The Controversial Princess (The Smoke & Mirrors Duology #1)(112)

“This is fucked up. Where’s Damon? Put him on. Now.”

My hand shoots forward between the two seats. “He wants to talk to you.”

Damon audibly exhales, pulling the car over to the side of the road. His empty eyes meet mine in the mirror as he reaches back and takes my phone. “I’m between a rock and a hard place here.” His voice is devoid of emotion, matching his eyes, as he speaks to Josh. He’s trying to disconnect himself. He’s trying to be professional rather than emotional. Damon knows what’s happening here is wrong. “I can’t do that,” he breathes, and then he laughs. It’s a disbelieving laugh, his eyes still stony in the mirror. What’s so funny? “You’ll give me a job if I lose mine?” he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. My body moves forward, trying to hear what Josh is saying. He would do that? For me? “Josh, you’re American. You live in America. The job would be in America. The commute would be shite. I have a direct order from the King of England. My hands are tied.”

I sag, defeated. This is hopeless. Damon’s phone starts ringing, and he glances at the screen where it’s positioned to the left of the steering wheel. “I have to go.” He hangs up without so much as a goodbye, and then proceeds to take the call. “Yes?” He looks left and right a few times, his shoulders rising slowly in the chair. “What the fuck?” He breathes the rhetorical question out, his knuckles going white from the grip he has on the steering wheel. I fly forward in my seat again, trying to hear what has him trembling with anger. “Loud and fucking clear.” He slams the ball of his palm into the steering wheel, and I flinch as my phone starts ringing from the seat where Damon threw it.

“Whatever is going on?” I ask as I reach for it.

He barely checks his mirrors before he yanks the steering wheel clockwise and slams his foot down on the accelerator, spinning around in the road and flinging me back in my seat. “Damon!”

“Put your belt on,” he shouts, the sounds of screeching tires piercing the air. “Now.”

I quickly reach for my belt and clip myself in. “Damon, what is it?”

“There’s been an assassination attempt on Prince Edward.”

My heart feels like it could break through my chest and land in my lap. “What?” The sound of the roaring engine drowns out my murmured request for confirmation of something I couldn’t have heard right. Yet Damon’s urgency and intense vigilance, constantly looking around as he drives, tells me I heard him just fine.

Someone tried to kill Eddie?

“Where was he?”

“Riding at the royal stables.”

My eyes drop to my lap, where my phone is lying in my limp hand, Josh’s name flashing persistently at me. I only just manage to convince my hand to raise it to my ear. “Josh.”

“Adeline,” he breathes.

“Someone’s tried to kill Eddie.” The statement comes breezing out like a pre-programmed robot. And then there is silence down the line. A horrific silence that is filled with the scream of skidding tires as Damon brakes hard in front of the palace gates, smacking his horn.

“Open the fucking gates,” he roars.

“Jesus,” Josh says, obviously hearing the chaos unfold. I’m stuck to the back of the seat as Damon accelerates through the palace gates, barely waiting for them to open fully. “Where are you now?”

“Back at Claringdon.” The car screeches to a stop and Damon is ushering me out soon after, crowding me as he hurries me up the steps. We enter complete and utter chaos, staff racing across the foyer, people on phones, shouting and cursing of the bluest kind saturating the air. I stop, staring at the anarchy, completely bewildered. “I have to go,” I tell Josh, my phone limp at my ear. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

Josh puts the cursing of the palace staff to shame, blurting endless explicit language down the line. “I hate this. I should be there with you.”

Hearing his hopelessness, his frustration, has me closing my eyes where I stand. “I’ll call you.”

I hear him inhale deeply, gathering patience. “Okay.” His agreement is strained, but it’s all he can do. “I love you.”

I smile sadly and cut the call, just as my mother appears across the foyer, virtually being held up by Mary-Ann. Her expression, the visible state of her, haunted and shell-shocked, makes me forget my despondency. I hurry over, quick to comfort her. “Mother.” I claim her from Mary-Ann and help her through to the lounge off the foyer, where the chaos continues. “Sit.”

For the first time in her existence, my mother follows an instruction from me, lowering to the brocade couch. One of the servants is quick to pour some tea, and I load Mother’s with a sugar she never has, stirring it quickly and placing it in her limp hands. Her gaze, empty and vacant, doesn’t move from the floor. “How could this happen?” she asks herself, her hands shaking terribly.

I curl an arm around her shoulder, my only offering, since I don’t have the answer to her question. “I’m sure everything is being done to find out.”

Davenport marches into the room, his expression lethal. “Are you okay, ma’am?” he asks, coming to a stop before the Queen Consort. Then, shocking me completely, he lowers to his haunches and places a hand over hers, searching out her eyes. “Catherine?”