As he turned toward the liquor cabinet, I wrestled my conscience. Deep down I knew that Nick wouldn’t love this. But Freddie and I weren’t the same people we had been that night in my Chelsea flat. He’d found the beginnings of love elsewhere, however briefly, and Nick and I had formed a united front in Scotland. And none of us could hide from each other forever. We had no chance at fixing this if one of us didn’t make the first move. With any luck, Nick would understand if that person was me.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

Good morning, Rebecca.”

To my great surprise, Agatha—who’d never had much time for me in the past—appeared and perched next to me on a tufted bench outside the locked Chinese Dining Room. As if she were practicing a new social interaction, she patted me awkwardly on the hand.

“How are you getting on with it all?” she said.

Nick’s often-persnickety aunt was an inveterate whiner and hand wringer—the outmoded primogeniture laws that passed the throne through her to Richard had bred in Agatha a bone-deep sense that she was always being wronged—and she had doubted me from the start. This, in fact, might have been the first time she initiated a conversation with me.

“We’re muddling through,” I said. “It’s so surreal. I thought she’d be around forever. She’s still relatively young.”

“Still young?” Agatha blinked. “My dear, you do know that she’s dead?”

“Wait,” I said, a numbness rolling over me like a cloud. “Who’s dead?”

“Auntie Georgina,” Agatha said. “What did you think, that we hid her in the attic?”

I tipped back my head in relief and grabbed her arm instinctively. “You scared me for a second,” I said. “I thought you were referring to the whole Eleanor…situation.”

Agatha disentangled her arm with a curl of the lip. “Obviously that situation is horrible,” she said. “I was merely making polite conversation about your redecorating.” She looked around as if hoping for someone to save her. “I assume Georgina’s collection is as robust as I remember.”

“It is. Maybe even more so,” I said. “Were you two close?”

“I was the only one in this family Georgina liked,” Agatha announced. “She often went on about how unfair it was that Mummy didn’t get primogeniture sorted so that I would be Queen. It infuriated her, actually.” Agatha glowed a bit at the memory. “I felt very seen by my auntie for much of her life. Until she stopped seeing any of us at all, anyway.”

“Why did she shut herself off?” I asked. “Did she ever tell you?”