leaned against the counter and dropped my head on her shoulder. “I’m so happy for you, Lace.”
“Good,” Lacey said. “Because I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Can you help me plan a wedding?” she asked.
I grinned at her. “Because mine went so well?”
“Nowhere to go but up,” she said.
* * *
How’s the prep going, Killer?
Two days before we were due to leave for Canada, I was standing on a wooden box in my dressing room amid a ring of mirrors as Donna ran a final check on the weights keeping my skirts in place so that I didn’t scandalize North America with a glimpse of my cellulite. She had been working relentlessly on looks for all fifty-two engagements in our diaries—plus emergency alternates in the event that I accidentally sat on a piece of chocolate and melted it to my butt, or something similarly horrific—and she was so stressed that she’d taken up smoking just for an excuse to go outside.
It had been twenty-nine hours since I got a text from anyone but Bea, so when I saw that my phone had a message from Freddie and not, say, a stern reminder about a pedicure, I was so pleased that I actually yelped.
Donna panicked. “What happened? Did I stab you? Are you bleeding? Are you bleeding on a Greta Constantine that took me nine weeks to get?!?”
“No!” I assured her. “No, I’m sorry. Everything is fine. I just got a text. It doesn’t have anything to do with the tour.”
“That must be nice,” Donna said under her breath as she stabbed another straight pin into my hem.
True to my name, I am slowly killing Donna, I wrote back to Freddie.
Sounds like she needs a break. Up for an adventure before we lose you to the Frozen North?
“Hmm,” I said to my phone.
“Now what?” Donna asked around the three pins she had clenched in her teeth. “You’re frowning.”
Come on, Margot, live a little.
“You know what, I think we should give ourselves the rest of today,” I said to Donna. “We can’t burn you out before we leave. My skirts will be fine.”
Donna leaned back on her heels and grinned. “Bless you,” she said. “Kira and I need you tomorrow to do a final run-through of your hats, and at this rate I’ll be a hunchback by then.”
“You guys have been working so hard,” I said, wriggling out of the dress and handing it to her. “Thank you.”
Donna took it from me almost tenderly and carried it back to its hanger. “It’s actually exciting,” she admitted. “I’ve never been to the States. Did you know that Kira went to Columbia? She wants to take me on a nostalgia tour if we have time.”
“I’ll make sure that you have time,” I promised. “I wish I could come.”
Meet you at your place in 5? I typed to Freddie.
I’ll come to you.
As Donna carefully zipped my dress back into its wardrobe bag, I bounded up to the bedroom to fetch my Margot wig and got back down to the foyer right as the bell rang. When I opened the door, I saw a man in a full, bushy beard, oversize aviator sunglasses, and a flat cap pulled down over a stringy blond wig I recognized from a long-ago Oscars party where Freddie came dressed as Gwyneth Paltrow.
“You look like a pervert, Fred,” I said.
“Some would argue that I am one,” Freddie said. “Is Nick around?”
“He probably wishes he was,” I said. “Richard called him over to Clarence House to review game tape of the opening of Parliament.”
We had, of course, already watched the whole thing live. Marj and Bea had interrupted a meeting to flip on the TV, and we fell mute at the surreal sight of Richard processing into the House of Lords to give the traditional government-penned Queen’s Speech on behalf of his still-recuperating mother. It was one of the monarch’s most visible ceremonial roles, a performance for the whole country, much bigger and more formal and official than any state visit.
“I don’t mind telling you, I wasn’t sure I’d live to see anyone else do this,” Marj had said, fiddling absently with a cardigan button.
Richard was merely a stand-in, a prop, and he knew it. But he’d held his head high under the weight of the crown—at Eleanor’s insistence, he’d worn the custom ceremonial one from his Prince of Wales investiture rather than the iconic one belonging to the monarch—and he’d both stood and sat ramrod straight, as he’d been taught. I’m ready, his bearing