“One of Bea’s ancestors, I’m guessing,” I said.
“I won’t tell her you said that,” Nick said loftily. “Anyway, that Arthur is considered legend, and for dynastic purposes, they don’t count anyone from before William the Conqueror, anyway. Too bad for poor Sweyn Forkbeard. Perhaps I’ll revive that name with my firstborn.”
“So Arthur the First, then,” I said. “Died of pneumonia, it says.”
“Officially. But Great-Grandmother told me Artie actually drank himself to death because he was in love with his best friend’s wife.” Nick shook his head. “I can’t believe he gets a sculpted marble effigy, and my grandfather, who actually did die of pneumonia, just has a slab with his name on it behind an iron fence.” He pointed just ahead to the right, where a large bust sat atop a comparatively plain rectangular stand. “Even my great-granddad got better. He was Richard the Fourth. Took a boat out on holiday and fell off and drowned because he couldn’t swim, the idiot. What was he even doing on a boat?”
“We’ve all got one,” I said. “My great-uncle died falling off a barstool. In his own bar.”
“My great-great-great-uncle Charles was supposedly obsessed with holistic medicine, so when he got whooping cough he wrapped himself in brandy-soaked bandages as a cure,” Nick said. “Naturally, a servant dropped a candle on him and he went up in flames. Brilliant bloke, that one.”
I laughed. Nick’s dead relatives already seemed more entertaining than his living father.
“The Lyons women have been impressively hardy,” I said. “You’ve got a bunch of incautious men, and then two long-ruling queens.”
Nick tapped absently on the top of Richard’s marble head. “Hardier, or at least cleverer,” he said. “I’m probably destined to trip over an ottoman and die two years in. Just as long as whatever gets me is embarrassing. I have to do my part.”
We strolled past a short exhibit of watercolors and sketches done by the artsy members of the dynasty (I was surprised to learn Prince Richard was a capable landscape painter) and then into the main castle. Because it’s been open to the public for so long, Windsor’s halls have the patina of use about them—frayed carpets, creaky floorboards, stray scuffs and scratches—and it is as easy to imagine that a tourist from Scandinavia nicked the floor with an umbrella as it is to picture George IV taking a chunk out of it during a tantrum. Nick peppered the tour with stories that definitely aren’t on the official audio guide, like how he and Freddie used to stretch out on the floor by the Grand Staircase, snacking on cheese and onion crisps while trying to count every piece of weaponry that was fanned out on the walls and behind display cases; or the time he caught Agatha’s awful husband Julian throwing up in a sixteenth-century enamel box after a long day at Royal Ascot. Before he even got to a reenactment of playing hide-and-seek with Freddie using the old servants’ doors and hidden corridors, the castle had started to look like a home to me, too.
Eventually, we came into a very long rectangular room, with knight statuettes in niches on the walls and an elegant wood-beamed, slanted ceiling. Nick fell quiet and seemed to need a minute to absorb the view before explaining that this was the room dedicated to the highly selective and very ancient Order of the Garter, one of the highest honors in England.
“Those belong to everyone who’s ever been invested,” Nick said, gesturing to the thousand or so colorful shields adorning the ceiling. “The number underneath corresponds to the spot on the wall where the honoree’s name is engraved. I used to spend hours in here, trying to pick out the crest I liked best, imagining what mine would be.” He grinned. “Freddie preferred mooning the guardsmen through that window. Once he even left a mark behind. Imagine, this room dedicated to chivalry, and my brother’s disgusting bum print fogging up the glass.”
I snorted, and Nick looked pleased.
“His name will be carved in here, too, someday, like most of the rest of our ancestors, and no one else knows about that but me and the guard, and now you,” Nick said.
His gaze flickered to a nearby section of wall, where the names had stopped after the most recent new members were inducted two years ago, including his uncle Edwin (a grudging but obligatory addition on Eleanor’s part).
“And that’s where yours will go,” I inferred.
He reached out and ran his finger across his father’s name. “He wants me in now,” Nick said. “I think it’s disrespectful. I haven’t done enough—no military service yet, not nearly enough charity work. But he is so anxious to get good stories into the press.”
Nick dropped his hand. “That’s why I’m out here, actually,” he said. “To talk to Gran about it. I think Freddie and I should have our own team, and get to manage our own affairs. I’m so tired of Father putting out bollocks stories without running them past us. I once woke up and read that I’d agreed to be patron of a charity I’d never even heard of.”
He clearly needed to vent.
“There are worse things, I know,” Nick continued. “But the press is hard enough on its own, without him stirring the pot. And he should know better because…” Nick’s voice seized for a second; he fought to control it. “Well, he should just know better. But instead he plays puppet master, leaking farcical stories like my getting a ring for India. As if I’ll see it and decide it’s what I want. As if I can’t be trusted to find someone suitable on my own. That’s the main reason I’ve always said I won’t look for a real relationship until I’m older. Can you imagine being dragged into that?”
I couldn’t resist the opening. “Clive implied India was a done deal.”
“Clive knows better,” Nick said.
“Clive said—”
“Clive,” Nick interrupted, sharply, “is perfectly aware that I broke up with India because I found out Father had nudged her toward me for positive press. Everyone loves a royal romance.” He rolled his eyes. “I did like her, and it was real for a bit, but never real enough, and I knew it. So now she’s stuck looking heartbroken and Father’s hoping I’ll cave and take her back because I look like a wanker, but I won’t.” He looked sideways at me. “It reminds me of you in the meadow that day talking about Lacey. I’m done rolling over for Father just because it’s easier than fighting him.”