“I’m not legally an American anymore. I certainly don’t feel British. I’m…” The Flake was melting in my hand, so I popped the rest into my mouth while I searched for the words. “Kind of nothing. And people have expectations of me here that are not necessarily the expectations I imagined for myself, but I still have to live up to them, and…I don’t know. It’s hard to find myself in that sometimes.”
Freddie looked up at the canopy of leaves over our heads. “I understand how that feels, a bit,” he said.
I blew out my breath. “Wow, this really did turn into a therapy session.”
“My hourly rates are very reasonable, if you want to keep talking it out,” Freddie said, elegantly slurping the drips from the bottom of his diminishing cone. “But if you haven’t been in America for a while, it also means you haven’t left us for a while. Maybe you’ll miss bits about England in the same way.”
“Or I’ll get over there and decide all those Americans are irritating and start complaining about why there aren’t proper scones,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
“Right. About that,” he said, rubbing at his left knee. “It looks like I won’t be here.”
Flake number two chose that moment to faint gracefully out of my pooling ice cream and into my lap.
“Crap,” I said, picking it up and brushing at the stain. “I already used up my napkin.” I blotted at the puddle of ice cream on my cargo shorts. “Whatever. No one cares how Margot looks in public. What are you talking about? Where are you going? Can I not just call you?”
Freddie was staring off to the right at an obelisk that sat atop three stone steps, with the word SPEKE carved into the base. “See that?” he said, pointing. “That right there is an expensive homage to futility. The good Mr. Speke believed he’d discovered the source of the Nile, but the day before a public debate with his archrival about it, he died mysteriously by his own gun.”
“Whoa,” I said. “I smell foul play.”
“The thing is, Speke turned out to be correct. Everyone celebrated this amazing thing he’d done, solving a geographic riddle. But he was long gone. Isn’t that sad?” he asked. “Plugging away at life, bit by bit, and then dying before you find out whether you did anything of consequence.”
I blinked. “Am I going to like where this is going?”
“Probably not.” Freddie took a deep breath. “I’m joining the Special Boat Service,” he said. “It’s an elite tactical wing of the Royal Navy. I’d like to serve properly again before I settle down and get the hook like Nick did.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t like this. It sounds dangerous.”
“It’s intense,” he said. “They do a lot of hostage rescue, and anti-terrorism work. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going, and it might change, but historically they’ve been sent to the Middle East and Libya.”
“Freddie, oh my God.” I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “How can Eleanor and Richard let you do that? How can the Navy allow this? Are you even trained for that? You could be killed.” My voice had gotten very shrill.
“I’m a prince, Bex,” he said. “If I’m in the mood for a spot of counter-terrorism, I can show up and say so.”
“That is the most ridiculous—”
“I’m teasing,” he said. “I’ve been in training for months. Why do you think we’ve seen so little of each other?”
“Um, because texting makes people lazy?” I said.
Freddie shook his head, though he did smile. “I put this in motion at the end of last year,” he said. “The selection process was brutal. I had to swim five hundred meters in full combat dress and then do an endurance march with a twenty-five-kilo weight.” He shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on the interrogation training. I squeezed about twenty-four weeks of work into half the time. But everyone at the Royal Navy has been superb. No one has called me a dilettante to my face, although I’m sure they all think I’m a spoiled brat with something to prove. And I probably am.” He glanced over at the Speke monument again. “I couldn’t keep going to engagements and making small talk and cutting ribbons anymore. I need to do something, Bex. My whole life, I’ve skated by on charm and goodwill and money, and it hasn’t added up to anything real.”