Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(59)
It was a temporary blip in an evening of drinking, dancing, and jollity. Meghan and Harry were on the dance floor or in each other’s arms—or both. Love was definitely in the air.
After the raucous party, Harry took Meghan to the exclusive Caves Hotel in Negril for three precious days alone. Afterward, their long-distance commute continued, Meghan flying back to Toronto but returning to London a week later. Her absences from Canada were now so frequent that she had to hire a dog sitter to look after Bogart and Guy.
That said, soon it was Harry’s turn to arrive on her doorstep, spending Easter at her home. He had other reasons for being in the city—in September the Invictus Games were due to take place, and he had many meetings to attend and numerous agendas to go through. Top of the list on his personal agenda was a firm decision for Meghan to be by his side at some point during the games. Veteran reporter Phil Dampier quoted a royal source as saying: “Harry wants everything out in the open and for the days of skulking around avoiding photographers to be over. He wants to show Meghan off as his future wife and the Games, which he has put his heart and soul into, will be the perfect platform to do that.” Dampler was on the money.
At long last, after nearly two unconventional years of courtship, four months in private, the rest in public, the romance between Harry and Meghan hit a traditional groove. Meghan drove to Coworth Park near Berkshire on May 6 to watch her boyfriend play polo. It is something of a royal rite of passage. Some of the best—and most affectionate—photographs ever taken of Princess Diana were when she attended polo matches involving Prince Charles. Kate Middleton, too, was always keenly on point when Prince William got in the saddle. It was no different when Meghan, who was accompanied by Mark Dyer and his wife, Amanda, arrived at the ground. She dutifully clapped and smiled as she followed the back and forth of this most un-spectator-friendly of sports. Fellow attendees at the charity match, which raised funds for Sentebale and another of Harry’s charities, WellChild, included Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne, former ballerina Darcey Bussell, and actor Matt Smith, who plays Prince Philip in the hit Netflix series The Crown.
Harry made them all wait. But it would be worth it. The following day, after playing in a match with Prince William, Harry gave the cameramen what they wanted—he kissed Meghan in the parking lot. Game on.
Once again Meghan flew home, only to return just a week later to attend Pippa Middleton’s wedding to financier James Matthews on May 20. So as not to overshadow the bride’s big day, Meghan stayed away from the wedding ceremony at St. Mark’s Church in the village of Englefield, Berkshire. After the service, Harry drove back to London to pick her up and then took her to the reception at the Middleton family home in the nearby village of Bucklebury.
The evidence had been piling up all year, and by now it was clear that it was only a matter of time before she was walking down the aisle herself to marry her royal prince. An informal strategy was emerging to clear the way for their own announcement. It had started with the closure Meghan’s various social media sites, including The Tig and her Instagram account, continued with the decision to involve Meghan with the Invictus Games and, of course, followed by that kiss at the polo match. These days when she arrived at Heathrow Airport, often as not Harry was waiting on the tarmac and was able to whisk her through the VIP mini terminal. So when Meghan attended a Suits convention in Austin, Texas, though she dodged questions about her future, most of her fans reluctantly concluded that this season would probably be her last. When Meghan admitted that the sex scenes she had done in the past seemed “weird now,” it appeared as if the writing was on the wall for her character, Rachel Zane.
A couple of weeks later, in mid-July, Meghan opened the door of her Toronto home and greeted Sam Kashner, the best-selling biographer of Furious Love, his dissection of another power couple, actors Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. From that moment he arrived at her front door, bookies no longer needed to take bets on a royal marriage. The bespectacled scribe was there on behalf of Vanity Fair magazine not only to savor the pasta she had bought specially from the fashionable Italian deli Terroni, but to imbibe her life.
It was an extraordinary development. Traditionally royal brides-to-be are Sphinxlike, blushing furiously, ducking away from photographers, smiling politely but not saying a word. It is the uniting thread that links Lady Diana Spencer, Sarah Ferguson, Sophie Rhys-Jones, and Catherine Middleton. They know the consequences. In the days when Diana’s sister Sarah was dating Prince Charles, she was cast into the outer darkness the moment she chatted to royal correspondent James Whitaker about her relationship.
For Meghan to be giving an interview before any engagement announcement was a royal first, all the more so as she would not have gone ahead without the agreement of Prince Harry; his private secretary, Edward Lane Fox; and their communications director, Jason Knauf. Nor was she making anodyne remarks about fashion and Suits with the odd aside about her royal romance. No, Meghan was telling her true story—in her own words. She was emphatic, no dithering around the issue.
“We’re a couple,” she told Kashner. “We’re in love. I’m sure that there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time. This is for us. It’s part of what makes it so special, that it’s just ours. But we’re happy. Personally, I love a great love story.”