So I don’t think Lacey quite believed it when I announced my England plans. History had borne out that our gravitational pull was simply too strong. Even as infants, Mom said that she’d set us down two feet apart in our crib, and an hour later we’d somehow be snuggled right up next to each other again, as if we were still in the womb. Nothing had ever come between us before, so it must have seemed highly unlikely that I’d willingly put an ocean there.
“It feels weird that you haven’t met any of these people,” I told her that night. “I keep turning to tell you things, expecting you to be here.”
“How am I going to survive organic chemistry without you drawing obscene cartoon molecules on my flash cards?” she complained affectionately.
“Well, we can’t be attached at the hip forever,” I reasoned. “Nobody will let me hang out in the operating room sketching people’s innards while you rebuild their aortas, or whatever.”
“Why not? It’d be like a souvenir,” Lacey said. “But fine, don’t worry about me, up here with my face in a cadaver while you’re living with a prince.” She tsked. “I can’t believe you don’t even have any gossip on him. You are the worst.”
“I rarely see him, Lace,” I said. “Half the time he doesn’t socialize with us. He hasn’t even come into town.”
By the sheer happenstance of Ceres Whitehall de Villency inexplicably (to me) opting for a year at Cornell, I’d landed smack in the middle of Nick’s tight social cluster—everyone in our hall was a proven-loyal chum, or the offspring of one—and my own assimilation came largely thanks to Cilla, who didn’t so much take me under her wing as wrestle me there. I think we were mutually grateful that we got along so well: me because Oxford was the first time I’d been without Lacey, my genetically built-in best friend, and Cilla because her proximity to Nick made her suspicious of outside girls’ motivations, and her other choices on our floor were unsatisfying. Lady Bollocks was too aloof and consumed with horsy pursuits, Joss spent all her free time sewing and immersing herself in the essence of whatever oddball she was dating (which accounted for her current insincere punk look), and the mysterious eighth door in our hallway belonged not to a coed, but to Nick’s personal protection officers. We were forbidden to buddy up with this taciturn quartet of ex-military men, so we never knew their names, instead christening them based on their various personal qualities (PPO Stout was as tall as he was wide; PPO Twiggy was svelte but could snap you like one; PPO Popeye occasionally had spinach in his teeth; PPO Furrow was a frowner). None was older than forty, all had wives and children at home, and yet to do their jobs they bunked two at a time in the most inelegant fashion—it must have felt like trying to shove a cat into a mouse hole—which surely put them on the fast track to sainthood.
Nobody said it directly, but I sensed that coming on strong with questions about Nick would raise the hackles of both my new friends and his trained killers, and it wasn’t worth it just to find out if Nick wore boxers or briefs. So I couldn’t tell Lacey much about him that she didn’t already know from People. The day I got accepted to Oxford, she dragged her old Royal Family commemorative issue from the dusty archives under her bed, and showed me pictures of three-year old Nick roaming Balmoral’s moors in buckle shoes and a tweedy plaid jacket, or waving from the Buckingham Palace balcony during a state occasion while Freddie waggled his tongue. None of it did much to create an image of an actual person; just a poster boy, a character in a far-off story.
“I did hear a rumor his room is totally bulletproof,” I told Lacey. “But that’s about it.”
“Maybe he’s just not that friendly.”
“Well, but he’s not unfriendly,” I explained. “He just socializes really sporadically.”
“Shy, maybe?” she wondered. “Like his mom? She’s basically a hermit. Or maybe he takes after Prince Richard. I read that he’s super stiff.” Lacey let out a puff of frustration. “It’s killing me not to see for myself. Some people swear Nicholas has a wooden leg and that’s why he never plays polo anymore.”
“That’s ridiculous. Are prosthetics even made of wood anymore?”
“You’re missing the point,” Lacey groused, but she was laughing. “I would kill to have a prince three doors down. Take pity on me and go make out with him, please.”
“I can’t, Lace. I already kissed his friend. And don’t you remember? He will never—”
“Marry an American,” we finished in unison.
Lacey let out a girlish giggle. “I still can’t believe she actually said that to you.”
I had seen Nick alone once more, on my third day, about thirty seconds before my inaugural conversation with Lady Beatrix Larchmont-Kent-Smythe. I’d forgotten my robe and towels in Iowa, so until I bought new ones—which was, naturally, exactly what I’d been planning to do on the day in question—I’d been wrapping myself in the tiny terrycloth loaner from the college and sprinting to my door. It had worked, until I bumped smack into Nick as he was coming into the bathroom. My bucket of toiletries went flying, including a box of tampons I’d left in there, raining feminine hygiene products all over him. It sounds like a quirky meet-awkward from act one of a romantic comedy, but it was mortifying, and I didn’t have the advantage of being well-lit and cutely dressed. Or dressed, period.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry.” I frantically tried to pick everything up without flashing him.
“No trouble,” Nick said, gallantly gathering my scattered stuff. He was wearing ratty maroon gym shorts that proved definitively his legs were made of very nice muscle rather than wood. “Tricky business having to bring so much stuff to the shower.”
“Thanks for helping,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “Forecast for today did say ‘sunny with a chance of Tampax.’”
Syphilis and Tampax. That’s what I’ll call it when I crack and write my own version of The Bexicon.
Nick kept his head down, but I saw his cheeks flush. He later told me that he’d never even said the word tampon, much less had to handle any, which of course made sense: Who sends the eventual leader of the Commonwealth out for lady supplies? Like the pro I would soon realize he is, though, Nick brushed it off, scooping up the last tampons and dropping them in their box before tossing it to me gently and continuing on his way.
As the bathroom door swung shut behind him, I heard a loud throat clearing and turned to face the one and only Lady Bollocks, polished and perfect in riding jodhpurs and a white button-down shirt.
“How trite,” she said. “Accidentally running into him wearing a glorified hand towel.”
“You’re Bea, right?” I said, awkwardly rearranging myself so I could clasp closed my towel and still shake her hand. “I’m Bex.”
“I know,” Bea said, making no move to meet the gesture. “And let’s be clear, Rebecca. Your little…whatever that was…is a waste of your time. He will never. Marry. An American.”
She punctuated the last sentence with thrusts of a sharply filed nail. I was so flummoxed that, still dripping water onto the centuries-old Persian runner, I simply gaped as she vanished into her room.