A bar cabinet in the corner had a key swinging beguilingly from the lock. Freddie deposited Eleanor at one of the window seats, where she rested her right elbow on a table between two of them, and caught his balance before unlocking the bar and carefully beginning to pour us all some port.
“I’m sure you’ve all wondered why I’ve called you here tonight,” Eleanor said as she accepted hers.
“Uh-oh,” Freddie muttered. “I knew I was right to bring the cigarettes.”
Eleanor chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” she said. “Your expressions were priceless. Rebecca, you’ve not improved your poker face at all.”
“Good to know,” Freddie said, handing Nick his port. “On that note, poker, anyone?”
“Careful with these nightcaps,” Eleanor said. “Being drunk on a train is a nightmare and the morning after is worse. Henry and I did a whistle-stop tour of the southern coast after Richard was born, and we both overindulged. We look nauseated in all the photos.”
She crossed her ankles. “Besides, I should think too much of that would be bad for your attempts to conceive.”
“Not mine,” Freddie said, overly jovially.
“Any minute now with my port,” I told Freddie.
“Gran,” Nick said, a warning note in his voice.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable topic of discussion between family members,” Eleanor said lightly.
“We’re taking a little break right now,” I said.
“A little break,” Eleanor repeated. She drummed her fingers on the red velvet arm of her chair. “Did I fail the other day to impress upon you the importance of this task?”
Freddie handed me a full glass of port and raised an eyebrow. “May I be excused?” he asked. “This is not my business.”
“Sit down, Frederick,” Eleanor said.
“It’s nobody’s business, actually,” Nick said to Eleanor. “With all due respect.”
“This family is my business,” Eleanor said. “And I should have been informed earlier that we might have another Queen Ingeborg situation on our hands. No heirs, and a shift to the left for the whole line.”
“It worked out for you,” Freddie said.
Eleanor fixed him with a steely stare. “Would it work out for you?”
Freddie slowly sat down.
“We need a solution,” Eleanor said. “To this.” She waved in the general direction of my uterus. “I am aware of how many science experiments you’ve done, and it’s rather a lot for there to be no results yet.”
“It’s me,” Nick said, looking directly at his grandmother. “I’m doing everything I can to, er, improve what I’m offering.”
“It might also be me, though,” I said quickly. “It’s going to be fine, Eleanor. I promise. We’re…exploring it. Discussing our options.”
Eleanor cradled her port glass. “Enlighten me.”
“The options mostly seem to be, keep trying,” Nick said.
“You’re telling me your impressive specialist hasn’t mentioned using a donor?”
Nick shook his head, but it was me that Eleanor’s eyes were boring into, and I never could hide from her.
I cleared my throat. Nick turned to look at me with surprise. “Dr. Akhtar did mention a sperm bank,” I admitted. “Once. Or twice.”
“When?” Nick asked. “Were you even going to tell me?”
“I was not, because I told her no,” I said tightly. “We don’t need it.”
“Correct,” Eleanor said. “Those people are strangers.”
“Some couples go well into double-digit rounds of IVF. We’ll get this,” I said.
“We don’t know that,” Nick said, looking suddenly stressed.
“Then we can adopt,” I said.
“No.” Eleanor’s head shake was crisp. “That is a nonstarter in your situation. Next?”
“I mean…” I exchanged glances with Nick. “That’s sort of it. If we can’t do it together, we need someone else. That’s the normal way this goes.”
“But you have agreed, time and again, that normal is not the way this goes,” she said, gesturing to the room, as if it represented the monarchy itself—which, in a sense, it did. “Do you really mean to suggest that the throne should pass to an outsider?”
“Our child wouldn’t be an outsider!” I said. “He or she would be just as—”
“This is not the time for mawkish tripe,” she said. “Of course there is nothing wrong with adoption, or specimen banks. But it would be against the law for that child to inherit the throne.”
“It is medieval that anyone cares how we build our family,” Nick spat. “It’s the twenty-first century.”
“The monarchy has survived since the medieval period for a reason,” Eleanor said. “And your child might care. That child might care very much, if you had to sit down and explain to it that while it is special, and loved, it cannot have what your firstborn is traditionally destined to have, because it doesn’t come