Chapter Thirty-Eight

"I still don't see why me and Malcolm can't just stay at the house," Graham grumbled.

"You could, I suppose, but I want you to live under the same roof as me until you go off to university. It's selfish, but I'm your father, and that's my right for giving you life," Harry replied with a heavy dose of snark.

"Ruth would have let me stay at home and at my school," he muttered.

Harry had to admit that Graham was right about that. Only a week earlier, she had come to him in his study while he was packing up his library and suggested that maybe just for the two years until Graham finished school, he could stay where he was and come up to see them on the weekends. She was feeling horribly guilty about having to interrupt all their lives, but Harry was adamant. And he told Graham, "Ruth's having a hard enough time with all of this. You really want to punish her more by having you not live with us? She loves you very much, Graham, and your piss-poor attitude is not helpful."

Graham stormed off, then. Harry let him go. He could be grumpy and moody all he wanted, just so long as he didn't make things harder for Ruth.

"I'll look after him, Harry," Malcolm said, coming up behind them with one of his suitcases.

"Thank you. I wouldn't think he needed much looking after at sixteen years old, but this is all going to be a bit of an adjustment for all of us," Harry replied.

Adjustment was putting it mildly. Now that King James V had settled inside the palace in the capital and vacated Leister, it was time for Ruth, as Princess of Leister, to take her rightful place in her ancestral home. She had certainly been of two minds about it, knowing that she was supposed to live there and keep up the estate and such. With all the upheaval with having three kings in the last two years, the stability of keeping Leister Palace properly occupied and following along with tradition was good for the family and for the country. But leaving the capital meant their lives would all change. Harry's commute to work had increased significantly. Ruth would be cutting down to only once a week. Graham had to change schools and all his friends were an hour away. Ruth had been fretting about all this for months, but they could not delay the inevitable. Catherine was off at university now. Leister Palace had been made ready for new occupants. It was time to move in.

Harry took one of his own suitcases while the servants were unloading boxes from trucks around the back. He walked up the front drive to the grand entrance to Leister Palace. He'd have to work at thinking of this place as home. Right now, it felt far too grand to ever be considered homey.

"Look who's here!" Ruth exclaimed as soon as Harry walked inside.

He smiled to see King James standing there with his arm around his daughter's waist. "Welcome home, Sir Harry."

Harry tried to keep from grumbling over that title. Now everyone he met would call him Sir Harry, thanks to the increased visibility of Ruth's elevated position. Ah well. He'd carry on. "I thought you didn't live here anymore," Harry teased his father-in-law.

"Thought I could come see if I could help you settle in. Give a tour and make some introductions if you like," he offered with a smile.

"That's very kind of you, Your Majesty."

"Oh Christ, not you too!" the king lamented. He, like his daughter, had never put much stock in royal formalities.

They all laughed at that. Harry and King James embraced warmly. The king led Harry and Ruth through the palace and introduced them to the various staff members along the way.

"Now, Ruth was born here and she knows it better than anyone. But since all my personal things and the medical equipment has all been removed, you can make it your own. Don't let her tell you where things are supposed to be, Harry, because its your house now and there's no place anything is supposed to be," James cautioned.

Harry had already been contending with that particular stubbornness in his wife. They'd talked about the bedroom they'd take as their own and she had balked very strongly against being in the room that had belonged to her parents when she was young. Thankfully, they'd been able to instruct for the décor to be changed enough that the room would be practically unrecognizable to Ruth.

"Ah, Adam, come meet your new protectees," James said, waving over a very tall man with a strangely handsome face and blonde hair. "Harry, Ruth, this is Adam Carter, Head of Security for Leister Palace. He'll be assigning each of you personal guards. And you can't boss him around, Ruth, because he only answers to the Head of the Royal Guard, who in turn only answers to me. You're both much more important now, so you do what Adam says."

Adam came over and shook both Harry and Ruth's hands. "It's really nice to meet you. We're all sorry to see King James leave here, but I'm looking forward to getting to know you and your family."

"Poor Adam's just had me to contend with all these years. Now he's got a married couple and children."

"I'd like to have a meeting with you both sometime tomorrow, after you get a little settled, to discuss the protection detail for the four of you," Adam said.

Ruth frowned. "The four of us?"
"We already have an officer at the university with Catherine Pearce. Our officer, Beth Bailey, blends in with the students there so Catherine isn't singled out. I'll want to introduce the rest of you to your bodyguards."

"Harry, did you know about this?"

He nodded. "The Head of the Royal Guard called me a couple weeks before Catherine left for school to let me know."

"And you didn't tell me?"

He shrugged. "I didn't think of it. She needs protection just like the rest of us. I trust the Royal Guard, Ruth, as should you."

Harry could see that expression on Ruth's face. She wanted to argue more, despite the fact that he was precisely correct. She didn't like it, though, and she wanted to challenge him at every point to see if there was a hole in the logic anywhere. But he'd have that to look forward to later, he was sure. Ruth got another idea in her head. She turned to Adam and asked, "What about Tom?"

"Tom Quinn has been reassigned to Queen Juliet's team. The palace has had to reorganize the structure after the abrupt change in monarchy," Adam explained.

Well, that was certainly one way of putting it, Harry conceded. And privately, he was not sorry to see Tom go. He'd been the only security officer assigned to Ruth and the rest of the family after they got married. He was perfectly good at what he did, but Harry had never liked him much. And now, of course, they needed a whole team. That would certainly be tedious. But keeping the future monarch and her family safe was serious business, and Harry would do his best not to complain too much.

"Fiona, come meet the family," King James called.

A very beautiful woman with short dark hair and olive skin approached them. She wore a uniform but it was a bit distorted from her distended stomach. She, like Adam, shook both Harry and Ruth's hands and greeted them warmly. "I'm Fiona Carter, I'm the head housekeeper. Anything you need in the palace or the estate, I'm here for you."

"Carter…" Harry began.

Adam put his hand on Fiona's back affectionately. "We're married," he explained. "And as best we know, that's mine, too." He pointed to Fiona's very pregnant belly, and she elbowed him with a laugh.

"Oh congratulations!" Ruth said. "It'll be lovely to have a baby in the house."

"Before you get too worried, our quarters are on the other side from yours. You won't get woken up by crying," Adam said. Harry was glad. He'd been about to ask the same thing.

"And maybe the Carter baby will get a playmate sometime soon," King James suggested.

Ruth's eyes went wide and she started chewing on her lips, deep in anxious thought. Christ, that was another thing to discuss later. Harry dreaded the moment he and his wife were left alone.

But the tour did not linger too long. King James took them to what would be the master suite for Harry and Ruth. Most of their suitcases were already piled in there to be unpacked. They then went up to the third floor to where one of the extra bedrooms had been chosen for Graham—where he'd already settled in with a book on his new bed and told them to leave him be—and another for Catherine.

They wandered the grounds where they stopped by the guest cottage, though it was more like another complete house than a cottage, where Malcolm was setting up his new residence. That had been tricky for Harry. Malcolm was technically staff as the Pearce family butler, but his role was more expansive than just being a live-in servant, as he took meals with the family and was a part of almost everything they did. After discussing with the king, Harry and Malcolm had decided that Malcolm would be Sir Harry's personal secretary, managing his royal duties and such. Harry was loathe to agree to having royal duties, but if it eased the burden off the king and Ruth, he'd step up and do what needed to be done.

Ruth had a secretary as well to attend to her expanded royal role. Sam Buxton was a bright, enthusiastic girl. More energetic than Ruth, but the two of them got on very well. And Sam did a lot to relieve Ruth's royal-related stress. Hopefully Malcolm would get on with her as well, since the two of them would likely be working together quite closely in the future. For the foreseeable future, actually.

Harry Pearce had lived much of his life being sent around the world and calling strange places 'home' for however long he was there. In a lot of ways, moving to Leister Palace felt quite a bit like that. But this was not temporary. And that fact was rather hard to get his head around. This was his life now. Until Ruth became queen, this was where they would live. God willing, that would still be a long ways off. Harry would have to get used to this in the meantime.