Page 31 of Love on the Main Stage
Did she work for them?
Princess Ingrid was a horse girl. She’d ridden for Britain in the last Olympics—a great big scandal since she’d prior ridden for her home country of Neandia, a small tax haven where she herself was born a princess. Then, I realized they also had kids. Maybe she was their nanny? Was that how she knew Leah, too? Had she beenhernanny?
I remembered her saying riding was herjob. She had to carry the team. Could she nanny and be a full-time horse girl? Maybe she was a riding instructor for the kids, and they paid in expensive purses? I didn’t pretend to understand royals. I assumed they absolutely did have riding instructors in their houses. Why not when you had more money than God and no one to remind you people couldn’t pay to heat their houses?
As I scrolled and glimpsed the Duke—a person I could have cared less about—I realized they shared a nose. Maybe she was a cousin? Again, there was the Leah connection. Maybe she was Lady Betty Something or Other? After all, I still had no idea what her name was. But did Norway have ladies? And why was she half-American and half-Norwegian?
I looked up the family tree, desperately hoping to find a random ginger cousin, but there was a problem. The only cousins to The Duke in the family belonged to his uncle, Prince George—the man who left to marry Leah’s father. I knew Leah was Leah and that Leah’s only sister was older and blonde. There were no other girls in the Lyons family tree. Just the Prince of Wales, Duncan, Keir and his brothers.
I clicked on Prince Keir’s bio and scrolled his Wiki to find anything about Norway. I realized after his father passed away in his childhood, his mother remarriedanotherprince, Prince Peder of Norway. My fingers tingled and panic set in as I scrolled down his long list of siblings and stepsiblings Then, there on the page was a name which shook me—HRH Princess Elisabeth of Norway.
Betty could be a nickname, but I still refused to believe this was more than a coincidence. It couldn’t be her,right?
I read on, slipping into the article on Keir’s mother, Princess Sanne of Norway, for more on the big brood of royals.
“Following the death of the Prince Paul of the United Kingdom, the Duchess of Inverness remarried a close family friend, Prince Peder of Norway, returning to the country where her mother continued to live until her death. The two raised their five boys together and soon welcomed a daughter, Princess Elisabeth “Betty” Hannah Natalie of Norway. This means that the Duchess remains stepmother to the second in line to the Norwegian throne and mother to the second in line to the British throne.”
That sealed it. Betty was Princess Elisabeth.Fuck!
I laughed so I didn’t cry. “Her family tree is a stick.”
Betty’s family was bizarrely big. Her identity loomed there in plain sight this entire time. Had I simply ignored the flashing red signs? And why didn’t she just come out and say it? Shaken, I needed to know more.
I navigated to Betty’s Wiki, staring at a photo of her in a ballgown and tiara presenting a Nobel prize. She was altogether different from the girl who had come on my face the night before—so desperate she’d plunged my fingers deep within her as she lost herself. Scrolling through her article, I didn’t see anything about her sexuality. There was no note about anything in her personal life beyond that she’d been linked to a Danish male actor, a male American eventer, and a Dutch male dressage rider.
All men. I looked up and down the lengthy Wiki to see pictures of a christening, horse photos, and information about her patronages for any sign that she was a queer person. I thought for sure she was involved with an LGBTQ charity or had shown up at a parade. Instead, crickets. There was no sign Betty had ever dated a woman, been open about her status as a queer partner, or had ever even engaged in the community.
Rubbing my temples, I began to fade. The night took a toll, but the truth hit harder. The girl I thirsted after—the one whoappeared to cure every ill the night before—was untouchable. She’d never end up doing anything but toying with me. I wasn’t even sure she knew she wasn’t straight for fuck’s sake! I’d been down this road before. I’d waited for a partner to come out to their family. I made myself small and called myself a friend, but I was done doing that. I was too old and my world too big. If Betty wasn’t out now, she’d never be.
Her status would never afford her acceptance. I may have been a fun experiment, but I was done thinking running around was hot—I had been for at least a decade and a half. No, I deserved someone willing to love me a full measure—out and proud. She didn’t fit into my plans of a serious relationship and family. She would never be mine.
And yet, she persisted in my memory. I only hoped she didn’t torture me another five years.
Chapter 12
Fueled with Rage
MARY
“That was the best recording of that one,” I admitted, “but I don’t think it’s ready.”
“It’s brutal. Stripped down. I love it,” Alicia said. “You will never think any of these recordings are good enough, Mary.”
I fussed with my hair and rolled my sleeves nervously. “I dunno. What do you all think.”
“Put it in the can. It’s ready,” Barry confirmed. “And I think we should record‘Blue Jetta’ if we’re going to do anything else.”
“I agree. Let’s rage,” Clarice said.
We wrote “Blue Jetta” on a tour bus the day after we recorded the final, studio version of “Justice”. It was a song about a guy who fucked with Clarice’s head, completely mispresenting what they were. We channeled the rage from every breakup we ever had. What she didn’t know, perhaps, was that my rage in writing that song wasn’t just girl power solidarity. It pulled from my own pain and realization I’d been strung along, too.
“We wrangled studio time for “Wayside”, and I’m not fueled with rage, right now,” I admitted.
“So what is eating at you?” Clarice asked.
“It’s melancholy. That girl from the other night broke her heart,” Alicia teased. “The one Leah knows.”
I rolled my eyes. “She did not. It just didn’t work out. She’s not anything serious. It was fun.”
