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Singh confiscates my laptop and phone, leaving me with no way to see what the world is saying about me. Tibby, on the other hand, is glued to her screen, and while she refuses to spill any details about what’s happening in the headlines and on social media, her favorite new pastime is declaring it all utter bollocks. And though part of me knows that remaining blissfully ignorant is undoubtedly for the best, the possibilities still eat away at me until I feel like I’m losing my mind.
My schedule isn’t completely empty. Every morning, I sit in the conference room with Maisie, Helene, Constance, and Nicholas, along with a revolving door of senior advisers, as they all make plans and decisions I barely understand. While Jenkins attends the first few meetings and goes to significant lengths to make sure I’m included, he’s conspicuously absent from the rest. And from then on, no one will look at me, and I never speak up. My only job is to fill a seat that would otherwise be Ben’s, and that, I know, is the sole reason Helene hasn’t thrown me out on my arse. Though she and Constance are both cold to the point of being unapproachable, neither seems to actually believe the ABR’s claims about me, probably because it would also mean believing that Kit was involved. But the truth doesn’t stop either of them from treating me like the whole wretched scandal is entirely my fault.
To make it all worse, Kit officially leaves Windsor for his family’s townhouse in London. While he isn’t far, we have no way of communicating—and even if we did, I’m sure he wouldn’t risk it, not when it might give Singh a reason to reconsider my supposed innocence. But either way, the solid foundation Kit has offered me for the past seven months is gone, and I constantly feel like I’m walking on shaky ground, and one small push could send me spiraling into oblivion.
On the fifth day after the bombing, I wake up to another round of whispers. They’re more frequent now that I’m on my own, and I lie in bed, my eyes squeezed shut as I try to ignore them.
“Evangeline.”
“Evangeline.”
“Evangeline.”
At first my name is almost white noise in the quiet of the early morning. But as the seconds pass, the whispers seem to converge until they become a single voice pulsing in the air, and even when I roll over and bury my head underneath the pillow, I can still hear them. With a curse, I shove the blanket off me and sit up with dizzying force.
“Go away!”
The words ring through my bedroom, and silence rushes in as the whispers abruptly disappear. Startled, I look around in the darkness, but before I can figure out what just happened, my door swings open, and Tibby stands silhouetted in the lamplight from the sitting room.
“Evan?” she says. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I mutter, though my heart is racing. I push a loose lock of hair from my face, and I can hear the faint thud of Tibby’s heels as she walks toward the windows. “What are you doing here so early?”
“Fitz is a wreck, so I stopped by to help him arrange Her Royal Highness’s schedule for the rest of the week,” she says as she opens the curtains, even though the sun hasn’t come up yet. “Naturally the job took all of ten minutes. Did you have a nightmare?”
She says this in a strange, almost sympathetic tone that doesn’t sound natural on her, and I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter,” I say, climbing to my feet. “I need to shower.”
Tibby lets me trudge off to my bathroom without further comment, but I can feel her eyes on me as I go. And once I emerge half an hour later, she speaks to me like I’m a feral animal that’s one wrong word away from biting her, and I know it’s going to be a very long day.
I barely manage to choke down a croissant at breakfast, and I don’t say a word during the meeting that follows. Vaguely I note the dark circles under Maisie’s eyes—ones that are slowly beginning to rival Helene’s—but she, like everyone else, does a remarkable job of acting like my seat is empty, and the moment the meeting is adjourned, I escape into the hall and make myself scarce.
This time, however, the thought of returning to my room and enduring Tibby’s sympathy is too much to bear, and so rather than turning left when I reach the bottom of the staircase, I turn right, heading for the drawing rooms instead.
Even though seemingly every adviser is on call, the household staff has been reduced in the wake of the bombing, and the long gallery is empty. As I pass the series of doors that lead into the royal family’s private apartments, I pause in front of one that’s identical to the rest, but as far as I know, no one except cleaning personnel has been inside in months.
Ben’s suite.
My fingers wrap around the handle before I know what I’m doing, and I give it an experimental twist. The knob doesn’t give, and I take a deep breath, standing perfectly still. I shouldn’t be here. I should keep walking and disappear into the maze that is the state apartments and not give this door another thought. But something compulsive—something irresistible—makes me slip my lockpicks out of the narrow pocket in the waistband of my leggings, and after a quick glance up and down the corridor to make sure no one is coming, I slide them into the keyhole.
Fifteen seconds later, I’m inside, my back pressed against the closed door as I look around the room. It’s different from the last time I was in here—less lived-in, somehow, even though none of the blue-and-gold furniture has changed. But the floor-to-ceiling bookcases are full of generic leather-bound books and artfully arranged knickknacks, and when I peek inside the credenzas near the dining table, where Ben stashed the rest of his seemingly endless supply of paperback novels, they’re empty.
That should be the end of it—solid evidence that any sign of Ben’s time here has been vacuumed and dusted away. But something pulls me toward the door that leads into his former bedroom, and when the handle turns easily, I cross the threshold, feeling as if I’m entering a tomb.
It’s nearly pitch-black inside, with heavy velvet curtains covering the windows and blocking out the sun, but I don’t bother fumbling around for a switch. Instead, I let the light from the sitting room spill inside as I move straight toward the large wardrobe and open the doors. It’s also empty, without even so much as a single stray sock or hanger left behind, but I’m not surprised. If his books are gone, then his clothes must be, too.
I crouch down and feel around the bottom of the wardrobe, until my fingers brush against a slight gap at the edge. With dread settling in the pit of my stomach, I lift the false bottom of Ben’s favorite hiding spot and hold my breath.
At first, all I see is darkness. My body is blocking the light from the sitting room, and it isn’t until I shift that I notice a shadow lurking inside. The last time I was here, the contents of the drawer were mostly organized, save for the pile of adult magazines that served as a decoy to keep anyone from searching too hard. But now, the Polaroids and media and manila envelopes are gone, and in their place sits something strange and irregular. Gathering my courage, I reach inside, and my fingers brush—
A flower.
I snatch my hand back, and it takes me several long seconds before I can make myself touch it again. The petals are velvety soft, and gingerly I pull it out of the hiding place, not at all surprised when the light reveals it’s a blood-red gerbera daisy. Ben must have stashed it here before Maisie kicked him out of Windsor, but the daisy doesn’t look like it’s been lying at the bottom of a dark wardrobe for the past five days. It’s healthy and thriving, as if it were plucked straight from a vase full of water. As if Ben placed it here minutes ago, knowing I was about to come looking.
Suddenly my skin prickles like something—or someone—is watching me, and I scramble to my feet, the flower clutched in my hand. I don’t bother to close the wardrobe as I hurry out of the bedroom. Ben will know I was here whether or not I cover my tracks, and I dash through the rest of his suite, my pulse racing and my vision blurring—with anger, with determination, with every answer I know I have, but can’t prove. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe, like a predator taunting its prey, Ben wants me to know I’m right—that his fingerprints are all over what’s happened since the attack at Sandringham, and I’m the only one who knows he’s playing the game.
I’m three long strides into the corridor when I run straight into something warm and solid, and it’s a minor miracle I don’t fall flat on my face. Instead, as I stumble, a hand reaches out to steady me, and I hear Jenkins’s voice.
“Evan. Evan.”
