The door clicked behind Dr. Akhtar, and Nick helped me off the bench and wrapped his arms around me. His tears fell in my hair.
“Are they good tears?” I whispered. “Are you good?”
Nick pulled away, beaming. “I am so good,” he said. “I wish I’d had more faith in myself. The minute I saw them on the screen, all cuddled up, I couldn’t imagine how I ever thought…” His voice thickened. “We did it. We’re going to be parents. We are,” he said pointedly.
Relief flooded me. “We’re going to be really awesome parents,” I said.
We stared at each other for a moment, dumbstruck smiles on our faces, then simultaneously reached out and knocked on the faux wood panel on the exam table. Then we both giggled.
“Superstition,” Nick said. “I can’t help it.”
“I know. But I love you,” I said. “I love them. Let’s be hopeful this time. And I really need to put my pants back on, because my butt is getting cold.”
Nick laughed. “We’d better make a note to give Freddie a spectacular wedding gift. A silver chafing dish is not going to cut it.”
“Would he like a house in Sweden, do you think?” I wondered, doing up my pants very carefully over my stomach, as if the babies (the babies!) might be disturbed by an overly aggressive zip. “I guess he’s going to end up with a lot of houses, though.”
“We can percolate that,” Nick said. “But there is one fairly serious thing we do need to do first, and right now.” He held open his arms. “Rebecca Porter, may I, at very long last, have this twirl?”
I felt my face crumple in on itself, but this time—maybe for the first time—it was with joy. Tears streamed down my cheeks as Nick tenderly picked me up and spun me once, twice, three times, before setting me back gracefully on my feet.
“There,” he said, taking my face in his hands and kissing me, before smoothing away my tears with his thumbs. “Now it’s official. We’re having a baby. Two babies.”
“Two down, three to go,” I joked.
Nick laughed. “I knew you’d come around,” he said, then tugged at my ponytail. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s take the three of you home.”
* * *
The reaction to Freddie’s betrothal was—predictably—gigantic. Bloggers were instantly obsessed with Daphne; a new fashion site had already been started called Daphne’s Diary, and the teal dress she wore for their engagement photo shoot sold out in six and a half minutes. It wasn’t surprising that everyone had caught, as Vanity Fair had put it, “Tulip Fever”: On paper, Freddie and Daphne were the platonic ideal of a sweeping love story, the wayward prince and the reclusive princess bringing each other out of the darkness. Daphne looked fragile but beautiful in the pictures, and Freddie looked dashing and strong, like he’d just parked his white stallion around the corner.
Of course, The Sun’s headline two days after the announcement had been BITTER BEX BANS DARLING DAPH FROM PALACE. Clive’s accompanying article—while smugly reminding readers who’d nailed the scoop in the first place—speculated that Nick was enraged because once the wedding took place, Freddie would outrank him, at least until Nick took the throne himself. Quite a few reporters had made note of this technicality, in fact: Freddie was leaping up from “spare” status, and while Nick was not fussed about having to deploy a bow now and then to his younger brother, Freddie was overwhelmed by the pace of his own version of my duchess training.
“I don’t know how you did it, Bex,” he said, flopping onto our sofa one afternoon and clanking his feet up onto the coffee table. He was back in London after a few weeks of whirlwind events and meetings in The Hague. “It’s endless. I wish I’d paid attention in school when we learned about the Netherlands.”
“At least you don’t need to be taught how to get out of a car without flashing anyone,” I said.
“Yes, but you weren’t asked to learn a totally different language,” Freddie retorted, patting at his breast pocket, and eventually taking out his silver-plated cigarette case. “Dutch is impossible. So many Js.”
“Still smoking?” I asked. “How stressed are you?”
Freddie tapped the cigarette case against the pile of art books on top of the coffee table. “It helps me study. Don’t worry, I won’t smoke in here.”
“I should hope not,” I said, pointing at my slightly distended belly. At just shy of twelve weeks,