“A column of your very own, weekly or monthly, whatever suits. Syndicated in all the papers, or exclusive to Metropolitan, as you like.”

“What kind of column?”

“Why, reporting from Nassau, from the middle of society, all our busy little doings here. Intriguing tidbits. The kind of details that only an intimate friend of the Windsors might know. Surely that would be of interest to readers in America?”

The exact shade of her eyes was so particular, so remarkable, a plush, vivid lavender, they had a name for it: Wallis blue. Her wedding dress, I’m told, matched that shade exactly. And I don’t blame her. Those eyes, they held you in thrall, especially when she wanted them to. When she channeled the full force of her charm through them and into you. On that July day, the duchess was as much a mystery to me as to everyone else who wasn’t married to her, and maybe even—maybe especially—to the fellow who was. I perhaps thought her morals a little wanting, her ethics a little thin, her mind a little shallow, her clothing a little fabulous and perhaps the most interesting thing about her. As for me, I was a pedigree twenty-five-year-old feline, blessed with a sleek, dark pelt and composure in spades, polished to a sheen by decent schooling and a little over a year of college, followed by a swift, brutal tutorial in the outside world to harden the skin beneath. I thought I was plenty of match for a woman like that, the Duchess of Windsor, the former Mrs. Ernest Simpson, the former Mrs. Earl Winfield Spencer, yes, that woman, striking, thin-lipped, blue-eyed, lantern-jawed, who nearly toppled the British Crown by the force of her ambition.

But here’s the thing. You cannot possibly know somebody you’ve never met. You can observe her in a thousand photographs, a hundred newsreels, and not understand a thing about her. That person on the magazine cover is a character in a play, a character in a book, a character of her own creation and your imagination, and this immaculate namesake bears no more than a passing resemblance to the original. Remember that, please. You don’t know her. You know only the fascinating fiction she’s presented to you. Surely that would be of interest to readers in America, she had said.

“I bet it would,” I answered.

Until that instant, I hadn’t noticed the tension in her face. That tautness, I thought it was her natural state. Now everything loosened, her eyes and cheekbones and mouth, that fragile skin, like the softening of frosting on a cake. She looked almost human. I thought this couldn’t be happening, I couldn’t be standing here. She couldn’t be offering me this prize. There must be some trick. But her eyes were so blue.

“Then we understand each other?” she said.

“I believe so.”

“Good.”