“No. I have enough self-awareness to realize that competent today doesn’t mean competent tomorrow or next month or ten years from now.”

  Tessa took in the curve of Margaret’s neck, the tendrils of hair brushing her skin, the fullness of her lips, the slight sniffles. “You seemed perfectly fine to have your spouse be in control,” Tessa said. “So it’d be no different if Katharine or Emma were in charge.”

  Annoyance in Margaret’s eyes. “Of course it would be different. Katharine and Emma still see me as a lesser. They wouldn’t be with me day in and day out to make the best decisions. My spouse would. Hopefully. And it’d be more of a power balance.”

  “Good points.”

  “Katharine and Emma would let me stay in New York, though,” Margaret said reluctantly. “I think. At least for a while as long as I explain in more detail that I need space.” She stood and crossed to the window. “Ahh, I’ve been here two days and haven’t seen much. What is wrong with me?”

  Tessa went to her and wrapped her arms around Margaret, resting her hands on Margaret’s waist. “Of course you have. You saw a library and a kick-ass diner.”

  “True.”

  Tessa found Margaret’s earlobe and teased it between her teeth. Margaret shuddered, and Tessa increased her ministrations, knowing full well where they would lead. She didn’t care.

  “Oh, that feels good,” Margaret said. She turned, and they kissed and kissed. Margaret was a wonderful kisser, her tongue hot and intense but also playful.

  After their shirts came off, Margaret caressed Tessa’s nipples, alternating among fingers, teeth and tongue, intense pressure and mild pressure. She pulled Tessa’s jeans down and her tongue snaked between Tessa’s legs.

  “Fuck, that feels good,” Tessa whimpered. She collapsed on the bed, and Margaret crawled in with her and showed her exactly what she had to look forward to.

  Six months later, with no engagement talk whatsoever in the interim, Margaret got down on her knees and asked Tessa to marry her.

  “Yes,” Tessa said. She didn’t have to think about it.

  Chapter Ten

  Katharine

  It was Treadie who alerted me to Tessa and Margaret meeting up in New York. He’d retired from his European basketball career and was back in the Big Apple working at his father’s corporation.

  I was playing with Veronica and Alexander in our nursery and thinking about the reports I’d read Friday from the prime minister on a new program to reduce homelessness when the text landed.

  Check this out, Treadie said. Margaret’s hanging with Tessa. He linked to an article from a gossip website. It’d collated images and posts from various social media accounts. For example, a screenshot from the Facebook account of library assistant Langford Browne showed Margaret and Tessa hunched over a poetry book.

  Well, I thought it odd. More than odd. They barely knew each other, and I was still reeling from Margaret’s letters. Emma had delivered mine the night before, saying that they’d really upset Mum and that we should wait a day or two before settling on a course of action. I’d been tempted to call my sister anyway but, in the end, held back.

  Hanging out with Tessa, though? Interesting. I knew that Tessa and Emma met at my wedding and had a fling. Margaret may have met Tessa a few times because of that. I made a note for Banks, my personal secretary, to find Tessa’s personal cellphone number. He didn’t work weekends, and I tried to avoid it whenever possible as well.

  The next day, I went ahead and called my middle sister even though Emma, Mum and I had yet to discuss our approach. Privileges of being queen.

  I reached Margaret about one p.m. her time. “Hi,” I said, keeping my voice a notch above neutral but not too cheerful. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m good,” she said.

  “We found your letters.”

  “Oh.”

  I rubbed my nose and wandered to the window. I’d retreated to my study for the call, and the window overlooked the palace gardens. They didn’t have much to show on this overcast November evening. A stray cloud floated by in the otherwise empty sky.

  “Margaret, we love you,” I said carefully. “All of us. What bad thing did you do that you need to atone for?”

  “That’s—I told you in the letter not to ask.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk about it later. I want you to know there’s nothing you could do that would make us hate you.” A couple of years ago, Margaret accidentally spilt soda on the carpet in her study. For some strange reason explainable only by the misfirings of her brain, it devastated her. She sobbed, she dragged a table over with her weakened body and tried to use maroon-coloured marker to conceal what she’d done.

  None of it came close to camouflage, but in her mind, I suppose it had. When Nurse noticed the stain, Margaret cried and cried and apologised. I could recite a list of other examples of “bad things” Margaret had done that her brain magnified and exaggerated.

  No answer. “Margaret?”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Are you having fun in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  New York was all Margaret been able to talk about the past month, and now she had nothing to say. It was interesting but frustrating to have a sister like Margaret. At times, she could be the most brilliant person in the room and dig up a memory that no one should by all rights remember. At other times, it was like contending with a toddler.

  “Well,” I said brightly, “how was The Lion King? How’s Adam?”

  “I broke up with Adam. Didn’t go to The Lion King.”

  I bit my lip. Margaret was miserable with Adam and had broken up with him a few times already. He was nice enough but didn’t fit into our family. He hated the scene. He would rather die than be fixed with the HRH title. So, they had no future together, but he’d surprised her with a grand idea. A trip to New York, show tickets, and she’d broken up with him. Poor guy, learning the hard way what life with my sister could be like.

  Time for a new topic. “Hey, I heard that you’ve been hanging with Tessa Donovan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Margaret, can you give more than one-word answers?”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s one word.”

  “Okay, I will. Three words.”

  I laughed despite myself. “Did you happen to see her somewhere?”

  “In my hotel room.”

  “She magically appeared?”

  “I invited her to visit because she’s one of the few people I know in New York.”

  “Hmm.” Margaret’s letters made it obvious she’d planned to use the New York trip to her advantage to stay longer, so this explanation made a modicum of sense. If anything, it showed possible desperation—Margaret grabbing at straws to be able to stay. I made a mental note to ask Emma how well our sister and Tessa were acquainted.

  “How is she?” I asked.

  “She’s good. Katharine, I need to go.”

  “Margaret,” I said patiently. “Do you know how much it costs to live in New York? Plus, there are a lot of logistics involved.”

  “I brought things that I can sell. Jewelry and the like because I doubt Mum would release my own funds for me to live here, and I don’t want to talk to her about it anyway.”

  A cold fear gripped my heart. My sister had planned more extensively than I realised. “Margaret.” I thought of Treadie who lived in the city and who I would trust with my life. He could get to her much sooner than I could. “Please don’t do anything rash.”

  “Then help me live here. Can we start with three months?”

  “Maybe,” I said, not meaning it. I wanted her home tomorrow. “Will you have dinner tonight with Treadie, my friend? He’ll come to your room.”

  “No. That’s weird. I don’t know him.”

  “Please do it.”

  “Fine.”

  I hung up and thought back to the time when I sold pictures of myself to Pulse magazine to raise funds because I had no cash at my disposal. I was on the run and far from home.

  I broke away from these unsettling thoughts parallel to Margaret’s situation. I called Margaret’s main doctor, Dennis Milville. He was authorised to talk to me, Emma and Mum about her condition. My sister was going off the rails!

  Without telling him what she had done, I asked him to give me his thoughts on her current condition.

  He repeated what he’d told me in an email the previous week. She was doing well, he said. Better than good. She was at perhaps her highest functioning. Of course, still not like a normal person, per se. She still tired fairly easy. She still acted impulsively and spoke bluntly, but these behaviours had decreased. She was able to use executive function much more.

  “You know that New York trip she and Adam were planning?” I said. “They made it over there. She wants to stay put and live in the city, at least for a while. It seems that a degree of planning went into her decision. She brought things to sell so she could raise funds to live there.”

  “I see.”

  “Is that a sign of deterioration?”

  “Most likely not. In fact, it could be an extremely promising sign.”

  “It doesn’t feel promising.”

  He made a sympathetic noise. “I understand. Families tend to have a hard time when a person who has been dependent on them for years begins to spread his or her wings.”

  I called Treadie and asked him several favours. One of his tasks was to assess the items Margaret had brought to sell. I wanted photographs to make sure they really were hers to sell. For all I knew, she grabbed sparklies that belonged to the country, not to her personally.

  He agreed, and when he reported back the next morning, he said that dinner had gone well, Tessa had been there too and he’d been impressed with Margaret. He seemed half in love with her, actually. He kept going on about the way she carried herself and how nice and smart she seemed.

  What had he been expecting? A woman little more than a drooling mannequin?

  In any case, the items he photographed were indeed all Margaret’s personally and worth several hundred thousand dollars when taken together. Treadie recommended that I let Margaret have her little “holiday” in New York. In fact, he said that she could move in with him. Plenty of room in his apartment, he explained, and he was tired of rattling in it alone. Also, Margaret planned to reach out that day to Dr. Milville for recommendations for doctors in the Big Apple. I touched base with Tessa as well and she said she was happy to help, to keep an eye on Margaret.

  I made a quick trip down to Manhattan. Already, my sister had begun to come into her own. She talked and moved more confidently. With smooth, graceful moves, she fixed me tea and biscuits at The Mark. She showed me the bedroom that would be hers at Treadie’s apartment, a spacious place overlooking one of the rivers. She said that she’d found a pet shelter down the street to volunteer at. Tessa I never had the opportunity to meet with because she was at work, and my trip needed to be brief.

  Treadie seemed delighted to have Margaret in his life and vice versa. Thankfully, I got no romantic vibes between them.

  When I told Mum that I was inclined to let Margaret stay, she nodded and stared blankly out the window. “Like I said, she brought jewels and other items to sell,” I went on. “It won’t be necessary if you release funds from her account. She insists on paying Treadie a small amount of rent, plus there are grocery expenses and—.”

  “Understood,” Mum interrupted. “Of course. I’ll do that.”

  Mum changed in the months that Margaret was gone. She withered into herself. She aged. But not once did she complain about what Margaret had done or express worry about her health. She barely said a word, did Mum. They may not even have spoken once to each other, my mother and my middle sister. That was the most baffling thing about it all, but I knew better than to try to explore the reasons behind the silence.

  **

  Six months after Margaret fled to New York, she called, reaching me about seven p.m.

  “Hi,” I said. We talked on the phone every two weeks or so, and we’d chatted four days ago. This call was early. “What’s up? You good?”

  “I’m good! Really good.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I knew she was doing well. She’d become a darling of Big Apple photographers. In fact, I sometimes found myself jealous of her, out there and living the life.

  “Katharine, I’m calling to inform you that I am engaged to be married.” Her voice had a breathy, excited but scared quality to it.

  My heart creaked and tumbled down to my stomach. She had been dating someone? Who was this person? I imagined a fellow volunteer at the pet shelter or some handsome but lazy young swindler who would ride on Margaret’s coattails and take advantage of her. Or…could it be Treadie? Oh God. It was Treadie, wasn’t it, thinking he’d met a woman he could be happy with?

  “Wow!” I said, buying time. “Tell me about the proposal.”

  “The pro—yeah. Okay. Well, we’d talked before about getting married, and I actually kind of proposed then, but it wasn’t realistic. Or romantic. But I knew from the first time we had sex that it was meant to be.”

  Okay, no. I didn’t want to hear about my sister having sex. Bad enough that I’d had to see the sleepy and content look on her face once in a while after Alec left her post-session. I changed tacks: “Never mind, Margaret. Um, when did it happen? The most recent proposal.”

  “Last night.”

  “Well, congratulations.” Technically, Margaret needed my permission to get married if she wanted to stay in the line of succession. I couldn’t see myself happily granting it at that point. I’d grudgingly given it to Emma and Cheryl because I saw no other choice. In the end, I would probably have no choice with Margaret either. Still, I had a job to do, not only as queen but as a big sister.

  “I’m ready to come back,” Margaret said. “We want to get married at Windsor Castle and be part of the family. I miss you and Emma so much. I’m in a good place physically and in my head. I want to start making official appearances.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “Tessa approves of the match,” Margaret continued.

  “Does she?”

  “Yes. Do you think she’s smart and kind and competent and level-headed?”

  I sensed a trap closing in but ignored the alarms. I sat on the sofa and slipped out of my shoes. Rubbed my left foot. “Yes, of course she is. I’m glad she’s been able to help you out.”

  “Katharine, I’m really nervous. My heart is racing, and I’m, I’m…”

  “What—”

  “It’s Tessa,” my sister clarified. “Tessa and I are getting married, and you said yourself that she’s smart and kind and competent.”

  Margaret had forgotten to take her meds, or she was experiencing her first mental fluctuation in months. “That’s nice,” I said blandly. I hoped this break with reality didn’t signal a downward spiral that would last more than a few hours.

  “Yes! Yes, it is, actually. Does that mean you grant permission?”

  “Is Tessa there?” I didn’t expect her to be, and it surprised me when Margaret said, “Yes, she’s here,” and another voice, Tessa’s voice, said, “Hello, Katharine.”

  I still thought Margaret was having some kind of reality slipup but wasn’t sure how to proceed without offending her. “Hey, Tessa,” I said. “Can I talk with you alone a sec?”

  Margaret: “You can talk with me here.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “I’m not having one of my crazies.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No,” Margaret said. “I’m not.”

  I resumed rubbing my foot. Both my brain and body knew something was terribly wrong, off, but the wrongness of it was so significant they couldn’t accept it. If they waited enough, the world would right itself again.

  “Tessa, what’s this about getting married?” I asked.

  “Well,” she started. “Well, it’s like Margaret said. I mean…we love each other very much.”

  If Tessa had been a man, I may have heartily approved in that moment. She was fantastic—as Margaret said, smart, kind, competent, level-headed.

  But Tessa was a woman. Her marriage to Margaret would mean yet another “blot” on the monarchy. Since Emma came out of the closet, I’m sure she and I both saw Margaret as the sister who would, hopefully, recover enough to marry a nice-looking man and give the public the beautiful heterosexual wedding they craved.

  Forgive me, but in that moment, I hoped that there was a reality issue, or maybe it was a joke. Maybe Tessa having too much to drink and humouring Margaret? I really needed to talk to Tessa alone.

  Margaret: “Do you give permission?”

  “No,” I snapped. “Of course I don’t.”

  “Margaret. Margaret.” This was Tessa speaking to my sister, and the soothing way she spoke made me imagine her covering Margaret’s hands or rubbing her back. It was at this point that my stomach became the first part of the brain-body combination to react to the news. To consider that it might be a genuine request for permission.

  “Katharine,” Tessa said. “Let’s talk in person. Margaret and I will fly to London in the next few days to meet with you.”

  I blinked stupidly at the painting gazing across from me on the wall, one I’d done of my baby Alexander’s lips. “Are you serious? Is this serious?”

  “Yes,” Tessa said.

  “You have been dating my sister! I asked you to keep an eye on her, and you thought it wasn’t worth mentioning that you two were dating?”

  “We both wanted to keep it quiet.”

  “How long?”

  “Pretty much the entire time she has been in New York.”

  Treadie must have known, and he, too, refrained from telling me. “I do not grant you and my sister permission to marry, and that will not change even if we meet in person!” Aware I was speaking shrilly, I toned it down. “Have you been drinking? Did you accidentally take Margaret’s meds? Is she taking her meds?”

  “We will still get married,” Margaret sniped at me. “It just means I give up my place in the line of succession. That may be for the best anyway.”