that Stout, Twiggy, Popeye, and Furrow—so christened by Nick and Freddie years ago because they hadn’t been given their real names—were experts at creating the illusion of privacy, and that escaping royal life didn’t mean escaping royal security, but it wasn’t until this past Tuesday that I’d started to look for them in my periphery. Surely Eleanor had deployed them. There’s no way we were as alone as we pretended to be. I’d tricked myself into obliviousness, but it wasn’t working anymore. I had to talk to Nick.
But I didn’t know how. We were here, in the global sense, because my secrets had hurt him. Loving Nick had meant giving him whatever agency he could find in this, for as long as was feasible, but hiding out had just been a convenient illusion for us both. Ever since our afternoon at Caerlaverock, any time Nick left the room, I’d sneak online to gauge public opinion, and the news wasn’t good. Nothing had been forgiven, or forgotten. I tried to take it as a compliment that the entire country now believed me to be some kind of sexual sorceress (in addition to a gold-digging tramp), while Freddie was alternately a predatory jerk and a lovelorn moron, and Nick was a hero, a martyr, or an unbearable wuss for not having me burned at the stake. Vanity Fair even made a Game of Thrones comparison chart. I was Cersei.
I slowed to a walk, panting, at our battered front door and let myself inside. I found Nick in the garden poking morosely at a tomato.
“Another one bites the dust?” I asked, picking up his coffee from the patio table and taking a sip. “Ugh, too much sugar.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with these tomatoes. Maybe they need a pep talk,” he said, squinting at one limp-looking vine.
“You look more like you do.”
His gaze stayed fixed on the veggies for a long while. Then he lifted his other hand to reveal a rolled-up newspaper, which he handed to me. I unfurled it and was met with the headline FAITHLESS FREDDIE AND NERVELESS NICK.
“As you can see, I haven’t entirely quit the papers,” he said.
I scanned the article, which suggested that while Freddie had done him a grievous wrong, Nick was the bigger loser here for not jettisoning his evil wife. Inside were shots of Freddie at various recent appearances, both with Richard and without, accompanied by captions praising his busy schedule.
“I hate this,” Nick said. “I don’t know what I thought would happen when we left, but it wasn’t being made the villain, and it definitely wasn’t my brother being hailed as a hero for doing actual work for once in his life.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Makes me glad we’re gone, if that’s how they feel.”
“See, it makes me think we need to go back,” I said softly. “I haven’t wanted to bring this up, because I didn’t want to be the one to say it. We’ve always been good in a bubble. But…”
“But staying in the bubble too long has historically been bad for us,” Nick finished. “I know.”
“I’ll grant you that a bit of a bubble is important,” I said. “This bubble gave us a chance to ground ourselves. And I learned a ton about you. Like, for example, that you will need ten more years to finish knitting that scarf—”
“It’s a sock,” he said defensively.
“And that you overcook chicken on purpose because it freaks you out.”
“And you are an even worse cook than I am,” he said, “but are getting very adept at watercolors, and I can’t wait to hang some of your pieces from Wigtown in our house.”
“But that house is in London,” I said. “Whether we want it to be or not. And unless we show up soon, what’s in the papers is only going to get worse. We can’t pretend that whole other part of our lives doesn’t exist.”
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s worked so far.”
“Has it? Because I’m starting to think we’ve been fooling ourselves.”
The silence between us stretched and expanded, and I let it, having learned not to rush Nick into his feelings. He walked away from me and fussed with some of the other vegetables in the garden, then kicked the grass and looked at the cottage.
“They say nothing good can last,” he said.
“We can last,” I said, coming up next to him and sliding an arm around his waist. “I think we’re pretty good.”