He didn’t—he looked utterly chuffed to be here at Buck Place, and Osla felt cautiously optimistic that Beth’s guess was right: he hadn’t been notified of her escape. “You look smashing,” he whispered into Osla’s ear as the first course was served. “How’d I get so lucky bagging a filly like you?”

Because you took a dead set at me when I’d have said yes to the bloody postman, Osla thought. She’d been giving his seemingly casual proposal a great deal of thought since learning what her fiancé really was. He might have had a First from Cambridge, but Giles didn’t run in the crowds she did . . . crowds he’d been very eager to enter. Social climber, Osla thought, giving Giles her biggest smile over the turtle soup. I was never a friend to you, just a rung in the ladder. She was very glad Philip wasn’t at lunch today. Unlike her fiancé from hell, he’d have twigged her real mood in two seconds flat. Not just her anger, but what lay underneath it: a shiver of fear, to be sitting beside a man who would have a woman lobotomized because she wouldn’t give him what he wanted. A man capable of anything. A man she was engaged to marry.

The future queen took her first spoonful from the shallow Coalport dish, and everyone followed suit. “I hope I may present my personal felicitations for your upcoming marriage, ma’am,” Osla said, taking the bull by the horns. “I wish you every happiness.”

A faint softening in the future queen’s eyes. “Thank you.”

“Such a fuss over one day,” Princess Margaret said airily. “Quite makes me want to run off to the registry office when my time comes. I don’t think Philip would be averse either. He’s always been one for informality, Miss Kendall—but of course, you know that. I shan’t tell you the childhood nickname he had for me; it’s quite unflattering.” A gleam in Princess Margaret’s eye. “What did he nickname you?”

Osla would rather have been strapped to a rack than say that Philip had once called her princess. Giles saved her by launching on a self-deprecating story about school nicknames. A few of the other men laughed; Princess Elizabeth addressed an elderly lady at her side. Turtle soup was replaced by roast partridge and potatoes. Princess Elizabeth came back to Osla with a polite comment about the weather; Osla replied and took a different bull by the horns. “The newspaper coverage of the wedding has been quite unrelenting. It must be a relief to know the scrutiny will return to its usual level soon.”

I’m not here to throw a spanner in your wedding plans, she wanted to say, preferably embroidered on a banner in three-foot letters. Can I skip dessert and go home? I’ve got a traitor to collar, and he’s sitting here blithering on about his school days!

One of the other ladies was asking Giles if there was a date set for their wedding. “June,” he said with a smile, pressing his knee to Osla’s under the table. Osla wished she could jab her silver-gilt dessert fork into his leg. “We’ll be quite unfashionable, with the new fashion for winter weddings, ma’am.” An ingratiating smile to the future queen; Osla distinctly saw Princess Elizabeth’s jaw tighten as she yawned without so much as parting her lips. You had to respect a woman who could yawn with her mouth closed.

“A June wedding!” Princess Margaret knocked back her wine. “Too, too original!”

Some mention was made of Princess Elizabeth’s wartime service, and Osla fell gratefully on the change of subject as the partridge was replaced by fluffy crepes doused in apricot jam. “I understand you were with the ATS during the last year of the war, ma’am. What a lark, working with engines and automobiles.”

“I enjoyed it.” A spark lit the princess’s blue eyes. “You can do a lot if you’re properly trained.”

“Yes, you can,” Osla said, thinking of Hut 4.

Princess Elizabeth tilted her head. “Did you serve, Miss Kendall?”

“I did, ma’am.” Biting into a crepe. “I would have been thoroughly ashamed not to do my part.”

“Not one of the women’s branches, I believe?”

“I wish I could say more, ma’am”—swallowing her crepe—“but I’m afraid your superiors would disapprove.”

The future queen looked startled. Osla smiled sweetly. Mark the occasion: the very first time I ever enjoyed BP’s song-and-dance of secrecy: over lunch at a very different BP.

Princess Margaret had another glass of wine in hand when luncheon broke up, and she drew Osla to the window as if to point out the gardens. “I’m the one who wanted to invite you, you know. Lilibet wasn’t keen at all.” Her eyes glittered with mischief. “Come on, spill. What’s Philip like when you get him . . . alone?”

Osla blinked, innocent. Princess Elizabeth glanced over at them, then went back to nodding as Giles told her yet another story.

“Maybe Philip’s no great shakes, considering you’ve moved on.” Margaret looked at Giles. “Your fiancé’s rather nice.”

“He’s a crashing bore.” Strange how a traitor could also be a real yawner.

The princess laughed. “So ditch him! One understands the need for a wedding date, but afterward—”

“I quite agree,” Osla said.

Margaret grinned. “You aren’t so milk and water as you seem! I didn’t think you could be. Philip hates dishrags.”

“He will be very happy with your sister, I’m sure.”

“If other people don’t muck it up for him . . . Mummy wasn’t keen.” Margaret scrutinized Osla. “Look, you know him. Is he up for this? Can he do it?”

Osla remembered her own words to Philip, that last meeting in Euston station: Do you think you’re built for that, playing Albert to her Victoria? I don’t think you are. The look on his face afterward . . . looking at Margaret now, Osla realized she could complicate Philip’s entry to this family quite efficiently, with just a few drips of poison. “You can trust him,” Osla said. “He’s not perfect, and you shouldn’t expect it. But he’s nearly an orphan—like me—and family is everything to people like us.”

“What about country?” Margaret asked, arch. “Mummy called him ‘the Hun,’ you know.”

“In his own words, he’s near committed murder on behalf of the British Empire.” Smiling at Margaret’s startled expression. “Perhaps someday, if he really trusts you, he’ll tell you about his experiences at Matapan.”

Family was everything, Osla thought. And maybe—yearning to get back to Courns Wood—she had more family than she thought.

“THAT WENT SWIMMINGLY!” Giles was gleeful as they were ushered out. “I can already see tomorrow’s write-up: The princesses lunched privately with special friends, including Mr. Giles Talbot and his fiancée, Miss Osla Kendall . . .”

Osla dug in her handbag for her gloves, hoping Giles wouldn’t want to take her out for a night of cocktails. Oh, God, if he tried to wheedle her between his sheets she was going to absolutely heave.

“Excuse me, Miss Kendall.” A footman caught up to them halfway down the burnished hall outside, bowing. “If you will come back with me? Your gloves . . .”

But there were no gloves when Osla left Giles and returned to the drawing room. Only Philip, standing hands in pockets by the window.

“Hullo,” he said with a crooked smile.

Her stomach was suddenly in ropes. “Hullo.” She wasn’t entirely sure what to call him: he’d be elevated to a dukedom on the morning of his wedding but hadn’t received that title yet; he’d renounced Greek citizenship to marry England’s princess, so he was no longer Philip of Greece.

Philip nodded the footman out, motioning for the door to be left cracked. A private meeting, then, Osla thought, but not private. “I wanted a hello, since I couldn’t join you at lunch. How was it?”

“I’m sure you’ve been filled in.” Something told Osla Philip had already spoken to his fiancée. “I hope no one thinks I had anything to do with those scandal-rag pieces.”

“I know you, Os. Never your style.”

They gazed at each other. Philip looked strange out of uniform, his bright hair no longer picking up the glint of gold braid but shining over a civilian suit. His eyes landed on her emerald ring. “I thought you hated green.”

She did. Since the Café de Paris bombing, after which her nightmares were studded by flashes of her blood-drenched green gown. Ozma of Oz . . . we’ll get you back to the Emerald City, right as rain. “I’ve learned to tolerate it,” Osla said. “Like a lot of other things.”

“Margaret thinks your fiancé’s a prat.”

“Margaret talks too much.”

“She also relayed what you said about me.” Pause. “Thank you. You could have said a good deal to her . . . it would have made its way to her sister and— Well, you could have made things difficult between my fiancée and me. I wouldn’t even have blamed you, considering how things ended.”

An ocean of words hovered visibly at his lips. I didn’t behave as I should have, perhaps. Or I let myself care more than I should have, and you were hurt. It all remained unsaid. Philip was more contained than Osla remembered: the future consort, already weighing every remark. She felt a moment’s regret for the boisterous wartime lieutenant who laughed and spoke on quicksilver impulse.

“You look well.” Philip studied her. “I’d like to see you happy, too. Is Giles Talbot the one to do that?”