“A toast. To the woman who is responsible for us all, who is the mother of our beloved kingdom. God save the Queen.”
Richard raised his glass to the sky in solemnity, and everyone else followed.
Agatha shot me a reproachful look from down the rectangular table. “She’s not your Queen.”
“No, but…” I faltered. It had felt weird to glom on to that salute, but it seemed like it would be even weirder if I had ignored it and implied I didn’t think God should help Eleanor out at all.
“Oh, just let ’er drink,” Awful Julian slurred. His foot found mine under the table. I shifted without changing my facial expression.
“What if she doesn’t even believe in God? They have all kinds of atheists in America,” said Lady Bollocks, in a way that suggested she was enjoying adding fuel to this fire.
“They’ve got atheists here, too,” boomed Clive’s brother Martin. “I’m in the running for captain of the national rugby side!”
“Better hope they don’t give IQ tests,” Clive said under his breath.
“Perhaps the girl can say, ‘May a higher power of some sort preserve the Queen of this realm,’” offered Agatha, still fretting.
“For my money, both God and Gran would want us to let it go and tuck into dinner,” Freddie said. “Bex lives in England. She pays VAT. She can jolly well rent the Queen for a while.”
“Enough!” Richard boomed. “Eat.”
Our first evening had been relatively tame. It had begun with subtly studying the cheerfully oblivious Fallopia—her lips did vibrate and even seemed to emit a mild hum, as if her last injection had gone bad—and then took a turn for the militant when our chalet was invaded by Clarence House’s best generals. Marjorie Hicks had worked for either Eleanor or Richard for Nick’s entire life, and Nick and Freddie had selected her personally when Eleanor granted their wish for their own dedicated staff. Marj tended toward woolen cardigans with floral buttons, and wore her iron-gray hair in a close-cropped coif that was too long to be a pixie, but too pixie to be a bob; the boys both greeted her with great and genuine affection—as if she, too, were their grandmother, an Eleanor proxy who could do all the constant hugging and reprimanding the Queen’s schedule didn’t allow. Marj’s equivalent on Richard’s staff was a heavy-lidded fiftysomething man called Barnes, who had a coiffure so elaborate it made Donald Trump look like he suffered from alopecia. Barnes had handed Fallopia and me, as the newcomers, a lengthy nondisclosure agreement and cowed us into signing it in about seventeen different places. Then he and Marj had distributed a personalized schedule outlining which social events we were expected to attend at either Richard’s chalet or those of his titled friends, the dress code for each, and when we’d have free time. Nick’s packet ran at least ten pages. Mine was two.
And yet somehow Nick and I still managed to be late for Richard’s dinner party. We’d had a long day on the mountain, where his attempts to teach me to disembark from the believably deadly T-bar ski lifts were hampered by the fact that we couldn’t stop laughing, and I’d healed my bruises in the hot tub and then passed out on the bed. We didn’t wake up until five minutes before dinner, which is why I’d arrived at Richard’s chalet out of breath, with my hair shoved up into a bun because it was only nearly dry and thoroughly frizzy.
“The schedule said your cocktail finest,” Barnes growled, unimpressed by the black long-sleeved dress Lacey had helped me buy. “And you are three minutes late.”
I wilted a little under his stare. I hate being late. But I’ve also never mastered the art of estimating how long it takes me to get anywhere or do anything. Now all my official schedules are done in BST—Bex Standard Time—which is elaborately coded and changes every day in case I accidentally crack it. If only we’d thought to invent it sooner.
“My fault,” Nick covered smoothly. “I could only find one sock.”
“I hope Frederick’s excuse is as compelling,” Marj said tartly. “His Royal Highness is also tardy.”
Nick squinted at the floor-to-ceiling glass window, into the pitch-black night.
“Is that him out in the snow, Marj?” he asked. “He’s not wearing a jacket.”
Marj tsked and bustled to the window. “That boy. He’ll catch his death. It’s below zero.”
She knocked on the glass and began to call out Freddie’s name, when a thunderous thwack sounded, followed a split second later by Marj’s scream, and gales of laughter. A giant snowball, easily half ice, had hit the window right where her face had been.
“NICHOLAS!” she thundered. He was doubled over, gasping with mirth. “I NEVER.”
“Wasn’t me…don’t know what you mean…”
“You were in it as much as your no-good brother and you know it,” Marj panted, fanning herself. “That rapscallion, I ought to—”
“Ought to what, Marjie?” Freddie asked innocently, walking in and whistling under his breath. “Gosh, have you had a fright?”
“You’re as good a liar as you are a person,” Marj scoffed at him. “Conspiring to give heart failure to an innocent old woman. I ought to staple you to the table.”
“That’s my Marj,” Freddie said, looping an arm around her neck. “It’s just not the holidays until I’m victimized by her bloodlust.”
Freddie was my salvation that night. With Nick on the other side of the elaborately carved dining room, Freddie kept me talking, deftly drowned out his seventeen-year-old cousin Nigel’s announcement that I held my utensils in the wrong hands, and now had stuck up for me during the inane argument about how, or whether, I should pledge my allegiance to the monarch of the country that was allowing me to live and work in it.