Sharma & Nair — WhatsApp, 06:12 Priya: why is there a photo of you MOUNTING EUROPEAN ROYALTY on the BBC Priya: tara Priya: TARA Priya: the bank called again btw. they used the word "regrettably" four times Tara: handling it Priya: handling WHICH

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The Hotel Edelweiss-Post did not have room service, but it had Frau Huber, which was better and more frightening. At 8 a.m. she arrived at Tara's door with coffee, a plate of pastries Tara had not ordered, and the morning's Continental Inquirer, laid face-up on the tray with editorial intent.

"You are famous," said Frau Huber.

"I'm leaving," said Tara. "Eleven o'clock train."

"Hm," said Frau Huber, with the expression of a woman who had seen the lobby.

The lobby, when Tara descended at nine, contained: fourteen photographers, three TV crews, a podcast host in hiking gear who had been walking past and smelled content, and — standing apart from the scrum with the stillness of a tall, spare monolith — an elderly gentleman in a black coat who somehow made the entire press pack look temporary.

He inclined his head one degree.

"Miss Sharma. My name is Barrowclough. I have the honor to serve the royal household." He indicated, with a gesture too economical to be called a gesture, the side door. "The palace requests the pleasure of your company. I would suggest the kitchen exit; the gentlemen of the press have covered the front with commendable thoroughness and no imagination whatsoever."

"And if I'd rather catch my train?"

"Then I am instructed to convey the household's profound gratitude, sir's best wishes, and a settlement of your hotel account." A beat, measured to the millimeter. "I would add, speaking entirely for myself, madam, that in forty-nine years of service I have carried a great many messages, and this is the first one I have hoped would be declined in favor of the interesting alternative."

Tara looked at him. Buried at the bottom of that face, fathoms down, something was twinkling.

"The kitchen exit," she said.

"Very good, madam. Mind the geese in the courtyard. They are unaffiliated with the palace and behave accordingly."

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They received her in a room with a ceiling so frescoed it constituted a second meeting. Present: the press secretary, Brandt — monochrome, two phones, lipstick chosen to convey no comment — a nervous palace lawyer named Dr. Kessler, and, arriving four minutes late with the air of a man attending his own audit, the Crown Prince of Virelle.

Vertical, dry, and un-cheesed, he was worse. The photographs flattened him; in person he came with weather. He took the seat across from her, performed one glacial nod — "Miss Sharma" — and looked at her exactly the way she'd once seen a client look at a subpoena.

Brandt talked for ten minutes. She was good — Tara, a professional, admired the build: the referendum, the polling, the four points, the nine, the hashtag, the impossibility of denial, the arithmetic of the third door. When she finished, the lawyer slid a document across the table. It was bound. It had tabs.

"A consultancy," said Brandt, "with public appearances. Ten weeks. Compensation at triple your standard retainer, plus the palace account for Sharma and Nair on a two-year term thereafter, win or lose. Full confidentiality both directions, in perpetuity."

Tara did not look at the number when she found it. She looked at it the second time through, casually, the way you check a mirror. It was the kind of number that paid the bank, the office lease, Priya's maternity cover, and the outstanding balance on her father's quiet little pension shortfall that he didn't know she knew about. It was, in short, a number aimed with care, and she glanced up at Brandt with new respect and higher guard.

"Before I read past page one," Tara said, "I have questions."

"Naturally," said Brandt.

"Who else knows?"

"The four people in this room, the Grand Duchess, and Mr. Barrowclough, who knew before it was decided. That is the full list, and it does not grow."

"What happens in August?"

"An amicable separation. Diverging paths, enduring fondness, a statement I have already drafted." Brandt turned one phone face-down, a gesture of intimacy by her standards. "You are grieved briefly and remembered warmly. We have modeling."

"You have modeling on my breakup."

"We have modeling on everything, Miss Sharma. It's a small country. There's little else to do."

Tara turned pages. NDAs, image riders, a schedule of appearances, approved topics, a clothing allowance with a footnote about regional knitwear she elected to leave for later. And there, on page fourteen, standing alone in the manner of a clause that a lawyer had typed while looking over his own shoulder:

Clause 14. The parties acknowledge that the arrangement herein is professional in nature. Neither party shall develop, declare, or act upon genuine romantic attachment to the other during the Term. Any such development shall be disclosed to the Office of the Press Secretary within seventy-two hours and may constitute grounds for renegotiation.

Tara read it twice and looked up.

"Clause fourteen."

"A standard safeguard," said Dr. Kessler, to his own hands.

"It is not standard. Nothing about it is standard. You've made falling in love a reportable event. Within seventy-two hours? To her?" She pointed at Brandt, who accepted the designation with a nod. "What's the modeling on that?"

"Sir insisted on the clause," said Brandt, blandly.

Tara looked at the Prince. The Prince looked at the middle distance, where princes keep everything.

"It is a matter of professional clarity," he said. "Contracts fail at their ambiguities. I saw no reason to leave the largest one standing."

"You think there's a risk."

"I think," said the Crown Prince of Virelle, with the deliberation of a man laying flagstones, "that lies require maintenance, Miss Sharma, and that people who tell one together for ten weeks have been known to lose the file. The clause is a smoke alarm. One installs it precisely because one does not intend to have the fire."

"Huh," said Tara, sitting back. "That's almost smart."

"'Almost,'" said the Prince, to the ceiling, as though asking the fresco to witness what he endured.

And that — the ceiling look, the dry nose-exhale that went with it, the fractional insubordination of one lock of hair — was the moment Tara stopped seeing the dishwasher and saw, with the terrible X-ray clarity that was her actual profession, the man: someone performing reliability the way she performed sunshine, both of them running the same software with different fonts, and she thought, with a premonitory chill entirely wasted on her, oh no. He's funny.

She clicked her pen.

"Three amendments," she said. "One: I'm not a prop; if I'm in the room when decisions get made about me, I speak. Two: my firm's name stays out of it until August — if this blows up, it blows up on me, not on Priya. Three —" she tapped page fourteen — "the smoke alarm cuts both ways. If your side breaches, the disclosure goes to Barrowclough, not to the Office of the Press Secretary. I've known her forty minutes and I can already tell she'd monetize it."

"I would," agreed Brandt, making a note.

"Mr. Barrowclough," said the Prince, "is acceptable."

Dr. Kessler amended in pen, initialed, rotated the document, and offered it to her with the ceremonial dread of a man passing a lit firework.

Ten weeks. One lie, professionally maintained. The bank, the lease, her father's pension, and — she could feel it already, filing itself under future problems — a prince with a smoke alarm and a sense of humor he kept in his breast pocket.

Tara has been in worse rooms, she narrated. It was, for the first time in her career, unconvincing.

She signed.

"Welcome to the household, Miss Sharma," said Brandt, standing. "Your girlfriend lessons begin at two."

"My what?"