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He, like Alexander and Kit, is also wearing a tuxedo, but his is still done up properly, and nothing about him is infused with Christmas cheer. To my dismay, he follows his mother inside my sitting room, and as his gaze slides to me, I instantly look away and suppress a shiver. Of all the brash and shameless things he’s done in the past, showing his face tonight is a step too far, even for him.
“Oh, Evangeline,” says Venetia, bending down to kiss my cheeks. “We’re so relieved you’re all right. I can’t tell you how worried I was—my own niece, nearly killed on Christmas Eve!”
Hearing her call me her niece almost makes me choke, but she shoves the gift into my hand and I busy myself with carefully undoing the sharply folded corners. I can tell it’s a book at first touch, but when I finally get it open, I’m not prepared to see a younger Venetia staring up at me from the cover.
Royally Ever After: Tips and Tricks from the Duchess of York
“It’s my third book,” she says proudly. “I wrote it almost ten years ago, but the monarchy never changes, and it all still applies. It’s about joining the royal family,” she adds at what must be my blank stare. “It’s meant for girls looking to marry into it, of course, but it’s an excellent reference for you, too.”
“Wow,” I say, hoping this doesn’t sound as hollow as I think it might. “This is…great. Thank you.”
Venetia beams, and she takes my hands—including the one in the sling. “We’re just so happy you’re all right,” she says again, this time with tears in her eyes. “We were so worried, darling.”
Worried enough to cry on the shoulders of a Daily Sun journalist, but I don’t say that. Instead, I let her kiss my cheeks again without complaint, but once she steps aside, Ben’s there, and my expression drops.
Across the sitting room, Alexander tenses, and Kit shifts forward on the love seat, prepared to leap to his feet if need be. And while I’m grateful for both of them, I look straight at Ben now, refusing to offer him even a hint of goodwill.
“I’m relieved to see you up and about,” he says with an amiable smile. “It seemed like it was touch and go there for a while.”
“I’m not that easy to kill,” I say in as neutral a voice as I can muster. There’s still an edge of hatred to it, though, but Ben’s smile doesn’t falter.
“Lucky us,” he says, and to my disgust, he leans in to brush his lips against my cheek. At his touch, I stay perfectly still, feeling like I’ve plunged into a tank of ice.
“You missed,” I whisper in his ear.
“I never miss,” he breathes, and when he straightens, there’s a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Here—I thought you’d like a reminder of how far you’ve come.”
He offers me a shallow golden box tied with red ribbon, and when I refuse to take it, he sets it in my lap instead. We stare at each other for a painfully long moment, but at last Ben slips his arm into his mother’s.
“We ought to get back to the party and let them enjoy the rest of their night,” he says, and we finally agree on something.
“Of course,” says Venetia as he leads her to the exit. “Happy Christmas, all!”
None of us says a word until Ben closes the door behind him, and only then do we all let out a collective exhale. “What did he give you?” says Maisie with an eager glint she can’t hide as she kneels on the carpet beside the sofa.
“You can have it, whatever it is,” I say, and my father clears his throat.
“Evan, I know you don’t trust him, and I certainly don’t blame you. But I truly believe he isn’t responsible for this particular incident.”
“It’s hardly the first time someone’s tried to have a go at one of us,” says Maisie as she snatches up Ben’s gift and starts to unwrap it. “Daddy, didn’t a woman try to stab you on a walkabout once?”
“Mm, a few years after you and your sister were born,” he says. “Your grandfather was shot at twice in the nineties.”
“And Mummy was attacked when she was pregnant with me—broke her nose and everything,” says Maisie, tossing the ribbon aside. “See? It happens.”
“It won’t happen again,” says Alexander darkly. “I’ve already spoken to Victor Stephens, our head of security, and—”
“A photo album?”
We all look at Maisie now, who’s staring into the box. She pulls out a red leather-bound book, and when she turns to the first page, I spot my face peering back.
It’s one of the few photos the public has of me as a kid, from my third boarding school yearbook. I have uneven bangs, a zit on my chin, and I’m scowling at the camera, but Ben has blown it up so large that it takes up nearly the entire page. Confused, I reach forward to flip to another, and this time I’m looking at several pictures from a royal garden party held at Buckingham Palace this summer. But they aren’t the official photos released on social media. These were taken by someone else, and I’m the focus of them all.
“Odd,” says Maisie, seemingly bored of it already as she checks out one more page—which is full of more candid pictures of me at various appearances over the past month, including the one where Thaddeus Park is catching me in his arms. She eyes the photos for another beat before shutting the album with a satisfying snap, and she sets it on my lap again before turning back to her mulled wine. “The pictures aren’t exactly flattering, are they? Ben may be a monster, but there’s simply no excuse for immortalizing paparazzi dreck.”
As she segues into a tirade about the terrible angles some of the Royal Rota have been using on her lately, I pick up the album, determined to hide it under the sofa until I can throw it in a dumpster myself. Something on the cover shimmers in the twinkling Christmas lights, however, and as I squint, I spot two lines of gold lettering embedded in the leather.
Evangeline Florence Phillipa Constance Bright
