Marta, as the daughter of the Swedish king and the wife of an English one, had a fair bit of personal fortune and property to mete out. Dunheath Castle, her beloved private retreat, was willed to Edwin and Elizabeth, under the assumption that Eleanor’s Balmoral would eventually pass to Richard. He got the ski lodge up in Jämtland, Sweden, unused by anyone but him for nearly a half century now, with the intention of it eventually going to Freddie. Nick and I were willed an estate outside of Stockholm that had housed some distant relatives until about five years ago. It was a stunning canary-and-white manor on the water with a giant terrace and regal double stone staircase in the back, descending to the impressive lawns.

“It’s basically Captain von Trapp’s house,” I hissed to Nick, passing him the file that had been handed to me. “There’s even a gazebo.”

“Please make me lederhosen out of drapes,” he murmured back.

An assortment of baubles was divided evenly among me and Elizabeth and Freddie, for the use of his future bride; Freddie, who wasn’t present due to his forthcoming interview, had already accepted them and promised to donate them to a museum collection if they went unused, which I found a bittersweet stipulation. I’d been given, among other things, a topaz cocktail ring that I recognized as the one Marta had been wearing when we watched the Cubs win. As this was announced, Agatha’s fists were balled up so hard, she could have crushed all the aforementioned pieces into a fine dust.

“And, finally, Princess Agatha is to inherit Queen Marta’s sapphire suite,” the lawyer finished, the words sapphire suite booming out so loudly they nearly reverberated.

“Oh!” Agatha gasped with pure, uncontained joy. “But of course I’d prefer she was still with us,” she recovered theatrically, even as she smacked a hand on the paperwork and drew it toward herself with unseemly haste.

Richard capped off the meeting with a few lingering agenda items, and then everyone scattered—back to their day-to-day lives, their meetings and workshops, the official book closed on the life of a matriarch who’d seen more than a century. Life and death was as much a business affair in The Firm as anything else.

Nick drummed his hands on his leg nervously. “Ten minutes to go,” he said. “I wonder if he’s ready. Should I check on him? Maybe not. Maybe?”

“He’s probably nervous enough without you staring at him,” I said. “Why don’t you go kill some time by irritating Barnes? I need a Diet Coke, but I’ll meet you in there.”

“Excellent plan,” Nick said, kissing my cheek as he headed off toward Barnes’s office. It gave me a frisson of joy to think about how annoyed Richard’s imperious right-hand man would be to get any kind of unscheduled visit from anyone.