confused mistake, and I’d believed it. He apparently hadn’t been so sure, and now, thanks to a combination of betrayals both accidental and chillingly deliberate, everybody knew it.
Nick and I had both decided we couldn’t draw anyone else into our escape. It was better for them to know nothing, and safer for us to keep it that way. No texts, no emails, no check-ins, nothing that risked getting leaked to the media and threatening the peace of mind that we had found by hitting the road incognito, ambling sociably through small country towns, and now selling books to people who had no idea they were passing their bills to a royal cuckold and his faithless wife—the most hated person in Great Britain, if not the world.
Stop it, I told myself. The whole point is to get away from all that. But the damn bells had really thrown me off tonight. I shoved aside my feelings and dragged a hairbrush roughly through my own brown hair, matted and tragic from a day of being shoved into Margot’s flaxen disguise. With every night that Nick and I climbed into someone else’s lumpy old bed, our adrenaline surging from another day of going undetected and our hormones rising to match it, the shitshow that had erupted in London felt farther away. The ruse was working—both for us and on us.
With a tug of the brush, one of my hair extensions got caught in the bristles and came free. One more vestige of Duchess Rebecca that I could leave behind. I tossed it into the wastebasket and followed my nose back out into the kitchen, where Nick was taking two faintly less charred objects out of the oven. He set a pie in front of me with a flourish.
“This one might even be mediocre,” he said.
“High praise,” I said, and with a grateful sniff, sank into a dining chair. It did at least smell like meat. Of some kind. “Oh, our last customer of the evening sent his regards. It’s a good sign that he’s met us both and didn’t twig to anything. Your mustache is really effective.”
“We’re also not front and center in as many papers anymore,” he said. “Or at least our faces aren’t.”
He nodded toward the Mirror as he joined me at the table. I stabbed through the lid of my pie, and as it belched steam, I reluctantly pulled the paper toward my plate. The lead story was about an MP being found passed out in a shrub, but at the bottom, there I was. Allegedly. It was really a random brunette in one of the royal Range Rovers, her face obscured by giant sunglasses and a copy of the Times. I wondered how much she knew. And how much her silence cost.
The teaser next to it caught my attention. “Yikes, Freddie and Richard did an event together again? What’s that, six now?”
“Seven.” Nick shuddered. “Better him than me. That’s a lot of Dick.”
I nearly choked on a piece of what seemed like chicken.
“Imagine having to spend so many days in a row with Father, talking about God knows what,” Nick continued, not noticing. “I can think of no worse punishment.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Freddie’s face, which smiled up at me underneath the headline, APOLOGY (TOUR) NOT ACCEPTED. I searched it for a sign of what he was really feeling, whether his smile was real, or—as was so often the case when the brothers were around the Prince of Wales—wilting at the edges, merely pasted on top of a lifetime of resentment. Suddenly, I burned to know if he was okay.
I forced myself to push the paper aside. “So. What’s on for this evening?”
“I thought I might get my hands all over some dirty dishes,” Nick said. “Then, I don’t know, coffee and biscuits, perhaps a quiz show?”
“Wow, we’re really starting our married life with a bang,” I teased.
“This is, in fact, a perfect start to our married life,” he said with a contented sigh. “I had a long chat with the greengrocer today about courgette, and then walked to the chemist to buy dandruff shampoo. In person. I’ve never been able to do that.”
I grinned. “And your nearly adequate food is far superior to anything I’ve ever made.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nick said, raising a piece of pie on his fork. “Your toast is exquisite.”
We clinked forks. It was quiet again for a bit, interrupted only by the sounds of my chewing. I noticed Nick was spearing