A Royal Affair

Author’s Note:
We just crossed 2,000 subscribers, and I want to pause for a moment and say thank you.
Truly—thank you for reading, for sticking around, for trusting me with these stories and these characters. Writing is a strange, solitary act most of the time, and yet none of this exists without you on the other side of the page. Your support, your messages, your engagement, and your willingness to follow me into these worlds make it possible for me to keep doing this at the level I care about.
This milestone means more than a number. It’s a reminder that the stories are landing, that they’re resonating, and that I’m not writing into the void. I don’t take that lightly.
I couldn’t do this without you—and I wouldn’t want to.
And to my paid subscribers, a special thank you.
Your support makes the time, care, and ambition behind this work possible. You’re the reason I can take risks, linger where it matters, and tell these stories without compromise. That trust means everything to me, and it’s felt in every word I write.

From the House, With Love.
—R.

ACT I

WYNSHIRE PALACE – SUNDAY NIGHT

Lucas

I arrived earlier than required. I always did.

The car released me at the outer drive, where the palace rose without drama—stone washed pale by floodlights, windows glowing with a controlled warmth that never quite reached the air. Names were checked softly. Credentials were glanced at, not examined. I was waved through with a nod that said I belonged there, or at least close enough not to question.

Inside, the palace moved the way an institution moves when it has been rehearsing itself for centuries. Staff passed without urgency but never without purpose. Corrections were murmured. A jacket sleeve was smoothed. A place card was shifted a fraction of an inch. Everything looked effortless. None of it was.