The Nelson Touch

Chapter Thirty-Five

Years ago, Ted had been called out of class and sent to face the headmaster of his school for something that hadn’t been his fault. He’d hated the feeling of being stared at by the old bastard who’d run the school and resolved that if he was ever in the same place, he would treat his students with considerably more respect. Now, as a grown adult, he understood the old man more than he cared to admit. It had been his job to maintain a distance between himself and his pupils. He couldn’t serve them by being their friend.

He looked up as Prince Henry was escorted into his office by the XO. Ted had heard from her while the Prince remained outside, but he found it hard to come to terms with what he’d heard — and what he could do about it. Going by a strict reading of the regulations, the Prince had done nothing wrong, not when Ted’s Flag Lieutenant and he were in different chains of command. But morally? Ted had to admit that he was coldly furious about the whole affair, no matter the legal rights and wrongs. The Prince would do uncounted damage to Lopez’s future career if the media ever found out.

Or even another officer, Ted thought. The Royal Navy was hardly free of favouritism or nepotism — the Old Boys Network saw to that — but anyone who might have been tainted with either tended to be tested to the limits by their new commanding officer. After all, it had been uncontrolled nepotism that had caused some of Britain’s greatest military and political disasters. It might have its uses, but the government was determined to keep it firmly under control. If Lopez was believed to have benefited from her relationship with Prince Henry, her next CO might be very suspicious of her until she proved herself.

He studied the Prince for a long moment, trying to gauge his mood. Unfortunately, growing up in Buckingham Palace had made the Prince a practiced dissembler, at least when he wanted to conceal his emotions. Captain Fitzwilliam had said the Prince had a chip on his shoulder, but Ted didn’t see it, not now. Or perhaps he’d reached a point where he tried not to give in to the temptation to start screaming and throwing tantrums. It wasn’t something he could ever ask the younger man.

And he is young, Ted reminded himself. He’s only nineteen years old.

“So tell me,” he said, as the Prince came to a halt in front of his desk and saluted. “What were you thinking?”

The Prince looked, for a long unguarded moment, remarkably sullen. “I was thinking that I had a chance at a proper relationship,” he said. “And I took it.”

Ted met his eyes and held them, firmly. “Tell me,” he demanded. “Does she know who you are?”

“I don’t think so,” the Prince said. His demeanour started to crack. “Did you tell her?”

“No,” Ted said, shortly. He’d been careful not to discuss the matter with anyone other than Captain Fitzwilliam, Commander Williams and the CAG. It was possible that Lopez could have accessed the file belonging to Charles Augustus and realised there was something wrong with it, but it would be a jump from seeing that to recognising that she was dating Prince Henry. “But that raises another question, doesn’t it?”

Henry pulled himself up to his full height. “Sir,” he said, “with the greatest of respect, have we broken any regulations?”

Ted glowered at him. “If you were a normal pilot,” he said, “you would be enduring backbreaking punishment for speaking to a senior officer in such a manner.”

The Prince flushed, brightly. “It doesn’t make the point any less valid,” he said, sullenly. “I don’t believe that we broke any regulations.”

He was right, Ted knew. Hell, the aristocracy were encouraged — sometimes quite firmly — to marry anyone but their fellow aristocrats. There was no reason to suspect Lopez of being disloyal, quite the opposite. Her background had been firmly scrutinised when Ted had nominated her as his Flag Lieutenant and nothing suspicious had been found, apart from her odd desire to serve on Ark Royal before the carrier became famous. Given her family history, Ted knew, it was quite understandable.

But morally… it would cause all sorts of problems.

“You are a Prince of Great Britain,” Ted said, tartly. “You may, depending on which way the lawmakers actually jump, be the Heir to the British Throne. Like it or not, anyone you wind up dating is going to draw attention from the media.”

“No one knows I’m here,” Henry said.

Captain Fitzwilliam stepped forward. “Do you think that will last?”

Henry’s face darkened. “Sir?”

Fitzwilliam looked oddly grim. “If you cover yourself in glory, and you have done very well in a quite stressful situation, the Royal Family will take advantage of your success to prove that it is sharing the burden of the war,” he said. “They have faced far too many charges of sending young men and women to war while staying behind in safety themselves. Your success will become their success. And, once they start bragging, they will have to provide details of your false identity to convince the media that they’re actually telling the truth.”

He was right, Ted knew. The media sometimes took what they were told on faith, but in the long term fact-checkers and researchers inspected every story, just to avoid the embarrassment of discovering that they’d been made fools by someone’s PR department. If they knew that Charles Augustus and Prince Henry were the same person, they’d pick apart every last part of his career, looking for signs of favouritism or anything else that would reflect badly on the Prince. And, somewhere along the line, they’d discover that he’d started an affair with the Admiral’s Flag Lieutenant.

Lopez hadn’t known to be discreet, Ted suspected, even though she was a naturally careful person. Someone might well have noticed her and ‘Charles Augustus’ sharing time together, particularly when they weren’t in the same section, without any actual reason to spend time together. That person might tip off the media, once the reporters started handing out money and other rewards for useful insights into the Prince’s life. And Lopez’s life would be completely ruined.

Ted had no intention of penalising her for a honest mistake; hell, he wasn’t even sure it was a mistake. If the Prince genuinely cared for her, she could do worse; if it was just a fling on both of their parts, it didn’t infringe any regulation. But the media would penalise her, in the guise of making her famous. Her entire life would be dissected, anyone close to her would be tapped as a source of information and she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without being surrounded by a howling mob of reporters. It wouldn’t fade away either, Ted suspected, even if she did nothing to encourage it. The media would make her their puppet for years to come.

And they’d tear her life apart, he thought. Poor girl.

“You don’t have to provide any details,” Henry said.

“The details will come out,” Ted snapped. He remembered reading one article about his alcoholism that had quoted officers he’d served with before his assignment to Ark Royal. If he hadn’t been a big hero, with the media aware that the public didn’t want to read bad news about him, it would have been a great deal worse. “And her life will be destroyed.”

The Prince wilted. Ted felt a moment of relief. He did care for her. The cynic in him wondered just how far they would have gone, even if Charles Augustus had been a real person; relationships forged in fire rarely stood the test of time. But the media wouldn’t give a shit. They’d tear her life apart, looking for salacious detail they could cram into the tabloids, the more compromising the better. And if she’d taken any… interesting photographs as a young girl, she could expect to see them blasted across the datanet.

“I’m sorry,” Henry muttered.

“Glad to hear it,” Ted snapped. Part of him wished the Prince was his son, so he could disperse some fatherly advice. The rest of him was adamant that he’d better disperse some advice anyway. “You have some choices to make, young man.”

The Prince looked up, surprised. No one who knew who he actually was, Ted suspected, had spoken to him in that tone of voice. But then, it was always difficult to discipline a Prince, particularly when the media was always watching. If Prince Henry had been sent to bed without supper, the media would have started howling about child abuse. But then, what was the endless observation from the media? Beatings would definitely have been kinder.

“If you’re serious about her, and you certainly seem to be, you need to tell her the truth,” Ted said. “Tell her before we get home, before the media starts scouring the ship for ribald stories about your service. She has to know what she’s getting into before she actually gets a very nasty surprise. And if she decides, knowing what happened to some of your other girlfriends, that she doesn’t want to stay with you, I suggest you let her go and respect her privacy.”

Henry flushed, again. Ted didn’t blame him. Anyone, male or female, whose name was romantically linked with one of the Royal Family had the unwanted attentions of the media, tearing his or her life apart. Princess Elizabeth had actually lost a boyfriend after the media uncovered more than a few uncomfortable facts about his past behaviour, back when he’d been a young boy. No one deserved that level of scrutiny just because they might be dating the wrong person.

“Yes, sir,” Henry said. “I didn’t mean to cause problems…”

Ted allowed his anger to show on his face. “You’re a Prince,” he snapped. “You knew, perfectly well, what happens to people who date someone from the Royal Family. At best, you acted in a very poor manner, one that I find despicable. You want to be normal, you want to be common, but you will never be either. I think you could have destroyed her life and career, just by not telling her the truth.

“It’s not fair, I know it isn’t fair, but it’s what you’ve got. Deal with it!”

He met the Prince’s eyes. “I respect what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I respect your desire to earn awards and plaudits for your achievements, not for an accident of birth. And you’re doing very well. But you cannot get away from your birth, Your Highness. And anyone involved with you will become an object of scrutiny when the truth finally comes out. Because it will!”

“I know, sir,” the Prince said, lowering his eyes. “But…”

Ted sighed. The Prince seemed to range between mature behaviour and an immaturity that was shocking, at least in someone who was meant to be a responsible naval officer. But it was understandable, Ted knew. The Prince had never been allowed to grow and mature at a normal rate. He’d been expected to be mature at a very early age — or at least to act mature. It wasn’t a surprise that it caused long term problems…

… But they were problems that couldn’t be tolerated on a starship.

“We will discuss this matter further when we escape Target One,” Ted concluded. There wasn’t time to give the Prince a proper lecture, no matter how much he might deserve it. “And I suggest that you decide how to tell her, soon. Or I will have to handle it myself.”

Henry looked down at the deck. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And you will report for punishment duty during the voyage home,” Ted added. “You wanted to be normal, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the Prince said. “But what do I tell her?”

Ted sighed. No one sane would ask his advice on relationships. The last true relationship he’d had had been years ago, before he’d climbed into the bottle. After that, there had just been the occasional visit to Sin City whenever he’d felt the urge for some female company.

“I suggest you tell her the truth,” Ted said. “And that you grovel one hell of a lot.”

He met the Prince’s eyes, willing him to understand. “Dismissed.”

“Poor bastard,” Captain Fitzwilliam said, as soon as the hatch had hissed closed behind the Prince. “Can’t ever get a break.”

Ted rounded on him. “Do you think this is funny?”

Fitzwilliam sobered. “I sometimes think that we walk backwards into pitfalls with our eyes firmly shut, loudly protesting all the time that that wasn’t what we meant to do,” he said. “I can’t fault the Prince for wanting a normal life and normal relationships, but at the same time…”

He shrugged, expressively. “Poor bastard.”

Ted scowled. He understood the Prince’s desire to prove himself to be more than just a title, one granted by an accident of birth, but starting a relationship with anyone would cause its own problems. And the fact he’d started dating the Admiral’s Flag Lieutenant would stink like the starship’s waste disposal tubes… and if it didn’t now, it sure as hell would by the time the reporters and their editors were done with it. He wondered, absently, just how long it would be before they started casting nasty aspirations at Lopez herself. She was certainly in a good position, at least to civilian eyes, to realise who Charles Augustus actually was and set her cap at him.

“Yes, sir,” the XO said. “Should we take steps to keep them apart?”

“I don’t know,” Ted confessed. “Do we have any right to do so?”

The hell of it, once again, was that no regulations were actually being broken. Starfighter pilots who ended up in bed together could expect to be reassigned to different squadrons; command staff who slept together could be dismissed from the service… but people from different sections were allowed to form relationships. Given the sheer size of any carrier and the time they spent away from Earth or Britannia, no amount of regulations could hope to prevent relationships from forming. All they could do was try to ensure that they caused the minimum disruption to the ship and the rest of the crew.

“You’re her boss,” Fitzwilliam pointed out. “You could keep her busy, at least until we leave Target One behind.”

Ted nodded. There were two hours before they slipped through the tramline and re-entered the system. By then, it was quite possible that Force Two had realised the drones were nothing more than decoys and moved back into Target One themselves, hoping to intercept the fleet. And they would succeed. The only other way the fleet knew that would take them back to human space involved passing through the front lines.

“I think I will,” he said. “And you can let Kurt know to keep an eye on him.”

Henry barely noticed his surroundings as he made his way back to the starfighter ready room, caught up in a whirlwind of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Control was one thing he’d learned early, but it was also something that frayed regularly as he came to grips with the reality of his situation. It just wasn’t fair! Why should he be treated as a role model for young men and women when all he’d done was choose the right set of parents? And why should he be condemned for doing something other young men did regularly? It wasn’t fair!

But the Admiral was right, he knew; he’d been selfish.

Bitter self-disgust threatened to overwhelm him as he paused, just outside the hatch. He’d wanted a normal relationship, he’d wanted a normal life, but he wouldn’t get either, no matter what he did. Even the Royals who had walked away from their titles were still hounded by the media, as if anyone really gave a shit what they did with their lives. Henry had no illusions any longer about the ravenous monsters men called reporters, subhuman vermin who fed on misery and created it wherever they went. Janelle’s life would be torn apart, dissected and then broadcast to the entire universe.

And what if she had something in her past that made her… unsuitable?

It had happened to his sister, Henry knew. His parents and the Privy Council had put their foot down, after the media had reported the facts to the world. Elizabeth had sulked for weeks afterwards, refusing to attend to any of her ceremonial duties — and how could he blame her? Her life had been torn apart because of something the media had discovered. But was anyone truly without sin?

Henry had few sins in his past, but then he’d always been aware that anything he did would be discovered and used against him. The ever-present threat of exposure had kept him under control, even as his father had retreated into his regal persona and his mother had become a neurotic mess. But what might Janelle be hiding in her past?

It might not even be a real sin, he knew. If she’d had a relationship with another woman, it would be used against her. After all, the Queen had to be willing and able to bear children. It was tradition. Anyone else could sleep with whoever the hell they wanted, at least as long as they were sixteen or older, but not the Royal Family. They had to pick their partners with extreme — and pointless — care.

He tried to compose a speech to Janelle, to tell her the truth, but found it impossible. What could he tell her? Would she think he’d been leading her on? Or would she become one of the crawling women who wanted to be Queen… and didn’t realise, until it was too late, that it was nothing more than a gilded cage?

Silently, he cursed it all under his breath. It just wasn’t fair.