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Joanne insisted on referring to me royally, even though she had no idea what to call me. She also thought the flowers were for Emmabelle. Why shouldn’t she? She had booked Sweven’s weekly OB-GYN appointments and sent cabs with me in them to pick up Belle.
“It’s not the Penrose girl,” I said shortly, blazing into my office.
Joanne darted up and followed me, her short legs moving with force I hadn’t seen from her since she had to take half a day off when her daughter went into labor.
“What do you mean it’s not the Penrose girl?” she demanded.
I settled behind my desk, powering up my laptop. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m courting another woman.”
“Courting another … Devon, is that how you folks do it in England? Because here, bigamy is illegal.”
Devon? Whatever happened to His Royal Highness lord sir?
“Belle and I aren’t married.” I waved her away.
“Only because you haven’t asked!” she boomed.
“She is uninterested.”
It was easier to admit this to a sixty-year-old woman with five kids and seven grandchildren who thought Ferrero Rocher was the height of sophistication than to do so in the ears of my mates and their wives.
“Make her interested.”
I chuckled darkly. “I tried, trust me.” In my own way, at least.
“If she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t have let you put a baby in her, honey. Of course she’s interested. You just need to give her a little push. If you go out with someone else, you’re going to kill any chance you have with the girl, even if the relationship falls apart. And it will fall apart.”
“Louisa is an absolute gem. Lovely, well-kept and extremely stylish.”
“Those are good traits for a couch, my lord. Not a woman.”
“In a wife, too.”
I was being purposefully difficult. For some reason, I deeply wanted to catch shite for what I was about to do and knew Joanne would give it to me straight.
Heaven knows I deserved being yelled at.
Two splotches of red colored her cheeks, and she reared her head back as if I’d physically struck her.
“Wait a minute.” Jo held up a hand. “Did you just say … wife?”
“Yes.”
“But … you love Emmabelle.”
“Gawd, you Americans do love to throw this word around a lot.” I took out a rollie from a tin and tucked it into my mouth. “I, at the very most, want her companionship. But she is unavailable to me. I need to move on.”
“If you marry someone else, Your Highness, I’m afraid I’ll have to quit.”
“On what grounds?”
“Well … that you’re a turd and a half.”
Hearing Joanne use blasphemy to describe me—or anyone else in the universe, for that matter—cemented the fact that I was, indeed, a flaming piece of shite.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Get those flowers ready and go back to work, Joanne. And if you want to quit, leave a resignation letter on my desk.”
She turned around and stomped away, muttering under her breath.
For the rest of the day, she did not try to engage me in small talk whenever I left my office, nor attack me with new pictures of her grandchildren, nor give me a snack she’d packed especially for me from home—usually in the form of a healthy peanut butter and granola cookie.
At six o’clock, when I exited my office, a large bouquet with white roses, peonies, and ranunculus waited on her desk with a note.
Mr. Whitehall,
You’re about to lose everything for nothing. Congratulations!
P.S. Consider this my official resignation letter. I quit.
—J
Throwing the note in the bin, I grabbed the flowers and headed downstairs.
My phone began ringing in my front pocket with an incoming call. Mum.
It was outrageously late in England. Or extremely early, depending how you looked at it.
I picked it up on a whim, knowing that I shouldn’t.
“What now?” I growled.
“Devvie!” she cried in delight. “Sorry. I won’t take a lot of your time. I would love to throw an engagement party for you. The spring is a lovely time for celebration. Is there any way you could take a weekend off and hop on a plane with Lou?”
It didn’t sit well with me. The fact that Ursula naturally assumed Louisa and I were already engaged.
Additionally, the thought of being in a closed space with the Butchart brothers and a few dozen more stuck-up royals made me want to seek asylum on another planet.
“Work is hectic right now.”
“You only get married once,” she argued.
“Not necessarily in the twenty-first century.”
“I hope it’s not about that dreadful woman again. If she gets into trouble, it’s on her, not on you.”
That dreadful woman had a name, and frankly, my mother didn’t deserve to utter it out loud. But something struck me.
No. Don’t go there. There is simply no way.
“Why would she get into trouble?” I asked, throwing open the driver’s door to my Bentley before slipping inside. I put the phone on speaker and tossed it to the central console. “What do you know?”
