Royal Indiscretion, chapter 19 (Patreon)

I closed down Royal Indiscretion a year ago because the lack of comments and my own insecurities. However, when I was home sick for several days, I started rereading it, and then I wanted to play in the sandbox again, so I asked the $10 folks if the bunny was worth reviving.  They were so supportive, so now I have a new chapter.  No, I have not given up on Earth Husbands, but I do need a break as I work out the mechanics of some plot holes.  Meanwhile, this whole story is now available, so you have 45K of contemporary slow burn to hopefully keep you busy.

Chapter Nineteen

Doug looked at the desolate landscape outside the window. Every once in a while a distant house was tucked between two rolling hills or a barn with gray weathered wood stood against the verdant wild grasses, but for the most part, this place was an empty paradise. A cold, empty paradise, and this was summer. However, there were plenty of people who preferred privacy to sun. Doug's brain couldn't stop spinning with all of the possibilities. The drive alone was stunningly beautiful and well worth the time required to get out here.

“I think you can find my uncle is very reasonable,” Yves said. He had been saying something along those lines every ten or fifteen minutes for the last hour.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

Yves winced. Clearly that had been a direct hit, and Doug hadn’t meant to inflict damage. Sometimes his mouth got ahead of his common sense. “Look, I'm sorry. I get the family stuff is hard,” Doug offered.

“You would. Do people give you a hard time because of your father?” From someone else, Doug might consider that a challenge or a subtle dig about how people did or should judge him. But Yves seemed genuinely curious as if it had never occurred to him that people were judgmental assholes to everyone, not just royals.

Doug shrugged. “When I was young, other kids gave me a lot of shit, and that was even before the murder. My father was never a good man. I suppose it didn't help that I was pretty quick to fight them to defend the family honor.” Honor. That was ironic. Doug figured whatever sense of justice or fairness or honor he had in his life, he inherited it from coaches and teams, not his family.

“Children are unforgivable monsters,” Yves said with a certain conviction that made Doug suspect there was a story there.

“People are.  Do people give you a hard time about being the Duke’s son?”

“Hell yes,” Yves blurted. “My older brother is the golden one in the family. Duke Albert. Even when he was having his rebellious ten years, everything he did was a sign that he was going to be a good king one day. If he mouthed off, it was because he was showing initiative. If he struggled in school, it was because he had more important things on his mind.”

“Double standard, huh?”

“Triple standard,” Yves said darkly. “Albert got away with everything. And Mary… It was different with my sister. She was the spare, not the heir, and she was a girl.” He frowned. “I don't know. My dad never seem to get upset with her, but Hagan says that's because Mary is so much like our mother, and she died not long after I was born. Maybe Duke Gerard simply couldn’t get angry at someone who reminded him of his late wife.”

Doug didn't say anything, but it sounded like the whole fucking family had decided Yves was the designated scapegoat. Assholes.

After a long silence, Yves said, “If Queen Fenella had any children, none of my family drama would've mattered. We would've become one more side branch of the royal tree and no one would've commented on Gerard's useless third child.”

“Hey! That is not cool.”

“What? Telling the truth?” Yves laugh was devoid of any humor.

“No, tearing yourself down. You're good with those dogs, and I see how you are when you talk about that land. You have a passion for it.”

“Yes, my passion is so great that when Hagan sent your documents up north, I didn't give them to you for over a day because I needed you to wait until my appointment with King Alfonse. I can't trust myself to drive through the countryside without stopping and getting drugs. And my love for the land is no protection against that addiction.”

“Oh.” Doug wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t used to men laying their vulnerabilities and fears out. Everyone in the locker room was quietly terrified of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and injury. They worried about bad publicity and their images. Some guys spent money like water to project an image of themselves as successful, and others—like Doug—socked money away in metaphorical sock drawers, terrified of waking up penniless one day. When they talked about guys like Aaron Hernandez who had CTE so bad that he killed his friend or Bernie Kosar who went from being a star quarterback to being penniless, they whispered the names. These were their boogeymen.

But they hid their fears behind inappropriate jokes.

“Are you angry?” Yves asked.

“About what?”

“That I hid your papers.”

“Nah.” Doug smiled. “It’s not like I have anywhere to go. In case you missed the memo, my dumbass plan to find a respectable wife is dead on arrival.”

“Dead on arrival? Do you mean beyond resuscitation? Sometimes your Americanisms are difficult to follow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Doug said with a dismissive wave. He didn’t want to rehash a failed plan. “You know, your father strikes me as someone who has a reason for everything.”

“Given that you’ve only met the duke once, you have a fine grasp of his personality,” Yves said. He hadn’t yet called the duke his father or Father or Dad. Doug figured he was closer to his own father, which was pathetic.

“He does seem transparent,” Doug said. “If he’s not hoping to protect you…” Doug waited.

“Oh, he is certainly not,” Yves confirmed.

“Then he’s after something that goes with your title.” Doug hated puzzles. More accurately, he hated ones he couldn’t solve. He always read the last chapter of a murder mystery first, and the inability to skip to the end was annoying him.

“I’m sixth in line to the throne. That’s an advantage he doesn’t need since he will take the throne if King Alphonse dies before him.”

“Are you sure that giving up your title wouldn’t take the heat off you and let you live your life?” Truth be told, if Doug had a chance, he would hit a button and make his father and everything related to him vanish from the face of the earth. It make him a shitty son, and he accepted that. But it seemed like Duke Gerard was the sort of worthless father who might have the same fantasies about making a difficult relative vanish.

“No,” Yves said firmly. “I am a public figure, and whether I am the Count of Northlands or not, the second I approach civilization, the press will hound me. They will simply do it more if I were to give up my title. That sort of dramatic action would stoke popular imagination. I suspect people would assume I had a lover, and they would want to know about him. I can’t come up with any other reason for giving up my title.”

“Would you have to give up your title for a lover?” Doug couldn’t imagine anyone taking that sort of risk for a lover.

“For a casual lover, no. Obviously not,” Yves said. “However, my family might pressure me to avoid marrying if I were still in line for the throne. After all, if I were unlucky enough to become king, a male consort could not give me heirs. God forbid the reigning monarch fail to provide an heir and a spare.” Yves rolled his eyes.

Sometimes the stupidity of rich people floored Doug. “There’s this thing called surrogacy or adoption.”

“The parliament would assume there were owls in the moss if a royal adopted.”

Doug frowned. “They would assume… what?”

Yves waved his hand. “That something was wrong, that some was trying to pass off an illegitimate child as an adopted one, that political chicanery was underway.”

“That owls were in the moss.” Doug nodded. “Got it. I assume owls don’t normally hang out in moss.”

“No.” Yves rested one hand on the top of the steering wheel and shifted subtly toward Doug. “I am pleasantly surprised that you are not infected with the homophobia of your countrymen. I expected an American to react poorly to my preference for a male lover.”

“Hey. We have gay marriage.”

“And gay bashing and high rates of gay suicide and political parties that retain power by promising to strip rights from gays and immigrants. My assumptions are not without evidence. I certainly can’t see an activity as stereotypically male as American football tolerating homosexuality, so it seemed fair to assume you would be discomforted at the least. Is there even one gay football player?”

“How should I know what other guys do in their beds,” Doug snapped. He knew a few guys who came out after they retired—David Kopay and Jeff Rohrer. But he was painfully aware of the total lack of openly gay active players. Since he was bisexual, Doug had gone out of his way to play on the heterosexual side of the street to avoid being the first. “But don’t you dare paint me as some fucking homophobe.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s a quote. From Hamlet.”

“I know that. I’m asking what you mean by quoting Hamlet right now.”

A frown flickered across Yves’s face. “I had only meant that you are getting quite vocal in your protests, but now I’m starting to wonder if, like the players, your declarations are hiding something.”

Cold fear washed through Doug’s soul. He could not afford to make a mistake now, not when his future was still unclear and the press was sniffing around, looking for a story about the white-trash quarterback. “Don’t assume you know anything about me.”

This time Yves’s frown was deeper. “I would never assume or discuss my assumptions with others.” He shifted his gaze to the empty road, and this time he kept his attention there. The swell of fear settled, and now guilt crept in on its belly, sliding through Doug’s psyche. Damn it. Yves had enough trouble without Doug making life more difficult. Unfortunately, Doug didn’t know how to apologize, and he definitely didn’t know how to do it without making himself look even more suspicious.

Hopefully Yves would dismiss it as home-grown American homophobia because Doug was entirely too aware of the other assumption the man could make. He really needed to go home because clearly traveling turned him into an idiot.