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“None taken.” She sniffs again. “I don’t think I’ve ever really seen her happy before, except when she’s with Nicholas.”
“And I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you happy before, except when you’re with Gia. Or ordering me around,” I add as an afterthought.
Maisie sighs again, ignoring my quip. “I love her. I hate that we’re fighting. I hate that this might be the end, all because of things we can’t control. It isn’t fair. Thaddeus is the perfect solution, and it wouldn’t be forever.”
“I’m not sure that would end well for anyone, though,” I say.
“I know,” she mumbles. “I don’t want to lose her. I’ve tried talking to her about it a million times, but—”
Abrupt staccato footsteps sound in the hallway, growing louder as they approach Maisie’s sitting room. No one knocks, however, and we both fall silent, listening as they fade—until the muffled but unmistakable sound of Helene’s shrieks echoes down the corridor.
“Mummy’s home,” says Maisie grimly, and with one more pass at her face with her sleeve, she grabs my good arm and yanks me to my feet, dragging me to the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation, and consequently must often act contrary to my passions.
—King George III (b. 1738, r. 1760–1820)
“MAISIE,” I HISS AS WE creep toward the doorway that leads into Windsor’s white drawing room. “Maisie. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Since when have you had a moral objection to eavesdropping?” she whispers, pulling me closer to the threshold. Though she and I are sneaking around like we’re thieves in the night, our protection officers walk normally behind us, both looking vaguely bored by the whole thing as Helene’s rising voice reverberates through the open door.
“…all over,” she cries. “Everything I’ve worked for, every terrible thing you’ve done that I’ve excused or ignored or endured—”
“This is hardly the end of the world,” says Alexander’s measured voice, far quieter than Helene’s. “Does it truly matter if everyone knows you and Nicholas are a couple? You live together, after all, and that was hardly going to stay a secret forever—”
“No, of course not. How could it, with you parading her around?” snaps Helene, and it’s only when I catch a glimpse of my mother’s auburn hair through the doorway that I stop caring about being spotted. With Maisie still attached to my arm, I’m the one leading us inside the room now, over the threshold until the whole miserable scene is laid out before us.
My mother’s seated with her back to the large bay window, facing an easel and a canvas I can’t see, paintbrush poised in her hand even though it isn’t moving. Nearby, Alexander sits unperturbed on one of the white-and-gold sofas beneath a massive portrait of some long-dead queen, and Helene paces frantically in front of him. Her thin frame is rigid and her silk skirt catches between her knees, and no amount of concealer can hide the dark hollows beneath her eyes—which, every time she turns toward the window, are glaring daggers at my mother.
“Oh, lovely,” says Helene when she catches sight of me near the doorway. “Precisely who I was hoping to see at this very moment in my life. Shall we tell your secret family about all our private affairs, Alexander, and call it a day?”
“You’re being unreasonable,” he says, which even I could tell him is exactly the wrong thing to say. Sure enough, Helene sputters and whirls on him again, her face twisted into a caricature of its usual beauty.
“I’m being unreasonable? I didn’t get a say in any of this, Alexander. I was twenty years old when I agreed to marry you—twenty. I didn’t know what I was getting into, and you certainly didn’t tell me you were in love with someone else.”
“You knew it was an arranged marriage,” says Alexander in a tired voice that makes it clear this is an argument they’ve had countless times before. “You knew you weren’t the first woman I proposed to. And we both knew we didn’t love each other—”
“So that made it all right for you to sneak around behind my back?” she snarls. “That made it all right for you to ruin my life barely a year into our marriage?”
Alexander is quiet for a moment. “Why is it,” he says at last, “that whenever something goes wrong for you, you insist on laying it at my feet?”
“Because everything is your fault,” she explodes. “You never tried to love me. Nicholas was the only one who ever paid me any attention, and—”
“When did your affair start, Helene?” says Alexander, now deadly quiet. She stops in her tracks, her face draining of color beneath her makeup.
“That has nothing to do with—”
“We both know that’s not true,” says Alexander. “If you want to have this argument here and now, then we will. But I don’t think you do.”
Helene swallows convulsively, and for a moment I think she might actually scream. “You didn’t love me, Alexander,” she says, so pitifully that I feel like an intruder. Which I am, but with my mom so close to the line of fire, I can’t back away now.
“Yes, I did,” he says. “Just not the way you wanted me to.”
“Not the way you were supposed to,” she counters. “Not the way you promised to.”
“I loved you the only way I could,” he says. “I’m sorry it wasn’t enough. I mean it—I’ve always been sorry. And I’m especially sorry it’s come to this.”
