon’s words echo in her head: “Royal servants, falling on their sword to protect the monarch.” Yes: she will be their sacrificial lamb, because for once here is a scandal they can take advantage of, one in which the king comes off remarkably well, one where he’s the victim and not at the heart of the troubles. And it’s not like what’s in the book will hurt him, because yes, he was stupid and selfish and silly, she told it like it was, but everyone knew that anyway and he’s grown up now and they love him.
Oh, God. Her stomach turns. She deserves it. She knows she does. But that doesn’t make it feel any better.
That night, she puts on her dark sunglasses and heads out to get completely pissed.
She is nearing the end of her third round of vodka when a familiar voice behind her left ear asks, “Are we drowning our sorrows so soon in the evening? The festivities have barely begun, you know.”
Abigail turns; Simon stands with his coat over his arm and an apologetic look on his face. “Simon,” she says unsteadily.
“Babe,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s two of us,” she says. “What the hell was I thinking, Simon?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he says. “Well, all right, blame yourself a bit, you wrote the damn thing. But we both know that bitch is to blame.”
That lifts her, a bit. “You’re done with Eleanor, then?”
He shrugs, drops his coat on the counter and slides onto a seat beside her. “It was a mutual thing, really,” he says. “I didn’t much fancy working for an evil monster on some abandoned rock in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and she-well. She didn’t like anyone on her staff with a beating heart, see.”
Abigail tips back the last of her drink. “So,” she says, wiping the corner of her mouth, “why are you here, Simon?”
“The way I see it,” he says calmly, “you treated me like shit. Yeah? But they treated you like shit, too. He treated you like shit. So I suppose we’re even.”
Abigail smiles a little, ruefully. “Something like that,” she says, peering into the bottom of her empty glass. She sets it down with a dull thud. “I’m ruined. No one’ll touch me now.”
“Maybe. We’ll see. I’m sure your phone is ringing off the hook for interviews-”
She stares at him with mute refusal.
“No to that, then,” he says. “We’ll figure something out. We’ve enough brains between us.”
“I’m never going to see him again,” Abigail says.
“No,” Simon agrees.
Abigail drops her head onto her arms and takes in a shaky breath of air.
{five:}
Against all odds, despite themselves and the rest of the world, they sort of end up with their happy ending.
Richard loosens the collar of his stiff red jacket, peels the last of his medals off his chest. “Perfect, Neil,” he says, twisting the winking sapphire off his little finger and dropping it into his valet’s outstretched hand. “That’s all.”
“How’d it go, sir?” Abigail asks as David swings the door closed with a knowing look. She’s standing by the couch, waiting for the king to sit; when he grips her shoulders and sits her down first she doesn’t know quite where to look as he stands over her with his arms crossed, grinning.
“There’s you sorted,” he says. “And, for a lark, we’ll try an experiment: next time I walk into a room, you stay sitting without leaping to attention. God, I’m a genius, we’ll shock them all. It went fine, thank you, thought certain members of the family shockingly didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves a great deal-”
“Yes, I thought Princess Eleanor looked rather strained,” Abi says, nodding at the television. She doesn’t say how proud and odd she’d felt at the sight of him on the balcony, solemn and regal and alien. She can’t think of him like that, on that level, so she says: “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to sit down? You’re giving me a crick in my neck.”
“Oh, your neck hurts, does it?” He rolls his head and winces, dropping down with a sigh beside her. “That crown is bloody heavy.”
“Am I supposed to take that statement as metaphorical or literal?” He’s sitting entirely too close to her, his arm pressed against hers. She isn’t, however, planning on moving anywhere if he’s not.
Richard shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “You can take that however the hell you want to,” he says. “Forgive me if I’m a little tired of playing nice for the cameras today.”
“Of course,” Abigail says.
He makes a face at her. “Stop that.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Oh, the pandering. Stop it.”
She widens her eyes. “I’m sorry, I thought the pandering was what you hired me for, Your Majesty.”
“See, and I thought I hired you to look after me,” he says, digging his elbow in her ribs; she lets out a noise that is not quite a squeak but is close enough, and he adds, “And do stop it with this “Your Majesty” business. Say ‘Richard’ for me, go on.”
“Richard,” she repeats; it feels strange, but a slow smile makes its way across her face nonetheless.
“It’s a start, I suppose. I’ll have to completely reprogram you.” He hesitates a moment, then says cautiously, “You know we have my Auntie Octavia’s garden party next week.”
“I know, I even bought a funny hat for it and everything. I mean, before the whole-” Abigail gestures pointlessly. “Well. You know.”
“Yes, but you see…” Richard trails off, picks at the arm of the leather couch. “I sort of wanted you to come. I mean, you’re coming, obviously, but. As… my date. If you want, that is, I’m not trying to freak you out or make you do it if you don’t want to, but-”
Abigail blinks, staring into space for a long moment while her heart throbs with a sudden terror of cocking this up, then takes his hand, twines it tight in hers until her knuckles are white. “Right,” she says gravely, nodding when he looks back at her, his face fearfully earnest and uncertain. “I’m going to need a bigger hat.”
He laughs, then puts his arm around her, pulling her close. “Here’s to following your heart,” he says, smile fading, and at the look in his eyes Abi holds her breath and thinks, no matter what comes next at least I have this, this one moment of happiness without guilt; he takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger and kisses her softly, delicately, and when he pulls away she sits frozen, like she might upset the balance of the universe if she moves a muscle.
She does not think with a clear-sighted sort of sadness, if he were any other man, then maybe we’d have a chance-
{one:}
She quits, starts up her own PR firm and does a bit of freelance writing on the side.
It’s a good life. Abigail’s clever enough to manage it well, pays off both her mortgages and builds a reputation for herself and while she and the king don’t move in the same circles, exactly, there is the odd occasion where their worlds overlap-like tonight.
Maybe she’s giddy from the champagne and listening to him speak, maybe it’s the summer heat and the dizzy feeling of being back in this place after all this time-but she’s actually enjoying herself, isn’t tense and wary of bumping into him with all the awkward weight of their shared history. Everyone around her laughs; she focuses her attention back on him as he smiles, wide and cheerful. He’s done well, in these past years. He seems to have settled into his skin and his role, with his pleasant, pretty little wife and his baby girl. He seems happy.
He looks up and meets her gaze.
Abigail holds her breath without noticing that she’s doing it. A muscle in his jaw jumps, and he raises his eyebrows slightly, then tucks away his notes. She lets herself grin at him; somewhere in the shadows, his APS is going spare over what he’s doing, but he’s the same as ever: he will try to wing it, no matter how much time they spend trying to rein him in.
His lips twitch, and he continues.
Later, when she slips her shoes back on and pulls the sleeve of her dress up over one goose-pimpled shoulder (and she must remember this, when it’s done: even in the worst heat wave London’s seen in two decades, the king’s bedroom is cool and fresh and smells like cucumber and clean laundry), he asks her how she enjoyed his speech.
She leans back on one elbow, feet dangling off the bed. His hair falls across his forehead, just like it did when he was that charming idiot boy, though it’s touched with silver now and fine laugh lines are forming at the corners of his eyes. “A bit of an ungainly introduction, but I thought you carried it off nicely by the end,” she says.
“I thought you’d enjoy that-like I can’t still hear you and Iain in my head, moaning about me getting political and going off-message.” He taps her hand. “I’ve never found anyone as good as you, you know.”
“Well,” Abigail says uselessly, then adds, “The queen seems quite lovely,” to fill up the empty space between them as she sits back up and fumbles with the fastenings of her gown.
Richard nods. “She is,” he says, and she can tell he means it. He comes around to her side of the bed, zips her up with steady competent hands. “Penelope’s a wonderful girl, and Charlotte-”
“She has your eyes.”
“Yes.” He smiles and sits beside her. “That’s what they all say. No DNA tests there, hopefully.”
“No,” Abigail agrees, and turns away so that he doesn’t see the faint tremble in her lower lip. It doesn’t work: he rubs her arm soothingly, tucks away her short sleek hair.
“Abigail,” he says, and she shakes her head.
“Your Majesty,” she says with forced levelness, the brief bubble of happiness that rose up earlier in the evening irrevocably burst. “Don’t. Please.”
Richard doesn’t say anything for a moment; when she flicks a glance to the side, she can just see his face in the soft yellow light, lashes lowered. He nods. “But I want you to know I meant every word of it. Back then. When I told you I loved you.” He doesn’t answer the question hanging in the air, doesn’t tell her whether he means it still, just pauses and continues, “Peter will take you out the back way-”
“I remember how it works, sir,” she says, and he nods again.
“Of course you do.”
The kiss he presses to her hand is kind and affectionate. It makes her want to be sick all over the Persian rug, but she turns and does not look at him as she walks away.
{two:}
Two months after he’s crowned, he abdicates in favour of Eleanor.
The next morning, he manages to give the media the slip and shows up at Abigail’s flat. She’s been sitting on her couch glued to the telly for about a day straight, and is still in her pajamas when the knock on the door comes before six.
“Sir!” she says, and bobs a clumsy curtsey, astonished. Peter pushes past her to do a sweep of the place; Richard is playing at his version of going incognito, with his hood pulled down low over his eyes and his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.
“Can I-can I come in?” he asks, looking ridiculously young.
“Yeah, yeah,” Abi says, standing back to let him in, with only time to pray God, please, I’ve been good, let me not have anything embarrassing strewn about the place, but she thinks it’s probably too much to ask.
Her toes feel conspicuously bare, and she pulls her dressing gown closer; tongue-tied and stupid, she casts about for something to say as he pulls off his hood and scruffs one hand through his hair, but he interrupts her thoughts, saying, “Oh, hell. I know it’s early, but tell me you’ve got something to drink around this place. I need to get pissed.”
While she’s rummaging about for the beer, he catches sight of the telly in the other room, Eleanor’s brilliant smile of triumph in glorious technicolour. Slowly, Abigail crosses the kitchen, and passes him the beer; he shakes his head in disgust, at his sister or himself, she can’t quite tell.
“The worst of it is, I’ve let her win,” he says, cracking it open. He won’t meet her eyes, but laughs bitterly: “Which is stupid, right? I mean, I did it on my own terms, I get that; I didn’t want it, I’d never wanted it, and the guilt, Abigail, the guilt: you really shouldn’t have the head of the bloody C of E a doubter, can you? I’m glad. I think I am. I’m glad I gave it to her. But she still got her way.”
Peter gives Richard the nod and leaves, pulling the front door ajar but not closed.
Gaze fixed on him, Abigail says, “You did the right thing, then.”
He shakes his head again, mouth bitterly twisted-but he meets her eyes properly now, really seeing her for the first time. “I’ve missed you, Abi,” he says. “You look good.”
Abigail looks down at herself, puts a hand through her frizzing curls. “Thank you, sir,” she says wryly. She pauses as he drinks, and adds, “You could have given the throne to George, you know.”
He snorts.
“Or Izzy. I’m sure she’d jump at the chance.”
“Yes, and abolish the whole system in the first fifteen minutes.” He shrugs one shoulder. “She was the one who got me thinking about it, you know. That speech on her birthday. She’s thrilled to bits, she’s already been begging me to share a flat with her. But no, the people will love Ellie. They already do. The institution will thrive under her, I know that.”
“And it rankles.”
“Yeah, a bit.” He takes a long drink of beer and looks around the kitchen, eyes scanning for something else to be cross about, then flicks his finger at a half-crumpled can of Coke as he balances his bottle atop a stack of newspapers and says finally, “My God, don’t you ever clean this dump?”
Abigail bursts out laughing, and after a minute Richard smiles bleakly. “Oh, Lord,” he says, leaning back hard against the fridge, “What have I done, Abi?”
“Shut up,” she says, holding out a hand, “and come here.”
He does.
{three:}
She stays on staff at the palace.
It’s been a mad couple of days since the coronation and Abigail hasn’t had more than thirty seconds alone with the king since their talk in that great echoing drawing room. He finds her, finally, walking down the empty hallway on her way out; it’s after midnight and she’s exhausted and her feet are aching in the glossy red heels that look a hell of a lot better than they feel, but when he catches her hand and turns her around her heart thuds like it might burst from her chest and she grins at him like she’s a silly schoolgirl with a crush, which in all honesty she really, really is.
“Were you planning,” he says, tugging her folder out from the crook of her arm and letting it fall to the floor in a flurry of white paper, “on leaving without saying goodbye?” There’s a devilish smile on his face as he takes her other hand and backs her slowly against the wall where she collides with a table, roses trembling in their delicate antique vase.
“Ouf,” she says, and adds, “I hope you intend on picking up my papers, because I’m bloody well not-”
And then he kisses her into silence, and she forgets what she was going to say anyway, one thumb hooking in his braces, fingers curling in the knot of his silk tie as she pulls him closer and her teeth scrape across his lower lip. Flushed and breathing hard, Abigail draws back a bit with a glance at the imposing white bust looming out of the darkness on the opposite wall, and whispers, “Your ancestors are judging me.”
“Charles the Second? Judge us?” He throws his head back and laughs; anxiously, she muffles his mouth and darts a look over his shoulder down the hall, half-expecting to see Ruby come loping up the hall brandishing a feather duster. “I think it’s safe to say that’s fairly unlikely, Abi,” he says more softly, breath hot against the skin of her palm, and she lets her hand slide through his sleek hair as he leans in to kiss her again
“Oh, like you’re the history expert all of a sudden,” she says, and laughs around his smiling lips, kisses him back frantically when his soft touch down her spine sends a shudder through her body that throws her flush against him. She finds herself on the verge of sighing his name into his mouth but stops herself at the last minute, seizes up and pushes him back even with her fingers lingering in his hair and smoothing over his cheekbones.
“What?” he says, eyes wide and serious, and she shakes her head, something hard and unspeakable lodging in her throat. What’s she supposed to call him? Your Majesty? Is she supposed to call him sir and let him have his wicked way with her, like they’re playing out some sick submissive fantasy? Because she’s never called him by his name, never called him Rich like his family, his friends, like she has the right-she’s never crossed that line, and what’s worse, she doesn’t know if he wants her to.
She won’t lie: the thought chills her.
But it’s hard to remember that when he kisses his way up her throat and behind her ear, and with a shiver Abigail bites her tongue and closes her eyes, hands slipping down his neck. She does not think with a clear-sighted sort of sadness, if he were any other man, then maybe we’d have a chance-
{four:}
Eleanor, in one last act of malice before she’s shipped off into exile, leaks her copy of Abigail’s manuscript to the Times.
Abigail stares numbly at the headline. She hasn’t been able to read the article yet; the first glimpse of the front page was like a slap across the face that buckled her knees and clouded her mind, and the paper remains a sick blur of black and white that refuses to resolve itself into clarity.
She knows what it means, though, knew the minute her phone began ringing before dawn. Her line’s disconnected now, her work mobile switched off. It’s not like she needed Sir Iain’s tones of measured fury telling her there was no need to come in today and that someone would be by with her things to understand that she was finished-but she did pick it up and he did say it anyway and it did drive the blade in even deeper.
Simon’s words echo in her head: “Royal servants, falling on their sword to protect the monarch.” Yes: she will be their sacrificial lamb, because for once here is a scandal they can take advantage of, one in which the king comes off remarkably well, one where he’s the victim and not at the heart of the troubles. And it’s not like what’s in the book will hurt him, because yes, he was stupid and selfish and silly, she told it like it was, but everyone knew that anyway and he’s grown up now and they love him.
Oh, God. Her stomach turns. She deserves it. She knows she does. But that doesn’t make it feel any better.
That night, she puts on her dark sunglasses and heads out to get completely pissed.
She is nearing the end of her third round of vodka when a familiar voice behind her left ear asks, “Are we drowning our sorrows so soon in the evening? The festivities have barely begun, you know.”
Abigail turns; Simon stands with his coat over his arm and an apologetic look on his face. “Simon,” she says unsteadily.
“Babe,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s two of us,” she says. “What the hell was I thinking, Simon?”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he says. “Well, all right, blame yourself a bit, you wrote the damn thing. But we both know that bitch is to blame.”
That lifts her, a bit. “You’re done with Eleanor, then?”
He shrugs, drops his coat on the counter and slides onto a seat beside her. “It was a mutual thing, really,” he says. “I didn’t much fancy working for an evil monster on some abandoned rock in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and she-well. She didn’t like anyone on her staff with a beating heart, see.”
Abigail tips back the last of her drink. “So,” she says, wiping the corner of her mouth, “why are you here, Simon?”
“The way I see it,” he says calmly, “you treated me like shit. Yeah? But they treated you like shit, too. He treated you like shit. So I suppose we’re even.”
Abigail smiles a little, ruefully. “Something like that,” she says, peering into the bottom of her empty glass. She sets it down with a dull thud. “I’m ruined. No one’ll touch me now.”
“Maybe. We’ll see. I’m sure your phone is ringing off the hook for interviews-”
She stares at him with mute refusal.
“No to that, then,” he says. “We’ll figure something out. We’ve enough brains between us.”
“I’m never going to see him again,” Abigail says.
“No,” Simon agrees.
Abigail drops her head onto her arms and takes in a shaky breath of air.
{five:}
Against all odds, despite themselves and the rest of the world, they sort of end up with their happy ending.
Richard loosens the collar of his stiff red jacket, peels the last of his medals off his chest. “Perfect, Neil,” he says, twisting the winking sapphire off his little finger and dropping it into his valet’s outstretched hand. “That’s all.”
“How’d it go, sir?” Abigail asks as David swings the door closed with a knowing look. She’s standing by the couch, waiting for the king to sit; when he grips her shoulders and sits her down first she doesn’t know quite where to look as he stands over her with his arms crossed, grinning.
“There’s you sorted,” he says. “And, for a lark, we’ll try an experiment: next time I walk into a room, you stay sitting without leaping to attention. God, I’m a genius, we’ll shock them all. It went fine, thank you, thought certain members of the family shockingly didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves a great deal-”
“Yes, I thought Princess Eleanor looked rather strained,” Abi says, nodding at the television. She doesn’t say how proud and odd she’d felt at the sight of him on the balcony, solemn and regal and alien. She can’t think of him like that, on that level, so she says: “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to sit down? You’re giving me a crick in my neck.”
“Oh, your neck hurts, does it?” He rolls his head and winces, dropping down with a sigh beside her. “That crown is bloody heavy.”
“Am I supposed to take that statement as metaphorical or literal?” He’s sitting entirely too close to her, his arm pressed against hers. She isn’t, however, planning on moving anywhere if he’s not.
Richard shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “You can take that however the hell you want to,” he says. “Forgive me if I’m a little tired of playing nice for the cameras today.”
“Of course,” Abigail says.
He makes a face at her. “Stop that.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Oh, the pandering. Stop it.”
She widens her eyes. “I’m sorry, I thought the pandering was what you hired me for, Your Majesty.”
“See, and I thought I hired you to look after me,” he says, digging his elbow in her ribs; she lets out a noise that is not quite a squeak but is close enough, and he adds, “And do stop it with this “Your Majesty” business. Say ‘Richard’ for me, go on.”
“Richard,” she repeats; it feels strange, but a slow smile makes its way across her face nonetheless.
“It’s a start, I suppose. I’ll have to completely reprogram you.” He hesitates a moment, then says cautiously, “You know we have my Auntie Octavia’s garden party next week.”
“I know, I even bought a funny hat for it and everything. I mean, before the whole-” Abigail gestures pointlessly. “Well. You know.”
“Yes, but you see…” Richard trails off, picks at the arm of the leather couch. “I sort of wanted you to come. I mean, you’re coming, obviously, but. As… my date. If you want, that is, I’m not trying to freak you out or make you do it if you don’t want to, but-”
Abigail blinks, staring into space for a long moment while her heart throbs with a sudden terror of cocking this up, then takes his hand, twines it tight in hers until her knuckles are white. “Right,” she says gravely, nodding when he looks back at her, his face fearfully earnest and uncertain. “I’m going to need a bigger hat.”
He laughs, then puts his arm around her, pulling her close. “Here’s to following your heart,” he says, smile fading, and at the look in his eyes Abi holds her breath and thinks, no matter what comes next at least I have this, this one moment of happiness without guilt; he takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger and kisses her softly, delicately, and when he pulls away she sits frozen, like she might upset the balance of the universe if she moves a muscle.