cupboard beneath it. Every lampshade was stained glass, as if Georgina had once seen a photo of an Italian family restaurant in New Jersey and fallen in love.
“This. Is. Something,” Nick said.
“For someone who didn’t go out much, she had a huge closet.” I crossed to a massive floor-to-ceiling armoire set into the wall at the back of the room. “This is the size of my old bedroom in Shepherd’s Bush. We could sublet it.”
I yanked it open. Whoever gave up on handling Georgina’s belongings also had zero interest in archiving her clothes, because it was stuffed with vintage dresses and suits. The wardrobe was deep enough that I could step in and walk around, which I did, poking my head out between two gowns to make a face at Nick.
“Fetching.” He grinned, sitting on the bed and bouncing. “Hmm. We’re going to have to swap this out. Also, I think she died in this bed.”
“Some of these are still wrapped like they’re fresh from the cleaners,” I said, squeezing around one of the hangers. My foot hit a pile of the plastic sleeves that had pooled on the floor of the closet, and I skidded and slammed hard into the back wall.
It greeted my weight by swinging open. I tumbled to the ground and found myself lying at the foot of a narrow, steep staircase that led up into darkness.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“You’re a duchess now, Rebecca,” Nick teased. “Watch your language.” But I heard him hurry over to check on me, and when he saw the opening, he stopped short.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Does that lead to Narnia?”
“The Lyons, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe,” I quipped.
“Obviously we’re going to investigate,” Nick said, helping me to my feet, then scrambling past me up the stairs. There was no railing, so I braced myself with my hands against the smooth walls and slowly ascended behind him.
I alighted into a cozy, completely secret room—windowless, which made it easier to escape notice from the outside. The bulb was dead in the room’s only lamp, so Nick and I had to poke around by the lights of our mobile phones. They revealed floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves and a wide array of plush, faintly musty lounging pillows. Rudimentary sketches and poems littered a small writing desk, and a hardback copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being sat next to a piece of notepaper onto which someone had copied a quote from the book: Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. The novel was open and overturned to mark a page, and had been thus for so long that when I picked it up, it stayed that way.
“What is this place?” Nick wondered, shaking his head.
“She must have wanted a spot where no one could find her.” I thought back to the events of the last few days, all of us tromping in and out of Eleanor’s sickroom, and then back even further, to the day of the wedding when countless palace employees had borne witness to me trying to pull it together. It made sense that a person might go to extremes for her privacy, even in a palace. Especially in a palace.
I went to set the book back down where I’d found it, and saw that it had been sitting atop a torn corner of paper.
NOT UNTIL THE END OF MY DAYS, it read.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Nick, showing it to him.
He shook his head. “Sounds like a juicy feud, but I haven’t heard any stories about that.”
“It could be a love note,” I reasoned.
“I’ve not heard any stories about her being in love with anyone, either.”
I rubbed the scrap with my thumb. “So these are her secrets. How soapy,” I said. “I love it.”
He sidled up to me and slid his arms around my waist. “It is very romantic in here.”
“You know, this little den means our house actually has twenty-seven rooms.” I turned to face him and locked my hands around his neck. “It’s going to take us a while to mark our territory. We’d better get started.”
He dipped his head to kiss me. “It’s the middle of the day,” he said, even as he drew me down to the cushioned floor. “What would Georgina say?”
“She had a den of secrets,” I murmured. “I think she’d approve.”
CHAPTER SIX
She sounds like she’s being a total cow.”
“Lacey. You’re talking about the Queen,” my mother said.