be delusional not to see them as gems of equal beauty. We could arm-wrestle for ultimate bragging rights later.
The service at the registry office would be families only, and then we’d head over to the pub for a small party. The Eagle was an ancient, boxy spot on a nondescript street off King’s Parade, famously where Watson and Crick barged in to announce their discovery of DNA, and it had won Lacey’s heart because the ceiling of the otherwise generic back bar was covered in graffiti, courtesy of British and American World War II pilots who’d burned their names and squadron numbers into it with lighters and candles. (She liked the nod to the alliance of her and Olly’s birthplaces.) My haul of elephants waited for us on the tables there. Everything was ready.
“Do you think she’s going to come?” Lacey asked as Kira wrapped her hair into a loose chignon.
“No,” said Mom.
“Yes,” said my aunt Kitty, who was nose deep in Tatler across the room.
“No,” I said. “She was being extreme. I cannot imagine she’s going to want to burn her energy on this. No offense.”
“Trust me, none taken,” Lacey said. “I do not need to have hostess anxiety about the freaking Queen.”
“It would be amusing, though, if she went to Bex’s wedding because she had to and Lacey’s by choice,” Aunt Kitty said.
“Katherine, enough,” my mom tsked.
“No, she’s right,” I said. “Eleanor definitely would have called in sick to the Abbey if we’d given her the option. Of course, if we knew then what we know now, Nick and I would have, too.”
“Not me,” said Kitty, smoothing her brown waves. “Semi-King Richard is a fine hunk of man in person. I’m just sorry he’s not at this one.”
“Ew,” I said.
“He’s not even divorced!” Mom said.
“I’ve got three under my belt,” Kitty said. “Perhaps I could offer my counsel.”
Mom tsked again, but she was laughing. Kira wove a few final pearl pins into Lacey’s hair and then stepped back to admire her work.
“Beautiful,” she said. “This updo turned out so much better than one I did for the Made in Chelsea wedding episode. Of course, I had to buttress that one in case someone threw a drink at it.”
Lacey was radiant in a vintage, short-sleeve, bias-cut cream gown. I had loaned her one of Georgina’s extravagant fur-trimmed capes, and when Lacey swung it over her shoulders and gazed in the mirror, Georgina’s face as I’d seen it in photographs flickered over my sister’s. Lacey’s was the picture of a glamorous courthouse wedding, the kind I imagined Georgina herself might’ve had if she’d been born with romantic free rein—or at least found requited love. That letter had been jockeying for my mind’s attention all morning. I’d decided ten times to tell Nick about it, and then eleven times not to, in part because I wanted to read it again and make sure it really said what I thought it said, and implied what it seemed to imply. Try as I might—and I did, the whole way to Cambridge in the car—I couldn’t think of anything else H. V. could have stood for in that context.
Lacey hung back in her readying room while I checked that everything and everyone was in place for the ceremony. We’d met the Omundis twice in the run-up to the wedding, and they were mercifully unperturbed by any of the notoriety surrounding me, or Nick, or even my sister. Olly’s parents were as compact as he was, and shared his vibe of being so grounded as to be rooted to the earth. His sister Natasha, who Lacey told me was the pioneer behind some groundbreaking new surgical laser, was almost intimidatingly accomplished and had gone on a long rant to Nick about the latest spate of Times Cryptics. Her wife, Karmen, had rolled her eyes at me and whispered, “Total gibberish, right?”
There was a huge flower arrangement sitting on one of the windowsills at the far end of the registry council’s ceremony room that was new since I’d stuck my head in earlier.
“Love from Niles Kensington,” I read off the card that was peeking out from between the dahlias and roses, and smiled at the sight of Freddie’s pseudonym.
“Who’s Niles Kensington?” asked Natasha.
“A…distant cousin,” I lied.
I could see from Natasha’s face that she had a follow-up question about this, but the officiant stepped into his spot behind the flower-bedecked wooden podium in the front of the room, and we all had to take our seats. Olly