“We need the room,” Nick said curtly to Murray, who was hovering nervously by Eleanor’s side. “Now.” He cleared his throat. “Please.”
“Nicholas, my word, what an entrance,” Eleanor said from her velvet stool, the very place I had sat when—several years ago—she’d more or less conned me into giving up my American citizenship. I wondered how many other cons Eleanor had run in this room.
Murray looked from Nick to the Queen, clearly unsure of his next move.
Eleanor patted her curlers. “I suppose you may go, Murray,” she said.
When the door shut behind him, she turned to us and folded her hands in her lap, making a bit of a show of arranging her right one with her left, as if reminding us she was mortal. And perhaps to convince us that she was weak.
“This is a strange surprise,” she said pleasantly. “And Frederick, back from the land of the windmills. What a treat.”
“You might not think that when you find out why I’m here,” he said, glancing from me to Nick and back to me again, before taking the letter out of Nick’s white-knuckled hand, and stepping toward her.
And we watched as Eleanor read the truth of her life—the other side of it, from the point of view of the two people who were supposed to love her the most, but who had loved each other more. The Queen rarely looked like anything other than the picture of self-control, but I could see the cracks begin to open.
“My, my,” she managed. “Georgina’s fantasies were even more elaborate than I imagined. I did tell you, Rebecca, that she was trouble.”
“This letter is from him,” I said.
“An elaborate forgery,” Eleanor said. “She never did anything by halves. It’s sad, really.”
Nick shook his head. “I cannot believe,” he said, his voice vibrating with anger, “that we came to you in good faith and you’re still bullshitting us.”
“Nicholas! I simply won’t stand for that language,” she said haughtily, her chin high and strong. “Frankly, I’m offended that you would believe the scheming of a sad and jealous—”
“The letter isn’t all we found,” Freddie said.
Eleanor’s features sharpened. “Oh?”
“There were photographs,” he said, turning beet red. “Intimate ones.”
She pointed at me. “I told you that Georgina made a play for him.”
“And a baby shoe,” Nick added. “A front page, folded onto itself, from Father’s birthday. A lock of what looks like baby hair, in an envelope. Shall I go on?”
Eleanor’s breath caught. She looked back down at the letter she was holding—a photocopy we’d made on Nick’s printer; after she’d destroyed Lacey’s phone, we weren’t stupid enough to hand her any originals—and her fingertips traced her husband’s signature, light as a kiss on a sleeping person’s cheek. Her face crumpled.
“I did wonder,” she said, so softly I had to crane my neck to hear it, “whether there was anything more.”
“It’s true, then.” It rushed out of Nick in a heavy breath. “I was trying to have some sympathy for you. Then we came here and you told more lies, upon the mountain of others.”
“And do you blame me?” she asked. “You’ve been given a window into an old woman’s worst heartbreak, at the hands of her own sister, which she had to bury in public and in private for a lifetime. I’d have thought you, Nicholas, of all people, would understand that.”
Nick fell silent. Freddie looked like he wanted to drop through the floor.
“I suppose I’m Georgina in this situation, then,” Freddie said. “You must really loathe the sight of me.”
A look of tenderness crossed Eleanor’s face.
“My dear boy,” she said. “Never. You forget—I know what it’s like to lose.”
“Yes, you do,” Nick said, and he was calmer, but still steely. “You know everything, apparently. And we know nothing.”
“Clearly not,” Eleanor said, lifting the papers. “You know this. What more is there?”
“Those are the facts,” Nick said. “I want the story.”
“It is what it is, Nicholas. My sister had a baby with my husband. Your father is not my natural-born child,” Eleanor said, her voice rising. “Plumbing the hows and whys, opening myself to the bone, won’t make a damned bit of difference.”
“It would to me.”
We all turned toward the door as the color drained from Eleanor’s face.
Richard.
CHAPTER SIX
I had seen Richard walk into rooms. I’d seen him storm out of them. I’d seen him circulate in public, yell at his sons in private, and even deliver flowers to his incapacitated wife. Through it all, he’d remained very much the picture of the man in the papers: sleek, tall, ramrod straight, every inch a person who identified as a prince. But I had never seen him as I did in that moment: slumped against the doorframe, airless, small. Judging by his expression, the Prince of Wales had not known he held the title through false pretenses.
“You don’t think,” Richard said, “that this is information I should have had?”
Nick quickly crossed the room to him. “Father,” he said. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t—”
“Not you,” he said, pointing a shaky finger at his mother. “Her.”
“Now, now, don’t be melodramatic,” Eleanor began, but her voice lacked its usual assuredness.
“Melodramatic,” Richard repeated. “You’re right. Melodrama is inappropriate. I’d say raging bloody dramatic would be a more appropriate response. I’ve just walked into a room to confirm three separate wedding travel plans for you and me and Nicholas, to protect the direct line of succession, and learnt that we aren’t technically even in it.”
“As far as the world knows, you are,” Eleanor said.
“The world,” he said, “is not my concern right now.”
“It should be,” she said. “Perception is reality.”
“Then please, correct my perception that my reality is a cruel prank,” he said. He slumped into the room,
