“I tried to push past this, I did, but as soon as we came back here the doubt crept in.” I could barely hear him. “Even looking at you right now makes it hurt all over again. I just…I can’t. I need time. I need…”
Whatever it was, I never heard it, because his words were lost in the slamming of the front door. For what felt like an eternity, I watched, waited, willed it to open again. But it didn’t. And standing there, surrounded by the byzantine rooms of Apartment 1A, I stared down at the gold G on the floor of my foyer and felt nothing so much as alone in another person’s life—not only Georgina’s, but also my own.
ACT TWO
I beseech you now with all my heart definitely to let me know your whole mind as to the love between us.
—King Henry VIII
CHAPTER ONE
Come on, Duchess, hold still, or else I’ll stab you in the ear, and it might not be an accident.”
“I’m trying!” I said to Kira, my hair and makeup person and the only American in my orbit who wasn’t related to me. “I wish you would go back to calling me Bex. Or Rebecca. Or even Hey You.”
Kira cocked a brow at me, and reached for a bobby pin.
“Half the reason I do it is because of that face you make,” she teased. “Besides, if things keep going the way they are, your title is very much in flux.” Her face turned solemn. “Is there any change?”
I looked down at my nails, freshly manicured, cheerful in an incongruous way. “No.”
Just as it said on the novelty T-shirt Freddie once gave her for Christmas, Eleanor had proved to be One Tough Old Bird. We’d arrived on the doorstep of the state visit with no signs of life beyond the beeping of her monitors, but she was still with us, and no news was just that: no news. The country was getting anxious, and so was the family—but, as usual with The Firm, we were expected to shove down those sentiments and put on a show of family unity tomorrow for the Dutch.
Over the last few weeks, I’d gotten really good at burying my feelings.
A familiar voice slithered to me from across the hall. We’d turned a first-floor bathroom into my glam room, because at some point Georgina had installed a giant makeup mirror circled in lightbulbs—it was like living backstage in an old Broadway theater—and from where I sat, I could see the cracked door of Nick’s nearby study. He had apparently turned on Get Up, Great Britain! The guest was Clive.
“But that’s why this state visit is so important,” he was saying. “It’s our first glimpse of Richard as our figurehead. Given Her Majesty’s health, we should watch closely, because this could become our new normal at any moment.” He then ruined the somber mood by winking at the camera. “It’s tense at the palace. You can take it from me.”
“Yeah, well you can take something from me, too, and it’s gonna hurt,” Kira muttered. “Are you ready to try on this tiara, or are you too distracted by the loser on TV?”
I blew out a deliberately childish sigh, which made us both laugh.
“Sorry,” I said. “I hate that the sound of his voice still bothers me.”
I also hated when that voice told the truth, and once again, Clive was at least a bit right. Marta’s already bowed frame had become more stooped. Freddie was drawn and snappish, and Richard and Nick had to juggle their own agita with accepting that their promotions within The Firm might be permanent. It all would’ve been much easier to handle if Freddie and Nick hadn’t gone off like hand grenades.
Nick had asked for time when he left Apartment 1A, so I gave it to him, with a dose of supernatural restraint. He’d stayed out all night, and even though I was itching to know what he’d done and where he’d done it, when he returned I acted like his disappearance was the most normal thing in the world. He’d found me curled up in bed reading Georgina’s first edition of Little Women, a tan leather volume so old that it only contained what the world now thinks of as the first half of the book. Amy March was behaving like a real brat when I heard his muffled steps on the thick hall carpet. He walked in still wearing the previous night’s sweater.
“Good book?” he asked.
“A classic,” I said.
We locked eyes.
“Busy day today?” I asked.
“Mostly a research day,” he said.
He blinked. I blinked. He smiled. I returned it.
“I’d better shower,” he said.
I scowled at his back as he closed the bathroom door. “Enjoy.”
I hadn’t asked him anything else. I need time didn’t mean Please quiz me about exactly how I spent that time, or Pressure me to announce whether, with respect to forever or the next five minutes, I need yet more time. Nick hadn’t come home with a new face tattoo or anything, so I resolved to let him process the blowup however he needed, at least until the damn state dinner was over. Making a good showing for the Dutch meant a lot to both of us, and the War of the Waleses had already done enough to imperil that. I did not press Nick for details, nor push him about his emotional state, nor do anything that might make this train careen any further off the rails; instead, I’d pasted on a smile and white-knuckled my way through, promising myself it would be temporary. We just had to pass the Dutch test.
It had been a long two weeks to get to this point. I was climbing the walls.
Kira clapped once, loudly. “You are somewhere else today,” she
