Eleanor blinked very, very slowly, and then picked up her glass of Chardonnay and tilted it toward me. “Bex,” she said to me, my nickname sounding so right and wrong all at once on her lips. It was the first time I’d ever heard her say it. “You, my dear, have been nothing but surprises.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The first thing I saw at the construction site was a giant sign that read CONGRATS ON YOUR NEW PROJECT next to a photo of two people in construction gear onto which they’d pasted Nick’s and my faces. It was hilariously homemade, and heartfelt, and my own heart skipped a beat. It had been a long time since anyone had made such an enthusiastic hand-drawn sign for me in London; maybe since the day of the wedding.
“Are you crying?” Eleanor asked, next to me. She was wearing a hat that looked like a purple octopus, and her expression was alarmed.
“No,” I said. “Ish. I’m not in control here. You must remember how pregnancy hormones are.”
Eleanor eyed me coolly. “I can assure you, Rebecca,” she said, “I was always in control.”
Rather than breaking out the bullhorn at the more standard twelve weeks, Nick and I let things cook a little longer—partly out of paranoia, partly to let Freddie’s news breathe—before announcing that we were expecting twins. The world welcomed this news with wild enthusiasm (and a heavy amount of betting on both gender and names; the current front-runners were Albert and Arthur). Even the online haters had to admit that, no matter how derelict a mother I was destined to be, it was nice when people had babies. We were riding a tidal wave of public warmth, and with Freddie haring off to Europe, Richard and Eleanor doubled down on putting me on display to reassure the United Kingdom that it still had royals putting down roots here. I had wanted more work, and I’d gotten it.
The car door opened and Eleanor slowly disembarked, raising a hand to the assembled masses as a cheer went up. I scooted out behind her as quickly as I could, given that I was four months along and yet already felt like I had a beach ball filled with sand stuffed up under my dress. We walked to a neat construction site ringed with workers in orange jumpsuits, their white hard hats respectfully in hand, the merry sign—onto which someone had also added a baby in a hard hat—waving around behind them.
“Your Majesty. Welcome to the beginning of the Eleanor Line,” boomed the mayor of London, an imposing, bloviating sort with hair that looked like it had been cut with a chain saw. He fumbled through the protocols with Eleanor and then shook my hand. He had a surprisingly limp grip. “And, Your Highness, you look just like your portrait,” he said. “Spitting image.”
I smiled. “Yes, aren’t I fortunate?”
“Er, not that I’ve properly seen it,” he admitted. “Popped by the gallery, but it was out for cleaning.”
“How thoughtful of them,” Eleanor said sweetly, resolutely not looking in my direction. I’d shown her the postcard, listened as she shrieked, watched as she tore it in two.
“Yes, well, you’ll want it in tip-top shape for those lovely babies to see someday, eh?” the mayor said. “Oh, that reminds me,” he added, summoning a worker, who stepped forward tentatively with two onesies. They bore the unmistakable Tube logo with CLARENCE written where the stop name would be.
“How marvelous!” I said, taking them and holding both over my stomach as best I could. Click, click. A perfect sidebar photo for tomorrow’s Daily Mail. “Thank you!”
“Twice blessed,” the mayor said.
“Indeed,” Eleanor said. “We are thrilled. Now, tell me more about the Eleanor Line. Will it be the best of them, do you think?”
I bit back a grin and tucked the onesies under my arm. Eleanor never did like to be upstaged, not even by the heirs she’d been so aggro about me providing. But I was outpacing her in gifts, for once in our lives. Since we’d announced my pregnancy, every event I’d done—and I’d done a lot—had come with a trinket, in duplicate, for the forthcoming princes or princesses. Tiny socks, little T-shirts, loads of bibs and blankets and knit caps, almost all of which we would covertly donate to charity, unless they were personalized, in which case we’d tuck them away for posterity (officially—there was no way I wasn’t getting photos of the kids in Paint Britain hats, especially now that Richard had brought me back into the fold there and let me be its primary patron).
“These are unreal,” I said to Nick, marveling at the canopy and large wheels and brass handle of the matching baby carriages parked in our foyer—a gift from the entire board of the Clarence Foundation. “This feels like something Mary Poppins would’ve used.”
“The Banks children were far too old by the time she got there,” Nick said, bouncing one of them up and down as if a real crying baby were inside to soothe.
“Use your imagination,” I said. “Margot and Steve would look amazing pushing these through Kensington Gardens.”
“Too conspicuous,” Nick said. “Also these can’t be up to code.”
He crouched down and poked at one of the spoked wheels. Nick had read an unending stream of baby books since that first ultrasound, and had taken to doing things like moving me away from air-conditioning vents, in case they were circulating secret asbestos, and making his own binder of baby safety tips and product ratings. It was sweet, and sweetly annoying.
“No, sadly, these will probably end up in a basement waiting for a made-up museum exhibit of things we once used,” he said, straightening to a standing position. He started vrooming one of them around in a circle. “Perhaps we could have a bit of fun in the halls with them first. Twin races.”
“You’re on,” I said, grabbing the other one and darting down the corridor. “Last one to the kitchen forfeits naming rights.”
“This is a
