odd to hear Gran referred to as Ellie.” He gestured for me to throw him the book, and caught it deftly. He flipped through its pages. “Crikey. She wrote loads. This book is full up.”
“I wonder if there are more of these anywhere,” I said. “Maybe they’ve all already been sent to the official royal archives.”
Nick shook his head. “We’d have heard,” he said. He gnawed on his pen cap. “All my ancestors apparently kept massive diaries. Am I ruining things for future historians by not doing that? It sounds exhausting to document every detail of every minute of every day.”
“We don’t need it,” I said. “Historians will have our text messages.”
Nick pulled a face. “I hope not,” he said, giving me back the journal. “Some of them are highly inappropriate. I should have sent you proper love letters.”
“It’s not too late to start,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed writing to Lacey. We get a little deeper. When we’re texting or talking, it turns into teasing.”
“Maybe you should be our official diarist,” Nick suggested. “When you put it all on paper, please make sure I come across as very muscular.” He tugged at his hair. “And with more of this, please.”
I dropped the journal and stared at Nick. “Put it in writing,” I said. “That’s it. That is it.”
Nick looked pleased. “Am I a genius?”
“Don’t get cocky,” I said. “But you just might be.”
* * *
The next morning, when I arrived at Eleanor’s chambers for what she surely intended to be another day of pretending I was inanimate, I came prepared.
Marta greeted me with her usual poke of the cane. “I don’t think I care much for this Clive person,” she said.
“Welcome to the team,” I said. “What pushed you over the edge?”
She crossed her arms. “He uses too much alliteration. I don’t trust it.”
“He’s a cow-faced bore,” I said with a chuckle, mostly to myself, but then I looked up and saw Marta staring at me as if I’d spoken in tongues. “Sorry. That phrase makes me laugh. It’s from an old diary of Georgina’s that we found last night. She did not like one of her tutors.”
Marta stood her cane on one end and tapped it as if considering coming to her feet. “How curious.”
“It’s super charming,” I said. “I’ve learned more about Georgina from the stuff in that house than even Google can tell me. She seems like she was very feisty.”
“She was, for most of her life.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Marta said. “She simply turned to a genteel life of quietude and spiritual reflection, as all respectable aristocratic ladies do.” She looked down at her buzzing mobile. “Piss it, Edwin just played bat. What a git.”
I bit back a smirk. “Do you want to read the diary?” I asked. “I can bring it to you.”
“Perhaps.” She tsked. “Whatever Eleanor paid for Edwin’s schooling was highway robbery. He took four days to put down that bloody word.”
I continued into Eleanor’s room. Her flutter had forced light bed rest for longer than expected due to an issue with keeping her blood pressure down, though I couldn’t imagine what it was, given how placid she was every time I saw her. Today was no different: Calmly, she leafed through yesterday’s Globe and Mail wearing a green bed jacket and a brooch that was a bigger version of the Lyons Emerald. Pulling rank, but more luxuriously than most.
I settled into my usual armchair by the side of the bed and opened my large pad of paper. But instead of doodling, I uncapped a Sharpie and wrote, GOOD MORNING TO YOU, TOO.
Eleanor glanced up.
THE NEW CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER HAS GREAT HAIR, I wrote next.
Eleanor raised a brow and flipped a page. This was the most she’d ever even looked at me during one of these sessions, so I pressed onward.
TECHNICALLY, “SPEAK WHEN SPOKEN TO” DOES NOT APPLY TO WRITING. HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
I heard the newsprint crunch slightly as Eleanor’s hand tightened on it. I said a quick prayer that Lacey was even partly correct about Eleanor having a secret appreciation for moxie, and turned to another fresh page.
SOME WOULD ARGUE ETIQUETTE DEMANDS A LADY’S TIMELY RESPONSE TO A WRITTEN MISSIVE FROM A FAMILY MEMBER.
Eleanor lowered the paper and stared at me, stone-faced. Maybe she would have me killed. That would solve a lot of her problems.
“Technically,” she said, “etiquette only requires a written response. But my stationery is out of reach at the moment.”