“Nick swears that’s not a rule anymore,” I said. “Freddie will turn up. He always does.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Lacey said. But she didn’t believe me, and I knew it. It’s both a testament to and an indictment of Freddie that he can keep someone on the hook with the merest scraps of attention; if he were anyone else, she’d have gotten breakup bangs and burned all her keepsakes by now, but he was Freddie and so he endured.
“Places!” Alistair called out, clapping his hands.
I turned to Lacey. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She waved me off with a smile, but it looked a little lonely. “Go. Nick is waiting.”
*
Eleanor had decided the Royal Family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church would be a festive way to reveal Nick’s proposal—her gift to the nation, along with confirmation that the future Defender of the Faith had chosen someone sufficiently devout (I was already an American; I could not also be an atheist). But protocol dictated that only those married into the family could spend the holidays at Sandringham, and, being generally as flexible as a lamppost, Her Majesty refused to accommodate me overnight. Instead, I woke up earlier on Christmas morning than I had since I was a child so that my car would arrive long before anyone thought to look for unusual activity at the house. I felt like a cat burglar: Go in, do the job, don’t get caught, the stress of which was eclipsed only by the tiny matter of me finally meeting my future grandmother-in-law. It’s not as if I really thought Eleanor would do something drastic, like throw a drink in my face or challenge me to a duel. But I would not have been her choice for Nick, not in a million years, not when she’d encouraged Agatha to marry a bounder like Julian just because, like a dog, he was pedigreed (and she hadn’t thought Agatha—sturdy Agatha, best referred to as a handsome woman—could afford to wait for anyone nicer). As we wound north into Norfolk, I told myself that I should just be thankful she hadn’t simply vetoed the engagement and deported me.
Unlike Buckingham Palace, Sandringham is not just a residence; it’s also an immense working estate, encompassing everything from national parkland to a sawmill and an apple juice factory. But its jewel is the redbrick Sandringham House, paradoxically both sprawling and compressed to the eye, all narrow bay windows and vertical lines—like someone carved out a long cluster of row houses from one of London’s ritzier boroughs, popped on pointier roofs, and plopped them in the middle of twenty thousand acres. Approaching it in the eerie predawn dark felt wildly like being the heroine in a Jane Austen novel, headed to Netherfield Park to check on my pneumonia-riddled sister, or dropping by Pemberley for haughty verbal foreplay with Mr. Darcy. But when I arrived, the vibe was more Upstairs, Downstairs. The ground level crawled only with people in the Queen’s employ, because the rest were still in bed, presumably trying to stay warm. At the turn of the previous century, Sandringham was ahead of its time in adopting flushing toilets and modern showers, but hasn’t led a technological charge since, including modern heating. Eleanor believes being cold is character-building, and won’t coddle her guests with plush eiderdowns, so everyone ends up sleeping in as many layers as they wear to ski. Freddie once told me that he keeps a bottle of whiskey in bed. He calls it portable fire.
I was ushered with quiet efficiency to a high-ceilinged chamber with a canopy bed smack in the middle, a thin, itchy-looking blanket tucked in with military precision. The door had barely clicked shut before I took a running leap and flopped on that tall mattress. I had to take my unscheduled pleasures where I could get them.
The door opened again sneakily, and there was Nick, bundled up like an arctic explorer. He did an adorable fist-pump with the hand that clutched the ring box.
“You get to keep it this time!” he said, padding over and handing me the emerald. “And look, I had it engraved. It’s a Lyons tradition.”
I peered inside at the century-old gold band. I saw, ever so slightly rubbing out from age, the VRII; a much clearer script M; an R and E for Nick’s parents, and an interlocking N and B, officially making me a link in this chain.
“I went with B for Bex so that even when we have to be Nicholas and Rebecca in public, you can look at this and remember who we are at home,” Nick said. “Although Freddie’s suggestion was a pair of Ks for ‘Knickers’ and ‘Killer.’”
I grinned. “That might have been hard to explain to history.”
Nick slid the ring gracefully onto my finger. “It’s all changing,” he said. “In mere hours, everything will be different.”
I rolled over and welcomed him on the bed next to me. “Any second thoughts?”
“Yes, actually. Be a love and pop the ring back in my sock drawer.”
“No way,” I said. “You do whatever you want, but I will smuggle this sucker back to Iowa if I have to.”
Nick grew serious. “I am certainly not having second thoughts about you,” he said. “As for the rest of it…”
His voice dropped off. Today wasn’t just about us. It was about everything. It was about Emma.
Nick had spent months advocating telling the truth about his mother, but it wasn’t until he realized that our engagement had turned the lie into a time bomb that he got anyone’s attention: While nobody was suspicious now, Nick pointed out, everyone would side-eye Emma missing her firstborn’s wedding, especially with her ring winking at them from the bride’s finger. Like magic, the matter appeared on the agenda of our next Team Wales confab at Clarence House. Nick arrived with the jittery relief of someone who’d sealed a big deal but forgotten to ask the price; Richard refused to meet anyone’s eyes, and Freddie seemed tense-jawed and moody.
“Here is how it will work,” Marj announced. “Nicholas and Rebecca will tape a television interview discussing their courtship, which will air a few weeks after the Christmas reveal. During the course of this chat, Nicholas will explain that there is a particular truth he must share to ensure that Emma can be part of his festive day.”
Freddie whistled. “Very tricky, Marjie,” he said. “Burying the lede, as they say.”
“Except it makes me look like the liar,” Nick said, his triumph turning to irritation.
“Technically, we all are,” Freddie said. “We went on with Katie Kenneth and made up stuff about Mum just the same as everyone else.”
“It’s not too late to call it off, Your Highnesses,” Barnes intoned. “Once this cat is out of the bag, it’s never going back in.”
“I am not calling it off,” Nick said tightly. “I’m not the one who put the cat in the bag.”