“We can’t evict Freddie from his own home,” I said. “I wish he felt like he could stay there with us, but since he doesn’t, we should be the ones to go.”

“I will arrange it,” Marj said.

We rounded a corner, and I chased her up a flight of stairs before she came to a halt in front of a familiar gilt-trimmed door. “And this is where I leave you,” she said.

I nervously fluffed my hair, and Marj clearly saw the tremor in my hand.

“I cannot pretend you and the duke didn’t leave us in a pickle,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Most people are allowed several moments of massive immaturity in their lives. Frederick, in fact, is overdrawn on that account.” She looked me right in the eyes. “But Nicholas, because of what he will one day be, hasn’t been afforded much space for that. He gets one. He’s earned one. But only one.”

She swung open the door for me. “I’ll have a footman run over the keys to 1A.” She winked. “Chin up. She didn’t call for a firing squad today.”

Walking into Eleanor’s dark, quiet quarters felt like breaking and entering, and even though I was there by invitation, I couldn’t help but tiptoe. I was so fixated on the door of her actual bedroom sitting ajar, and at the swath of carpet that would lead me there without knocking over anything expensive, that I didn’t even look at the rest of the sitting room. I certainly didn’t expect to feel a light whack at the back of my calves.

“Since you’re up,” Marta’s voice said, “my mobile’s done charging.”

I turned to see the Queen Mum, hair in tight white curls, sitting on the couch with a frown, her cane innocently propped up next to her as if she hadn’t just used it to prod me. She waved in the direction of an end table across the room, and I obligingly went over and unplugged her phone.

“Ah,” she said. “Edwin’s made a move at Scrabble.” She peered at it. “Cat. What a twit.”

“How are you this morning, Your Majesty?”

Marta’s eyes flashed. “I’ve spent the morning in a Twitter fight with a berk who thinks we’ve killed you in secret,” she said.

I glanced at her screen. Her handle was @KingIdrisElba and she’d kept the default egg avatar.

“He’d weep if he knew the call was coming from inside the house,” she added. “I feel quite alive.” Then she nodded toward Eleanor’s room. “Don’t speak until spoken to. My daughter does love her rules.”

The bedroom loomed dead silent before me. For a harrowing second, I wondered if Eleanor had suffered another flutter and all this dead silence would prove to be literal. But once again Eleanor was sitting up in bed, backed by a pile of pillows, and sporting a silk bed jacket—today’s was pink, with a stupendous oval ruby pinned to it. She did not look up from the paper when I walked in, and my curtsy went unacknowledged. I knew that “don’t speak until spoken to” also meant “do nothing at all without permission,” so I stood and waited.