Chandelier (Tarnished Crowns Trilogy Book 1) Page 2

  I pause outside the Kinney room, peering in from my shadows. Despite women from another age calling for equality, the room’s dominated by men who are intoxicated with the stench of power. I see suits, jackets, shirts, ties, the odd dress and a pair of bare legs, stilettoes. A peel of laughter cuts through the bass and baritones.

  Elise.

  My best friend. Schoolmates, classmates. Whisperer of secrets and the keeper of dreams.

  “Blair! We wondered where you were!” Elise sees me and releases Lennox’s arm where she’s probably been hanging, a benign spider.

  “Helping Marian.” I smile, accepting her air kiss.

  She’s dressed in green satin, the material clinging to curves that she’s owned since she was thirteen and she noticed how boys looked at her. Elise doesn’t need anything more than what nature gave her, the power to spellbind the eyes of most beholders.

  “You’re the princess, not the staff.”

  “Sometimes it’s the same thing.”

  She laughs, bells tinkling. A half dozen set of eyes use the sound as an excuse to focus on her, but not my brother, the future king.

  “Blair,” my mother sweeps in, smiling. “Let me introduce you. It’s been a while since you were at a dinner like this.”

  It hasn’t been long enough.

  Six weeks in Australia, four weeks in America. Ten weeks away. Meeting people, opening hospitals, schools, visiting charities, hospices, meeting dignitaries. All with a smile on my face and gracious words even when I was crippled with period pain or struggling with a migraine, because I didn’t have the right to feel like that. Princesses didn’t bleed or throw up or fuck or scream.

  We work the room. I meet politicians and advisors, titled gentry, business owners. People whose own personal wealth depends on the matrimonial settlement between two countries who were together for so long.

  There’s a man with brown hair that falls over his face as if he’s forgotten to style it. His eyes are blue and small, his cheekbones sculpted. He should be attractive but he’s not.

  He holds out his hand. “I’m William.”

  I know who he is. The world knows who he is.

  “Blair.” I take his hand.

  “I think I’m supposed to bow or something.”

  “Curtsying would be far more humorous.” I said that to a man once and he did.

  William laughs. “I’d probably fall over. More than likely I’d knock you over. Imagine what the press would say about that. ‘Prime Minister fells Scotland’s princess.’”

  Because he’s the new Prime Minister of England, recently chosen by his party to lead his country forward. Forward into what, no one knows.

  “You can keep your curtsy then.” I smile, the sweetly knowing smile my mother taught me when I was eight.

  He gives me a nod. “I hear you spent some time in Cuba. How did you find it?”

  He’s been briefed, just like every other statesman in the room. I’m not the heir to the throne, I have no influence, so unlike Lennox and my father, I don’t need to be wooed with impassioned speeches and quiet affiliations.

  “Cuba was beautiful.” Standard response. “The culture is superb.” And the men were talented in more than just dancing.

  “How long did you spend there?”

  He knows the answer to this.

  “Not long enough.” The nights in Havana had been cloaked in music and steam, the people not knowing who I was so I could be eaten by the crowds and meet a man who thought I was just another blonde on vacation, looking for an easy fuck.

  “You’d like to go back?”

  Tomorrow. But that isn’t in my diary, which is planned for the next eighteen months. Maybe longer.

  “Hopefully. I spent some time in the schools there. It would be nice to go back and see how the children I met are faring.”

  William smiles and nods. Asks more questions and I smile and nod back. He’s the youngest Prime Minister to lead England, not yet forty. He’s been linked with models, actresses, all very discreet of course, and well-chosen. A game of political chess.

  “How are you finding your new job?”

  His smile is genuine. Flustered. He pushes a hand through his hair.

  “It’s difficult.”

  My laugh is quiet and real. “Did you expect anything less?”

  He shakes his head. “No. I didn’t.” Then there is the smile that I know is rehearsed, one for the ladies and the men who prefer their partners with biceps and pecs.

  “How is being a princess?”

  I’ve been asked it more times than I could ever count and I still don’t know the answer. “My life.” My words barely audible over the call to head to the dinner. “I don’t know anything different.”

  He offers his arm for me to take, a gentlemanly act, fulfilling yet another role he has to take. It’s strange, in this time of technology and alleged equality that we fall back on the same manners that we had a thousand years before.

  I accept his arm and we stroll back down the corridor, discussing the mountains and vacations and Cuba. My sentences are strung with the experiences I was meant to have over there, the meetings with dignitaries, the sites, the visits, but my head reels with the memories of the night time, dancing in the shadows with a stranger who had no idea I wore a tarnished crown on my head.

  Behind us walks a dark-haired man I haven’t seen before. He’s tall, suited, his waistcoat the same dark grey as his suit and he isn’t wearing a tie. Instead his collar has a button undone.

  He’s quietly breaking convention.

  It’s been ingrained in me. Just as children learn their times tables or the days of the week, I’ve been taught to notice people. A lot can be said when there is silence. A lot can be heard in the intonation of someone’s voice. A lot can be seen in the way someone dresses, or sits, or breaks eye contact.

  My spirit animal had to be a chameleon, capable of blending in anywhere but always noticed. The man behind us was doing just that, but that open button told me all I needed to know right now. He had an agenda.

  “Did you grow up here?” The Prime Minister has been talking while I’ve been noticing the people around us. His focus has been solely on me, as if I’m the target here, which I might be.

  “Here and at Loch Lomond.” In the Trossachs. Surrounded by mountains and protected by the storms. “How about you? Are you a Londoner?”

  I knew he wasn’t.

  “Cambridge.”

  “The university too?” He is a graduate from there. As is his father, a previous Prime Minister, and his grandfather. All Cambridge graduates. Upper class, probably an old title somewhere stuffed in.

  “Just about.” His smile is almost nervous and I hear the dark-haired man behind us cough. William turns round, his expression fracturing. I’ve met several Prime Ministers, played with their children, dined with them in restaurants, sat next to my father while he’s discussed negotiations between our two countries. William is young to be one, in more than just age. “Are you okay?”

  The dark haired man nods, pausing as we reach the doorway to the banqueting hall. A string quartet plays. Staff stand discreetly around the walls of the room.

  “I’m fine.” His voice is low and deep and shivers saunter up my spine. “Enjoy your meal.” There’s no tinge to his voice, no alternate meaning. It’s a simple statement and I wonder who he is to make such, speaking words that aren’t loaded with the lust for power.

  I don’t ask William for his identity, because that would show a chink in my knowledge. Instead I smile and show him to his place, perpendicular to me, our secretary of state next to me, my brother to William’s right.

  Every place is planned meticulously by one of my father’s advisors and my mother, the women spread around carefully. There is the sound of a bell and someone stands, makes introductions, says the Selkirk Grace in Gaelic.

  Tha biadh aig cuid, 's gun aca càil;,

  acras aig cuid,'s gun aca biadh,

  ach againne tha
biadh is slàint',

  moladh mar sin a bhith don Triath.

  The Scots in the room stand and toast with their whiskies, a few more words of Gaelic thrown in. The English smile, some forced and I see the dark-haired man sitting back, his drink in his hand, probably untouched.

  He sees me looking and I don’t move my eyes. His stubble is thick, hair well styled and his eyes hold a gleam of interest. He raises his glass slightly towards me as a toast and nods before looking to the person to his left, Harris, the brain behind our education system.

  The meal begins, like clockwork. Entrees, soups, appetisers, wine. Our removed English cousins are courted with Scottish fayre. Oysters from the west, beef, salmon that has been smoked at the palace, everything locally sourced. All another sign that we don’t need England, yet Lennox talks about Cornish cream teas and Leicester cheese, our family’s outstretched hand.

  Throughout the dinner I feel eyes regarding me as I politely nod and smile and respond appropriately to what is said. William glances my way, offers me nervous smiles while he talks sport with my brother. And the dark haired stranger observes, an unreadable journal, padlocked. His eyes telling me nothing.

  “There was a security breach last night.” My father sits down with a coffee. We’re in our lounge in a wing of the palace that is the most home-like of the building. This is where we are normal, or whatever normal masquerades as. There are no staff, we cook and clean up for ourselves. As children, Lennox and I would be here without nannies or tutors and we would be our parents’ problems.

  But we are safe. Or at least we try to believe we are.

  “What was it?” My mother is reading a book, probably a romance. She barely looks up. Security breaches are nothing new.

  “A woman entered the perimeter.”

  She looks up now. Cyber-attacks occur on an almost hourly basis. Protestors are common. Intruders to the palace, given that it is surrounded by a mile of streams, forests and rough land, are uncommon.

  “A woman?”

  My father nods. “She was arrested. Not known to our intelligence.”

  “There were rumbles that Alba an-Asgaidh were planning something.” Lennox looks up from his computer.

  It’s unusual for us to all be together like this. Tomorrow Lennox will be in Edinburgh, then Glasgow, then Skye. My father leaves in the morning for America where he is looking at an agreement around our waters and fishing, something he’s passionate about and doesn’t want to delegate. Then they both head to London for more peace talks while my mother and I continue on our social circuit of wooing and courting. Making friends of enemies.

  “There are always rumours about Alba an-Asgaidh. Especially when you speak too highly of what could be with us and the South.” My father’s tone is cutting. Lennox’s allegiance with England is problematic and divisive. One day Lennox will be king and my father worries that he will roll over like a panting dog and submit to the South, to England, overturning the trade agreements and reuniting the countries with a bond that had been strangled years before.

  “It’s a party for terrorists. They’ll crawl back under their rocks in a couple of months when something else hits the headlines.” Lennox’s attention goes to his phone which has been vibrating.

  My mother sits up, her hair loose and messy, off-duty. “When does Ben start?”

  I stand up and head to the window, uninterested. Security is something I try to ignore, like a mild allergic reaction. I see the sky and the mountains, the same scene I’ve grown up with.

  “This week.” My father quietens. They’re communicating without words. “We should assign him to Blair.”

  I turn around. “Who?”

  “Ben. Do you remember him?” My mother smiles and it’s warm, the smile when her eyes crinkle at the sides. “He was here every summer with his father, Leonard. He’s been in the army and now he’s coming back here as security. Ben Smith. The blonde boy. A couple of years older than you.”

  I remembered Ben Smith. I remember his lanky legs while we ran around the gardens, his teasing words, his laugh. I remember his hands and his mouth.

  Benjamin Smith.

  I remember everything.

  Chapter Two

  “It’s a possibility.”

  The horses have slowed to a trot, seemingly aware that it’s nearing lunch time and we and they want to eat. The sun is high, shrouded in thin white clouds and it’s easy to forget that it’s the beginning of summer.

  Lennox slips off his mount, a chestnut stallion nicknamed Gunnar, and stretches out his legs. We’ve been riding for miles, the three of us, choosing to escape the palace at nine this morning, mainly because Lennox wants to avoid our father after the furore he’s caused.

  “Now isn’t the right time for your possibilities.” I’m scolding even though Elise is there, although it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. “You aren’t king. Not yet.” Not for years, or so I hope. Lennox being king would mean that our father had died or was too ill to reign.

  He offers Elise a hand to the ground. She grew up on horses, spending more of her time at the stables than me when she visited in the school holidays and she’s more than capable of getting down but I know he wants to touch her. Pretty Elise with her big eyes and perfect breasts. Lennox is a fool for a pair of tits, especially if they come with a woman who looks at him like he’s god, just as Elise is doing now.

  I shake my head, feeling seventeen again, the age I was the first time he fucked her. My brother isn’t subtle. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word and he wears his soft beating heart on his sleeve with no fear of it being stabbed.

  “I get where you’re coming from…”

  “We need to stop all the shit between us and the South,” he interrupts me and I listen to the wind.

  This is nothing I haven’t heard before. Unfortunately, my father has heard it too and he doesn’t share the same ideas. They both want peace, a trade and movement of people agreement between us and the South, but through different means.

  “William’s a decent man. He’s open to suggestions.” Lennox shrugs, looks at the sky. An eagle flies above, looking for dinner.

  “How was he elected?” There had been no General Election. He’d been chosen by his peers after the previous leader of the ruling party had fallen to a vote of no confidence.

  Lennox looks at me, as if he’s never truly seen me before.

  “I am interested in these things.”

  “But you don’t need to be. And if you don’t need to, then why?”

  Elise is saying nothing, just unpacking the lunch we’ve brought with us, sipping at her hip flask.

  “Because I sit at those state dinners too. I answer questions. I pretend to know nothing when it suits me, Len. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an interest or want to know more. William seemed a bit, I don’t know, out of his depth?”

  Lennox’s face clouds. “He’s young. The youngest PM there’s been. But he’s still seven years older than me.”

  I know Lennox will probably be king before he’s forty. I know our father’s health isn’t good. There are consultants involved, a surgeon, scans. But he says nothing to anyone.

  “But you’ve been brought up to do this job.”

  He gives one firm nod and looks to the mountains. “So’s William. His father.”

  I look to the ground.

  “Doesn’t mean you’re the right person for the job.”

  Lennox’s head swings towards me. “Did you ever want it?”

  He’s never asked me this before. Even when he’s been blind drunk and asking me advice about women, told me too much information about whisky dick and Elise’s tits, he’s never asked me if I’d want to be queen.

  “I’ve never had to think about whether I’d want it or not. The crown’s not mine. Someone else will be queen after mother. Not me.”

  I see Elise’s eyes fix on Lennox as I say the words and I feel the rage bubble inside me, a poisoned cauldron stirred. She wants more than just m
y brother’s crown jewels.

  We eat. Drink. Tend the horses.

  For moments, an hour, we are normal young adults, sitting in a heathered field in summer under a veiled sun. We talk about sport, food, a new restaurant, a marriage, divorce, a birth.

  “Do you remember Ben?” Lennox says. He’s drank too much of whatever’s in his hip flask, but his horse is good and won’t mind. It’s rare my brother is able to be off duty. “He was round a lot when we were kids. I used to play football with him.”

  I remembered Ben.

  “A bit. He was more your friend than mine.” Liar.

  “I remember him. He was tall and blonde.” Elise giggles like she did when she was fifteen and saw a workman with no top on.

  Crows fly over us. Cawing.

  “He helped his dad in the gardens.” It was a fact.

  Lennox stretches out, lazing over Elise’s legs. I’ll ride home alone and leave them to enjoy al fresco sex with the midges and Scottish sun.

  “I remember you spent loads of time with him.” Lennox pulls a long stalk of grass and chews it. “Especially one summer.”

  The summer when Elise stayed and was more about my brother than me. The summer I first kissed a boy and learned that shadows were for more than than just spying from. The summer I discovered what my body could do and how my mind was key to a whole new world.

  “It was a long time ago. I wonder what he’s like now?”

  I can see them itching to touch each other, her fingers stretching towards him, trying not to feel. It’s as if she’s fingering his aura, touching the yellow light that flickers from him, her inky blue turning him green. I see in colours, shades. My head is an artist’s palette.

  “He’s been in the army,” Lennox says, shifting, not away from her, just shifting. “He’ll be bigger. Taller. How long is it since he left?”

  It’s eleven years.

  “I’m not sure. I think he was about twenty.” He was twenty. I remembered his birthday. I stayed in my room that day, in my tower. My hair did not fall from the window for him to climb.