“King Richard,” Bea mused. “Even when Eleanor was unconscious, it didn’t feel this real.”
“Crikey,” was all Nick had offered, the color draining from his face.
As Freddie stood on our doorstep, a curious expression playing around the corners of his disguise, I told him, “He didn’t admit it, exactly, but I think the whole thing freaked Nick out. It made his future feel awfully close.”
Freddie looked sympathetic. “Father practiced his whole life for that moment. I think he forgets not everyone was looking so forward to it,” he said, and there wasn’t a trace of malice in it. “But Knickers is going to have his turn someday, whether he likes it or not, and he’s got to be every bit as ready.”
“Freddie,” I said patiently as I followed him into the gravel courtyard, “if the time ever comes that I’m not wearing sensible shoes off duty, please hurl me into the Thames.”
Freddie guided me out of the courtyard, and onto the private road that led out of the protected palace walls. We strolled around the far wing of the compound, past an array of charming potting sheds, a tennis court, and cottages that housed offices and occasionally low-level relatives visiting from out of town.
“Where are you even taking me?” I asked. “Don’t we look like security threats, lurking around in these wigs?”
“Patience, Killer,” Freddie said over his shoulder. “Besides, your PPOs are well acquainted with your disguise. They’ll just think I’m some creepy weirdo you’ve picked up off the street.”
“As is my habit,” I said.
“Exactly. And anyway, we’re here.”
“Here” was a long, narrow garden shoved between the outbuildings and the ivy-covered brick wall that separated us from the public Kensington Gardens. There, in the middle of the wall, was an unassuming white-painted wooden door.
“I used your little trick the other day—and my God, that was risky,” he said. “I scared the hell out of two people on the cleaning staff when I burst into that janitorial closet. I had to tell them we’d run out of toilet cleaner.”
“It’s an imperfect system,” I agreed.
“So I did a little exploring,” he said. “Look.”
He pushed open the door a foot, and I stuck my head through the crack to see the vast green lawns and dusty footpath of Kensington Gardens spread before me. Nearby, a Labrador retriever looked askance, but his owner, chatting away on her cell phone, didn’t even notice my head poking out of a hedge.
“I feel like I’m wearing an invisibility cloak that slipped,” I whispered. “What if someone sees me randomly emerging from this bush?”
“Act casual,” Freddie hissed.
I slithered out the door and into the gardens, and Freddie followed.
“Found it, Margot!” he shouted, pulling a golf ball out of the hedge, tossing it in the air, and catching it with a satisfied flick of the wrist.
“Where would we be golfing near here?” I asked. “We don’t even have clubs!”
“We were playing catch,” he said.
“With golf balls?”
“Just go with it,” he said. “No one cared. Mission accomplished.”
We strolled down the wide dirt path that ran parallel to the palace, silent together under the sunshine. It was a scorcher of a summer day—the kind where half of England wonders how much it would cost to install central air—and the gardens were packed with people exercising, walking their dogs, or sitting on rented lawn chairs around the Serpentine leafing through magazines and chatting. I couldn’t even see the end of the line at the ice cream cart.
“You need an alias,” I told Freddie. “I’m Margot, and Nick is Steve. But who’s this guy?” I waved at Freddie’s disreputable-looking costume.
“Oh, I know who he is,” Freddie said. “I used an alias at Eton, but then we all sort of stopped because I decided I didn’t care if people knew what I got up to. My fake name is Niles. I was into Frasier as a child.”
“Really?”
Freddie shrugged as we cut through the grass, moving into a part of the park that was more secluded, all high, leafy trees and bucolic niches broken up here and there by petite obelisks dedicated to dead British explorers—a surprise burst of history in the midst of your perambulations.
“I was always interested in shows about brothers, I guess,” Freddie said. “It felt familiar. They got along swimmingly, they liked the same things, but one of them was slightly more uptight than the other. And they had a cranky father, although he always