Meghan Markle Takes Tea With the Queen, Fueling Engagement Rumors
She was invited to a secret tea party with the queen last week. Can an announcement of marriage be far off?
Meghan Markle has met the queen for an hour-long afternoon tea, according to a well-sourced report in Thursday’s Daily Mail, which is further fueling speculation that the two are already engaged, and merely waiting for an appropriate moment to share their happy news with the nation.
Meghan and Harry arrived at Buckingham Palace in a Ford Galaxy with blacked out windows for the tea-time conference, according to a report by the Mail’s consummate social diarist, Richard Kay.
The meeting reportedly happened Thursday last week.
Kay reports that “everything about the tea-time meeting was deliberately informal” in a bid to “settle any nerves Meghan might have felt.”
After being driven into the inner courtyard of the palace, the couple were “whisked up to the queen’s private sitting room on the first floor overlooking the palace gardens and Constitution Hill,” Kay reports.
The meeting was kept deliberately low-key to minimize staff gossip.
Although Meghan has been a regular visitor to Kensington Palace, where Harry has his home and office, this is understood to be the first time she has visited the monarch’s official residence.
After last month’s public appearance together at the Invictus Games, fresh rumors have abounded that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are secretly engaged, and merely awaiting a politically opportune moment to make the official announcement.
Many commentators find it hard to believe that Meghan would have conducted her astonishing interview in Vanity Fair, in which she teased that she “loves a good love story,” unless both she and Harry were settled in their plans.
It’s also almost impossible to envision a situation in which Harry would have kissed Meghan in public, as he did at the Invictus Games, were the couple not set on a long-term future together.
And meeting the queen is one of the last pieces in the protocol puzzle.
Meghan has reportedly declined to sign up for a new series of Suits, with a source telling The Sun, “Meghan loves playing Rachel and feels she owes so much to Suits. But Harry can’t move to Toronto, so she’ll have to move eventually if they want to be together.”