Spare Me

Chapter 3

M onday morning found Winfield House in a tizzy. Embassy staff were scurrying about their business and Mrs. Stewart was pacing her office, a cup of coffee threatening to splash onto her perfectly crisp white collared shirt in one hand, a half-eaten cranberry scone in the other, and two large hot rollers still tucked into her ash blond hair.

“It has to be perfect, Madeleine,” she was saying, as Maddy tried to offer her a napkin.

“Ma’am, it’s just the intro meeting,” Maddy said, attempting to placate her unusually flustered employer. “It’s our chance to meet his staff, start going over logistics, and get a schedule worked out for the rest of the meetings before the concert.”

Although she understood why Mrs. Stewart was stressed, Maddy also had to inwardly roll her eyes a bit. Yes, the ambassador’s wife was the face of the Armistice Day concert she was co-hosting with Prince Alexander, but the two of them wouldn’t really be doing most of the legwork. That would be left to Maddy, the other cultural staff, and the prince’ s people. Really, if anyone should be stressed, it was Maddy herself. She finally had a real job to do, with responsibilities that had nothing to do with fourteen-year-old girls or maintaining Mrs. Stewart’s schedule.

“Yes, but nobody’s seen the prince in years! He’s practically a recluse!” Mrs. Stewart exclaimed.

It was hyperbole, but not entirely untrue. The younger son of King Albert and Queen Sarah had left England to work on restoration after a catastrophic typhoon in New Zealand several years earlier and had only rarely returned home, mostly to join the family at their private retreat in Scotland. He had appeared briefly on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on the occasion of his father’s silver jubilee, but there had been so many royals crowding the small space, and Prince Alexander had managed to position himself half behind a pillar and half behind his elder brother who was sporting the tall hat associated with his military regiment’s formal uniform, and had been mostly hidden from public view. The British tabloids speculated regularly about the prince’s notable absence, hinting at everything from substance abuse problems to mental health issues to the Daily Mail’s comical suggestion that Prince Alexander had had botched plastic surgery and was too embarrassed to face his country. Regardless of the reason for his long absence, though, Prince Alexander had certainly made himself something of an enigma. His return to London in advance of his brother’s wedding and, presumably, to take up more of a public-facing role had the UK’s royalists slobbering for news, photos, anything. Maddy didn’t really get the fuss, but she did understand why Mrs. Stewart considered this collaboration such a big deal.

Prior to moving to London, Maddy had never really considered the British royal family. She’d never been one of the girls who had posters of the young princes in her dorm room or bought the special editions of People dedicated to them. The princes were both undeniably attractive, but they’d never taken up any space in her mind. Until now. Mrs. Stewart had been obsessing over the impending royal visit to Winfield House for days, agonizing over everything from what to include for refreshments to driving Maddy up the wall nitpicking the font she’d selected for the meeting agendas.

“Ma’am, as my father always says, ‘He puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us,’” Maddy reassured her, rescuing the half-full coffee cup and the scone from Mrs. Stewart’s precariously distracted grasp. “Now why don’t you go finish your hair, put on some fresh lipstick, and I’ll meet you in the family dining room in ten minutes.”

Mrs. Stewart took a deep breath. “You’re right. Your daddy always has his head on straight.” One would hope so, given that over the course of a thirty-five-year career in the Army culminating as a three-star general, he’d been responsible for the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many of them eighteen-year-old boys with as much sense as a cotton ball. She glanced at Maddy. “Is that what you’re wearing? To meet the prince?”

Maddy looked down at her outfit. She was wearing tan pants with a pale blue silk shell and light brown Tory Burch flats. “This? Oh, no, of course not,” she said. At least, not anymore . “I’ll just run down and throw on my actual outfit.”

“Good.” Mrs. Stewart nodded. “We have to make a good first impression. He’s a prince , after all!” Maddy sighed as Mrs. Stewart left to go finish putting herself together and headed towards her own room to find something more appropriate for meeting a prince.

Fifteen minutes later Maddy speed-walked toward the family dining room. It had taken her longer than she’d anticipated, having realized that despite having a reasonable wardrobe for government work, she apparently did not own anything that she thought Mrs. Stewart would deem appropriate for meeting a prince. Prior to Mrs. Stewart’s comment, it hadn’t really dawned on Maddy that the prince would even notice she was there. Maddy had thoroughly briefed Mrs. Stewart on the preliminary arrangements for the concert, which would feature military bands from both countries and welcome a number of active-duty service members in addition to a selection of military families whose service members were deployed. She had planned to station herself somewhere discreet where she could fill in any information that slipped Mrs. Stewart’s mind and ideally also be close enough to the refreshments to snag one of Nadia’s amazing brownies before everyone else ate them.

Now, as Maddy rushed towards the meeting, freshly attired in a navy-blue sheath dress, a pale pink cardigan, and her black patent leather slingback heels, she realized that she hoped the curtsey she’d learned as a four-year-old at the ballet classes she’d briefly taken while her father was stationed at Fort Bragg was the same curtsey one gave to a prince. She was grateful that she’d taken time to reread the briefing that the Kensington Palace protocol office had sent over that reminded her to call the prince “Your Royal Highness,” but in that moment, she realized she’d never gotten around to trawling the internet for recent pictures of their royal guest. She hoped it would be obvious when the time came. It had to be, right?

As she approached the family dining room, she realized that her plan to be stationed in the room before the royal delegation arrived had been foiled, as she heard Mrs. Stewart ushering a small handful of people ahead of her toward the meeting.

Maddy slipped in behind them as Mrs. Stewart invited the prince and his small entourage to help themselves to tea and pastries. “I hope you’ll enjoy, Your Royal Highness,” she was saying, her lush Alabama drawl even more pronounced than usual. The prince had his back to Maddy, so all she could see was a navy-blue suit jacket and medium-brown hair. He had three staff members with him. Maddy knew from reading the briefing that the tall white man in a black suit must be his security guard, while the shorter Black man was his personal secretary, Eric Okonkwo, and the other woman was Maddy’s counterpart, Sloane Travers, with whom she’d been in periodic email contact over the last month to confirm initial details and schedule the meeting.

A sudden sneeze escaped from Maddy’s mouth, and her hopes of going unnoticed flew out the window. “Oh, good, there you are, Madeleine,” said Mrs. Stewart. “Your Royal Highness, please let me introduce Madeleine Cartwright, my right hand on this project.”

Prince Alexander pushed back his chair and turned to face Maddy, who just barely managed to keep her jaw from hitting her chest.

Oh shit.

It was him. Mr. Martini was Prince Alexander.

A.W. was Alexander Windsor.