Margaret followed Tessa to her bedroom. “I’m sorry about Diego,” Margaret said.

  “I know.” Still, it couldn’t be undone. Besides, Margaret would forget who she was tomorrow afternoon and the cycle would repeat itself. “It’s not just him,” Tessa explained. “It’s other men too. It wearies me.”

  “I do apologize,” Margaret said. “I really do. I’m married. I shouldn’t bring anyone, male or female, to my room.”

  “It wouldn’t be a problem if you were married to a man. You’d jump into bed with him every day and love the sex. It’d be Christmas for him daily, a nice screw with his wife.”

  “We don’t know that,” Margaret argued. “There are plenty of men I’m not attracted to.”

  Tessa pulled her clothes off and slipped into her pajamas. “Katharine made a strange proposal last night after you left the reception.”

  “What’d she say?”

  Tessa’s heart raced. She hadn’t planned to tell Margaret, but she was curious to see if jealousy would flicker in Margaret’s eyes. If, on some base level, Margaret would recognize, This is my wife. Mine! I don’t want her fooling around with others.

  “She said I’m close to a breaking point. She said she didn’t want any hint of scandal surrounding our family and she was afraid I’d give in to some random woman who wanted to fuck. She basically…offered herself and Veronica up for relief.”

  Margaret blinked. “You serious?”

  “Serious.”

  “Wouldn’t it mess with their marriage?” A gleam entered Margaret’s eyes. “Oooh, have they already done a threesome?”

  Tessa gritted her teeth. Of course! The sanctity, the state of Veronica and Katharine’s marriage was what worried Margaret instead of her own.

  “Never mind,” Tessa mumbled.

  “Well, do you want to? With them?”

  “No! I want my wife. I want you to be attracted to me and want sex with me.”

  “I want that too.”

  **

  For one second, Margaret had thought it a brilliant idea as long as it didn’t mess with Veronica and Katharine’s relationship. Count on Katharine to find a practical solution. One look at Tessa, however, disabused Margaret of the notion.

  “Do I have a phone?” Margaret asked.

  “No.”

  “Give me yours.”

  “Why?”

  Margaret puffed her chest out. “I’m hopping mad, that’s why! I’m going to call Katharine and give her what for. I can’t believe she invited us over tonight after making that incredibly inappropriate suggestion.”

  Annoyance hovered in Tessa’s eyes. She didn’t buy Margaret’s playacting.

  “Can it,” Tessa said. “I appreciate you trying, though.”

  “I’m serious. Give me the phone.”

  “No,” Tessa said. “Go to bed.”

  “What was Katharine’s plan for me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d be with Veronica and Katharine, but what about me? I’m a loose cannon for a woman who wants to avoid scandal.”

  Tessa shrugged. “Maybe Alec again. Something discreet like that.”

  Ah, Alec. Lovely Alec who would eat Margaret out for hours. So unlike Adam.

  “How long since we had sex?” Margaret asked.

  Tessa plumped the pillows on her bed. Margaret ignored the hint to leave.

  “More than a few months,” Tessa replied. “It’s been close to a year.”

  “And you’ve not strayed?”

  “No,” Tessa. “Of course not.”

  “Been tempted?”

  Tessa laughed, maybe to cover discomfort.

  “Tell me,” Margaret said. “I probably won’t remember after tomorrow afternoon anyway.”

  “A few times,” Tessa admitted. “Nothing overly so.”

  “Nothing overly tempting?”

  “No.”

  “I had orgasms before Alec,” Margaret said. “Not many but I had some by touching myself and sometimes I could hump my pillow. I like orgasms.”

  “Yes. They’re nice.”

  “Do you hump pillows?” Margaret moved her gaze to the pillows Tessa had just plumped.

  “Geez, don’t look at them like that,” Tessa said. “And no. I use vibrators.”

  “I’ve never used one.”

  “You have with us. A few times.”

  “Did we have sex a lot when I was normal?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “What did we do?” Margaret asked.

  “Different things. Sometimes it would be normal lovemaking. Other times, we’d role play a little or get more physical than usual.” Tessa lowered her voice. “We made a sex tape once,” she said.

  “No!”

  Tessa retrieved a thumb drive from her bedside drawer. She inserted the drive into a laptop on her desk and gestured for Margaret to sit in the desk chair. The scene opened on a bed, possibly the same one Tessa sat on behind Margaret. On the screen, Tessa lay spread-eagled with some sort of penis thing pointing up in the air. Laptop Margaret sidled over to her from behind the camera.

  “What’s that penis thing?” now-Margaret asked.

  “It’s called a dildo.”

  “Oh.”

  Margaret straddled Tessa, and they began kissing and necking.

  “This part goes on and on,” Tessa said. “Hold a sec.” She pressed fast forward and sped them into the future. Laptop Margaret reached for the dildo and guided it inside her. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back and went up and down and up and down so hard, she wouldn’t ever have thought her body capable of such a thing.

  Margaret felt a lurch of excitement within her. “Can we do that?” Margaret asked. “Now?”

  “Um,” Tessa said. “Sure, why not?”

  They went to the faux NYC flat and undressed in the bedroom. Tessa inserted her dildo through a strap and lay on the bed. Sex-tape Margaret had made it appear easy to get into bed and straddle Tessa, but Person Margaret couldn’t keep herself upright for long. The position disoriented her at the moment.

  Tessa got on her side and said for Margaret to do the same. Then Tessa was on top, trying to push the dildo inside Margaret, but Margaret knew this was wrong, they needed to kiss first and play with each other first.

  Maybe Tessa thought Margaret wasn’t genuinely horny, but she was.

  “Stop,” Margaret said. “Stop for a minute. Let’s kiss.”

  Tessa obliged, lowering her mouth to Margaret’s. Margaret tried not to worry about how well she was kissing. Tessa was reluctant to lead, perhaps to even kiss at all, but after a few moments, she relaxed, and Margaret did too.

  **

  Margaret awoke in a strange bed. She yawned and felt grime on her teeth. Ugh. She sat up and took stock of her surroundings. The room somehow felt familiar. She felt safe here, even if she couldn’t place herself.

  A woman appeared in the doorway. She had red hair and friendly eyes. “Hey,” she said. “Good afternoon.”

  Margaret returned her smile. She remembered some things—scrabbling up three flights of stairs, blue crayon on the wall, John leaving—so she knew this woman was safe.

  But who was she?

  Margaret had to wee, but the woman kept staring at her, waiting for her to say something, do something.

  Margaret rose, yawned and covered her mouth.

  The woman pointed behind her. “The bathroom’s here.”

  “Okay. Um, do you mind me asking, who are you?”

  “I’m Tessa,” she whispered.

  “You’re my friend?”

  “Yes.”

  **

  After Margaret used the toilet, she found Tessa setting out crackers, cheese and fruit in the living room. “That looks good,” Margaret said.

  “Thanks. It tastes good too.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. “Um,” Margaret said, “Where are we? You sound American.”

  “We’re in…we’re actually…” She sighed, and tears glimmered in her eyes. “We’re married, and you’re my wife. Yes, you’re married to a woman, and I wish I could tell you to get over it, but it’s hard for you to. Except we had incredible sex last night, it was wonderful, and now you’ve forgotten all over again!” Her teeth gnashed in frustration.

  “We had sex last night?” An easier phrase to grab hold of than, You’re my wife.

  “You have bite marks on your breasts. We both do.”

  Ah. Also explained why her nipples were thoroughly sore. “Have you kidnapped me and taken me hostage?”

  Tessa snorted. Then she slumped, covered her face in her hands and began to sob.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tessa left Margaret alone to watch a DVD and to go through a three-ring binder.

  Margaret had a wife and a son. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach and knifed in the throat. Her, married to a woman! She strained to remember Tessa from way back when. She replayed the way in which Tessa slumped, covered her face in her hands and sobbed.

  It triggered a memory but not exactly of the type Margaret sought. She, Margaret, yelled at Tessa, telling her of course she knew shady characters, it was her fecking job to know shady characters, and of course Tessa would be able to find the necessary people to carry out the deed.

  Where were they? Margaret couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember, but she saw the light shining behind Tessa’s brilliant red hair, creating a fiery halo.

  Her father’s death. More drips into Margaret’s brain—Tessa’s neck, Tessa’s Baccarat Les Larmes Sacrees de Thebes perfume, the halo the lights threw around Tessa’s face.

  She’d killed the king of England, had Tessa. She and Margaret had! Margaret’s pulse sped up, and she stared at the page the binder was open to, her and her wife’s first kiss as a married couple.

  This woman, her wife, helped her carry out the intimate of acts.

  Tessa had been crying. Tessa’s tears, Tessa saying, “No, I don’t want to do it. He’s the king! But even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it!”

  Later, Tessa calming down, saying, “I’ll do it. Will you please just leave?”

  Obviously, Tessa had gotten over her tears because she and Margaret, they were married.

  Okay. Okay. Margaret had to think this through. Why would she have wanted to kill her father? The only reason that came to mind was his treatment of Katharine. How did Tessa enter the picture? Margaret saw in the binder that they’d met at Katharine’s wedding reception and that Tessa used to be one of Katharine’s bodyguards at Purcell.

  That must be the official story. Margaret and Tessa had obviously met before the reception. Perhaps Tessa accompanied Katharine on one of her visits to England before she became queen. In fact, Margaret remembered one such visit, Katharine’s first to see Margaret after she began to recover in earnest. Margaret had been sitting in her study, not knowing her sister was flying all the way over from the United States. A knock sounded on the door. Nurse had left Margaret alone for a while, and Margaret reached for her walking stick to haul herself up.

  She maneuvered to the door and opened it. Before her stood Katharine, and Katharine’s eyes rounded like she couldn’t believe Margaret in front of her and actually a little taller. Katharine looked Margaret over, and Katharine was beautiful, so beautiful, now a woman.

  “Hi, Katharine.”

  “Margaret! Oh. Oh!” Katharine leaned in and wrapped her arms around Margaret. Sniffling commenced. No doubt it was a poignant moment for Katharine, who, apparently, hadn’t seen much of Margaret in the past four years.

  “It would’ve been too painful for Katharine and Emma to see you regularly,” Margaret’s parents explained.

  Anyway, Margaret had become accustomed to outbursts of emotion like Katharine’s, and she tolerated them as well as she could. The folks at the clinic that had largely been her home the past four years, her parents, Emma, her grandmother Alexandra, various cousins, they all reacted the same way Katharine did.

  To Margaret, though, it was like she saw them just yesterday. She didn’t even remember being shot. That Easter day had altogether vanished. Margaret went to bed as a fourteen-year-old girl and woke up eighteen years old, a cripple with a curvier body and more developed breasts.

  Katharine had been away at college while Margaret had begun to recover the past two months. So, out of all these outburst-of-emotion people, Katharine was the only one Margaret truly had the opportunity to miss. She relaxed into her sister’s embrace and didn’t mind as much as with the others when Katharine drew back and cupped Margaret’s cheeks in her hands and took in every detail of her face. Margaret did the same for Katharine—her dimples, the tiny freckle on her nose, the small diamond earrings, the right eye slightly closer to her nose than the left.

  In the hours that followed, Katharine told her about this guy called Treadie that she was dating.

  “Oh!” Margaret exclaimed, noting the breathless quality to Katharine’s voice and the shine in her eyes. She seemed to genuinely like him, or she’d gotten too good at faking. Margaret chose to believe Katharine was happy. She hugged her sister and asked lots of questions about Treadie.

  And then what? Margaret somehow befriended Tessa who must have joined Katharine on the flight over and demanded that she kill the king? Maybe there had been other visits from Katharine and Tessa, visits that Margaret could not recall at the moment. Oh! Thanksgiving! Margaret remembered Katharine coming home for the American holiday and them spending lots of time together. Soon, Margaret would remember Tessa too. Her memory would tease out the blurry edges of Tessa and bring her into focus to help this recollection of them discussing the king’s death make more sense.

  Or maybe Margaret would never remember. Much of her life remained in the shadows, never again to see light. The important thing was that she knew the truth deep down in her gut. Her father had been killed by his daughter and his future daughter-in-law.

  **

  One day turned into two days and then three. Before long, it had been a week. Margaret’s memory did not return but…and it was a big but. She remembered everything since she woke up one afternoon with bite marks, sore breasts and an inconsolable woman. Every time she woke up after that day, she knew her wife upon awakening, and she knew her son. Sure, she didn’t remember herself and Tessa falling in love, but she no longer had to be reminded that she was home in London and this woman was her wife.

  Margaret still didn’t understand her relationship with Tessa, but she remembered they were married and that they’d carried out the most heinous of plots. She kept Tessa at a distance for nearly two weeks, barely acknowledging her and speaking to her only when necessary. It seemed that Margaret was the more culpable one in the plot to kill her father, but Tessa was far from blameless. In fact, Tessa should have known that Margaret’s “condition” made her prone to reckless behaviors. She should’ve found a way to talk Margaret down from her insane thought to kill the king.

  Tessa’s presence filled Margaret with confusion, and shadowy thoughts slithered and skittered across the surface of her brain. She hated looking at Tessa because every time she did, she saw her father’s laughing face and the life she and Tessa extinguished. The first few days, Margaret would rub her sore nipples and pinch them hard, hating the pain but welcoming the punishment it provided. Did they hurt each other in bed, her and Tessa? To try to bleed the guilt away?

  She fared somewhat better with their son. He was innocent. It would be unfair for her to ignore him just because his name was Henry and she killed his namesake.

  Still, she found it difficult to let go of her disturbing memories around him. She watched her mother with her grandson and kept thinking, “Dad should be here too.”

  Even the handsome men working outside in the gardens failed to quell her thoughts. Before the shootings when she was a teenager, she would spend hours gazing at them and imagining their callused, strong hands touching her body. Now she could only stare at them and wonder if it was men like them who had been the ones to complete the plot, to serve as the “shady characters,” who would, ostensibly, ensure the king’s death.

  Margaret had to be reminded to eat. She had to be reminded to drink. She holed herself up in that faux NYC flat. She gritted her teeth and tried to read Tessa’s books on female criminals, hoping for more flashes of memory. She only got headaches because the books were text-heavy.

  At some point, it was inevitable that she would have to talk to Tessa about the details of their plot. She would put it off as long as possible, though. She already knew she was an evil person and didn’t want to find out exactly how evil.

  One day, Amalia said that she’d set up a lunch date between Margaret and one of her old school friends, Kissy Kissbridge.

  Margaret smiled despite herself. Some British aristocrats had the weirdest nicknames, and Kissy Kissbridge ranked up there. They’d been friends since a very young age. “What’s she up to?”

  “She got divorced two months ago. I found out last week from her mother. Apparently, most of Kissy’s friends are taking her husband’s side even though he’s the one who cheated and left her. She would enjoy seeing you, and you know what she’s like. She doesn’t shut up, so she could carry most of the conversation. You wouldn’t need to worry about answering lots of questions.”

  “I suppose it would be fun to get together,” Margaret said.

  “Adriena Agata?” Amalia asked casually. “Do you remember her?”

  Margaret searched the recesses of her brain. “Hmm. No. Who’s she?”

  Amalia lifted Henry into the air. “She used to work here.”

  “Oh. I don’t know her.”

  A few moments later, Margaret inhaled a nervous breath and moved Henry from her lap to the floor. “Mum?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why does the three-ring binder say that Tessa and I met at Katharine’s wedding reception?”

  “Because you did.” Amalia smiled. “It’s funny. I actually introduced the two of you. She came outside, and I said, ‘Tessa, come here and meet my daughter, Margaret.’ Who would’ve imagined the two of you being married a few years later?”