I wondered briefly if I should be at Nick’s side instead of yukking it up with Freddie and Daphne, but Nick had not glanced my way since embedding himself near Doris Tuesday. I resented needing to chase my own husband, and took a longer slurp of my bubbly than was strictly polite.
“My fear is, any old person might not want to date me,” Daphne was saying. “The last one told me that he loved me but he didn’t love the circus that was royal life. Then he literally joined the circus.” She gave us a doleful look. “I may have given it a very bad review on Yelp.” She paused. “That’s Dutch for Yelp.”
Freddie laughed. His eyes met his father’s again, and this time, the nod of approval was in Freddie’s direction. Daphne didn’t miss it.
“Oh no,” she said. “Am I your assignment tonight?”
Freddie looked down at her as if seeing her for the first time. I read guilt on his face, but I knew him well; to Daphne, I suspect his expression seemed like embarrassment on behalf of his father.
“Not one bloody bit,” he said. “Prince Dick can’t make me be anywhere I don’t want to be.” He bowed and offered Daphne the crook of his arm. “Now let’s go drink too much wine and really give him something to look at.” His gaze came back to me. “Good luck up there, Killer. Chew with your mouth closed.”
My breath caught as we processed into the ballroom. The heavy gold candelabra and vases, the latter exploding with roses, had been buffed to a perfect shine, while the tablecloths were so starched that you could use them to cut butter. The golden cutlery and cut-glass crystal sparkled under the chandeliers, as did the ostentatious harp being plucked in the corner by a woman with aggressively long hair. The room even smelled good, in an untraceable way where you wondered if perhaps royalty came with a pleasant bespoke odor. It was impossible not to feel the weight of the room’s history, to think of the people who had sat in these gilt chairs, the choices they had made and the mistakes and victories they had discussed over these same gold-trimmed porcelain bread plates and crystal saltcellars. One room frozen in time as the world changed around it.
You are part of something much bigger now, I recalled Eleanor saying to me. You married a man and you married a country.
But for all the priceless place settings and tiaras and immaculate linens, the state dinner was like any other formal event: a whole lot of blah blah blah, beginning with some light mingling as everyone drifted toward their eventual places—except for Marta, who bypassed the chitchat and went straight to her seat. She wore her signature scroll tiara as a choker, a mint-green silk dress, and the most exquisitely displeased expression.
“I’m too old for this,” she muttered. “I’ve made it a hundred years on this earth, and if I die of boredom tonight, Dickie, I’m bloody well going to haunt you forever.” Then she’d turned to me. “You look like candy floss.”
Across the room I spied Edwin and Lady Elizabeth, nuzzling while chatting to a balding man I recognized as the famed theater producer behind the gymnastics musical Perfect Ten. Freddie was introducing Daphne to Bea’s mother, Lady Pansy Larchmont-Kent-Smythe, once Emma’s best friend and a person I’d never seen smile (admittedly on-brand for that family). I tried to make contact with Nick, or pass him by so we could at least brush pinkies the way we often did when we wanted to say a silent hello at public events, but he either was flanked by Dutch dignitaries or just never turned my way. I felt profoundly alone.
“And then you swipe right if they’re sexy, and left if they’re a tosser,” I heard a voice say, and turned to see Agatha huddled over her cell phone with a silver-haired dowager type in a gray lacy dress and five strands of pearls, and her trussed-up daughter, everything too snug and too short for no apparent reason.
“This one’s handsome,” Agatha said, peering at her screen. “And an international financier.”
The woman swiped left for her. “No one calls themselves that unless they plan to rob you.”
“What about him? He’s a lord,” Agatha tried. “He likes horses, and to ‘Netflix and chill.’ Sounds fun?”
“It means he wants a fuck,” said her daughter plainly. At her mother’s strangled noise, she jerked her head up, then looked right at