Eleanor’s breath caught. She looked back down at the letter she was holding—a photocopy we’d made on Nick’s printer; after she’d destroyed Lacey’s phone, we weren’t stupid enough to hand her any originals—and her fingertips traced her husband’s signature, light as a kiss on a sleeping person’s cheek. Her face crumpled.

“I did wonder,” she said, so softly I had to crane my neck to hear it, “whether there was anything more.”

“It’s true, then.” It rushed out of Nick in a heavy breath. “I was trying to have some sympathy for you. Then we came here and you told more lies, upon the mountain of others.”

“And do you blame me?” she asked. “You’ve been given a window into an old woman’s worst heartbreak, at the hands of her own sister, which she had to bury in public and in private for a lifetime. I’d have thought you, Nicholas, of all people, would understand that.”

Nick fell silent. Freddie looked like he wanted to drop through the floor.

“I suppose I’m Georgina in this situation, then,” Freddie said. “You must really loathe the sight of me.”

A look of tenderness crossed Eleanor’s face.

“My dear boy,” she said. “Never. You forget—I know what it’s like to lose.”

“Yes, you do,” Nick said, and he was calmer, but still steely. “You know everything, apparently. And we know nothing.”

“Clearly not,” Eleanor said, lifting the papers. “You know this. What more is there?”

“Those are the facts,” Nick said. “I want the story.”

“It is what it is, Nicholas. My sister had a baby with my husband. Your father is not my natural-born child,” Eleanor said, her voice rising. “Plumbing the hows and whys, opening myself to the bone, won’t make a damned bit of difference.”

“It would to me.”

We all turned toward the door as the color drained from Eleanor’s face.

Richard.

CHAPTER SIX

I had seen Richard walk into rooms. I’d seen him storm out of them. I’d seen him circulate in public, yell at his sons in private, and even deliver flowers to his incapacitated wife. Through it all, he’d remained very much the picture of the man in the papers: sleek, tall, ramrod straight, every inch a person who identified as a prince. But I had never seen him as I did in that moment: slumped against the doorframe, airless, small. Judging by his expression, the Prince of Wales had not known he held the title through false pretenses.

“You don’t think,” Richard said, “that this is information I should have had?”

Nick quickly crossed the room to him. “Father,” he said. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t—”

“Not you,” he said, pointing a shaky finger at his mother. “Her.”

“Now, now, don’t be melodramatic,” Eleanor began, but her voice lacked its usual assuredness.

“Melodramatic,” Richard repeated. “You’re right. Melodrama is inappropriate. I’d say raging bloody dramatic would be a more appropriate response. I’ve just walked into a room to confirm three separate wedding travel plans for you and me and Nicholas, to protect the direct line of succession, and learnt that we aren’t technically even in it.”