is the safest place in England. You’re welcome.” She placed her purse on the table. “Will you all stop acting as if I am a china figurine? I’m here now, and I mean to enjoy myself. The reception is where the real amusement happens, and the Queen is so rarely invited to this part.” She glared at me. “Sometimes the Queen even has to cancel them.”
“Don’t act like you were the person who had to call the caterers,” I said.
“It was very taxing all around,” Eleanor said serenely.
Nick’s gaze bounced between us as if he were watching a tennis match. It occurred to me that this was this first time he’d ever seen me and Eleanor interact during the Death-Cheating Fun List era. He looked a little surprised.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go get your refreshments. If you’re sitting here doing nothing, it will make people nervous.”
“Nonsense. Being at a wedding with the Queen is a coup,” she said, folding her hands neatly atop the table. “Tequila on the rocks, light on the rocks, please. Put it on Niles Kensington’s tab.”
“How do you know about Niles Kensington?”
“Underestimating me is always a mistake,” she said.
Nick slid onto the bench at her left, still shaking his head, and I walked over to where my friends stood at the bar and placed the Queen’s order.
“You owe me five quid, Beatrix,” Cilla said.
“More fool you,” Bea said, pulling a crisp note from her clutch. “I’d have taken that bet at five million.”
“Is she in her right mind?” Gemma asked, chewing aimlessly on the plastic stirrer that was meant to go in her vodka tonic. “No offense.”
We all watched as Gaz crossed the pub’s polished wooden floors toward Nick and Eleanor’s table, overcommitted to his courtly bow, and knocked a glass of water onto the floor.
“Yes, that seems right,” Bea said.
“Ohhhh, I feel sick,” I said. “I’d better deliver Her Majesty’s drink in case she gets any wild ideas about coming to the bar herself.”
“I genuinely don’t think you can rig an exercise bike to electrocute someone,” Nick was saying when I carried over the tumbler of Cuervo and a sampler of snacks.
Eleanor patted the spot on the bench next to her. “Good, now Nicholas can clock out,” she said. “He’s ruining Cotswolds Coroner for me. Go put some Rod Stewart on the jukebox.” She held a bacon-wrapped date up to her face to examine it better. “And I can already tell we’ll need more of these.”
“Rod Stewart,” Nick muttered as he walked off.
The open bar had served its intended purpose. Olly’s DJ friend was turning up the music while another pushed some tables against the wall to make a dance floor. Olly bowed before my sister and led her out for an impromptu spin as the DJ grinned, and pushed a button on his MacBook. In the absence of an official first-dance song, his friend had chosen Carly Rae Jepsen’s masterpiece “Call Me Maybe.” Eleanor tapped her foot to the beat and smiled at Olly spinning Lacey around with a light air of being worried he’d jostle the baby.
“It’s awfully nice to see young people in love,” Eleanor said. “I barely remember what that was like.”
“But you did find it,” I said. “You were one of the lucky ones.”
“Yes, well.” The music switched to a slow song, and Lacey buried her face in Olly’s neck. “I never got to see Georgina this way,” Eleanor added. “I often wonder if things would have been different if she’d only accepted what she couldn’t have, instead of…well.”
I felt a nervous slosh in my gut. This was my opening. But I shouldn’t. I couldn’t. Could I? The words bubbled up, and before I could catch them, I blurted, “Was that Henry?”
Eleanor slowly turned to look at me, holding my gaze. She held herself still, and said nothing. She barely seemed to breathe.
“I found the last page of her love letter,” I stammered, queasier by the second. “Addressed to an H. V. Henry Vane. Right? I’ve been trying to think of what else it could be, or how to tell you, but the way you said that just now…it is him, isn’t it? It’s true.”
“Hmm. The truth.” Eleanor tapped her glass with her middle fingernail. “The truth is that Georgina never could help herself. Damn the torpedoes. That was her modus operandi.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lacey coming toward me with two Champagne flutes, and shook my head subtly. She turned on her heel as if