This time, Nick smiled a little. “Me too,” he said. “Again. But if I feel this betrayed at having the wrong life thrust upon me, how can I keep quiet and thrust the wrong life on my own children?”

“It’s a lot to contemplate,” Richard agreed. “But I meant it. You are not bound by my decision. I won’t trap you in this life, in this lie. I won’t deprive you of choice.”

Nick wrestled with what to say for long enough that I interjected.

“Thank you, Richard,” I said. “This means a lot to both of us.”

“It feels good,” Nick added, choked up, “to think that we understand each other. At last.”

Richard stood, and they shared an awkward handshake that Nick abruptly turned into a hug. Richard seemed shocked, for a second, and then relaxed into it and patted his son’s back. They pulled apart, and Richard turned to include me.

“We have a wedding to celebrate,” he said. “Sleep. Enjoy tomorrow. Take that time for yourselves, and for Freddie. The future can wait at least that long.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

The wedding of the Princess of Orange and Prince Frederick of Wales was to be a two-part affair: first, a civil ceremony performed by the mayor in a very dressed-down exhibition space, and then a religious one immediately thereafter at the more ornate Nieuwe Kerk next to the palace. It was a lot to handle even with a full night’s sleep, which neither Nick nor I had gotten. My mind would not be stilled, and neither would the babies tap-dancing on my bladder. It felt like the entire world yawned before us, and I didn’t know where to look. Worse, Eleanor’s dark secrets, dragged into the light, had overshadowed the fact that we were about to encounter a massive shift in the relationship of the brothers to each other, and me to Freddie. Now that day was here, and we hadn’t done any of the work to get ready for it.

“Freddie always lived down the hall, or around the corner,” he said at breakfast, morosely prodding his uneaten sausages. “Even when we were fighting, I knew he was there. I feel like we lost so much time together over the last few years and we’ll never get it back and now he’s leaving.” He sighed. “It’s been generations since a prince of the realm has gone off to claim another country’s throne. What if it turns sour and he feels there’s nothing left for him back home?”

“There will be,” I had said. “We will be.”