The Heir Affair

ourselves we have lost. The novel was open and overturned to mark a page, and had been thus for so long that when I picked it up, it stayed that way.
“What is this place?” Nick wondered, shaking his head.
“She must have wanted a spot where no one could find her.” I thought back to the events of the last few days, all of us tromping in and out of Eleanor’s sickroom, and then back even further, to the day of the wedding when countless palace employees had borne witness to me trying to pull it together. It made sense that a person might go to extremes for her privacy, even in a palace. Especially in a palace.
I went to set the book back down where I’d found it, and saw that it had been sitting atop a torn corner of paper.
NOT UNTIL THE END OF MY DAYS, it read.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked Nick, showing it to him.
He shook his head. “Sounds like a juicy feud, but I haven’t heard any stories about that.”
“It could be a love note,” I reasoned.
“I’ve not heard any stories about her being in love with anyone, either.”
I rubbed the scrap with my thumb. “So these are her secrets. How soapy,” I said. “I love it.”
He sidled up to me and slid his arms around my waist. “It is very romantic in here.”
“You know, this little den means our house actually has twenty-seven rooms.” I turned to face him and locked my hands around his neck. “It’s going to take us a while to mark our territory. We’d better get started.”
He dipped his head to kiss me. “It’s the middle of the day,” he said, even as he drew me down to the cushioned floor. “What would Georgina say?”
“She had a den of secrets,” I murmured. “I think she’d approve.”

CHAPTER SIX
She sounds like she’s being a total cow.”
“Lacey. You’re talking about the Queen,” my mother said.
“Sorry. A right royal cow,” Lacey amended.
My mother snickered. “Much better.”
“You guys are terrible influences,” I said. “I love it.”
This three-way Skype session was the closest to being in the same room that Mom, Lacey, and I had managed since the wedding, and it was good to see their faces, even if they were squeezed into halves of my laptop screen and Lacey’s internet connection was spotty. And I’d already said more to my sister and my mother—each on different continents—than I had to my grandmother-in-law, who’d summoned me to her chambers twice more over the last week for more time spent in rigorous quietude. The only use of my voice was with Marta, who was habitually fiddling on her iPhone in her daughter’s sitting room, and either sharing internet gossip or dropping tidbits about Eleanor.
“Did you happen to notice the pocket watch?” she’d asked earlier this week. Eleanor had been wearing one around her neck. “Dates from the 1900s. Made in Coventry.” Her lip twitched, and I knew why: Being sent to Coventry was a British expression for being iced out. It turned out Eleanor was speaking to me. Through her accessories.
To my family, I said, “She at least let me sit down. Or, more accurately, Marta told me Eleanor didn’t care for my hovering, and that she said I would get huge ankles if I didn’t find a chair.”
Lacey whistled. “She’s cankle-baiting you. Her evil runs deep.”
“Don’t let her get to you,” Mom said, topping off her coffee with some cream.
“Says the woman who yelled at the Queen in her own home,” Lacey said.
“Do as I say, not as I do,” Mom said airily. “How are the elephants, dear?”
At the same time, I said, “Have you even brushed your hair, Lace? You look like me.”
“You wish,” Lacey said. “But I do spend like 70 percent less time on my head here than I ever did in London.” She sighed contentedly. “The elephants are so smart. I got to give the baby a bath yesterday and she really likes me. Olly says he’s worried she’ll try to follow me home.”
“Olly says that, does he?” I asked. “What else does this Olly say? Maybe we should ask Olly how to handle Eleanor.”
“Unless you want him to suggest an electronic collar to study her migratory patterns, better leave it alone,” Lacey said, but she was blushing. “Push back at her, Bex. Crack her first. What’s she going to do? It’s not like she can have you killed.”
“Debatable.”
“I think it’s a test of your moxie,” Lacey insisted.
“I don’t think Eleanor is interested in other people’s moxie,” I said. “I think I just have to be patient. Except, historically, I’m shitty at it.”
“Correct,” Mom said. “Which is why Lacey is right.”
“Yay!” Lacey pumped her fist.
“It’s time to force a reaction out of Eleanor,” Mom continued. “As your father used to say, make yourself big and the world can’t ignore you.”
She hugged herself for a moment, as if basking in a memory too private to share aloud. I gazed at the laptop screen, my entire immediate family in one LCD frame—Mom, with my chin and my hair but Lacey’s nose and blue eyes; Lacey, once the fancy twin, suddenly shoving her hair into messy ponytails and looking a lot more like I used to when I was running cross-country through the back roads of Iowa. And me, sporting both hair and eyelash extensions, because I was now a person with image architects (though not, thankfully, a person who used the phrase image architects with a straight face). It was comforting to know that we could bridge the miles and the time differences to keep our threesome tight. Even as it still broke my heart, one piece every day, that we were no longer four.
“Okay, girls. I’ve got to shower. Bed Bath and Beyond is taking me to lunch,” Mom said, breaking my reverie. She’d been running Coucherator, Inc., to great acclaim since my dad died. “SkyMall closing has led to so many meetings, I cannot even tell you.”
“And I