The Girl behind the Throne (Editing)

Chapter 1

I was busy humming along with a song inside my head, not really paying attention to my surroundings. I have found that it is easier to avoid thinking about things which make me nervous, if I hum crappy 90's electro pop and fill my mind with trying to remember the lyrics. I had been doing mental handstands and front flips, rather than let any thoughts of Jamie enter my mind and it had been working- so far.

'Tess, that fork goes on the other side'. My dad said, leaning around me to put it the right way, I jumped, characteristically scared out of my pants by nothing yet again.

'Sorry, my pheasant brain is all confused by the fancy shiny things' I replied finally in a spiteful voice, after my heart had stopped slamming into the walls of my chest. I had tried to make it sound playful, but clearly I was still bitter about things. 

I looked up at my dad, noting the warning look in his pale blue eyes, and I began to continue to lay out the cutlery he followed me as I laid out the table correcting me with passive aggressive throat clearing and elbow nudging.

"Tess". My dad said in warning. It's amazing how much can be communicated by ones tone, even if just using a name. This 'Tess' meant 'don't screw up, I worked hard to get your job back and I don't want to be let down'. I spun around on the spot, looking at my distinguished looking father, with his black hair and his dark suit, and I remembered the ache in my chest when I used to think about him. It had been so long since I had been with my father, so long that for his sake; I had better lose the attitude.

'I know dad, servants are to be seen and not heard and I better lose the attitude'. I said mimicking his voice badly and adding in a sassy salute. I was quoting the now infamous mantra which he had said at least twenty times in the three hours we had been at work- and twice on the walk over.

He nodded once, trying to stay serious before smiling warmly at me; I mean it wasn't as if I hadn't done all this before. I was one of the only people here who could honestly say this palace was my home. Well, 'home' in the loosest sense of the term.

'You only have to do this for three months'. He said looking at me with a knowing smile and a wink.

Three horrible months then I was off to Paris, to study with the greatest designers and materials, three months until I could leave England, and its archaic laws behind. I rubbed my hands down my horrible black cotton uniform the maids were required to wear, feeling the itch of my tights and the pinch of the flat ugly shoes. I shuddered once, my ponytail tickling the back of my neck, ugly clothes were the worst punishment I could have received.

'At least, I get to see Jamie'. I said in a quiet voice, allowing myself to say his name once, to say the name of my best friend, the person who knew me better than I knew myself, the other half of me who I wasn't allowed to even talk about.

'That is, Prince James, to you Tess; you can't behave that way anymore. You're not children, it's not becoming'. He said in a chastising tone, and I heard the Queen's choice of words come out of my father's mouth, in an example of terrible mock puppetry.

I had been the best friend of, His Royal Highness Crown Prince James Albert Montgomery, heir to the English throne since I was five. After my mother had died, my father had gotten this job, the two of us moving from the small terrace house in south London, to the on-site butler's cottage on the grounds of the royal family's main estate in the countryside.

We met while I had been looking for tadpoles on the edge of the large lake in the middle of the palace grounds, and we had become best friends straight away. I still had physical scars on my body from our raucous childhood, for example the light silvery lines which dotted my left leg since Jamie thought it would be a good idea to go swimming in a random stream one summer when I was seven and he was nine, I caught my leg on barbed wire and he carried me all the way home. Or the long knife line along the palm of my hand, one which Jamie also had, where we traded blood and became blood friend's for life.