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The queen’s head turns slowly. “And what options might those be, Catherine?”
“Well, I think there’s something to be said for coming clean. It could save us a great deal of face to treat it not as a scandal, but as an intrusion upon the privacy of the family and the victimization of a young man in love.”
“Which is what it was,” Bea chimes in.
“We could integrate this into our narrative,” Catherine says, choosing her words with extreme precision. “Reclaim the dignity of it. Make Alex an official suitor.”
“I see. So your plan is to allow him to choose this life?”
Here, a slight tell. “It’s the only life for him that’s honest, Mum.”
The queen purses her lips. “Henry,” she says, returning to him, “wouldn’t you have a more pleasant go of it without all these unnecessary complications? You know we have the resources to find a wife for you and compensate her handsomely. You understand, I’m only trying to protect you. I know it seems important to you in this moment, but you really must think of the future. You do realize this would mean years of reporters hounding you, all sorts of allegations? I can’t imagine people would be as eager to welcome you into children’s hospitals—”
“Stop it!” Henry bursts out. All the eyes in the room swivel to him, and he looks pale and shocked at the sound of his ownvoice, but he goes on. “You can’t—you can’t intimidate me into submission forever!”
Alex’s hand gropes across the space between them under the table, and the moment his fingertips catch on the back of Henry’s wrist, Henry’s hand is gripping his, hard.
“I know it will be difficult,” Henry says. “I… It’s terrifying. And if you’d asked me a year ago, I probably would have said it was fine, that nobody needs to know. But… I’m as much a person and a part of this family as you. I deserve to be happy as much as any of you do. And I don’t think I ever will be if I have to spend my whole life pretending.”
“Nobody’s saying you don’t deserve to be happy,” Philip cuts in. “First love makes everyone mad—it’s foolish to throw away your future because of one hormonal decision based on less than a year of your life when you were barely in your twenties.”
Henry looks Philip square in the face and says, “I’ve been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Philip.”
In the silence that follows, Alex has to bite down very hard on his tongue to suppress the urge to laugh hysterically.
“Well,” the queen eventually says. She’s holding her teacup daintily in the air, eyeing Henry over it. “Even if you’re willing to submit to the flogging in the papers, it doesn’t erase the stipulations of your birthright: You are to produce heirs.”
And Alex apparently hasn’t been biting his tongue hard enough, because he blurts out, “We could still do that.”
Even Henry’s head whips around at that.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to speak in my presence,” Queen Mary says.
“Mum—”
“That raises the issue of surrogates, or donors,” Philip jumps back in, “and rights to the throne—”
“Are those details pertinent right now, Philip?” Catherine interrupts.
“Someonehas to bear the stewardship for the royal legacy, Mum.”
“I don’t care forthattone at all.”
“We can entertain hypotheticals, but the fact of the matter is that anything but maintaining the royal image is out of the question,” the queen says, setting down her teacup. “The country simply will not accept a prince of his proclivities. I am sorry, dear, but to them, it’s perverse.”
“Perverse to them or perverse to you?” Catherine asks her.
“That isn’t fair—” Philip says.
“It’smylife—” Henry interjects.
“We haven’t even gotten a chance yet to see how people will react.”
“I have been serving this country for forty-seven years, Catherine. I believe I know its heart by now. As I have told you since you were a little girl, you must remove your head from the clouds—”
“Oh, will you all shut up for a second?” Bea says. She’s standing now, brandishing Shaan’s tablet in one hand. “Look.”
She thunks it down on the table so Queen Mary and Philip can see it, and the rest of them stand to look too.
