“You know he can’t, my darling,” says Nicholas, pulling her close. “His presence will draw attention away from Rosie and the Chesterfield-Bishops, and the pressure of his attendance is the last thing they need today. He called Lucy and Stuart earlier this morning to offer his condolences, and Jenkins has already sent flowers and a sizable donation to the charity they chose to honor Rosie’s memory. Sometimes that’s all that can be done.”
This sounds reasonable to me and what little etiquette I’veabsorbed, but Helene still buries her face in Nicholas’s shoulder, her own shaking with silent sobs.
To my surprise, Thaddeus Park is next. Kit rises to greet him, and I follow his lead, allowing Thaddeus to hug me like we’ve both lost a family member instead of someone he never met.
“Good of you to stay for this,” says Kit, his voice rough as Thaddeus sits down in an armchair near us.
“I want to make sure Maisie is okay,” he says, and he clears his throat, glancing around—and snapping his gaze right back to us as soon as he spots the crying Helene. “Speaking of, where is she? Isn’t it nearly time to go?”
Kit checks his phone.11:56.“It is,” he admits, though he looks miserable at the idea of facing Maisie for the first time since the hours after Rosie’s death. I’m not looking forward to it, either.
But if I can spare him this much, then I will. “I’ll go get her,” I say, standing and smoothing out my dress. “I’m sure she’s on her way.”
I’m sure of no such thing, but before either Kit or Thaddeus can protest—or worse, insist on coming with me—I kick off my heels and hurry out of the drawing room, making my way up the corridor that wraps around almost the entirety of the U-shaped castle. The royal apartments aren’t far, and as soon as I reach Maisie’s door, I knock, not at all surprised that she hasn’t even left her rooms yet.
“Maisie?” I say. No answer. “Maisie, it’s me. We’re all waiting for you in the drawing room. Are you okay?”
More silence. I press my ear to the door, and through it Ican hear the ticking of the grandfather clock that sits in Maisie’s living room. Between soft clicks, however, there’s something else—something soft and muffled, but it’s there, even if I can’t tell what it is.
Knowing I’ll probably be paying for this invasion of privacy for a very long time, I pull the lockpicks I always carry out of my bag and get to work on her door. I’ve had enough practice now, especially on the old hardware in Windsor, that I have the door unlocked in under fifteen seconds, and I nudge it open slowly, grateful the staff keeps the hinges well oiled.
Someone is definitely crying inside. Slipping my picks back into my bag, I tiptoe across the soft cream rug and peek around the corner into Maisie’s large sitting room. Part of me expects a mess like the last tantrum she threw, with broken treasures everywhere, but the room is pristine, as if housekeeping has just been through.
“Maisie?” I say softly. As soon as I speak, the crying stops, but at least now I can tell where it was coming from.
I peer around a massive bouquet of white roses, to the space between a cream sofa and a tall window. Maisie sits huddled beneath the narrow ledge in a sky-blue nightgown, her hair a mess and her face bare of any makeup, and an open photo album is in her lap.
The pictures already tucked into the pages are of three little girls—unmistakably Maisie, Gia, and Rosie, laughing and playing and completely oblivious to the painful future that lay ahead of them. And in a neat stack at Maisie’s side are more photos, these much more recent.
“Maisie,” I whisper, my heart breaking for her. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t understand how she can just be…gone,” she says without looking up. Her voice is hoarse, as if she’s spent all night crying. Or screaming. Or both. “We used to talk about what we would do when we were grown-ups. About what it would be like when I was queen and they were my ladies-in-waiting. It was always ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ Of course it was never ‘if.’ Who thinks like that?”
I have, I realize, ever since I lost my grandma and my childhood in one fell swoop. I was way too young to have to question the stability of my universe, but when’s the right time? When you’re nineteen, like Maisie is now? When you’re in your twenties, like my parents were when my mom got sick? “I’m sorry, Maisie.”
She finally looks at me, her eyes so red and puffy that her irises look oddly lavender in the light. “You could have saved her. You wereright there,and you did nothing.”
A knot the size of a walnut forms in my throat, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. “There was nothing we could do. We tried to get her out of there, but it was too late—”
“There’salwayssomething you can do,” says Maisie, and though she sounds every bit as exhausted and deflated as she looks, there’s an edge to her voice as dangerous as a chainsaw. “You could’ve warned her. You could’ve told her not to touch anything until you got there. You—you could’ve saved her, and you didn’t, andyouare the reason she’s dead.”
She exhales, her entire body seeming to expel whatever demons have been haunting her these past three days, and with a shuddering gasp, she buries her face in her hands and starts to cry. I crouch down beside her and gently slip the albumfrom her lap, ignoring the cut of her words—her very true words—as I do my best to stop her from crying on the photographs.
“If you—if you hadn’t come here—if you’d just—stayed in the States, where you belong,” bawls Maisie, the tears falling harder and faster with every word, “then she’d—still be alive. She’d—she’d be okay, and Ben—”
Her whole body is racked with sobs now, and knowing it might cost me my hand, I finally muster the courage to reach out and touch her shoulder. “You’re right,” I say, my eyes welling up, but I blink hard, forcing those tears back down. “If I hadn’t ended up here, Ben would’ve never…done what he did. And Rosie would likely still be alive.”
The fact that I’m agreeing with her is apparently so startling that Maisie seems to barely notice that I’m touching her. Instead, she pulls her hands from her face to stare at me again, this time like I’m some kind of venomous snake. “You shouldn’t be here. No one wanted you here.Ididn’t want you here. And now—now—”
“Maisie?”
A familiar voice, high and cautious, sounds from the doorway, and I can practically see Maisie’s heart stop. Slowly she pulls herself to her feet, and judging by the painful way she moves, she’s been sitting beneath that windowsill for hours.
“Gia?”
Kit and Gia stand in the doorway, both looking like they’re not sure they’re allowed inside. But that doubt is quickly banished—for Gia, at least—as Maisie stumbles forward, her nightgowntangling around her legs as she closes the distance between them and throws her arms around her.
I expect Gia to hesitate, or maybe not to hug her back at all. But instead she’s there in an instant, supporting Maisie as she collapses in her arms, and the pair of them sink to the carpet together, clinging to each other like there’s nothing as solid and grounded as they are. Kit gingerly sidesteps them and makes his way toward me, and I loop my arm around his waist, hugging him closely.
