The Heir Affair

have to go meet Ol—uh, Oliver, er, Dr. Omundi about some data entry, and…”
“Please say slide into some spreadsheets next,” I said.
Lacey rolled her eyes. “Fix your eyebrows,” she said.
“I love you guys,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted. Pray for me.”
I closed my computer heavily. Back to the emotional grind. Since returning from Scotland, my primary job (other than being summoned to Eleanor’s chamber) had been going through Georgina’s old stuff to decide what Nick and I wanted to consign to storage. This was usually interesting, but it was also overwhelming and dusty, and it bummed me out that the contents of Georgina’s entire life were the responsibility of someone who’d never met her. I’d done some online digging, too, into the enigmatic woman who’d called this place home before I did, but the results were unsatisfying. Her Wikipedia entry was complete but dry, a long litany of only the most elemental facts. At least the Daily Mail had written about a minor scandal in the ’70s when Georgina went on a twelve-hour craps marathon in Monte Carlo. A few fashion stories popped up about Georgina’s outrageous taste in hats, but were all pegged to the same photo of her at Ascot wearing what looked like a feathered swim cap and gesturing with a bejeweled cigarette holder. And her obituaries painted her as a party girl eliding the last reclusive chunk of her life. None of it helped me know the whole story, or her true self, any better.
The jaunts to Eleanor’s bedside fomented equal frustration. I’d looked at every photo in the room, from afar. I knew the contours of every piece of furniture. I could sketch the wallpaper blindfolded. The only excitement was hearing Marta’s latest travails on what she persistently referred to in full as the World Wide Web. My dad’s beyond-the-grave advice started making sense: Maybe if I made myself big enough, Eleanor would stop ignoring me. Something had to change, or I would lose my mind.
So I pushed my limits. First, I did bring in paper and pencils to draw the wallpaper. The next time, while Eleanor read the Express’s front-page story about how Freddie had coached a team of adorable five-year-olds to a rugby win, I blew through Jilly Cooper’s smut classic Riders, the cover of which features a hand groping a shapely rump in breeches. I played countless games of Candy Crush with the sound on, ate as much loud snack food as I could, and clicked a pen for five straight minutes. I even brought a tablet to stream Cubs highlights, and treated the bedroom as if it were my living room—language and all. Earl Porter would have been proud.
Eleanor didn’t blink. Not even when I called one of our middle relievers a douchecanoe (which I hadn’t even done for effect; it was a fact). Her impassiveness was impressive, and it was going to drive me into early insanity.
“It’s been two weeks,” I marveled to Nick while we were rummaging through the second-floor drawing room. “She’s made of iron. I don’t think there’s anything inside her chest that could flutter.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Nick said. “She’s never been this angry at me before. Today she and Father had me indexing charity names in the back room at Clarence House while Freddie gave the cast of Worthington Hall its OBEs.”
“I read an entire issue of Playboy in front of the Queen.”
“Do you know how many charities in Britain begin with B?”
“Do you know the word-to-nipple ratio in Playboy?”
Nick chuckled. “Please tell me you went to the newsstand and bought it yourself.”
“I made Gaz go,” I said. “I need to send him a bottle of wine. I guarantee you he is still blushing.” I let out a puff of frustration. “I’ve tried everything to get her to crack, short of rekindling the Revolution.”
“Before you go in muskets blazing, I’ve got news about a proper job for us,” he said.
“Do you think we need a brass magazine rack?” I asked Nick, holding up a metal basket that still had old issues of People and Newsweek in it. “Wait, what did you say?”
He snatched the rack from me. “I was about to say, ‘Yes, we absolutely need Nick Nolte’s Sexiest Man Alive issue.’”
“No, the other thing—wait, what is this?” I held up a small silver bowl with a snug lid and a small hole in the top.
“I think it’s an inkwell,” Nick said, “but if we don’t know what it is, we don’t need it.”
“What if later we decide we really need an inkwell?”
Nick rolled up Nick Nolte into a megaphone. “Rebecca,” he boomed. “If you change your mind, someone will go into storage and fetch you the inkwell.”
“Antiques Roadshow has given me anxiety that I’ll trash something priceless,” I told him. “What’s this about a job?”
“It might not help your anxiety,” Nick said, “but it seems we’re on the docket for an engagement with Freddie. Our first as a trio. We’re going to Hampton Court to unveil a new tapestry. Or, I guess, technically an old tapestry that they found in a hole and restored.”
“Of course. Nothing says, ‘Behold our marital bliss!’ like Henry the Eighth,” I said.
“Does it make you feel better that this tapestry was commissioned for the wife he liked best?” Nick asked. “Although nine days later she died. Maybe that’s why it got chucked in a hole.” He sighed. “I haven’t been to Hampton Court in ages. Mum took us as kids and I pretended to roast Freddie on the giant spit in the kitchen.”
“Gee, I wonder who’ll get roasted at this one,” I muttered.
I wasn’t kidding. We were going to be scrutinized within an inch of our lives, from our body language to whether or not the boys’ ties held some kind of hidden message, to how many times I smiled and at whom; I couldn’t cling to Nick, but neither could I keep my distance, and I had to maintain a paradoxical friendly disinterest in