“Do you think she’s going to come?” Lacey asked as Kira wrapped her hair into a loose chignon.

“No,” said Mom.

“Yes,” said my aunt Kitty, who was nose deep in Tatler across the room.

“No,” I said. “She was being extreme. I cannot imagine she’s going to want to burn her energy on this. No offense.”

“Trust me, none taken,” Lacey said. “I do not need to have hostess anxiety about the freaking Queen.”

“It would be amusing, though, if she went to Bex’s wedding because she had to and Lacey’s by choice,” Aunt Kitty said.

“Katherine, enough,” my mom tsked.

“No, she’s right,” I said. “Eleanor definitely would have called in sick to the Abbey if we’d given her the option. Of course, if we knew then what we know now, Nick and I would have, too.”

“Not me,” said Kitty, smoothing her brown waves. “Semi-King Richard is a fine hunk of man in person. I’m just sorry he’s not at this one.”

“Ew,” I said.

“He’s not even divorced!” Mom said.

“I’ve got three under my belt,” Kitty said. “Perhaps I could offer my counsel.”

Mom tsked again, but she was laughing. Kira wove a few final pearl pins into Lacey’s hair and then stepped back to admire her work.

“Beautiful,” she said. “This updo turned out so much better than one I did for the Made in Chelsea wedding episode. Of course, I had to buttress that one in case someone threw a drink at it.”

Lacey was radiant in a vintage, short-sleeve, bias-cut cream gown. I had loaned her one of Georgina’s extravagant fur-trimmed capes, and when Lacey swung it over her shoulders and gazed in the mirror, Georgina’s face as I’d seen it in photographs flickered over my sister’s. Lacey’s was the picture of a glamorous courthouse wedding, the kind I imagined Georgina herself might’ve had if she’d been born with romantic free rein—or at least found requited love. That letter had been jockeying for my mind’s attention all morning. I’d decided ten times to tell Nick about it, and then eleven times not to, in part because I wanted to read it again and make sure it really said what I thought it said, and implied what it seemed to imply. Try as I might—and I did, the whole way to Cambridge in the car—I couldn’t think of anything else H. V. could have stood for in that context.