the lady & her prince, penelope featherington

001

. . . THE LADY & HER PRINCE
—

"Brimsley?" His wide grin greets the man standing in his doorway, who only nods once while remaining straight-faced. Charles used to wonder whether the man was actually man (human) at all, having long mastered the ability to not react to the chaotic rhythm of the royal family. "What ever brings you to. . ."

His Mother, the Queen, with an even straighter and less impressed expressive attitude plastered upon her face, interrupts his curiosity. She steps to the side and reveals herself in all her queenly glory, and though it was usually Edward she was to lecture like this, he supposed his time was bound to come eventually.

Charles couldn't bring forth the last memory he had of his Mother personally coming to his rooms. She used to, when he was a child and so frightened of the dark that he'd scream bloody murder until somebody fetched the Queen, and then she'd tell him of the stars and how they weren't adamant on stealing him away.

( "No," She'd whisper to her youngest son. His nervous and scared eyes staring back at her. Her face, he had, but George's eyes. "The stars sent you to me. They would not have you casted away."

"What if they trick us? They whisper to me sometimes, they do."

Charlotte's smile would sadden, but remain. Her hands clutching onto his a little tighter. "I would not have anything happen to you." )

Queen Charlotte's hands wave away the royal guard that had opened his doors, before she's making her way through and he's stumbling backwards, eyes widening at the sudden entrance. Not that he could deny her, not that he would for she was his Mother and even more importantly, the Queen. She'd always been Queen before anything else.

"My Queen," Charles flashed another smile, a little more tense than the last. She spins around, and Brimsley steps inside, but remains only two steps in. Just there, as he had always been. "Mother. Is everything quite alright?"

In her hands, she waves something. A letter. A pamphlet. Not that he pays much attention to it.

He turns to place the flower down, that he'd not long picked up and stared at all morning, having not bothered to break his fast, but ready himself eagerly. And then meets her eyes once more.

She's suspicious of something. Charles knows the look on her face, usually it's directed toward one of his brothers whenever they impregnate one of their. . . friends. He'd been forced to sit through many lectures, and many complaints, over and over again.

"Is everything quite alright?" She copies his question. Her eyes narrow his way and his brows raise. He'd not done anything scandalous enough to receive such a look, he thought, and even with his attendance within the garden party, he'd of thought she'd be a little pleased. Even secretly.

"That is what I asked," He goes to move forward, but when she gives him a look, he backtracks and sits on his curved warm armchair. It had once been George's — his eldest brother's — but he'd begged for it some years ago, and unable to say no to the child that Charles had been, George had the chair delivered to his brother's room. "Is it Father?"

Father. Father. Father.

( He was King of the United Kingdom and yet his face was hardly seen. The rare occasion it was, he was more scared man in those moments than he was anything else. His balance was unsteady but his love remained. He seemed to run off of atlases and Charles feared the lingering similarities that continued to birth growth.

George had given Charles the warmth of his brown pools. 

But there was something — rotten, an uncertainty that bloomed by the day — else that had been passed along. It had made Queen Charlotte more attentive to him than the rest and even those (her other children) that teased him for it knew of her worries on some ground. )