Interlude: Somewhere Beyond the Sea | Oneshot
Date: Mid August 2022 Warnings: Rich people nonsense Featuring: The Charming Family
The Charmings receive news from the mainland.
Living on a yacht was not all it was cracked up to be.
Jacqueline was sunburned, seasick, and absolutely done with her family. She barely had any cell service, which was intentional, she imagined, so that they couldn’t be tracked. All of her entertainment consisted of rereading the same five historical romance novels she’d packed and fighting Granny for the portable DVD player to watch, in rotation, series four of EastEnders, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and a grainy recording of Phantom of the Opera.
She was twenty-six years old, for Christ’s sake! She had better places to be! Part of Jacqueline wondered if she should have done what the rest of her siblings had done, staying behind in England and ratting out the family. Sure, she might have to serve some time, but at least she’d have a social life afterwards.
Plus, did she mention there was no bloody Internet out here on a boat?
When they arrived at a port, Jacqueline was the first to volunteer to run to the mainland for supplies. Maybe she could get her phone to connect for a brief moment, and for a precious few minutes, she could go on TikTok again and feel a semblance of normalcy.
Jacqueline’s phone did not, however, connect when she reached the mainland. Damn it. Her parents had cancelled the family plan, hadn’t they? She had to wander for ages (it felt like) to find an Internet cafe, which was the sort of place Jacqueline wouldn’t have been caught dead normally. Internet cafes were for tourists! Regular people! Not people who vacationed the way the Charmings did!
But desperate times called for desperate measures, she thought, paying for her thirty minutes of access and setting herself up in front of a monitor. And this was no vacation. She wasted no time typing her name into Google, though she then had to wait (what felt like) an eternity for the page to load. (It was only a few seconds).
It popped up in an article from a local Wiltshire paper:
Jacqueline Knightley, Christopher Charming, and Shannon Charming are also considered to be persons of interest in this case, as they have been identified by the Charming siblings as participants in the illicit activities of The Order of the Prince.
She didn’t read any further than that.
Those dirty little traitors! Jacqueline thought as she scrolled to the top of the page and saw the faces of her brother and sister glaring back at her. Of course, when Augusta didn’t show up to the boat, Jacqueline had a feeling she might do this. And everyone knew that Henry was in the midst of a nervous breakdown. But it still made her feel sick-- like maybe she’d made the wrong choice here.
Had she made the wrong choice here? Jacqueline was miserable. She was sick of her parents, sick of Granny, and starting to wonder if any of this was really worth it. She’d avoided prison, but at what cost?
There was one more thing Jacqueline really needed to know. She typed another name into Google: Paul Knightley, and slowly an image loaded on the front page...
A mugshot?!
Jacqueline had paid for more Internet time, but she didn’t care. Her chair squeaked against the floor as she smashed Ctrl-P and sent the page to the printer. “Thank you!” Jacqueline said harshly, slamming down an unknown amount of Euros and practically ripping the page from the printer before tearing off toward the harbor.
~~~~
“MUM! DAD!” Jacqueline shouted.
“Jacq, please take your shoes off before--”
She ignored her mother’s request, instead shoving the article in her face.
“LOOK AT THIS!” Jacqueline screeched. “What did I say? What did I bloody say?!”
“Jacqueline--”
“No! Don’t Jacqueline me.” The eldest Charming began pacing the boat frantically. “Paul’s been arrested! This is all your fault! If we had just let Paul come on the boat, this wouldn’t have happened, I would have had someone I actually bloody like on this boat, and my husband wouldn’t be a convicted felon!”
Shannon sighed a very long sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose like she was staving off a headache. Just then, Christopher appeared from the bow where he had been lounging. “What’s going on over here?”
“Read it!” Jacqueline flung the pages at her father, hmphing for emphasis. He examined them closely.
“...Paul’s been arrested?” he said finally, frowning.
“Yes! Paul’s been arrested, just like I fucking--”
“Language, Jacqueline!”
“Just like I fucking knew he would be, if we left him behind! My life is over! My husband’s going to be in prison forever! You can both say goodbye to grandchildren, you know!”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “As if there were going to be grandchildren anyway,” she grumbled. Jacqueline shot a sharp look at her.
Luckily, that particular conversation was interrupted by another set of footsteps emerging from the cabin. “Jacqueline, there you are. I was wondering if you had the next book in that series--”
“Granny!” Jacqueline squawked. “Why are you reading those?”
“There isn’t anything else to read, and besides, I rather like them--”
“Jacqueline, you brought books and didn’t tell me?” Shannon, who had also been battling boredom, whipped her head around.
Jacqueline felt like she was going to explode. And then she did. “Because some things are private!!”
“What is so private about a couple of books you brought? Do you not want me reading them or something?”
“Honestly, not really, mother!” Jacqueline was red in the face now.
Christopher sighed. “Jacqueline, I think you ought to eat something. You’re being rather erratic right now--”
“I’m being erratic because my bloody husband is in prison and my grandmother is stealing my only reading material which, by the way, I specifically did not want her reading!”
“Well, I really don’t think it’s fair of you to hoard those books for yourself,” Shannon hmphed.
“Not the point!”
Christopher turned to return to where he had been lounging in the sun and Jacqueline let out a loud noise of frustration. “Not you, too!”
“Jacqueline, there are meals in the freezer--”
“I’m sick of bloody freezer meals,” she grumbled, plopping herself down on a seat and crossing her arms.
She had done everything right. She had followed all of her parents’ advice, remained loyal to the people who were supposed to be powerful, used her head. And yet here she was, stranded in a foreign country that she couldn’t even place on a map eating a freezer meal and fighting her grandmother not only for her shows, but now her romance books, too!
Where had she gone wrong?
She stomped down to the cabin to heat up a meal and almost slammed right into Granny.
“There was no need to be so defensive about those books. They’re quite interesting stories. I just skip past certain chapters, personally,” Granny sniffed.
Jacqueline rolled her eyes.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady.”
She couldn’t help but think of Paul. Was he having a better day than she was?
As Jacqueline settled in to dig into her pre-portioned meal, she glanced over at the pages she’d printed again. Wait a second...
Henry Charming is awaiting trial and is expected to plead guilty.
Jacqueline sighed loudly, pushing her food away. She didn’t know how she was supposed to feel about that. Henry was a traitor. He had turned on the family, abandoned everything he had been raised to believe. Jacqueline was never speaking to him again.
But he was still her brother. After all this, he was still her brother.
“Ah, did you get to the part about the Duke’s twin?” Granny said, looking up from her crossword.
All Jacqueline could do was let out a loud noise of frustration and crumple up the article, tossing it in the nearest bin. Maybe it was best to escape to the world of the Duke.