as a business transaction. There’s no passion, no drama. Alex’s kind of love story is much more Shakespearean.
It feels like years before he’s settled at a table between June and Nora inside a Buckingham Palace ballroom for the reception banquet, and he’s irritated enough to be a little reckless. Nora passes him a flute of champagne, and he takes it gladly.
“Do either of y’all know what a viscount is?” June is saying, halfway through a cucumber sandwich. “I’ve met, like, five of them, and I keep smiling politely as if I know what it means when they say it. Alex, you took comparative international governmental relational things. Whatever. What are they?”
“I think it’s that thing when a vampire creates an army of crazed sex waifs and starts his own ruling body,” he says.
“That sounds right,” Nora says. She’s folding her napkin into a complicated shape on the table, her shiny black manicure glinting in the chandelier light.
“I wish I were a viscount,” June says. “I could have my sex waifs deal with my emails.”
“Are sex waifs good with professional correspondence?” Alex asks.
Nora’s napkin has begun to resemble a bird. “I think it could be an interesting approach. Their emails would be all tragic and wanton.” She tries on a breathless, husky voice. “‘Oh, please, I beg you, take me—take me to lunch to discuss fabric samples, you beast!’”
“Could be weirdly effective,” Alex notes.
“Something is wrong with both of you,” June says gently.
Alex is opening his mouth to retort when a royal attendant materializes at their table like a dense and dour-looking ghost in a bad hairpiece.
“Miss Claremont-Diaz,” says the man, who looks like his name is probably Reginald or Bartholomew or something. He bows, and miraculously his hairpiece doesn’t fall off into June’s plate. Alex shares an incredulous glance with her behind his back. “His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of accompanying him for a dance.”
June’s mouth freezes halfway open, caught on a soft vowel sound, and Nora breaks out into a shit-eating grin.
“Oh, she’d love to,” Nora volunteers. “She’s been hoping he’d ask all evening.”
“I—” June starts and stops, her mouth smiling even as her eyes slice at Nora. “Of course. That would be lovely.”
“Excellent,” Reginald-Bartholomew says, and he turns and gestures over his shoulder.
And there Henry is, in the flesh, as classically handsome as ever in his tailored three-piece suit, all tousled sandy hair and high cheekbones and a soft, friendly mouth. He holds himself with innately impeccable posture, as if he emerged fully formed and upright out of some beautiful Buckingham Palace posy garden one day.
His eyes lock on Alex’s, and something like annoyance or adrenaline spikes in Alex’s chest. He hasn’t had a conversation with Henry in probably a year. His face is still infuriatingly symmetrical.
Henry deigns to give him a perfunctory nod, as if he’s any other random guest, not the person he beat to a Vogue editorial debut in their teens. Alex blinks, seethes, and watches Henry angle his stupid chiseled jaw toward June.
“Hello, June,” Henry says, and he extends a gentlemanly hand to June, who is now blushing. Nora pretends to swoon. “Do you know how to waltz?”
“I’m … sure I could pick it up,” she says, and she takes his hand cautiously, like she thinks he might be pranking her, which Alex thinks is way too generous to Henry’s sense of humor. Henry leads her off to the crowd of twirling nobles.
“So is that what’s happening now?” Alex says, glaring down at Nora’s napkin bird. “Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?”
“Aw, little buddy,” Nora says. She reaches over and pats his hand. “It’s cute how you think everything is about you.”
“It should be, honestly.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He glances up into the crowd, where June is being rotated around the floor by Henry. She’s got a neutral, polite smile on her face, and he keeps looking over her shoulder, which is even more annoying. June is amazing. The least Henry could do is pay attention to her.
“Do you think he actually likes her, though?”
Nora shrugs. “Who knows? Royals are weird. Might be a courtesy, or—oh, there it is.”
A royal photographer has swooped in and is snapping a shot of them dancing, one Alex knows will be leaked to Hello next week. So, that’s it, then? Using the First Daughter to start some idiotic dating rumor for attention? God forbid Philip gets to dominate the news cycle for one week.
“He’s kind of