Royally Fake Fiancé

Chapter 1-2

If I ever become king, I will not enjoy moving into the palace. But I will do it. It would be my duty.

“How are you feeling?” I ask the queen. She looks paler than normal. Morning sickness?

“Fine,” she sighs and flicks her hand. “Much to my doctors’ surprise.”

“Yes, well…” I shift in my chair, searching for a way to approach the subject delicately.

“Just say it.” The queen raises her chin. She didn’t miss how closely I was studying her. “I’m too old. Everybody knows it.”

“Forty-five is hardly ancient,” I protest and she snorts.

“I may as well be. Pregnant. After all these years?” She shakes her head with mild disapproval, as if her pregnancy is an unruly diplomat who’s arrived ten minutes late to an audience, unforgivably tardy.

She leans forward and pushes a red folder across the low table towards me. “It’s a high risk pregnancy, of course. My age is enough to make it so. But also…” She nods to the folder and I open it to see for myself.

A large, black and white ultrasound shot greets me. I flip past it to a page of three smaller ultrasound pictures, labeled ‘Baby 1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’.

“Triplets,” I breathe.

“Indeed.” The queen rises and when I rise with her, she waves me down. She paces to the giant floor-to-ceiling windows framed with waterfalls of royal blue curtains. “I’ll be lucky if I’m not put on bedrest before the month is out. The press release is scheduled for the Midsummer Ball.”

I calculate the time in my head. “That’s a week away.”

“Yes. And a week from then, I will name my official heir.”

I shift my weight in the chair and it creaks. I abandon all attempts to sit comfortably. “Why now?”

“You know why,” she says impatiently. For a moment, she is not the queen. She is my aunt, quizzing me after my lessons.

Of course I know why. She is forty-five, and pregnant for the first time, with triplets. As healthy as she is, with the best medical care in the world, it’s still considered a high risk pregnancy. As soon as the news breaks, the whole country will be wondering whether their queen will survive.

“I know why,” I say. “But you haven’t officially secured succession all these years. To do so now would be—”

“A vote of no confidence?” Her voice is drier than the Sahara. “In the face of my own mortality, it doesn’t matter. We are Lyonnesse. We do our duty.”

I straighten. She’s right. The Lyonnesse line has done their duty, ruling for five hundred years.

The window’s light halos her as she turns to face me. “If something happens to me before…” she takes a deep breath, “before the birth, the country will need a steady hand. As the eldest son of my deceased sister, you stand in line for the throne.”

I tilt my chin. I am aware. We’ve had many conversations to this effect, in this very room.

“I have not formally acknowledged you as heir, for reasons you know. The public has accepted this, but in light of the news of my pregnancy, they will expect a formal announcement. And I will make it. A week after Midsummer.”

I swallow. “I would be honored to serve—”

“It will be either you, or your brother.”

I sag back in the chair like I’ve been struck. “My brother?” My usual reserve is gone as I reel from the shock.

“Indeed.” The queen is watching me with something like pity in her brown eyes.

“But why?” I’ve been groomed for this moment since my mother died. I’ve gone to the best schools, gotten the best grades, worked the best internships. I endured years of thankless work, interning at each Ministry before accepting my dream job at the Ministry of Finance. There isn’t a junior government official who doesn’t know me by sight, if not by name, and not because I appear regularly in the tabloids. I do not.

Unlike my brother.

“My career and service have been exemplary.” Understatement. I didn’t just accept success as my due, I worked for it. I never partied, never caused a scandal, never stepped one toe out of line. I’ve been perfect.

“I know. If it were entirely up to me…” My aunt doesn’t shrug—queens don’t shrug—but her jaw tightens as if she’s holding back what she really wants to say.

“Isn’t it? Up to you?”

The queen doesn’t answer my question. I knew my enemies wanted to get their hooks into her, but I had no idea they had succeeded. “Benedict, there’s a very high chance it will be you. But you can’t afford any mistakes. Not now. Not with everyone watching.”

“But Franz—”

“Your brother is wild, to be sure.”

“Wild?” Another understatement. “He organized a regatta down the Regin river, on the night of your Silver Jubilee. All his crew friends in their fathers’ yachts.”

The queen closes her eyes, her lips pressed together. “I remember.”

“It caught fire. And that wasn’t even one of his more destructive parties.”

“He’s straightened up since then. His military superiors report he’s taken to discipline.”

“And every time he goes on leave, he ends up in the tabloids.” I snort.

“You know how they are.”

They being the press. The paparazzi. Hungry, vicious sharks. “Yes, I do. And I may have a certain strike against me, but Franz is a complete wastrel.”

“The strike in question, dear nephew, isn’t a small matter. If it got out, it would be the scandal that would eclipse all other scandals.” The queen settles into a chair closer to me. In a rare gesture, she covers my hand with hers. “We’ve worked hard to come to this day.”

“I am ready to serve.”

“I know. And I will do everything in my power to be sure it will be you.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I haven’t done everything perfectly, only to have it all snatched away now.

My aunt purses her lips. This is what she’s been unhappy about. “Yes. There is one matter.” She nods to the second folder on the table before her.

I lean in and take it, opening it to reveal half-blurred photos. Not ultrasounds, not this time. These pictures are of me and a woman.

A naked woman.

Few details are clear—the photo was taken from far away, from a building opposite the hotel room. But one shot perfectly captures my face, and the fact that I’m holding a brunette. She’s naked and pressed against me.

“The press forwarded these to my office before dawn. I called you here early to warn you.”

I suck in a breath. “I can explain—”

The queen waves a hand. “I know you abhor the limelight. As much as your mother thrived in it. I, too, have shunned it. It is what a good ruler does.”

My stomach is roiling, but I maintain a level tone. “Can you stop these photos from running?”

“It’s too late. The first printing is already done. I’m sure it’s hit the streets by now.” The queen shudders delicately. “I can only imagine what they’re speculating. And Benedict,” she gives me her gimlet stare, “we can’t afford for them to speculate.”

“I know,” I murmur. “I know.” Everything I’ve worked for. Everything I’ve fought to rise above. One instance, one accident of fate, and it’s all ruined. Everything.

I realize I’m gripping the edge of one photo too hard, and force my fingers to straighten. I place the pictures back in the folder, refusing to crumple them like I want to. “I’ll fix it.”

The queen’s shoulders relax the slightest bit. She’s worried. The pregnancy, the threat of scandal, crowning a new leader the people can trust—each is an added layer of stress. I can’t do anything about the first, but I can shoulder the rest.

“I’ll fix it,” I repeat. A Lyonnesse does his duty.

The queen gives a regal nod. “See that you do.”

“It was an accident,” I tell Daniel, head of my PR team, as I stride out of the palace with my phone pressed to my ear.

“Of course it was. The Duke of New Arcadia, caught with a lady of the night? It’s not your MO.”

I duck into my waiting car and direct my driver to take me home. Then I roll up the privacy window so I can speak freely.

“She wasn’t a lady of the night.” I grit my teeth before I admit the next part. “She was Wyndam Bennett.”

“Winnie Bennett?” Daniel chokes. “Heir to the Bennett Hotel chain? Reality TV star and B movie actress?”

I force my jaw to unclench. “The same. I didn’t know she was in a movie.”

A snort. “She’s the lead in at least two leaked s*x tapes. I’ve seen one. I’d rate it a B.” Daniel sounds thoughtful, but he often uses a smooth, soothing tone to deliver sarcasm. “Isn’t she in rehab?”

“She was. She left. She’s back now.”

“Why am I only now hearing about this?” Daniel demands.

“I handled it.”

“Clearly.” More sarcasm. I can hear papers flipping as he looks through printouts of the paparazzi pictures I forwarded to him.

“She was drunk, or on something,” I say. “Probably both. It was an accident. She saw me enter my hotel room, and stumbled in after me. The camera person must have been watching through the window.” I grimace. “Trying to catch me at something.”

“And it paid off. For once.”

“Quite.” My tone is cold enough to freeze a finger off. “Daniel, I can’t afford for them to go digging.”

Daniel knows my secret. As head of PR, his main job is to keep it buried. “We need to control the narrative,” he says.

“We could tell the truth.”

“That’s the last thing we want to do. The Crown Prince of New Arcadia, shacking up with the country’s top tabloid darling? While she was drunk and/or strung out?”

“We weren’t shacking up.”

“Says you. What will Winnie Bennett say?”

I groan.

“Exactly,” Daniel says. “We can’t ask. She’ll spin it the way she wants it. And she wants to be the reigning star of Page Six. Dating you would get her everything she wants.”

I groan again.

“You’re lucky her face isn’t in these pictures. Does anyone else know it was her?”

“I don’t think so.” I try to remember the details of that nightmarish night. “I bundled her back to her room as quickly as I could. I used her phone to call her father, who sent a car. The next day, he called my private line to thank me for my discretion and tell me Winnie had been checked back into rehab.”

“Where she will hopefully stay for the next two weeks. Excellent. With your permission, I’ll call Daddy Bennett and make sure the family stays quiet. And then it’ll be up to us to spin the story.” I can hear Daniel rubbing his hands together. Sometimes I wonder if he would prefer me to lead a more interesting social life. If that’s the case, he’d be better off managing PR for Franz, my younger brother.

“And how, pray tell, do we spin this?” I ask.

“I should think it would be obvious.”

“Is it?” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Of course.” Daniel’s breezy tone tells me I’m not going to like his solution. “You find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her.”

My head is still ringing with Daniel’s advice when I reach home. Find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her. Before Midsummer.

I can only imagine the casting call. Leggy brunette wanted. Body type to match nude photos already dispersed by the press. Must be willing to sign an extensive pre-nup.

“It’ll work perfectly,” Daniel insisted. “At least we don’t have to match a certain shoe size.” He laughed at his own quip.

I ended the call to keep from shouting at him.

My driver deposits me on my front stoop. My home is modest-sized—barely ten thousand square feet. Classic architecture with the interiors decorated in a modern style, just the way I like it. I head to my kitchen, make my usual breakfast smoothie on autopilot, and pour it into a mug so I can carry it outside.

Find a woman who looks exactly like Winnie Bennett, and marry her.

Daniel is brilliant at PR—most of the time—but there is no way this sort of elaborate farce will work. I’m better off declaring a one night stand with Winnie Bennett, complete with garish s*x toys and a drug buffet.

It’s a glorious summer day. Perfect weather for me to stare into my garden and contemplate my fate. Birdsong greets me as I slide open the door and step onto my deck.

I’m about to take a sip of my smoothie when a grey blur whizzes by my head. Before I can react, a sultry-eyed woman rises from my deck stairs like a dark-haired version of ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli.

Like Botticelli’s Venus, she is naked. Utterly and completely naked.

Unlike Botticelli’s Venus, she is not serenely rising from the ocean. She flies across my deck, shrieking, “Don’t let him out!” and runs straight past me… into my home.