the picture of the man in the papers: sleek, tall, ramrod straight, every inch a person who identified as a prince. But I had never seen him as I did in that moment: slumped against the doorframe, airless, small. Judging by his expression, the Prince of Wales had not known he held the title through false pretenses.
“You don’t think,” Richard said, “that this is information I should have had?”
Nick quickly crossed the room to him. “Father,” he said. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t—”
“Not you,” he said, pointing a shaky finger at his mother. “Her.”
“Now, now, don’t be melodramatic,” Eleanor began, but her voice lacked its usual assuredness.
“Melodramatic,” Richard repeated. “You’re right. Melodrama is inappropriate. I’d say raging bloody dramatic would be a more appropriate response. I’ve just walked into a room to confirm three separate wedding travel plans for you and me and Nicholas, to protect the direct line of succession, and learnt that we aren’t technically even in it.”
“As far as the world knows, you are,” Eleanor said.
“The world,” he said, “is not my concern right now.”
“It should be,” she said. “Perception is reality.”
“Then please, correct my perception that my reality is a cruel prank,” he said. He slumped into the room, shaking loose his necktie. “Tell me a story, Mummy,” he said sarcastically. “You certainly didn’t do much of that when I was a child, so it’s nice to get one in while you still can.”
Eleanor stared at him, then again down at the letter. “I am not sure I know how, exactly,” she admitted. “I haven’t talked about this in…” She looked at Richard. “A lifetime.”
I edged toward her. “You told me some of it,” I said. “You left out a lot, obviously, but maybe start there?”
“Please,” Nick pleaded. “This didn’t just happen to you. It happened to them, and now it’s happening to all of us, and I just…we…want to understand. Help us understand, Gran.”
Eleanor peered up at us, her four confessors, positioned around her now almost in a semicircle. She seemed diminished somehow, frail, and almost fearful. Finally, she gestured for us to take a seat.
“You came here for answers,” she said. “And there aren’t any short ones.”
I sat obligingly down in the armchair opposite her, Freddie taking the one next to me. Richard leaned slightly on the bed, as if in need of support but unwilling to sit and cede his height advantage. Nick kept pacing.
“Eleanor,” I said. “How much of what you told me was real?”
“That depends on your perspective,” she said. Nick made a noise of disbelief and Eleanor straightened a little. “Georgina had everyone wrapped around her finger, and she milked it. Daddy adored her. The press delighted in her. Our family friends flocked past me straight to her. Even Grandmummy thought she could do no wrong, while I was nothing but a disappointment. She got to go away for school, make friends, see a bit of the world, and have the sorts of life experiences that are thrilling for a young girl, but which were deemed too common for me. I had to stay home, locked away, preparing for my life of duty. All I gave was effort, day in and day out, and it was never enough. But Henry looked out for me, first as my tutor then as my friend. And when I lost…” She stopped and covered her mouth.
“Her first love,” I filled in for her to the others. “Her parents sent him away, and he died.”
Freddie paled. “That’s awful.”
“Henry was a girlhood crush, but Robert…Robert was real.” The last word was almost inaudible. “He was undone by it all, and drank too much and was flattened on a road in Wales. They didn’t find his body for three days, and when they did…” Her eyes closed. “I fainted when they told me, can you believe it? Like something in a silly film.”
None of us dared move. Eleanor stared into the fireplace, visibly fighting to compose herself. “When you’re my age, of course, you realize that people can recover from anything. But I didn’t understand that then. My heart didn’t feel like it would ever work properly again, and I told myself loving anyone that much was too painful a risk to take twice. But then Henry put me back together, and I realized I’d already reinvested myself in him. Trust. Affection. Love. And need. I did not think I could do this job without him.
“Then one day I found him out in the gardens playing croquet