“Grandfather,” Nick whispered.
The lid came easily off the box. It was full of papers and some curling old photographs. Nick and I read them, traded them, consumed them in total silence. Finally he grabbed at my arm.
“Freddie,” he said, sounding strangled. “Bex, we have to get Freddie.”
CHAPTER FIVE
My love,
I hated leaving you in tears like that, knowing it may be the last time we’re alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of today’s words being the last private ones we ever share. We said so much in anger and in sorrow, and I’m afraid you won’t remember all the things we also said in love. And I do love you, Georgie. I will love you until they bury me.
The moment you kissed me, all those years ago, I was gone. I wish it hadn’t happened when it was too late. I wish I hadn’t been too weak to do the right thing. I’ve always been weak. That isn’t artful self-deprecation, or an excuse for my infidelities (unfaithful to Eleanor in my heart and in our marriage, unfaithful to you because I dutifully go back to her bed every night). You knew I was weak even when you were a child, and I wonder if that’s what ultimately drew you to me: my need to be warmed by your fire. You are so strong, so brave, so ready to seize what you want; you make even someone like me feel like a warrior. But my weakness has ruined you, ruined me, ruined us, possibly even ruined Eleanor (as much as she can be ruined; she’ll outlast us both). I can’t ruin our child as well.
I know it must kill you to see him in Eleanor’s arms. I can’t look at him without seeing you, and what was stolen from you—from all three of us—and I know it must be exponentially worse for you because, unlike me, you’re forced to keep your distance. All I want is to take our son and run with you to the edge of the world. But that would collapse the whole house of cards, a house built by no less than the ruling family of this country. We could never outrun it. Richard would grow up with it haunting his every move.
But we also can’t keep up this dual life. Hiding in windowless garrets behind wardrobes, consuming each other under cover of darkness, stealing seconds alone in palace halls…I’d have done this forever, selfishly, if I hadn’t walked in on you today and seen you crying. It made me realize that it’s my turn to be the strong one. And that means letting you go.
Get married, Georgie. Have more babies. Live big and loud, the way we wish we could have. There is happiness in the world for you. Please let yourself find it, let it sustain you; that’s the only thing that can sustain me. And then, someday, possibly when we’re both gone, our son will be king. And that is bigger than us all.
Always yours,
Henry
Freddie put the letter down, his face waxen. “Fuck,” was all he said.
Nick’s color wasn’t much better. He’d been green since we unearthed it, his hand shaking so badly when he tried to dial Freddie that I’d ended up having to do it. With a pang of guilt for adding yet another lie about my father-in-law to this morass, I’d told Freddie that Nick was really struggling, and that he needed Freddie to help defuse tensions with Richard in person. It was enough to get Freddie on a private jet, but not so much that he’d go rogue and phone Richard on the sly. It wasn’t even that far from the truth. Technically, Nick was having a hard time with Richard—it just wasn’t, for once, Richard’s fault.
Freddie had turned up at our door six hours after I called.
“Where’s the fire?” he joked.
“We need to go someplace private,” I said, and I’d led him up the stairs into the master bedroom and opened the door to the Narnia closet. He’d stood there, blinking, confused.
“This is unutterably kinky, Bex,” he’d said, but he did as I asked, climbing up into Sex Den with deepest trepidation. “I’ve heard of safe rooms, but this is another level of— Oh.”
He’d stopped short when he saw Nick, ashen, clutching the sheaf of love notes we’d unearthed in the box along with some photographs of his great-aunt, presumably taken by Henry, that would have been better left unseen by anyone but them. Nick had handed Freddie the most revealing note of all, and we’d watched as the life drained out of him, too.
“I had to breathe into a paper bag after I read it,” Nick said to his brother now.
Freddie peered at it, as if proximity would change the words somehow. “Is it possible we’re not reading this correctly?”
Nick slid down the wall and into a sitting position. “Our grandfather and Georgina were in love, she got pregnant, and Gran raised the baby as her own,” he narrated. “And that baby is our father. Is that how you’re reading it?”
“Fuck,” Freddie repeated, covering his face with his hands. “Fuckity-fuck.”
Nick’s eyes were wild. “And if this is true,” he said. “Which…it must be. I mean, why would Henry Vane lie in his own love letter? But.” He gulped. “This means…”
“Father’s not the heir,” Freddie blurted.
“And neither am I,” Nick said. His hands were shaking. “None of this is ours. This whole life, all of it, everything we’ve been raised to do and say and believe, has been a lie. Our lives are a fucking lie. Our past. Our present. Our future. All lies. And we have babies coming who will make the lie bigger and bigger.”
His breathing sped up again. I made a move toward him but he waved me off, inhaling a huge, slow stream of oxygen. One of the twins nudged me in the ribs. My hand went to the spot where I felt it, and I thought about what Nick had said. This wasn’t
