"All right," Alexandra said. She crouched in front of Florence and straightened the collar of her riding jacket. "You listen to Auntie Vic. You stay on the path. And you don't try anything you haven't done before without asking first."
"I know, Mummy Alex."
"I mean it, Florence. No showing off."
"I never show off." Florence paused. "I just ride well."
Vic let out a bark of laughter. "That's the Kennedy in her."
The grooms brought Percy out, a sturdy dun pony with a white blaze and kind, dark eyes. Florence went to him immediately, hugging him, pressing her face against his neck and murmuring something too quiet for Alexandra to hear. Percy's ears flicked forward and he turned his head to nuzzle her shoulder. The bond between them was the sort of thing that made Alexandra remember the bond she herself had with horses, she felt sad she rarely had chance to ride anymore, and she understood why Vic had devoted her entire life to horses.
They tacked up quickly, the grooms working with practised efficiency. Vic swung back onto Thompson. Florence mounted Percy with the careful, correct technique she'd been taught, checking her girth, adjusting her stirrups, settling her weight. She looked down at Alexandra from the saddle and for a moment she looked so much older than eight. The set of her shoulders, the quiet focus in her blue eyes.
"We'll be back before lunch," Vic said, gathering her reins. "Come on then, Flo. Let's see what Percy's got today."
They walked out of the yard together: Vic on the big bay, Florence on the little dun, Jennings following on the grey mare at a respectful distance. Alexandra watched them go. They turned left along the bridle path and the trees closed aroundthem, the sound of hooves on gravel fading to a soft thud on earth, and then they were gone. Just the birdsong and the stable sounds and the tabby cat yawning on its mounting block.
Alexandra stood for a moment in the yard with her hand on the warm stone of the stable wall. The sun was on her face. The horses were dozing in their stalls. She could hear the distant laughter of the other children through the open windows of the house. It was going to be a good weekend. She could feel it in her bones, the kind of weekend they needed, with no schedule and no cameras and nothing to do but be a family.
She walked back up the path to the castle and found her way to the terrace.
The terrace ran along the south side of the house, a wide stone balcony with a low wall that overlooked the main lawn and the lake beyond. The housekeeper had set out a tray with a teapot, a plate of sandwiches cut into triangles, a bowl of strawberries, and a jug of something cold and lemon-scented that caught the light. A pair of the labradors were lying in the shade beneath the stone balustrade, their tails wagging slowly.
Alexandra sank into one of the cushioned chairs and closed her eyes. The warmth of the sun was like a hand pressing gently on her chest, easing the tightness that had lived there for weeks. The schedule had been relentless: four public appearances in the last ten days, a state dinner, two cabinet briefings, a charity gala, Florence's speech rehearsals, and the constant, grinding awareness that every room she entered required a version of herself that was polished and composed and endlessly, exhaustingly perfect. She was tired in a way that sleep didn't fix. Tired in her marrow.
But here, now, with the sun on her face and the sandwiches within reach and Florence riding through the woods with Vic and the other children playing inside with Hyzenthlay. Here shecould let the mask slip. Just for a weekend. Just enough to breathe.
She poured herself a cup of tea and was lifting it to her lips when the terrace door opened and Erin appeared. She'd changed out of her travel clothes into dark jeans and a fitted grey T-shirt that showed the lean muscle of her arms. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders and she was carrying two apples, one of which she tossed to Alexandra without warning.
Alexandra caught it one-handed. "Thank you."
"Nice catch." Erin dropped into the chair beside her and stretched her legs out, crossing her ankles on the low wall. She bit into her apple and gazed out across the lawn. "Frank and Matilda are trying to teach Hyzenthlay's dragon game to Audrey."
"Is it working?"
"Audrey's asleep." Erin turned her head and looked at Alexandra, and her green eyes were soft in the sunlight, the hard edges of the bodyguard and the watchful tension of the palace gone. She was just Erin here. Just her wife. "You look better already."
"I feel better." Alexandra reached over and took Erin's hand. Their fingers laced together, the way they had a thousand times, and the familiarity of it was its own kind of comfort: the calluses on Erin's palm from the gym, the wedding ring warm against Alexandra's skin, the way Erin's fingers tightened briefly around hers, a squeeze that said everything without a word. "I needed this."
"I know you did."
They sat in the sun, not talking, and the quiet stretched between them with the ease of two people who had long since stopped needing words to fill silence. The labradors sighed in their sleep. A wood pigeon called from the oak tree. The tea cooled and the sandwiches were slowly eaten and the afternoonsettled around them with the gentle weight of something precious and unhurried.
Alexandra thought about the past week: the charity gala where she'd stood for three hours in heels, smiling at donors whose names she'd memorised from Julia's briefing cards. The state dinner where she'd sat between the French ambassador and a billionaire philanthropist and managed to make both of them feel important while eating a meal she couldn't taste. The garden party yesterday, and Cecilia. Always Cecilia. She pushed the thought away. Not here. Not this weekend.
She thought instead about Florence on Percy, riding through the dappled woodland with Vic, and the image made her smile. Florence had Erin's intensity about horses, that single-minded focus, the refusal to do anything halfway. She'd been riding since she was four, first on a lead rein with Vic walking beside her, then trotting independently, then cantering, each milestone marked by a quiet, fierce pride that Florence tried to hide and couldn't. Alexandra loved watching her ride. It was the one place where Florence forgot to be careful and simply became a child.
She ate a strawberry. It was warm from the sun and tasted of summer. Erin's thumb was still tracing slow circles on her wrist and the sensation was hypnotic, a gentle rhythm that pulled the tension from her body one revolution at a time.
Alexandra was thinking about nothing. Deliberately, luxuriously, nothing. She was watching a dragonfly hover above the lake when the sound reached her.
Voices. Raised voices. From inside the house. Not children's voices. These were louder, more urgent, accompanied by the rapid clatter of footsteps on stone floors.
Erin sat up. Her legs came off the wall and her feet hit the terrace in one smooth motion, her posture changing in an instant from relaxed to alert. Her hand released Alexandra's. Her eyes went to the terrace door.
"What is that?" Alexandra said.
Before Erin could answer, the door burst open.
