Venetia scoffs. There isn’t even a moment, a beat when she considers it or processes the possibility—she simply rejects it. “I would say you were unconscious and have no way of knowing what happened, but even if you weren’t, Your Majesty, my son was with me in Italy the entire time. There’s no way he could have set the fire.”
“I didn’t say he set it,” says Alexander. “I said that he arranged for it to be done.”
She raises her chin another inch. “Ridiculous. He would never—”
“The evidence says otherwise.”
“What evidence?” she snaps. “Footage? A recorded conversation?”
“Testimony from the two people he blackmailed to do it for him,” says Alexander, and rather than the stunned silence I expect, Venetia starts to laugh.
“You have the word of two people, both of whom you could’ve easily paid off or influenced in any number of ways,” she says, shaking her head. “That isn’t evidence, Your Majesty. That’s just another way to accuse my son of things he would never do.”
Alexander takes a steadying breath, and though I can see his legs shake, he doesn’t move to sit down. “Your son is likely connected to the ABR,” he says bluntly, “and MI5 is investigating him for potential involvement in the deaths of John Phillip Michaels and Primrose Chesterfield-Bishop, both of whom he had regular contact with.”
“I see,” says Venetia, her perfectly lined eyes narrowing. “So now you’re accusing my son of breaking into a prison and making a terrorist hang himself, are you? And that girl—he’s told me about her, that they remained good friends after their breakup. Why would he have any reason to hurt her?”
“He released graphic photographs of her on the internet the day she was murdered,” says Alexander plainly. “Photos he took. Photos he was in.”
“If he was in them, then why would he release them? Wouldn’t the connection be obvious?” she snaps back. “Give my Ben somecredit, at the very least. And Nicky—” She looks at her ex-husband, who sits beside Helene with his hands clasped between his knees and his gaze fixed on the fire. “Are you going to say nothing to defend your own son?”
“I’ve seen the evidence, Vee,” says Nicholas wearily. “I tried to deny it, too, but there’s nothing we can do for him now except try to stop him from ruining the rest of his life.”
“We are also certain that he gave the shooter insider information on our security at Sandringham the morning Evangeline and Kit were shot,” continues Alexander. “He knew where they would be—”
“How?”cries Venetia. “How could he have known any of that? Irefuseto believe that my son, my twenty-year-old son, who is the funniest, sweetest, most giving person I’ve ever known, could be capable ofanyof these terrible things, let alone all ofthem.”
“We don’t always know a person—” begins Helene, but Venetia turns to her so quickly that she nearly trips over her own stiletto heels.
“No, we don’t,” she says nastily. “Especially our best friends. I know what this is really about. The same sordid secret you’ve always kept hidden, isn’t it? Does Ben know? Is that why you’ve done this to him? To discredit him? To make sure he can never tell, even though he already knows what’s at stake?”
I blink and glance at Kit, but he looks as confused as I am. Helene shakes her head.
“Venetia, this has nothing to do with—”
“Because I’ve kept your secret for you,” she snarls. “For years, I haven’t said a word to anyone, or even so much as hinted. Icould’ve made millions off of it, you know. I could’ve gone down in history. But I’ve honored my side of the bargain, and this is the thanks I get?”
Nicholas rises to his feet. “Vee, Helene is telling the truth. This has nothing to do with that and everything to do with more than a year of mounting evidence—”
“Evidenceyoucan’t show me!” Venetia stomps her heel into the patterned rug, and Maisie flinches, curling into herself. “Everyone in this room knows Nicholas should be the rightful heir to the throne, and that my son should be next. But you insist on this—thisfarce,thisinsultto every monarch that’s come before you—”
Maisie flies to her feet, and before anyone can try to stop her, she sprints out of the room, two red splotches on her cheeks and her blue eyes overflowing with tears. I give Kit another look, beyond confused now. But his focus darts between Venetia, Alexander, and Helene and Nicholas, and I can practically see him working out some kind of puzzle in his head.
“Enough,” says Alexander in a quiet, deadly voice. “How I choose to conduct my family’s business is none of yours.”
“Of course it is, when it’s my family, too,” insists Venetia, her volume only rising. “I’ve given upeverything—”
“And been highly compensated for it,” says Alexander in that same lethal tone. “Is that what this is about? Money?”
Venetia grits her teeth. “This is abouthonestyandintegrity,and the lies you’ve built your entire reign upon. If you continue to target my son, then let me make myself perfectly clear—your secrets will no longer be safe with me. I don’t care what it costs me,” she adds with the kind of defiant bravado that makes itclear she definitely does. “Maybe it’s finally time that everyone knows what this family has really been up to.”
With that, she pivots toward the door opposite the one Maisie fled through and walks away, her head held comically high and her back painfully arched. We all watch her go in silence, and it’s only once a footman closes the door behind her that Helene breaks.
“Alexander…” Her voice is thick with unshed tears, and she and Nicholas are both on their feet now.
“I’ll take care of it,” he says heavily, finally sinking down onto the nearest ottoman with my mother’s gentle help. His entire body is trembling, and I stand, like there’s something I can do about it. Like there’s something I can do about any of this when I have no clue what’s going on.
Except as Helene and Nicholas hurry to follow Maisie, I glance at Kit once more, and the look he’s giving me—the wide-eyed, shell-shocked expression of someone whose entire world has just been rocked—makes me pause, and Venetia’s words finally brand my brain like hot steel.
