"Even worse. Matilda, teeth brushed twice. Florence, one more run-through before bed and then that's it. You know this speech inside out."
Florence straightened her shoulders. "Can I wear my new shoes tomorrow?"
"If you can walk in them without wobbling," Alexandra said.
"I don't wobble."
"You wobble a bit," Matilda said quietly, and Florence shot her a look of pure betrayal.
The garden party was everything Alexandra loved and dreaded about public duty. The lawns of the palace were immaculate, the flower beds blazing with late-summer colour: delphiniums and hollyhocks and the roses that the head gardener treated with more reverence than most people reserved for newborns. Staff in black and white weaved between guests carrying champagne and canapés on silver trays. The string quartet positionedbeneath the copper beech played something by Elgar that drifted across the grass like an afterthought.
Alexandra wore a fitted cornflower-blue dress with a structured shoulder that her stylist had selected specifically because it photographed well from every angle and matched Alexandra's eyes in a way that would make the morning papers. She'd paired it with nude heels that sank slightly into the lawn and a smile she'd perfected over a lifetime of public appearances. The smile that was warm but not fluffy. Present and engaged but not too eager. Royal.
The children walked with them. Florence in a pale yellow dress with her blonde braid over one shoulder, composed and watchful, keeping pace with Alexandra's shorter stride. Frank in his navy blazer, already pulling at his collar with one hand and holding a sausage roll he'd swiped from the kitchen in the other. Matilda was at Alexandra's left, her small hand wrapped around two of Alexandra's fingers, chattering about the swans she'd spotted on the lake.
"Do you think they remember me from last time?" Matilda asked. "The swans?"
"Swans have very good memories," Alexandra said, which was probably not true but seemed like the right thing to say.
Erin was at her other side in a beautifully cut charcoal suit, tailored close at the waist, a crisp white shirt open at the throat. She'd worn her dark hair down for once, and it fell past her shoulders, glossy against the lighter fabric. She moved with the easy, alert grace that had first drawn Alexandra's attention all those years ago, when Erin Kennedy had been her new bodyguard and Alexandra had been a princess with a secret she'd barely admitted to herself. Erin caught her eye as they stepped onto the main lawn and gave her the smallest wink. The warmth that spread through Alexandra's chest had nothing to do with the afternoon sun.
They moved through the crowd as a family, stopping to greet the guests, shaking hands, accepting compliments on the children. Alexandra was acutely aware of the picture they made. The Queen, her wife, their three children. There had been a time when this image would have set the press into a feeding frenzy. Now it was simply what the country expected. More than that, it was what they loved. The approval ratings after the wedding had been the highest the monarchy had seen in decades. She and Erin had fought for this. Every ugly headline, every leaked photograph, every threat muttered in corridors they were meant not to hear. They had earned this.
Alexandra paused to speak with the chair of the literacy foundation, a kind-faced woman in her sixties who asked Florence a question about her favourite book. Florence answered with perfect poise: "I'm readingThe Secret Gardenat the moment. It's about a girl who finds something beautiful that everyone else forgot about."
The woman beamed. Erin squeezed Alexandra's elbow.Our girl,the squeeze said.
They circulated for another twenty minutes, Alexandra performing the familiar choreography of public warmth, and she was watching Frank try to steal a second profiterole from a passing tray when she saw her.
Cecilia. Her mother.
Her mother stood near the rose garden in a cream silk dress and a single strand of pearls, a champagne flute in her hand, laughing with the wife of a cabinet minister as though she belonged here. As though she had been invited. Her ash-golden hair was immaculate, swept up and pinned in a way that made her look ten years younger than seventy-four. She was petite and striking and still, after everything, capable of making Alexandra's throat close with a single look.
Alexandra's hand tightened around Matilda's fingers. She had not been informed that Cecilia would be attending. Julia would have told her. Julia always told her. Which meant Cecilia had come without an invitation, or someone had extended one without Julia's knowledge, and either possibility made something cold slide down the back of Alexandra's neck.
"Mummy Alex, you're squishing my fingers," Matilda said.
Alexandra released her grip immediately. "Sorry, sweetheart. Sorry."
Erin had seen Cecilia too. Alexandra could tell by the way her jaw set, the slight shift in her posture from relaxed to alert, the way her weight moved to the balls of her feet. The bodyguard in her surfacing the way it always did when she perceived a threat. And Cecilia was always, always a threat.
"Did you know she'd be here?" Erin murmured, her voice low enough that only Alexandra could hear.
"No."
Erin's hand moved to Alexandra's waist. Not possessive. Protective. "We can leave."
"We can't leave our own garden party."
"Watch me."
But before Alexandra could decide what to do, Cecilia turned and saw them. Her face broke into a wide, delighted smile, the one she reserved for cameras and strangers and anyone who might be watching, the one that had fooled an entire nation into thinking she was a doting grandmother rather than the woman who had once offered Erin a million pounds to disappear.
"My darlings!" Cecilia swept towards them with her arms open. "What a wonderful surprise!"
She embraced Frank first, who submitted with the resigned stiffness of a boy who didn't especially like being held. She bent to kiss Matilda's cheek, leaving a faint smudge of lipstick that Matilda would rub at later. And when she reached for Florence,Alexandra saw it. The way Florence's shoulders drew up, just slightly. The way her small body went rigid beneath Cecilia's manicured hand. Florence did not pull away. She'd been taught better than that, taught the royal discipline of accepting unwanted touch with grace. But her bright blue eyes found Alexandra's, and the look in them was not a child's look.
It was wary. It was old.
