Margaret took one step and then another. A few more, each stronger than the preceding ones. Tessa figured they had until four or five a.m., but the sooner they returned, the better.

  They walked for maybe five minutes, watching for a cab, and Margaret finally flagged one down. She wore a headscarf and nonprescription glasses that she had kept in her bag. The ensemble made Tessa feel like she was with Amalia in a way.

  “Where to?” the cabbie, an older man, asked.

  “To, uh, to…I don’t know,” Margaret said. “Can you start driving?”

  “Ma’am?” the cabbie asked, glancing toward Tessa.

  Tessa shrugged. “It’s up to her.”

  “I need a general destination,” he said.

  “Okay. Okay,” Margaret said. “Um, New Jersey?”

  “Where in Jersey?”

  “Newark,” she said. It wasn’t as out-there a suggestion as it might have otherwise been because the comedy Margaret and Tessa watched earlier was set in Newark.

  The cabbie pulled away from the curb, and Tessa tried to focus on the Taxi TV in front of her. An ad for The Lion King played, but she couldn’t concentrate on it.

  Barely any traffic, and Margaret tried to make conversation with the cabbie.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Omar.”

  “Thank you for taking me and my friend to New Jersey, Omar.”

  “Of course.”

  A minute later, he said, “So, you’re British?”

  “Yes. I came to the city to see a Broadway play. Have you seen it?”

  “Depends which play you mean.”

  “Oh, right. The Lion King.”

  He snorted. “Look, lady, cabbies like me don’t have the money or time for that kind of stuff.”

  “Right. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Excuse me, I’m in a mood.”

  Margaret smiled. “I know about moods. It’s okay.”

  “Look, where specifically in Newark do you want to go?”

  “Um…take us to a college or university.”

  “There’s the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Essex County College. Rutgers. Seton Hall is around there. Uh…Kean University too, and, oh, Livingston University.”

  “Livingston,” Margaret said, her confused expression signifying it might be the only name she remembered on that list.

  “Got it.”

  “Is Livingston big?” Margaret asked.

  “So-so. Do you know anyone there?”

  “No. Can you drop us at the library? Do you know when it closes?”

  “Late, one a.m. or so.”

  “Thank you.”

  Some minutes later, he stopped the cab in front of a finely wrought building.

  “Give him a big tip so he can see a play,” Margaret whispered. She and Tessa had discussed before leaving that Margaret would reimburse her for the night’s expenses with a bracelet worth at least several thousand dollars. Tessa had no intention of accepting it, but she would fight that battle when the time came.

  Tessa froze. “Uh…” She’d been so focused on remembering her gun and on sneaking out undetected that she forgot her wallet. She saw it in her mind’s eye, miles away and gleaming on her dresser drawer where she put it so she would remember it. “I forgot my wallet?”

  Omar quoted the total, which was, of course, greater than $0.

  “We don’t have money,” Margaret said. “I’m really sorry. I…I…”

  Frustration contorted Omar’s features. “Lady, I—”

  “I’m famous,” Margaret said. “You could take a picture with me or I could try to write you a short note that you could sell. My handwriting’s terrible, but I’ll try.”

  Omar narrowed his eyes. “Out.”

  The three of them spilled out of the cab, and Margaret took her headscarf and glasses off. “I’m Princess Margaret.”

  A dubious Omar chewed on his lip. “I don’t follow the royals, but my wife loves them.”

  “She’d love to see a picture of you with me, hmm?”

  Omar grunted. “It’d piss her off, actually, that I got to meet you and she didn’t. Look, you got proof you’re Princess, uh…what did you say your name was?”

  “Margaret. My walking stick. See.” Margaret showed Omar the bottom of the handle. Tessa had examined it during Margaret’s nap. It boasted a crown insignia, and tiny words embossed in gold read: HRH Princess Margaret.

  Omar squinted. “I can’t read them words. Hold on.” He reached into his shirt pocket for reading glasses. Momentarily, he replaced the glasses in his pocket and said, “Could be a fake. I’ve had fake Leo DiCaprio and fake Miranda Lambert in my cab before. Not falling for that again.”

  “Oh!” Margaret said. “Oh. Tessa, your phone.”

  “What about it?”

  “Google me! Show him pictures of me.”

  Omar brought out the reading glasses again as he compared the pictures of Margaret on the phone to the real-life woman. Tessa had to be honest—they didn’t look too similar. Margaret had yet to appear in public with any regularity, and when she did, she wore fine clothes and had her hair and makeup done. At this moment, she looked beautiful but in a girl-next-door, no-makeup way.

  “Sorry,” Omar said. “Nice try but no. I’m calling the police.”

  “I’m police,” Tessa said. “Detective Tessa Donovan, NYPD.” She fished her badge out. She looked Omar in the eyes. “Please take my word for it. This woman is Princess Margaret, Britain’s crown princess for sixteen years. How about that? Huh?”

  Omar looked unimpressed. “Let me see that badge.” He examined it and proclaimed it a fake.

  Tessa tried another tack. “Does your wife have video chat on her computer or phone?”

  “Yeah, to talk to the grandkids. Our kid took them to California. California!”

  “Let’s call your wife, and she’ll chat with Margaret. Then give me your address. We’ll mail you what we owe plus a nice tip.”

  “How you getting back?”

  “What? Shit.” Tessa hadn’t thought that far ahead. Being with Margaret had distorted her usual methodical, logical planning. “Margaret, how do we get back since we don’t have money?”

  “I’m driving you back,” Omar said. “You going to get your wallet, you’re going to pay me for my trouble, and I’ll take you back here.”

  It would be a nice fare for him, but Tessa refused to leave Margaret in a cab alone with him or alone on the first floor of her building, and Margaret couldn’t get up and down the stairs easily. “Oh! I’ll call an Uber,” Tessa said, remembering her original plan way back in Queens.

  “Give us five minutes,” Margaret told Omar. “We’ll go inside and find someone who recognizes me and get money from that person.”

  “I’m going with you,” Omar said. “Make sure you don’t run off.”

  “Of course,” Margaret agreed. They walked into the library, slowed by Margaret’s cane and Tessa’s thoughts on how what was supposed to have been a quiet night under the radar was about to turn into the whole freaking United States knowing that Margaret was in New York.

  It was a Saturday night, and few tables were occupied. A lone librarian stood behind the counter, and his face brightened when he saw the threesome.

  Oh, thank goodness he recognized Margaret.

  “Hi!” he said. “How can I help you?” No recognition in his eyes, after all. Simply being polite.

  Tessa flashed her badge. “Detective Tessa Donovan, NYPD. I hate to do this…” She glanced at his name tag, “Langford, but I left my wallet at home. This cabbie needs to be paid. You have my word that I will—”

  “NYPD doesn’t have jurisdiction here.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Anyone told you that you look like Princess Margaret?” Langford interrupted, gazing at Margaret.

  “Thank you!” Margaret exclaimed. “Please tell Omar that.”

  **

  In the end, they resolved what needed resolving. Margaret did a video chat with Omar’s wife, who was beside herself and who asked if she could come to the library to meet Margaret. She promised to be there within the hour.

  Meanwhile, Langford, not too subtly, snapped picture after picture of the princess on his cellphone. “Can you do me a favor and hold off posting and sending these pictures until morning?” Tessa asked. “And please don’t message or text anyone that she’s here. We’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Why’s she here?”

  “To…” Oh God. How do I explain this? “To study,” Tessa said. “It’s prep for some of her royal duties.”

  After Margaret got off the video chat with Noyrleen, Omar’s wife, she posed for pictures with Langford and wrote a short note:

  Langford,

  From one bookworm to another

  —HRH Princess Margaret

  Noyrleen arrived, did a strange excited hop-type curtsy, flung her arms around Margaret, and the two women had a nice chat. Omar and Tessa watched them from a few feet away, and he asked, “What’s the deal with you two? NYPD doesn’t let its detectives moonlight as bodyguards.”

  “She’s my friend.”

  “You shouldn’t be out alone with her. She was shot, wasn’t she?”

  Oh sure. Now he remembered who Princess Margaret was. “Everyone needs to live every once in a while,” Tessa said lightly. “Even if that means we’re not safe. That’s why she’s here to study calculus.”

  “Calculus, eh? Sheesh. Isn’t she a little muddled in the head?”

  “No. Besides, how do you know what you’re capable of doing if you don’t try?”

  “I know I ain’t capable of doing no calculus, that’s for sure. She ain’t either.”

  “Neither am I,” Tessa admitted. “But she intrigues me. She wants to do calculus. I find that inspiring.”

  Omar laughed. “You both crazy.”

  Margaret looked up in that moment, her gaze locking with Tessa’s. Tessa maintained the contact, realizing that her life could change in a fundamental, wild way. It had never been boring. It couldn’t be, not with her serving as a detective, but this, this was an entire new level.

  **

  They got back at three a.m. Margaret, near exhaustion, fell fully clothed into Tessa’s bed. Her earlier insistence to sleep on the air mattress had apparently disappeared. Tessa locked up her weapon. She undressed in the bathroom, and when she returned to her room, Margaret said, “Get in bed with me.”

  Tessa did.

  “I had so much fun,” Margaret said, her eyes shining.

  They never got around to calculus. Noyrleen told Margaret about some poems she was trying to write for a community college class but that she struggled with poetry. Margaret, Tessa, Omar and Noyrleen had spent an hour in the library’s poetry section before moving to the anatomy section.

  “My instructor says to study up on anatomy if you want to be a good poet,” Noyrleen explained. Another hour or so of looking at all types of naked bodies ensued.

  Easily one of the oddest but best nights of Tessa’s life. Omar and Noyrleen took them out for burgers and fries before delivering them home. Tessa wanted Noyrleen to come up with them to get money, but Noyrleen declined payment.

  “I had fun too,” Tessa murmured, loving the blue of Margaret’s eyes that shone through the dim lamplight. In another setting, say, at the top of a snow-capped mountain or in front of a roaring fire, it could be a romantic moment. After all, they gazed in each other’s eyes, and they’d experienced plenty of intense moments the past day.

  “Can I…can I tell you something?” Margaret asked.

  “Okay.”

  “I want to kiss you.”

  Tessa’s heart lurched. She wanted it too but…no. Horrible idea.

  “You have a sort of melancholy air about you,” Margaret said. “You hold yourself together too tightly. You don’t laugh enough.”

  “Damn, you really know how to sweet-talk someone. I’m all aquiver.”

  Margaret giggled. “That came out wrong, but I’m horny. Like almost painfully horny. I have to do something about it. I get like this sometimes and it…it’s horrible. It’s bad. It must be similar to the feeling that men get.”

  “Wow. Uh…”

  “In movies or on TV, people laugh if you get crazy horny, but’s it is not fun, it’s really not,” Margaret murmured.

  “I have vibrators.”

  “Or.” Margaret gave her a hooded, come-hither look. “You and me. Come on.”

  A certain problem had plagued Tessa since her teens, since she realized she liked the fairer sex and slept with her first girl. Her brain was wired so that after she had sex, Tessa wanted to be in a relationship with her sex partner. Something to do with the release of hormones, chemicals, feel-good stuff. She hated it, but she had improved bit by bit as she aged. Still, it remained an issue, and here she was on the cusp of fucking Katharine and Emma’s sister, a quivering, panting, ready Princess Margaret.

  Three for three! Hey. Okay, two for three. She’d never fucked Katharine, only kissed her. And Veronica.

  Anyway.

  It would be a mood killer to announce, “Hey, we need to have a talk about our future first, and actually let’s put this fuckity-fuck thing on hiatus.”

  But this time…Tessa allowed herself to hope. This time could be different. This was Princess Margaret, and Tessa’s brain would know better than to let itself become agog. To let itself hope.

  A round of sweat beads broke out on Tessa’s forehead, and a flash of their future entered Tessa’s mind: Dinner with the family in Buckingham Palace, Margaret and Tessa along with Katharine, Veronica, Emma, Cheryl, Amalia and a growing menagerie of children. Wandering walks in the countryside, their hands entwined, Margaret’s soft lips on Tessa’s. Adventures all over the world. A wedding. Oh goodness, a royal wedding with Tessa as its star, Tessa waving to throngs of well-wishers from the carriage, and a title maybe, an elevation to the ranks of Her Royal Highness and…

  Tessa groaned. She’d already stepped into relationship-land. The odds of her and Margaret ending up together were astronomical, and Tessa didn’t want it to happen anyway. Being a royal was like being in prison! Not that her body and heart would give any thought to logical desires if she slept with Margaret. Sex, lovemaking, fucking, whatever you wanted to call it, was intimate. The expressions you got to see, the things you got to hear, being with a woman in such a close way…making yourself vulnerable, giving yourself up…

  Together, they could kiss their troubles away and escape into a world of physical sensations.

  Margaret pointed to the curve of her neck. “Kiss me here.”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  Sex can’t happen. It can’t.

  Too bad Tessa liked sex a whole lot. Too bad her body tingled everywhere. Too bad it felt more alive than it had in years, maybe ever.

  Okay, fine, so if she did fall in love with Margaret, whatever. She’d deal like she had with Emma. She should focus on making sure that this one night turned out to be worth the next few months of potentially getting over another broken heart.

  Margaret got tired of waiting and lowered her own lips to a sweet spot on Tessa’s neck. “Oh,” Tessa cried, red-hot flares of desire licking her spine. “Oh, oh, fuck.”

  Margaret’s teeth again but no pain like there had been last night, just pleasure, lots of pleasure, and Margaret covered Tessa’s neck in small, demanding nibbles that were halfway between kisses and bites.

  Maybe there was a way around this. Tessa remembered Margaret enjoying the pain of their encounter the night before. Perhaps if they bypassed the usual stuff such as nakedness, kisses, cuddles, whatever, it could work.

  Worth a try. They were going to have sex. That was no longer in doubt, so the best Tessa could do was make it sex without too much of an emotional connection.

  “My pants are down,” Margaret said.

  She certainly got straight to the point, didn’t she?

  Tessa felt under the bedsheet. She found a mass of curls and wetness, plenty of wetness, a volcano’s worth. Enough to make her gulp.

  Okay, what now?

  Tessa preferred her lovemaking soft and connective. What was she supposed to do now, finger fuck Margaret until she came and then order Margaret to finger fuck her too?

  Oh, wait. Another idea. A pain idea. Tessa found the nipple of Margaret’s right breast through the fabric of her bra and shirt. Tessa pinched the nipple with medium strength.

  Margaret groaned. “Aah!”

  Tessa swallowed down a, “Sorry.” She found the nipple again and squeezed it with somewhat less intensity.

  Another, “Aah!” More groaning. Hips buckling.

  Stop looking, Tessa. That’s right, stop looking. Because studying Margaret, her face, her reactions, it was fascinating. Liberating. It defeated the purpose of rough, quick sex if Tessa was going to spend much of it with her eyes firmly fastened on the other woman. Already, Tessa felt strong tendrils of intimacy wrapping themselves around her and Margaret.

  Tessa decided against finger fucking because she’d be too tempted to take in every detail of Margaret’s face. Instead, she pushed Margaret back onto the pillow. She parted Margaret’s legs and licked the top of her pubic mound. Nibbled at some of the dark frizzy curls. Pubic hair on a woman didn’t bother her, and Margaret had plenty of it.

  Tessa licked rough circles on Margaret’s clit, and Margaret shuddered and moaned. Not long now. Not long now.

  Margaret cried when she came, the kind of crying with tears, and she came again and cried again. Tessa was afraid she’d hurt Margaret, but Margaret kept saying no, she hadn’t, and she appeared embarrassed, mortified, really. Tessa got her tissues and water and left her alone for a minute.

  Tessa stood at her bathroom window and studied the wall a few feet away, its red bricks barely visible in the darkness. Below her, a dim masculine figure in a hoodie meandered through the alley separating the buildings.

  Shit! She should’ve known better than to have sex with Margaret. The princess had health issues, she was taking tons of medications, she’d come onto Tessa out of nowhere and Tessa, like a sex-starved dummy, thought with her pussy and not her brain.