"I'll be in the corridor."
Alexandra moved to the drawing room. It was a larger, more formal space: high ceilings, heavy curtains, portraits of previous monarchs watching from the walls with the indifferent expressions of people who'd had their own Cecilias to contend with. She chose the chair by the fireplace, positioning herself with the window behind her so the light fell on the visitor's face rather than her own. It was a small tactical advantage, the kind of thing Erin would have done without thinking. Alexandra hadlearned it from watching her wife across a thousand meetings and negotiations, the subtle geometry of power, the way a room could be arranged to favour one person over another.
She sat and waited. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Through the window she could hear birdsong and the distant sound of the children's voices from the lawn.
The door opened and Cecilia swept in.
She was immaculate, as always. A cream silk blouse beneath a camel coat, her ash-golden blonde hair styled in soft waves that framed her face, her blue eyes, the same blue as Alexandra's, the same blue as Florence's, already bright with tears that caught the light and looked almost genuine. She moved with the studied grace of a woman who had spent her entire life being watched and who had turned being watched into an art form. Her perfume preceded her: Shalimar, the same scent she'd worn for fifty years, sweet and heavy and instantly recognisable. The smell of it triggered something in Alexandra's chest, a complicated knot of memory and revulsion and something that was horrifyingly close to the reflexive love that children never quite manage to outgrow, no matter how much their parents have earned its absence.
"Darling." Cecilia crossed the room with her arms already outstretched and reached for Alexandra's hands. Her grip was warm and firm and her nails were perfectly manicured and her face was a masterwork of maternal anguish: the quivering lip, the glistening eyes, the slight tremble in the chin that she had deployed at state funerals and charity galas with equal effectiveness. "I came as soon as I heard you'd see me. I've been beside myself. I haven't slept. Florence, my darling girl, have they found anything? Tell me everything."
Alexandra did not return the grip. She let her hands be held and looked at her mother's face and searched for something real beneath the performance. A flicker of guilt. A tell. Anything.
There was nothing. Cecilia's eyes were wide and wet and utterly, perfectly concerned.
"They're following leads," Alexandra said. She kept her voice neutral, giving nothing. "MI5 is involved. The police are involved. Everything possible is being done."
"Of course it is. Of course. But darling, you must be absolutely shattered. You look pale. Have you been sleeping? Eating? You must keep your strength up. Florence needs her mother strong." Cecilia released Alexandra's hands and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief that she produced from her coat pocket with the practised timing of an actress hitting a mark. "I couldn't bear it when I heard. I simply couldn't bear it. That someone could do this to our family. To Florence."
Our family.The possessive pronoun hit her like a slap. Our family. As though Cecilia had not spent the last decade trying to dismantle that family. As though she had not offered Erin a million pounds to disappear. As though she had not supported Lord Hugo's assault. As though she had not whispered in Arthur's ear for years, encouraging every scheme and every betrayal.
"Mother." Alexandra's voice was very controlled. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me."
Cecilia's expression shifted. Not alarm. Nothing so crude. A careful rearrangement of concern into attentiveness, the brow slightly furrowed, the head tilted, the posture of a woman giving her full and undivided attention. "Of course, darling. Anything."
"Arthur's private authorisation pathway was used to generate the credentials that took Florence."
The room went still. The clock ticked. A maid passed in the corridor outside and Cecilia's gaze flicked to the door and back with a speed that was almost imperceptible.
"Arthur?" Cecilia's voice carried just the right amount of shock. The blue eyes widened. The hand flew to the collar ofthe cream blouse. "That's not possible. Arthur would never. He's been in the countryside for months. He's barely left his house. He's a seventy-year-old man with a bad hip, Alexandra. He couldn't orchestrate a dinner party, let alone be authorising anything.”
"His legacy access code was used. A code that was supposed to have been decommissioned two years ago. It generated genuine credentials, not forged, genuine, for the car that intercepted Florence's riding party."
"Well, anyone could have used that code. A member of staff. A secretary. These systems are labyrinthine. You know that. One doesn't need Arthur himself to access Arthur's pathway." Cecilia stopped. She pressed her hand to her chest, the universal gesture of wounded innocence, and shook her head slowly. "Alexandra. You're frightened. I understand that. Any mother would be terrified. But your mind is playing tricks on you, darling. The stress of this, the terror. It makes you see enemies everywhere. Arthur loves Florence. He adores the children. He sent them birthday presents only last month."
The birthday presents. Alexandra remembered them. Three wrapped packages delivered by courier, containing expensive age-appropriate toys that Arthur's secretary had no doubt chosen. A gesture designed to look like love, calculated to provide exactly this kind of deniability.
There it was.Your mind is playing tricks.The phrase that Cecilia had been deploying since Alexandra was a child. The gentle, devastating suggestion that Alexandra's perception of reality was unreliable. That what she saw and felt and understood could not be trusted, because she was emotional, because she was stressed, because she was too close to the situation to think clearly. Cecilia had used it when Alexandra confronted her about the leaked photographs. She'd used it when Alexandra questioned her relationship with Lord Hugo.She'd used it after the assassination attempt, when Alexandra had suggested that the shooter might have had help from inside the royal household.Your mind is playing tricks, darling. You're upset. You're not thinking straight.
"And what about you, Mother?" Alexandra said quietly. "Were you involved?"
Cecilia's hand flew to her throat. "How can you ask me that?" Her voice was thick with hurt. "I'm your mother. Florence is my granddaughter. The idea that I would — that you could even suggest—" She broke off and pressed the handkerchief to her eyes, her shoulders trembling with what appeared to be suppressed sobs.
At that moment, the door opened and a young member of staff entered carrying a tea tray. She was in her early twenties, dark-haired, with the careful deference of someone new to royal service. "Tea, Your Majesty? Your — oh, Your Highness. I didn't realise — shall I bring another cup?"
Cecilia's transformation was instantaneous. The tears vanished. The trembling stopped. She turned to the young woman with a radiant smile that lit her face like sunrise and made her look twenty years younger. "How lovely. Yes, please, another cup would be wonderful. Thank you so much, my dear. What's your name?"
"Alice, Your Highness."
"Alice. What a beautiful name. Thank you, Alice." Cecilia's voice was warm honey. She placed her hand briefly on Alice's arm as the girl set down the tray, a gesture of intimacy and connection that Alexandra recognised with a sick lurch in her stomach as the same gesture Cecilia had used on every member of staff, every charity volunteer, every person she wanted to charm.
Alice left with a flush of pleasure on her cheeks. The door closed.
Cecilia turned back to Alexandra. The warmth drained from her face as cleanly as water from a sink. "Now. Where were we?"
"I asked if you were involved."
"And I answered. The suggestion is offensive, Alexandra. After everything I've done for this family?—"
