Charming by Haig Moses (1st Draft)

Chapter Thirty-Six

A PRINCE OF WALES

Meeting a prince when you didn't have the right connections was harder than I thought it was going to be. I arrived in the cloudy, damp city at five in the afternoon and told the taxi driver that I wanted to go to Buckingham Palace, though as we pulled up the gates were closed. "Do we need a code or something?" I asked pulling out my phone to text Elliot.

    The driver looked at me from his rearview mirror like I was a three-headed monkey sitting in the back of his car. "What are you the Queen of England without me knowing?" I barked sarcastically. "You can't just waltz on into Buckingham Palace without an invitation from her majesty herself!"

    I slouched back into my seat. "What about the Prince do you know anything about him?"

    "Which one?"

    "Is there more than one?"

    The driver groaned and I was sure he was growing tired of my ignorant Americanism. "There's Prince Edward of Wales, son of the late Prince James who was third in line to the throne. Then, there's his cousin Prince Louis of Oxford, son of the late Prince Arthur who was second in line to the throne."

    "Prince Louis," I confirmed. "What do you know about him?"

    "Not much," he said. "Bit of a shut in that one. Always sitting up in that palace of his and when he is seen he's either partying or getting himself into trouble. Now Prince Edward is a fine prince and will make us a fine King one day, if these you bloody millennials don't bugger our monarchy all up with your social media and talk of democracy."

    After the insistence that he take me to the closest and cheapest hotel, I badgered the man a bit more for information on Louis. I mean if I came all the way here for him I might as well get to know who he was through his own people, right? "I's told ya, there aint nothing to know," he said as he weaved the yellow cabbie through traffic. "The boy is a trouble maker. Every time we see him he's knocking it about at some pub. Dressing up in offensive indian costumes and the like. Almost knocked over my great-aunt Tessie once."

    "What?"

    "Well, it wasn't actually him, but it was bloody well a close look a like and I bet he would've with his nasty attitude and wouldn't even notice a thing."

    Everything the driver told me hadn't seemed like the man I knew from Harvard and yet nothing at all about him made sense because I didn't know him at all. This new princely being was a new person I hadn't ever met. At Harvard Alexander was annoying, but in a Charming way. Though, now I was feeling, now more than ever, that I'd been duped. Maybe it had all been an act for him to sleep with me or to win some kind of bet or something. Maybe I had come all the way to England to make an even bigger fool of myself than I already had.

    As we pulled up to a hotel, I looked across the street to see a very large and very obvious billboard with my shocked face on it. The headline read: PANDERING PRINCE'S PARTY PRINCESS.

    Pulling I swiped my card and dashed from the car right as the driver began to realize who he had in the back of his car. "Are you? Are you—"

    The door slammed shut behind me as I quickly ran inside the lobby running right into someone else. "Woah!"

    "I'm sorry." I huffed out as a large hand steadied me. Not bothering to look up less I was noticed, I pulled myself away and found myself checking in.

    My room was reasonable for one person and the bed was even better after hours of flying then sitting inside a taxi. Pulling out my phone I dialed Elliot's number, my spirits lifted at the sound of a familiar voice. "How's England?"