Her head snapped up to me. “Could you? Could Nicholas?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Eleanor sagged a little before catching her own posture. “You truly think one of them would walk away over this?” she said. “Over this matter of choice? How do they not realize that not having to choose can be a blessing?” She ran her hand along the ornately carved edge of Richard’s conference table. “We are surrounded by so many incredible historical objects. We are historical objects. We are lucky.” She cocked her head and looked at me. “How can they hate that? Do they hate it? Do you?”
“When I accepted Nick’s proposal, I knew what came with him,” I said. “They didn’t have that option about themselves. I think anyone would at least wonder what they might have been, if they hadn’t had their future prescribed to them.”
“I never did,” Eleanor said. “I saw entire rooms of people bob in deference to my grandmother. I saw people weep at her funeral, at my uncle’s, at my father’s. I saw my family commanding rooms full of world leaders and politicians and diplomats and commoners. I saw the world change and our family stay exactly where it was, and I thought, That’s what I want.”
“To be adored?” I asked.
“To be respected,” she said. “That’s far more powerful. Far more lasting. I wanted the legacy.” She gripped her cane, but did not stand. “Perhaps I was being naïve in assuming my son and my grandson felt the same.”
Her eyes fell upon every now vacated chair in the room, in turn. “I’ve watched Edwin grow up to be a gadabout, and a shirker,” she said. “I’ve watched Agatha care more about the symbols of the monarchy than the monarchy itself. Richard has always been the person who took it seriously. Dedication is in his nature. He’d have been dutiful to the core no matter what his place was. I believe that.” She pursed her lips. “The throne is only weak when the wrong person sits on it. A direct line matters less than a solid one.”
“That’s great, but you’ve had decades to make peace with the idea,” I said.
“Accepting something does not mean making peace with it,” she spat. “This was a nightmare that I was called upon to make the best of, and I did that. Largely alone, and for Richard’s benefit.” She pointed at me. “If he doesn’t see that, make Nicholas.”
I spread my hands. “They have their own minds, Eleanor. We just have to wait.”
“Wait,” she repeated emptily. “To find out if a lifetime of agony was for nothing.” A note of desperation crept into her voice. “He will come around. They all will. They have to.”
“Why?” I asked, leaning forward. “For you, as a person, or for the Crown?”
Eleanor did struggle to her feet then, and looked down at me. “Rebecca,” she said. “You should know by now that there is no difference.”
* * *
“Darling moeder!” gushed Queen Lucretia, gliding over to me and cupping my now very pronounced bump with a featherlight touch. “The miracle of life is the most powerful sunshine! I am overcome.”
She kissed me three times, twice on the right cheek. She was resplendent this evening in a royal-blue strapless gown with a beaded bodice and a simple cape; this was not a tiara event, but some truly bananas diamonds hanging from her earlobes had a pretty similar effect. One of them bonked me on the cheekbone when she came in for the second kiss.
“It’s wonderful to see you, Your Majesty,” I said, trying to rub at it subtly. The last thing I needed was to be at Freddie’s wedding with a shiner.
“And Prince Richard looks wonderfully well,” she said, clasping my hands. “I did fret. It seems every time we are to cross paths, illness mars the day. But he is tall and strong. A statue!”
Lax gestured absently toward the carvings over our heads in the Royal Palace’s Citizens’ Hall, a vast, high-ceilinged space bedecked with sculptures looking down upon us—of the Amsterdam Maiden, of the planets and the elements, of Atlas. Daphne’s family was based in The Hague but used the impressive Amsterdam palace for official functions, its two-story sandstone façade somewhat evoking Buckingham Palace, but crowned with a cupola and a ship-shaped weathervane. Richard had kept us guessing about his whereabouts right up until the minute his car arrived outside. I glanced up at Atlas, the world on his back, and thought how apt it was that we were all