The Heir And The Spare

#10

Adam clears his throat and then looks over at me. "I will be right back, your highness." I watch him give Henry a once over and although I can tell Henry can handle his own, his eyes drop under Adam's heavy gaze.

"He's protective like a father," I smile at Henry. "He doesn't like good-looking guys giving me compliments."

Henry's lips tug up and I swear I see his blue eyes twinkle. "You think I'm good-looking?"

"Am I blind?" I retort and shake my head. My eyes snake down his frame, from his sandy hair to his structured jaw and to the shiny cufflinks his finger keeps reaching for. With the waiting, I manage to get a better glance at the cufflinks and see they are embossed with the Prescott's royal seal – not a cheap feat, making it clear that this must be a present.

"James gifted them to me when I became his HoS," Henry tells me, his finger running across the engraved seal. This boy doesn't miss a beat.

"Shame that someone so vile gives such pretty presents," I mutter sarcastically. Henry goes still and I can see I have just made this entire interaction painfully awkward. Henry is James' head of security, of course his loyalties lie with him.

"I don't mean to make this awkward," I say.

"You're not," Henry replies. "But I won't lie and pretend that I understand why you dislike him so much."

I gawk at him for a second and then close my mouth. I've never had to try and explain why I don't like him. I don't even know if there are words to describe the feeling I have with James. "I can't..." I trail off, "I can't explain it."

"Try to," Henry says softly, and the thing is, I want to. I want to try how my stomach seizes up when I think about him. How my blood boils at how easily he tossed aside our friendship as children and proceeded to act like I didn't exist for years. I want to explain how I thought I had one other person in this world who was meant to be exactly like me and even then, it was taken away.

"The best way I can describe it is like this," I let out a deep breath, fiddling with the necklace around my neck. "There's a certain...security in knowing your place. Mine, as the second child as you know, is my brother's spare. James was the younger twin, meaning he was also Luke's spare,"

"When you grow up in the position I have, it's hard to find anyone who relates to how you're feeling. Sure, people can guess, people can try to understand but nobody quite gets it. But James did. He knew exactly what it was like to live in their sibling's shadow, to have more freedom than they did but to feel just as trapped. When Luke died, everything changed, and so did James, more than he had before. Our friendship died off a few years earlier, but we were always still connected. It took Luke dying for me to realise it wasn't because James and I were in the same position, but it was because of our love for Luke. And without Luke, there was nothing. We were nothing."

Henry watches my face carefully and I get the impression that if we weren't surrounded by security waiting to enter the ballroom, he'd reach out to touch me.

*

If there is anything worse than James, a ballroom would be a close second. I have spent the better part of an hour around the food table, grazing on small canapes and guzzling champagne like it is going out of fashion. I have stuck loosely to my word to get to know these girls for James, only conversing with a few that have bothered to glance once my way. The Danish girl from earlier makes polite conversation with me. I find her name is Ida and her father is an earl in Denmark. She's also the youngest girl here. I like her enough, but I know James would eat her alive. A girl like that does not deserve a monster like him.

Henna, who coincidently has her dance before mine, has chosen a classic piece to dance to, her dress swirling around the marble flooring, the royal blue frills pooling at the end of her feet. I will give her credit. She's a good dancer and perfectly in time with the music the live band performs but the music suggestion is medieval and James swings her about the room like he wants to swing her off his arm. Each song every girl has chosen has been respectable but infuriatingly boring. The same music but with differing tempos.