The baby reached out and grabbed Eleanor’s finger. Eleanor cooed at her, then pursed her lips. “Whether or not the proof dies with me,” she said, “the truth doesn’t have to. When these ladies are old enough to understand your decision, you have my blessing to offer it to them. Although I would certainly hate to deny the world…”

She looked expectantly at me and Nick. I glanced at him, and he nodded.

“Nick is holding Margaret Eleanor Mary,” I said.

“And you, Gran, are holding our future queen, Georgina Emma Victoria,” Nick said. “It felt right. I hope you agree.”

Eleanor’s lips trembled. “It is absolutely right.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “History has all but forgotten her. Perhaps now, it never will.”

She gently began rocking the chair, then looked up with a start as Georgina burped in her face. Eleanor’s expression relaxed into a chortle, and Nick joined her in it, both of their faces at peace in a way that had been missing since we’d opened that box. Georgie was named both for the beloved queen that was—whose death during World War I gave all the Lyons heirs their name—and for the one who never got to be, who’d loved her child enough to let a secret tear her to shreds. Maggie bore Eleanor’s name as a tribute to the strongest woman I have ever known, a talisman to help her navigate the twist of being born second—one slender minute that would someday feel monumental to them both. They carried everything and yet nothing at all on the shoulders of their five-pound bodies.

As I watched them nestled in the arms of a queen and of a king in waiting, I sent up a fervent wish that they would lean on each other for the rest of their lives, the way Georgina and Eleanor couldn’t. Unlike the heirs and spares before them, though, they would always have us. Nick and I had taken some blows, self-inflicted and otherwise, and somehow emerged unbroken—forged in fire, fiercely in love, and ready to fight for our daughters. These girls, these women in waiting, wouldn’t repeat history. They would make it.

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Acknowledgments