Meghan Markle is all-smiles hours before Harry arrives back from UK

Meghan Markle has been seen for the first time since Prince Harry dashed to meet with his cancer-stricken father King Charles. The Duchess of Sussex flashed a smile as she drove around near her $14 million Montecito home. 

Meghan looked relaxed from behind the wheel of her Range Rover in a baseball cap and dark, oversized sunglasses, and sipped from a coffee mug as she drove along. 

Her appearance on Wednesday was the first time she has been publicly photographed since Prince Harry jetted off to London to visit his ailing father. The Prince embarked on a trip to see King Charles following the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis. Harry is understood to have spent just 45 minutes visiting with his father and Queen Camilla before heading back. Charles was said to have been unhappy as he was left ‘kicking his heels’ waiting for Harry to arrive as he delayed his trip to Sandringham for ‘peace and quiet.’ 

Harry’s visit did not include a meeting with his estranged brother and heir to the throne, Prince William , or his wife, Kate Middleton , who is recovering from surgery. Both Meghan and Harry have been out of monarchy life since the couple stepped down from their royal roles. The Duke, 39, arrived at Heathrow just before 2pm and arrived back in LA on Wednesday evening. He traveled without his two young children Prince Archie, four, and Princess Lilibet, two. 

The father and son had a ‘brief meeting’ before the King and Camilla were driven to Buckingham Palace where a helicopter was waiting to take them back to Sandringham. Notably absent from the reunion was his brother Prince William, with no signs the tensions between the two have eased since Harry and Meghan decided to step back from senior royal duties in 2020.

‘William has shown today that he has disowned Harry, he doesn’t want to know him, and he probably doesn’t even like him anymore. Harry is just not part of his life,’ royal expert Jennie Bond told DailyMail.com. ‘That rift is so deep now, and that has been shown by Harry being here and them not meeting, so deep that I really do wonder if it can ever, ever be mended.’ William in addition to dealing with his father’s health scare, is also caring for his wife, Kate, as she recovers from abdominal surgery.

Expert Richard Fitzwilliams suggested the fact that Prince Harry made the trip at all shows hope for reconciliation. He told MailOnline: ‘The whole situation has changed with cancer. The fact the King has been diagnosed with something that millions know is life threatening has changed the whole relationship between the Royal Family and the Sussexes. The only way for a family to fight cancer is to come together. A lot has been made of the length of Harry’s visit and how quickly he left but that isn’t the point. The point is that Harry came – and Charles shared the diagnosis with him. What he wanted was to express support, it’s a completely new situation.’

The meeting between Harry and Charles was their first formal meeting in person since the late Queen Elizabeth II ‘s funeral in September 2022. The prince did attend Charles’s coronation at Westminster Abbey in May last year but was not seen interacting with the newly crowned King and Queen. Buckingham Palace announced the King was undergoing treatment for unspecified cancer on Monday. Doctors discovered the cancer whilst treating the monarch for an enlarged prostate just over a week prior, according to the Palace. He returned to his Sandringham estate to recuperate following treatment, arriving via the royal helicopter at around 4.20pm. It is thought that Harry stayed in a luxury hotel while in the UK, having technically been made homeless since his eviction from Frogmore Cottage last year.

As Harry was in London, Meghan was thought to be have been at home in Montecito with her kids while virtually all of Southern California was under flash flood advisories and watches. The historic Pineapple Express weather system dumped a record amount of rain over parts of Los Angeles on Monday, sending mud and boulders down hillsides dotted with multimillion-dollar homes. The storm is causing chaos over several regions including the star-studded Beverly Hills, Malibu and the Sussexes’ Montecito neighborhood. 

Harry and Meghan, George Clooney, Lady Gaga and Halle Berry are among the celebrities whose multi-million-dollar mansions are under threat by the severe storms. The Sussexes’ $14.65million Montecito mansion (pictured) was under a ‘flood watch’ warning for 28 hours, while their surrounding county, Santa Barbara, was deluged with inches of rain on Monday.

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