you,” I said. “I was getting woozy in there. Being outside is helping.”
“Great minds.” He rubbed his hands together and let out a puff of breath, which dissipated in a cloud in front of us. “You must have been working on Knickers pretty hard, to get him to invite me to dinner.”
“Nope,” I said. “That was all him.”
“I didn’t see that coming,” he said, scratching at his beard. “I’d started to make my peace with the thought that we’d keep drifting away from each other.”
“You can’t mean that,” I said, leaning on the concrete balcony railing. I felt a little queasy.
Freddie shrugged. “Prepare for the worst.”
“Isn’t the phrase ‘Prepare for the worst and expect the best’?” I asked. “You left out the optimistic part.”
“The last six months have made me into more of a pragmatist.”
I regarded his profile, so handsome, so sad. “Was it awful out there?”
“The accident was awful,” Freddie said. “But it was not the only thing I saw that I will never forget.” He looked out into the bare, leafless garden. “I had a lot of time to think out there. My problems that felt so big are nothing. I will always have a warm, soft place to land. Not everyone has that. We’re pretty bloody lucky.”
He flapped up his hurt arm like a broken wing. “It makes me want to yell at everyone to please stop acting like I’m some kind of hero because of this. I cannot tell you how untrue that is.”
“I suspect you’re selling yourself short,” I told him.
“Selling myself is the only thing on the agenda at the moment,” he said. “We promised the press an interview, in exchange for their cooperation in keeping my deployment hidden. Time to pay the piper. Got to make it all about me again.”
His face was miserable. I leaned in to give him a sideways hug. He squeezed me back, briefly.
“I’m so tired of myself,” he said. “It’s good to talk to you again. Did I miss anything interesting?”
I wanted to tell him about the baby, but it felt disloyal to do it without Nick. “Same old,” I improvised. “Trying to figure out this whole duchess business. It went well on tour, but now we have to apply that to real life.”
“Yes, Your Royal Highness, I saw how well it went on tour,” Freddie teased. “People are going to be scandalized if that keeps on.”
I whacked him on his good arm. “You know what I mean.”
“I do, I just couldn’t resist. How’s that easy and minor task going?” Freddie asked as a nearby bird took off from a barren branch with a loud flutter.
“It’s been a breeze,” I started.
Pain hit my abdomen. The edges of my vision went blurry.
“Are you all right?” Freddie asked.
A sharper pain shot through me, and I hunched over, blindly reaching for something to steady me. My hand closed on the railing. “Shit. Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
Freddie looked alarmed.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong? What hurts?”
I moaned. My head was throbbing. A warm, sticky wetness spread on the inside of my thighs. My other hand went straight to my abdomen.
“Freddie,” I said as another pulse of pain hit me. My knees buckled. Freddie gracefully caught my weight with his free arm and drew me toward him for stability. He pecked the top of my head.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
There was a gentle throat clearing behind us.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Daphne said, her face creased with concern. “Should I get someone?”
I peered up at her through my tangle of hair, and I thought I saw a hint of appraisal in her face. And then I found that I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth.
“Yes,” Freddie said tightly. “Find Nick. Now.”
CHAPTER THREE
Just like that, we were a family of two again.
Everything that came next was a blur, a montage set to my own ragged breathing. The only possible positive about having a medical emergency at Buckingham Palace is that its staff is peerless in the art of making you believe you’re alone, only to appear at your elbow in the moment you realize you need them. Before Daphne could even return with Nick, I was scooped into a guest room, helped into a crisp medical gown, and laid in a towel-lined bed while someone paged the Queen’s gynecologist. In half an hour, Nick by my side looking green and worried, we got confirmation of what I already knew. My pregnancy was over as unexpectedly as it had begun.