“I can assure you that our feelings developed appropriately,” Eleanor said. She tried to flex her right hand. It fought her. “Georgina got to finish her schooling in France, but I was made to stay in the country I was meant to rule. Henry was the only friend I had left. He always treated me like an equal, whether I was a little girl or the future queen. That dynamic has been rare in my life.”

“And that’s how you fell in love?” I asked. “Nick and I were friends first, too.”

“Naturally I was drawn to him,” she said. “Henry was shy, you know. Meeting people was difficult for him also. And then when his father died and he became the Duke of Cleveland, his mother expected him to try to carry on their political legacy, but he was never aggressive enough to make a success of that sort of life.”

“Their political legacy had been crap for generations by then, anyway,” Marta said.

“He ended up with a much bigger legacy,” I said. “He must have loved you very much to step into this spotlight if he was so shy.”

Eleanor had a faraway expression on her face. “He would have done anything for me. He was very protective.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him,” I said. “Or Georgina. I live in her house, and I’ve read so many stories about her but I still feel like I don’t have the whole picture of who she was.”

Eleanor sucked on the inside of her cheek and glanced over at her mother, who was dozing off.

“My sister was everyone’s favorite,” she said. “Pretty and funny and lively. Everything that makes life easy for a person. But because of that, she thought everything else should come easily to her, too, and it made her impetuous and selfish. She had a wild imagination and a skewed perception of the world. Don’t put too much stock in those journals of hers.”

Marta’s head had dropped forward. She let out a snore.

“I did find part of a love letter recently,” I confessed.

“Georgina had many suitors,” Eleanor said. “That Elvis Presley bit is, regrettably, absolutely accurate. She once served Agatha the worst sandwich because of that man.”

“I wish this had been to him,” I said, “but she wrote it way earlier than that. There was no name on it. She must not have ever sent it? The whole thing sounded forbidden.”

Eleanor glanced at the snoozing Marta, then looked back at the Cubs. “There was one young man,” she said. “The son of one of Father’s equerries. He’d become a veterinarian. Mummy and Daddy told Georgina in no uncertain terms that he was beneath her, and sent the lot of them away. She was heartbroken.”

“That’s awful.”