Spare Me

Chapter 1

A t least it was gin .

Her martini assailant could have just as easily spilled an entire pi?a colada on her and left her smelling like coconut for the rest of the evening. Okay, maybe not pi?a colada. The likelihood of a bartender at a royal engagement party making something like a pi?a colada seemed slim. But a lemon drop would have been sticky, and whiskey smelled terrible, so at least it had been a classic gin martini, and, better still, it had been up, not on the rocks, so she had been spared the added awkwardness of having to fish ice cubes out of the top of her black evening gown.

Yes, Maddy reflected ruefully, if one had to have an entire drink dumped down one’s front at a black-tie event at Buckingham Palace, a gin martini was about the best-case scenario.

She’d been standing in line at the bar when it happened. The cocktail hour at the engagement party for Prince Benjamin and Hannah Cromwell was in full swing. She’d checked to be sure that her “charges,” the fourteen-year-old twin daughters of the American ambassador and his wife, were safely ensconced in conversation with their parents and a group of other dignitaries, and then slipped away to snag a desperately needed drink. Contrary to appearances, she was not the au pair or the nanny, but the “other duties as assigned” section of her job description as the ambassador’s cultural attaché seemed to be rapidly expanding to include “teenager wrangling” and “assistant to the ambassador’s wife” on an alarmingly frequent basis.

She was lost in thought in the line for the bar, her brain ranging from reviewing the details of Mrs. Stewart’s schedule for the next day to wondering whether she looked as out of place as she felt at the swanky event. The room was crowded and she had been gradually pushed forward to stand a bit closer to the tuxedoed back in front of her as she waited. Suddenly, the tuxedoed back became a tuxedoed front and Maddy’s thoughts were wrenched back to the present as her neighbor in line turned, bumped into her, and dumped his martini squarely down the front of her dress. Frigid liquid ran down her cleavage toward her stomach. Her cheeks were on fire, and she knew intuitively that she had to resemble a tomato in a gown. Despite a sudden and overwhelming instinct to burst into humiliated tears, Maddy closed her eyes, took a deep, intentional breath, and tried to recenter herself. She absolutely was not allowed to make a scene. Not here. Not now. She hadn’t had time to go shopping, so if her dress was ruined, at least she’d already gotten her money’s worth.

“Oh, Christ, terribly sorry,” her martini assailant blustered, as a bartender rushed over with a towel and then obviously confronted his inner conflict over how to best help her when to blot her dress would involve some decidedly inappropriate touching. She gratefully accepted the towel, and taking one more steadying breath, she prepared to face the man who had just drenched her. Plucking the spear of olives that was dangling from the boatneck of her gown, she handed it back to the drink-spiller. “I believe this is yours?” she said wryly .

“Ugh, yes,” he groaned, taking it and dropping the offending fruit back into his now-empty martini glass. “Really, I’m sorry. That was positively idiotic of me.”

Maddy finished blotting as much of the gin from her dress as she could and handed the towel back to the bartender, who was already handing a new drink to her assailant. Deciding not to waste her turn at the front of the line, she turned to the bartender. “I guess to keep with the theme, I should have one of those too.” Might as well try to make light of the situation, even as she mentally panicked about the impropriety of spending an evening reeking of gin. “But make mine dirty.”

The drink-spiller grinned cheekily. “A girl with good taste.”

Maddy managed to force herself to focus on his person rather than his klutziness or choice of drink for the first time. He looked to be in his early thirties, brown hair, blue eyes. His smile was cheeky, but even as he seemed to focus on her, she noticed that he was keeping a keen lookout on the rest of the room. Maddy had just decided to try to further quell the awkwardness by introducing herself when a shorter Black man with a cell phone and a harried look hurried up to Mr. Martini, and breathlessly said, “Sir, they’re looking for you!”

Maddy found herself wondering who “they” were. Other people at the party? The mob? Interpol? She was almost too busy pondering this thought to notice that Mr. Martini was apologizing again and telling her to send him her dry cleaning bill. By the time she had the presence of mind to wonder how she was supposed to know where to send the bill—not that she’d even consider doing so—the two men had disappeared into the crowd.

She made her way away from the bar to a quieter corner to sip her drink—extra dirty, just the way she liked it, with what she assumed had to be extra pity olives—and survey the damage. She thanked her lucky stars that her dress was black, which meant that the impact of the spilled drink was almost entirely olfactory rather than visual. She’d been in a hurry to get ready after supervising the twins’ primping, so she’d grabbed the first unwrinkled vaguely formal-looking item she could find in her wardrobe, an older dress from college. It was black satin column dress that had a high boatneck and spaghetti straps.

As Maddy tried to decide whether the scent of Tanqueray was really as overpowering to those around her as she thought it was, Delia Stewart swept up to her. From the look on her face, it was readily apparent that, yes, she did smell like a distillery. Great . “Madeleine, what is that smell? Did you bathe in gin?”

“Ha, good one, ma’am. Someone spilled a drink on me while I was waiting in line at the bar.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t planning to stay for dinner, anyway.”

Much as Maddy would have liked to stay to witness the lavish dinner and dancing that was to follow, she’d been tasked with escorting the twins, Amelia and Audrey, back to the embassy after the cocktail hour. Not to mention she hadn’t been invited.

“Did the prince’s private secretary reply about the meeting Monday morning? We need to get the program for the gala concert ironed out and solidify the guest list for the champagne reception with the musicians for after the performance.”

Maddy silently mused that the royal family’s staff was probably otherwise occupied with the planning of the current party celebrating the engagement of King Albert of England’s oldest son to his longtime girlfriend, but only pulled out her phone from her small evening bag and checked Mrs. Stewart’s email. “No, ma’am, nothing yet. If I haven’t heard from them by the middle of the day tomorrow, I’ll follow up to confirm. ”

“Okay, thank you. What’s my first meeting tomorrow?”

“You have an eleven a.m. coffee with the head of the children’s hospital gala committee, followed by a twelve-thirty lunch with the new Canadian ambassador’s wife, your two-thirty hair appointment, and then dinner with Ambassador Stewart at seven at Claridge’s.”

“Thank you, Madeleine.” Mrs. Stewart paused and gave her an appraising look and said, not unkindly, “At least black doesn’t show the stain too much.”

Maddy smiled resignedly. “That’s true.”

Her boss barreled on, “And really, nobody has any reason to notice you, anyway.”

There it was. Delia Stewart was not intentionally unkind, but she had the kind of laser focus on her husband’s career—and, by extension, her own—that made her somewhat oblivious to the minor details around her, including other people’s feelings, needs, and schedules. Andrew Stewart had political aspirations much grander than the American ambassador to the Court of St. James, and Maddy often thought to herself that, once Mr. Stewart became a bit more prominent, she could see his wife trying to attain her own political post.

Mrs. Stewart spared her the awkwardness of trying to respond to her last remark by saying, “Okay, well, the cocktail hour should be over soon. The driver will be waiting outside for you to take the girls back to Winfield House. Try to see that they eat something besides potato chips for dinner and be sure that they’re in their rooms by ten.”

Maddy sighed. All she wanted to do when she got back to the residence was to get out of her heels and curl up with the most recent season of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on her VPN, but she’d smile, nod, and do what she was told. “Yes, ma’am,” she said to Mrs. Stewart. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Just then a gong echoed throughout the room—yes, like an actual gong—and a uniformed staff member announced dinner. Do they own that? Or do they borrow it from the London Symphony for fancy events? As Mrs. Stewart turned to look for the ambassador and the girls, Maddy quickly bolted as much of the rest of her cocktail as she could in one gulp and found a spot to ditch her glass. Seeing the twins standing with their father a little ways away, Maddy wished Mrs. Stewart an enjoyable rest of the evening and herded the two teenage girls towards the grand staircase that would return them to the car bringing them back to the ambassador’s residence at Winfield House.