Eight: Prince Henry
2339 Words
Eight
Prince Henry
I had spent an entire day at a children’s hospital event. Days like that were long, and grueling, as I’d been in the cancer wing. But it was a necessary part of the job as royal appearances brought attention to causes and raised money for charities as well as gave them much needed press coverage.
All I wanted to do was to pass out in my bed, but the door to my room burst open. In swept Cecelia Porter, with her cell phone in hand that she shoved in my face. “I am going to kill both of them.”
My face was still buried in my pillow and I tried to ignore her. “Who?” it came out muffled.
“Look, why don’t you.”
Sighing, I forced myself to look up at her cellphone. On the screen was Princess Delilah’s twitter, along with a black and white picture of Cecelia and Marlowe learning to waltz in the ballroom. The tweet read: Watching my baby sister learn to waltz with @hrhpmarloweofficial #teammarcelia for the win.
I sat up suddenly, annoyed at the tweet when only a few days ago Delilah had been rooting for me to be with Cecelia. I wondered what had happened for her support to suddenly switch to Marlowe. I grabbed the phone from her. “What the bloody hell?”
Cecelia put her hands on her hips, and stared down at me with a knowing look. “My sister has suddenly become champion of the good ship team marcelia. Everyone’s trying to marry me off, and I’m only sixteen. I don’t want to be a royal! Can’t she see that?”
“Well, I think that it’s Marlowe you’ve got to convince of that, not her,” I said, trying hard not to act bitter. I had a girlfriend. One that I loved, at that. And I shouldn’t have even been paying any attention to Cecelia But I couldn’t help it. Her and Delilah had this light about her that I didn’t understand, and that I felt that I needed in my life.
She got on the bed next to me in the empty space. I rolled over, and handed my cell phone back to her. “Everyone’s already decided my future,” she said with a scowl.
“You know all things considered, there are worse things than being the first pick to marry a Prince,” I reminded her.
“Such as?” she asked.
“I mean, you could be Joe Goldbergs love interest,” I said.
She laughed out loud and it was such a delicious, musical sound. “I’m sixteen. I don’t even know who I am. I should be out there making mistakes, breaking hearts, and I don’t know…not being courted by a Prince.”
“Well Jude---”
“Not Jude,” she said, “maybe I don’t even want a boyfriend. Maybe I just want to be alone, and live in a beach house, and have a cat for the rest of my life.”
“That is a perfectly valid option,” I told her, “however…”
“However what?” she glared at me, and I was almost afraid to say what I was going to say next.
“I think you’re a romantic.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, still holding her phone. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“Because,” I said, “there’s a very easy way out of this. Without having a rock star and a Prince fighting after you.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, still looking glum.
“Well, it has to do with that device right there on your phone. All you have to do is issue a statement, saying that you and Marlowe are nothing more then family, and that will put an end to it right there. People might still ship you, but my god, there were people shipping me with Delilah when she first got engaged to Derek because I put my hand on her shoulder at an event.”
Cecelia made a face. “God, I remember that. She ranted about it for a week. It seems petty. I shouldn’t…I mean…. there’s more important things I could be focusing on. For gods sake, Wales is in the middle of a war! With Coleum, the people that attacked us.”
“Yes, but this is affecting your life right now,” I said, “and if it makes you feel at ease there’s an easy solution…unless, of course, you don’t want to. Because you’re a romantic, and you actually like the idea of a Prince chasing after you.”
She glared at me. The thing about the Porter girls was, they did not give one, flying f**k if you were royal or not. That was why I so completely respected her and her sister.
Sighing, she took her phone and swiped away from the twitter page. “I am not giving into him,” she said decidely.
“Right, of course not.”
“In fact, I’m going to date someone else, just to prove I am not into him,” she said.
“But Gran has to approve the match,” I reminded her, “who are you going to find that the Queen will improve that’s better than my cousin?”
She grinned. “Well, that’s where you come in.”
“I’m taken,” I said. Although I almost didn’t. I almost said to hell with it, and kissed her.
Cecelia laughed, and shook her head. “No. That’s not what I’m talking about. I realize that you’re very, happily together with Vivian. But what I’m talking about is you can set me up with someone that the Queen would approve of.”
I groaned. “Marlowe scares me though. He’s so broody.”
“Well, he doesn’t scare me,” she said, “surely you have to know someone.”
I sighed. “I might know someone who the Queen likes, who would be acceptable to her for you to date.”
She smirked. “Who is it?”
“Marlowe hates him. There might be an actual brawl, you know.”
“Just tell me who it is.”
“Well, you know that we’ve got cousins in the French court, right?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Well one of them---Victor----goes to our school. He spends most of his time here, because my aunt married his father. Our countries have a history of fighting, so he gets sent here to help ensure the peace. If she thought that she might have a chance at marrying you off to him, she would definitely allow him to date you instead of supporting Marlowe.”
Cecelia grinned. “Victor? Do you have pictures?”
I pulled out my cell phone from my pocket, and I showed her a picture of the two of us at the clubs back in May. Prince Victor had short, blond hair, high cheek bones, full lips and gray eyes. When she saw him, Cecelia had the reaction that most people had to my cousin.
She blushed. “Oh, he’s----”
“Attractive, yes, I’m aware,” I said, “but if I do this for you, you have to tell Marlowe that you absolutely, completely, are not interested. Or at the very least, post a tweet or an i********: story.”
“Okay, alright,” she groaned, “fine.”
“Easy does it,” I told her, “but maybe you shouldn’t do it in my room. Wouldn’t want to make things weirder.”
“Right,” she said, “right.”
“Come on,” I said, “we’ll go find a place to film it.”
We got up off of the bed, and the two of us left my room.
“I know the right place to do this,” she said.
“What’s the right place?” I asked.
We walked up to the third floor of the palace, where there was a painting of King Edward the Sixth’s wife, Queen Marcella. She was a dark haired woman with high cheek bones, and full lips. She was most known for dying of a broken heart and a secret love affair with an artist that no one knew the identity of.
Cecelia held her cell phone up and spoke into the camera. “Hello, everyone. I realize that there’s been a lot of speculation about what’s been going on with me since I moved into the royal household. For the record, I would like to say that Prince Henry, Prince Marlowe, and I are all dear friends and I do think of them as family. Prince Henry himself has a lovely girlfriend, and Prince Marlowe is someone I respect, but simply as a dear friend. I think of him like a cousin, and I would very much appreciate if the press and the rest of the world would stop speculating about the nature of our relationship. Thank you and have a good day.”
She ended the story, and then turned around to stare at the portrait that was behind her. For a second, she was quiet. Then, I realized that she was clutching herself tightly and sobbing uncontrollably. I walked over, and I rubbed her back.
“Are you alright?” I said. “Cee---”
She looked up, and she wiped the tears away from her eyes. “Please don’t…don’t say anything.”
“It doesn’t have to be this hard, you know. If you’re in love with him---”
She shook her head. “I’m sixteen years-old. I just lost parents. I can’t….I can’t be in love, and I can’t be happy right now.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Don’t you think that they would want you to be?”
“They’re not here,” she sobbed, “they’re not here, and they’re never going to be here again. And I….I appreciate everything that this life has given me, but it wasn’t supposed to be mine, Henry. I love my sister dearly, and I’m so pleased that she’s in love, and married, and happy. But….I was supposed to have my own world, and it was never supposed to involve me in love with him, and I feel like if I love him, or this world that I’m….that I’m….”
She couldn’t get the words out.
I rubbed her back, and I pulled her close to me, wrapping her in a hug. “You can love this world, you know,” I said, “it doesn’t mean that you love them any less. And if you love him---”
She wiped her tears from her face. “I can’t love him, Henry. I can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“If I love him, I give up myself. My world. I give up where I came from. I’m not ready to do it. Not yet. Because if I give that up right now, I might just break myself and never be able to be put together again. And I won’t do that for anyone, least of all him.”
“Alright,” I said softly, “alright. I’ll call Victor tonight, hmmm? But I warn you…you might just be begging to get pricked by Tudor thorns.”
“Please,” she begged, “I just need…I need time.”
‘How much time?” I asked.
“As much as you can get,” she said.
I sighed, and ran a hand through my red hair. “Alright. I’ll go call him, and if everything gets approved, you should have a fake boyfriend by the first garden party of the season.”
Cecelia rested her head against my chest. “Thank you. Thank you, Henry.”
“Of course,” I said, and I rubbed her shoulders gently, hoping to help calm her down a bit.
She was a bird, trapped in a gilded cage. On the one hand, she had so much room to fly. On another hand, there were restrictions on where she could go and what she could do.
“Come on,” I said, “how do you feel about some centuries old scotch to calm your nerves?”
“I like the sound of that,” she said, smiling a bit for a change.
“Right, then let’s go steal some of the royal stores.”
She pocketed her cell phone, and the two of us went to the cellars. I had everything in the world, and yet the only thing I could do to help make her feel better was to make her a drink. It was better than nothing, I supposed. And the least I could do as she felt herself crumbling.
I couldn’t be the one to put her together. But I could help hold her up a little.
- Writer
