“And the babies?” asked Penelope Ten-Names from her spot in the front. “I understand we’ll get names in a few days. Any hints?”

“Once the shock wears off, we’ll let you know,” I had said with a grin. “After we have an audience with the Queen.”

“They’re doing brilliantly, though. Small, but mighty,” Nick had said. “Like Britain herself.”

This was now day three of our new schedule of NICU visits, and the press so far was keeping a respectful distance, making it an oddly peaceful time. Focusing only on these minuscule beating hearts, without fear that we’d leave the hospital through a throng of people trying to get a shot of me lactating, made it easy to shove the outside world away for as long as we could manage it.

My phone vibrated on the table next to me. I shifted as carefully as I could, so as not to wake my daughter.

“Gaz,” I told Nick. “Now he thinks we should name one of them after Saint Wulfhilda of Barking, who got…” I squinted at my phone. “Fired from the Abbey for being too hot.”

“He’s barking,” Nick said. “Should we tell him, and put him out of his misery?”

“No way,” I said. “His misery is way too entertaining.”

The baby grabbed Nick’s finger. “Yeow,” he said theatrically, tickling her nose. “First you rip out your feeding tube, and now you’re trying to pull off my finger. What two-kilogram baby can do that?”

“A fighter, that’s who,” I said. “In a spiritual sense, but mixed martial arts would be an interesting twist.”

Nick laughed. “I’m not sure that’s in the cards.”

“Maybe not,” I said. Nobody was around us—they’d put us in a private area—but I still lowered my voice. “We should probably talk about what is in the cards, though.”

He knew what I meant. His eyes scanned the area.

“The fantasy of leaving is so, so alluring,” he said quietly. “But now I’m not so sure I can do it.”

“I wondered if you’d land there,” I said. “It would be…such a shitshow.”

“It’s not even that,” Nick said. “I mean, it is that. But it’s so many other things, too. I keep thinking of my grandfather. He said in his letter that running off wouldn’t actually let him and Georgina escape anything. That the scandal would always chase their family. We’re in a similar position, and now that I’m seeing these two in front of me, flesh and blood, I don’t know if I can do it to them. Is that crazy? If I have the choice that I have always wanted, is it madness not to take it?”

“Deciding to stay is a choice, Nick,” I pointed out.

“But not my choice alone,” he said. “What do you want to do?”