“Rihanna rolling up the car window,” I said. “No, wait, Angela Lansbury eating popcorn.”
Freddie nibbled on his thumbnail. “That look on his face. I can’t forget it,” he said. “What if he really doesn’t come back?”
Nick took a long sip of his coffee. “I have no idea,” he said, as he put his cup down with a clatter. “I have absolutely no idea what to do about anything.”
* * *
I have never thought of myself as an actress, but over the course of the next month, the three of us may have outdone everyone performing on the West End. The public had never loved me more—being pregnant seemed to have absolved me of allegedly banging my husband’s brother—so Nick and Freddie and I were deployed steadily to draw attention away from the otherwise potentially glaring absence of their father. Our three-person act, honed out of necessity, worked like a charm. But the void he left inside The Firm was gaping. In addition to the wedding itself, Hax and Lax had planned a gala celebratory dinner that week, as well as some kind of variety show at a local soccer stadium, and it was a challenge to be evasive about whether the father of the freaking groom would be in attendance.
“Where’s Dickie?” Agatha wondered at one of our logistics meetings.
“Nagging chest infection,” Freddie said.
“Migraines,” Nick said at the same time.
“Both,” I said quickly. “All that coughing.”
“He’s recuperating at the country house,” Nick said, “but he said we should keep meeting here so that, ah, Barnes and the staff wouldn’t be inconvenienced.”
“He must be awfully ill,” Edwin said. “I sent him one of those cute little videos where it turns your face into a doggie, and he didn’t even tell me to get stuffed.” He frowned. “It’s so unlike him.”
“Is it a sex bender, dear?” Lady Elizabeth asked me. “You can tell me. We’ve all been there. Eddybear once sprained his—”
“He’ll be fine,” said Eleanor, and we all scrambled to our feet as she entered. Her rubber-tipped cane dragged on the carpet; I hadn’t known she was back to using it, but then again, this could have been a bit of theater to evoke sympathy. “I spoke to him this morning and he’s keeping his distance so as not to infect Frederick. The groom is the one person this wedding can’t do without, after all. Now. Where are we?”
Nick put a hand on the binder in front of him. “I’d been running things while Father is, er, out,” he said, glancing at Eleanor. “Would you like to take the reins?”
“I’m sure you’re doing a wonderful job,” she said with extra sweetness. “It’s good practice for the heir, eh?”
“Perhaps you’d like to give Edwin a go,” Nick said innocently. “He went to the trouble of showing up today, and all.”
We looked at Edwin, who was mugging into his phone. “Oooh, darling, I look dishy as a kitty cat,” he giggled to Elizabeth.
“Absolutely not,” Eleanor said, and sat down. We followed suit.
“Eddybear gets anxious around binders,” Elizabeth told us, patting his knee.
“Right, I’ll keep this, then,” Nick said smoothly. “Okay. Hax and Lax have got the chap who just won Eurovision to headline the variety show—”
“A scandal. It was a terribly dull song,” Eleanor sniffed.
“And we’re meant to send a British musician as well, though Lax politely requested that we not send any of ours who were at Eurovision,” Nick finished.
“Let’s send Elton,” Edwin said. “Or Paul?”
“Seems rather like overkill, Uncle,” Freddie said.
“It’s a royal wedding,” Elizabeth pointed out. “At least consider it. I love a good sing-song to Elton.”
“I’ll have Cilla prepare a list,” Nick said. “Let’s move on to the dress code for dinner…”
When the meeting ended and Eleanor gave us leave to stand ahead of her, everyone dispersed in a hurry—Nick and Freddie in particular—leaving Eleanor sitting in contemplation, staring up at the painting on the wall. The unfinished one of her had been rotated back in, and she was studying it with an air of sadness.
“I feel a bit like that portrait today,” she said. “Incomplete. As if I’m slowly fading to white.”
“Did Richard at least say where he was when you talked to him?” I asked. “Has he decided anything?”
“I’m surprised you believed that, Rebecca,” Eleanor said. “I’ve not spoken to him at all.”
“I guess I assumed you wouldn’t add another lie to the pile,” I said. “You’re right that I should know better by now.”
“It didn’t occur to me that there would be anything for anyone to decide. Only to cope with,” she said quietly. “The longer he stays away, the more I worry about what he’s thinking.”
“Not everyone can live a lie,” I said.
Her head snapped up to me. “Could you? Could Nicholas?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Eleanor sagged a little before catching her own posture. “You truly think one of them would walk away over this?” she said. “Over this matter of choice? How do they not realize that not having to choose can be a blessing?” She ran her hand along the ornately carved edge of Richard’s conference table. “We are surrounded by so many incredible historical objects. We are historical objects. We are lucky.” She cocked her head and looked at me. “How can they hate that? Do they hate it? Do you?”
“When I accepted Nick’s proposal, I knew what came with him,” I said. “They didn’t have that option about themselves. I think anyone would at least wonder what they might have been, if they hadn’t had their future prescribed to them.”
“I never did,” Eleanor said. “I saw entire rooms of people bob in deference to my grandmother. I saw people weep at her funeral, at my uncle’s, at my father’s. I saw my family commanding rooms full of world leaders and politicians and diplomats and commoners. I saw the world change and our family stay exactly where it was, and I thought, That’s what
