I wasn’t going to be anyone’s damned toy anymore. Never again.
Fortunately, for all Andrew’s attempts to get in touch, I found it relatively easy to keep away from him simply because I was very busy. All the servants were busy right now, preparing for an upcoming state dinner, which would mean multiple, high-profile guests staying at the Castle. It was a somewhat double-edged sword for me, as the preparations kept me occupied and allowed me to avoid Andrew, but the Friday dinner was a reception for the visiting Princess of Sweden, and the weekend would climax with the announcement of her engagement to Prince Andrew.
This wasn’t public knowledge yet, but talk of it was all around the servants. I hated to admit how much the thought upset me, and I’d taken a real dislike to this Swedish princess even though I’d never even met her. Along with the rest of the staff, I’d spent an afternoon receiving detailed instructions on how to greet the princess and treat her with the proper respect due to visiting royalty, but lord, I didn’t want to.
The days passed. Each night I returned to the new apartment where I was now staying (apartments were made available to royal staff, close to whichever of the royal residences they were working at), kicked off my shoes, and told myself that all of this was going to get easier, and that I would stop missing Andrew eventually. The only thing that seemed initially different about this particular night was that I was irritated to discover that I’d left the living room light on, which was strange because I wasn’t sure I’d even turned it on at all earlier this morning.
I’d just closed the door and gone through my usual ritual of kicking off my shoes and slumping into a chair when a voice came from behind me, in the direction of the kitchen.
“Don’t be alarmed.”
No one in history who’s said the words ‘don’t be alarmed’ has been met by anything other than an alarmed person. If you were in a position to say ‘don’t be alarmed’, then the person to whom you were saying it would inevitably be freaked out because it instantly implied that there was definitely something to be alarmed about, and the person saying it would rather you didn’t scream. Honestly, there are no scarier three words in the English language.
My reaction was typical and entirely appropriate; I yelped in terror and jumped, simultaneously out of my seat and my skin.
“I did say ‘don’t be alarmed’,” Andrew said as he emerged from the kitchen.
“So what? Those are probably the last words heard by the victims of every serial killer! What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”
Of course, technically, the apartment was owned by the royal family and so arguably it was more Andrew’s apartment than mine, but right now that didn’t seem to matter, and Andrew certainly wasn’t about to open it up for debate.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “You wouldn’t answer my calls or my texts and I get the feeling you’re avoiding me at the castle.”
“So the next logical step was breaking and entering?”
Andrew stopped to consider this. “I suppose ‘logical’ might be stretching it a bit, but I didn’t feel like I had any choice—you wouldn’t speak to me.”
“And you couldn’t have just taken the hint?”
“I wanted to speak to you.”
“Oh, I see,” I snapped sarcastically. “His mighty Majesty…”
“Highness.”
“Oh, shut up. His nit-picking Highness Prince Andrew wants to speak to me, and god forbid my feelings on the matter. I’m just a servant after all; I don’t deserve privacy or to have my desires matter at all!”
“It’s not like that,” Andrew said, his eyes darkening.
“In what way is it not like that?”
His face indicated that he was trying to come up with some explanation for his actions that didn’t seem wildly selfish and was really struggling to do it.
“Look,” he finally said, “maybe I am taking advantage of my position a bit by using the master key to get into your apartment. But it seemed the only way to get you to listen to my side of this and…well, if you don’t take advantage of your position when it will do you some good, then what’s the point of having it in the first place? I just want you to hear my side.”
I put my hands on my hips and gave him a defiant glare. “I don’t want to hear your side of the story. I already heard it, and I told you, I think it’s a load of crap. Alexandra is still coming to visit from Sweden, and I hear your mother is still keen on an engagement announcement.”
“Well, I’m not leaving until you hear my side of the story again,” he replied. “Or until you call the police.”