if it came with you. I don’t get Freddie because of you.” She clenched and unclenched her fists. “You are not the only person your relationship happened to. We all had to rewrite our lives. I had to change how I acted, who I dated, what I wore to work.”
“I can’t help what Nick’s family is,” I said, frustrated. “And you would have been in deep shit for this no matter who I was marrying. Probably deeper, because you’d still be there.”
“But the paparazzi wouldn’t have been there,” Lacey countered. “I get all of the crap from Hurricane Posh and Bex, and none of the benefits. We used to be the Porter twins, and now we’re just Rebecca Porter and the other one.” She was crying now, which only added to her anger. “I don’t know who I am now or why I’m even still here, and all anyone wants to ask about is you. Nick and Bex, Nick and Bex, Bex, Bex, Bex. Who. Cares. I’m over it. I’m over you.”
“Well, then, you made this really easy for me,” I said. “Consider yourself officially relieved of your wedding duties.”
Lacey’s jaw actually dropped. “What?”
“You just said you’re over me. I figured you’d be relieved,” I said, but my lips were quivering. Her words had hit me like a physical blow.
“Great. You’re right. I don’t want to be in your ridiculous wedding,” Lacey said, pivoting and marching into the hallway.
“Then you did finally get something you wanted,” I called after her, hearing myself on the verge of tears. “Maybe you should get arrested more often.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t even come,” she shouted, punctuating this with a slam of the door.
“Dammit,” I whispered.
I should have gone after her. I should have told her we needed to help each other. But instead, I collapsed in tears on the corner of the bed, and felt the invisible tie between us snap.
Chapter Six
The details of my wedding gown have been protected like the state secret they are. With eight months to go, Donna, Marj, and I had whittled the list of design candidates to three, each of whom signed confidentiality agreements longer than a novel, and took a circuitous route to our fittings that added forty-five minutes to the trip and required three car changes. One of the interns buzzing around Clarence House politely asked me in passing how it was going, and I’d cracked, “I’m leaning toward something in British racing green.” When it made the papers the next day, the poor trembling girl was dispatched to purgatory (Edwin’s offices) and I was instructed to respond to all queries, even from insiders, with the antiseptic, “It’ll be lovely.”
Eventually, my opinion was sought—Eleanor was human enough to realize that a bride should get a vote on her own gown—but she strongly expressed a preference for covered shoulders, and luckily, I agreed. Sleeves seemed more regal, despite the ensuing need for armpit Botox. Beyond that, I had no interest in trying to make a fashion statement, and the mere concept of a poufy affair with bows and ruffles and fringe made me itch. I think my missing Disney gene disappointed Fancy Nancy, because she worried several times that all my stipulations would lead to something that wasn’t fairy-tale-princess enough.
Eventually, I had to remind her, “Neither am I.” Marj guffawed before she could help herself.
The first designer had barely wrapped one piece of white fabric around me, looking more like a towel than anything, before my mother burst into tears. By the third, she had plowed through an entire tissue box, while I stood there and tried not to feel anything that might cause me to move and make one of the seamstress’s long pins miss its mark. It reminded me of some of the letters between King Albert and his wife, Georgina Lyons-Bowes, from before they were married—specifically, a chunk Nick calls Too Hot for History that did not end up in the Ashmolean, but which he had bound for me as a gift: My dearest, Mother thinks I am entirely too plump, but you must have something to grip onto! These tiresome gown fittings will only be worth it the moment you remove it from me on our wedding night. You cannot imagine how I long for the naughty tickle of your mustache. (The answer: a great deal, judging by the number of creative ways she expressed it.) Comparatively, though I shared with Georgina a waistline being monitored with obsessive fervor, Nick’s sporadic correspondence was