The Royal Romance - The Valtoria Diaries

Your version of events

After the security briefing, they'd firstly packed up their belongings for their journey to Valtoria in the afternoon, and had then headed into the capital to meet up with Maxwell's college friends for lunch, before their flight back to London. As Jen had fully expected, the meal quickly turned into An Audience With Maxwell Beaumont, and he had delighted in recounting stories of their various escapades over the last few months.

After lunch was over, Jen came back from the bathroom to find Laura, the girl who she'd exchanged a few awkward words with at the wedding, sitting on another table on her own. They had been told that Laura hadn't been feeling too well, so was giving lunch a miss. But, here she now was. How funny.

Not being one to shy away from awkwardness, Jen decided to take a seat next to her. Time to get to the bottom of something that had been niggling at her since the wedding reception, although to be honest she'd not really had time to think too much about it until now.

"So, Laura..."

She could just see Laura tensing up in her presence, hardly even looking at her.

"You feeling better? Your friends said you weren't feeling up to joining us for lunch..."

"No I wasn't," Laura said, curtly.

Jen smiled, and glanced around to make sure no-one was listening. "Hey. I'm not an idiot. I'm guessing you and Maxwell have.. previous."

Laura looked up, hurt. "What's he said?"

"It's what he hasn't said," Jen said with a sigh. She'd obviously been right on the money. "I've heard stories about all of you on the way here. With one exception. And then you didn't turn up for lunch... and now you have?"

"Alright, yeah," Laura held her hands up briefly.

A satisfied smirk crossed Jen's face. "Hey, don't worry, I just have a good radar for these things."

"It was a long time ago," Laura said, fidgeting with her hands. "I shouldn't have come to the wedding. I wasn't going to come for lunch, but..."

"No, you should," Jen said, leaning in close to her. "Because I'm quite curious to know just why my husband had such a bad case of serious-relationship-phobia before we got together. So, any light you can shed on that would be just great."

Laura looked straight at Jen, her expression unfriendly. "Maybe you should talk to him about that."

"Oh, I will. Just wanted your take on things first. While I can get it."

Laura sighed, and looked under the table again. "We were always best friends. For nearly three years. We should have stayed that way. Now... well, obviously I haven't seen him for seven years..." Jen noticed as Laura's gaze flicked across the room to where Maxwell was obviously regaling the rest of his group of friends with the somewhat unbelievable tale of Anton's final defeat. "But, I don't know what we are now."

"What happened?"

Laura looked at her again, a little more cordially. "Like I said, we were best friends. I never.. I don't think either of us ever thought any more than that. One night, we both got really drunk."

Jen nodded, getting her gist. "And after that..?"

"After that, we had fun for a few weeks." She grinned. "A lot of fun."

Jen giggled. "Yep. I can imagine."

"But.. it all got too intense too quick for me. He wanted us to move in together when we graduated. We'd only been together about six weeks. In the end, I put a stop to it."

Jen looked on, waiting for Laura to continue.

"I naively thought we'd go back to being friends. Maybe even.. friends with benefits, or something. But, he went back home, and his plans changed. He was going to come back to England, but he never did. He never invited any of us over to Cordonia again, like he used to in the holidays before. It's all my fault that he and these guys all drifted apart."

"No, it wasn't your fault," Jen assured her.

"How could you know that?"

Jen sighed. "Hey, Maxwell hasn't really told me much about you guys. But I get the sense you were all pretty important to him, and that he felt he really belonged somewhere with you all. He had to go home after graduation for financial reasons. He wouldn't have been able to invite you all back again because the House Beaumont finances wouldn't allow."

Laura looked confused. "But I thought his family were rolling in it?"

"They were," Jen explained. "But not anymore." She looked across at him, and they exchanged a brief glance; she detected an expression of disguised panic on his face. He would no doubt be over here in a moment. "Had it not been for that, he would have stayed in England, I'm pretty sure."

"And he'd never have met you," Laura said, a philosophical look in her eye. "How did you two meet, anyway? At one of those posh palace parties that his Prince friends hosted?"

Jen smiled, and shook her head. "You missed the full story over lunch. But you definitely need to Google me sometime and find out. It's a good story."

Her face changed. "People like you just have no idea," she spat.

"People like me?"

"People born into money. You live in your own little world. Maxwell was the same. We thought we'd managed to convince him to come and live in the real world with us.." She cut off, suddenly, and Jen felt hands on her shoulder.

"Laura! Hey!! I didn't think you were coming? Amy said you weren't feeling too good.."

"I'm feeling a bit better now, it would seem," Laura said, her voice careful and her expression guarded.

"So.. Are you two... getting on well??"

"Oh yes," Jen said, with a careful smile in Laura's direction. "I was just about to tell Laura the story of the night we met for the first time. Seeing as she missed your version of events earlier."

Laura was looking straight at Maxwell, a hurt expression on her face.

"Well, don't let me stop you two from.. bonding.." He kissed Jen on the cheek. "I'll be.. right over there.." He scuttled off, nervously.

Jen turned to look at Laura. "So here's the thing. I wasn't born into the nobility. And as you can probably tell from my accent, I'm no Cordonian. I'm no different to you. Maxwell and I met by chance, only seven months ago. We quickly became friends. Then we became best friends. And then, as soon as complicated circumstances which I won't go into right now allowed, we became more than friends. And then about a week later, something truly awful happened, and afterwards he asked me to marry him and I said yes. Because that man over there is the sweetest, funniest, kindest, most caring person I have ever met, and will ever meet. And there was no way I was letting him slip away. And I'm sorry that you couldn't see that back then. I really am."

Laura was speechless for a moment, but eventually spoke. "Wow. But.. you're a Duchess, aren't you?"

Jen laughed. "Like I said, Google me. It's a long story. This time last year, I was waiting tables. And I still would be if it hadn't been for Maxwell." She smiled. "Hey, I know you probably think I'm looking down on you right now, but I'm not. I couldn't do that. I just want to know what he did wrong back then."

Laura sighed. "He didn't do anything wrong. I guess it was all just too much too soon. I was.. scared? I was only twenty-one. I just figured that maybe we'd pick things up again a few years down the line.." She looked across the room again. "I broke his heart, didn't I?"

"I'm not sure," Jen said. "But I'm going to find out."