A Mess ~ Part Two
by Lise

To Part One
Part Two Continued...

This is the prologue of part two, or part two of the prologue, how chiasmic.

It takes place before the story and it's very short because I hate this stuff. (Heh - those who know me will know what follows - sorry girls, it's inevitable.)

There are still no names, just like in the Prologue, but I expect everyone to know at least one of the people we're dealing with here...and likely two. If you don't know the other, post your guesses ;-) Everyone who proofread for me knew 'the other' by the beginning of chapter two, so it is fairly easy, although I added some red herrings afterwards!!

Waking up from the dream was an unpleasant sensation. When they could avoid it no longer, reality did not even have the decency to creep up on them. It appeared so suddenly and so painfully that they could not even speak. There was nothing they could do. It had to end here and it was best to forget.

"Oh God, I'm so sorry," he whispered finally, turning away from her. It could not lead anywhere. It was wrong. He had to forget what he had been feeling and doing. He had to turn away so he would not see her eyes.

She could not answer. One part of her knew he was right in turning away. He should. She should. But another part of her wanted him to turn back. Inside she was screaming in despair, but she knew it was futile. They had to choose this way, but it hurt her more deeply than anything had ever hurt her before and she could not let this pain show. That would only weaken their resolve. If he was strong, he would not have averted his eyes. She should look away as well.

Quietly she gathered her things and left the room, feeling numb and cold inside as if her heart had been scattered into a thousand little pieces. She could not even cry. For that she needed a whole heart. All she concentrated on was how they were to continue. They should not betray anything to anyone, but behave as if nothing had happened. Reasoning took over.

Mary had been wondering what had happened. Henry had not wanted to tell her, but he had just taken her, David and John home, saying he had finished. She did not really believe him, because he was very quiet and he did not look happy. They might have finished, but they had not ended on a good note. She wondered if she could ask Elizabeth about it, since Henry was clearly affected, but she had no way of reaching the Queen.

After thinking about it for a few hours, she remembered that at school Elizabeth had allowed her to use her cell phone to call her uncle. The number should be listed among the incoming calls. She would only have to check Henry's phone to find Elizabeth's number.

She managed to do that before he took her back to school, excitedly scribbling the number onto six pieces of paper that she hid in different places. This was something she could not afford to lose.

It remained to be seen whether she had the nerve to call, but at least she had the number and that was reassurance enough for the time being. Being able to do something but not doing it was different from not being able to do anything at all.

Lord Setchley found his appointments with the Queen were cancelled for the next two occasions. Contrary to others, he was inclined to ascribe this to something other than illness. It was not only an illness that prevented her from receiving him. She might very well be ill, but if she was, it was not some innocent illness. It would have something to do with him.

His position was now even more unstable than before. He had turned his ally against himself. It was his own fault. These coming days he would have to be really good.

He had been hoping for a reaction from her side, but the cancellation was not what he had been wishing for. Stupidly enough, he had hoped she would seek a reconciliation, although he knew he was the one who should apologise. The words had come out of his mouth, not hers.

But thinking about it, he remembered that she was the one who had been making it impossible to continue. It was not he who had to change his behaviour. He might apologise for his unnecessarily cruel words, but that would not solve anything. She would continue in the same manner and it might happen again.

He regretted that it had come this far, but he did not see how he could have handled this any differently. If he had been less outspoken, the situation would have dragged on even longer, with even more of her constant games of teasing him and pushing him away.

His words had stung Elizabeth harder than she had wished to betray at that time. Manipulative bitch kept reverberating in her mind. Was she one? It had been bothering her badly enough for her to fall ill. If she examined her conduct, she could see it had been sorely lacking. Maybe she had been a bitch and maybe she had been manipulative.

That one instance had frozen her feelings. She had locked the event away and tried not to think about it, but she had never examined her feelings. They were inconvenient in her profession and they had to be suppressed as much as possible, for they could not do a lot of good.

A sob escaped her. She had been suppressing those inconvenient feelings quite successfully until then, only to be hurt and have her heart torn out when she finally lost control of her emotions. But she had not even wanted to know she had been hurt. She had been glad her heart had been torn apart, in a way, because it would prevent such a thing from happening ever again. If she had no feelings, she could not be hurt either.

Only her heart had not been torn apart forever. It was still there, it could be glued together and it could still be damaged even more. It had been frozen or scattered, but too much exposure to Henry had proved to be fatal -- again. How could he do this? He knew how to find the broken pieces of her heart and make it whole, only to tear it apart when it was beginning to show signs of working too well. And then the whole destructive sequence could start over again.

He helped her up and then kicked her down as soon as she was standing. They were not meant to be. Elizabeth brushed her tears away. When would this end? Why could she not make it stop?

She did not blame Henry. It was not his fault. They were both victims of fate, but fate was being very cruel in throwing them together all the time when nothing could come of it. What lesson did fate want them to learn? Humility? Heaven knew she could use a little humility, but really, why did it have to be so damn painful? She was prepared to be as humble as she could, if only fate left her alone from now on.

What would he be feeling? Would he be thinking she was the destructive one? It was likely, given his hurtful words when they had parted. She did not want to be destructive. She did not want to hurt him at all. If she had hurt or confused him, it was only because she was so hurt and confused herself.

Maybe she should apologise, but she knew what would happen if she saw him again. He would work his magic on her heart, make all the scattered bits come together and then when she least expected it, it would be destroyed again. She honestly did not know if she could survive another blow. Certainly not right now. He loved his job better than he loved her. It was best not to see him for a while.

She wished she could talk to Teddy, but Teddy did not know anything about it and Elizabeth did not know where to start. Besides, talking about it made the whole thing too real.

Later on, Mary recalled that Henry had promised her no more parents would be taken away from her ever again. Elizabeth was not her parent, but she had been kind, so maybe she counted as parent anyway. Mary explored this hypothesis. Yes, it worked. Elizabeth had filled the place of a parent at school too. She did not know whether she had the right to consider Elizabeth as such without consulting her -- Elizabeth might not like it.

Still, she wanted to make sure Henry had not inadvertently -- because his consciously doing so was out of the question -- hurt Elizabeth. The opposite -- that Elizabeth had hurt Henry -- would be a disappointment, but she also had to know about that. She might need it to see Elizabeth as something less than a saint. Right now she still admired her greatly, but she was clever enough to know the woman had to have her bad sides.

After two days of debating with herself, Mary called Elizabeth's number. She had been very nervous and she was almost relieved there was no answer. The phone had been switched off.

A day later she read in the newspapers that Elizabeth had cancelled some engagements due to illness. It did not say which illness and if it was serious. Mary frowned when she read the society pages, which surmised that the illness was the result of a heated quarrel Elizabeth had had with her cousin. Somehow Mary did not think so. If Elizabeth had had a heated quarrel with her cousin, it was because she had first had a heated quarrel with Henry. Both things had happened on the same day and at the funeral Elizabeth had not given any signs of having quarrelled and being on the brink of some illness because of it. The row with the cousin had happened afterwards and that would only have happened because she was already in a rotten mood.

It was somehow comforting to find that Elizabeth had been affected as well. If she liked quarrels, she would not have fallen ill.

It was safe again to be seen talking to Henry now that he was back at his former level of popularity and Clarissa grabbed her chance when she saw him unexpectedly. She had tried his sister, his niece and some friends, but she had become none the wiser about Henry. "Oh, that was such an ordeal you had to go through," she said sympathetically.

"I'm glad my friends supported me," he answered completely for her benefit, knowing as well as she did that she had not supported him in times of crisis and that she was only talking to him now because the crisis appeared to have passed. "Their faith in me really helped." He stayed away from others as much as possible, but if they were regular visitors of the fitness centre, he could not help but run into them some time. He wondered why Clarissa was a member. She never actually worked out, but only chatted and paraded her new outfits. Perhaps she was only trying to find a man. Right now she appeared to be chasing him, for some reason.

"I have so much faith in you as well. I know you couldn't possibly have had any contact with such a woman."

"Dear Clarissa, I admitted publicly that I did have contact with a woman." While he might at the moment be harbouring some unkind feelings towards that woman, he still felt more for her than for Clarissa.

"Yes, but wasn't that just because you couldn't get out of a public apology?"

"I had sex with the woman." Somehow he loved saying that to her.

For all the subtle invitations she had sent his way, Clarissa looked pretty shocked to hear this. "You did?"

"Did you think I'd stop at kissing her?" He had missed the opportunity to talk about it. It was a natural urge he had had to suppress, but if you gave in to one urge, it was very hard to resist the other. Henry felt his feelings return. "She was wonderful."

"Marry her," Clarissa said coldly and walked away.

But the whole point was that she had been wonderful in Brazil and that she was a completely different person at home, he thought silently. He could never marry her. Thoughtfully he resumed his exercising.

Elizabeth was still feeling incapable of leaving her bedroom. Introspection was exhausting. It had now been a week since the second incident and she was slowly beginning to recover. While there were great parallels between the two incidents, she was starting to see a difference as well. This time the pain lasted much longer. The first time she had suppressed it, but now she felt she was making up for that by feeling it twice as acutely.

Her days were still spent going through many cycles of recovering and then relapsing again, but the frequency of the cycles was diminishing. She could now live through a day with only two relapses, whereas in the beginning she had had two relapses per hour.

Because she could not confide in anyone, she often got stuck in the same mental traps and that was very frustrating. It always took her a few times to get out of them and it usually cost her many tears.

It was one thing to realise that you were not getting anywhere by thinking fate was treating you unkindly and that you should be brave, but quite another thing to take matters into your own hands and actually be brave. Knowing you were not being brave was also depressing.

Now, however, she felt as though she might return to real life, or rather, that she had to return to real life because it was expected of her. She was afraid of it. The disadvantage of having gone through the same ordeal twice was that you knew what might happen. If she returned too soon without steeling her heart against Henry, he would have free access to it again with all the predictable results. If she did not get to the bottom of this self-pity, real life would make her suppress her emotions again and it would pay her back with interest some time later.

Elizabeth was now in a more thoughtful and less emotional state of mind as she considered her options carefully. Somewhere there was a sign that told her to take a certain direction, but she could not see it yet. It had to be there, though. She was sure of that. All this had to be good for something. It had to be happening in order to make her a better human being. She had to learn something from this experience, but what?

Today was Monday and she was supposed to have met him today. He had said she would go down with him if he went, but nothing like that had happened during the past week. If anything, he had gone up while she had gone down -- possibly as a result. Was the incompatibility of their characters not enough and did their functions have to be incompatible as well? It seemed as if they could never be popular or unpopular at the same time.

She did not know where it had come from, but in the media she was now seen as the arch-conservative, retarded, priggish, intolerant, bitchy and arrogant Queen who was totally out of touch with reality, whereas the Prime Minister was all that was modern and popular. Something had apparently sparked off a whole load of reactions and people seemingly liked to see them as complete opposites, especially those who were in favour of a republic.

It baffled and shocked her to fall right into the middle of it, not having read the newspapers for a few days. People had wanted to see her -- about this, presumably -- but she had sent them all away because she had not been feeling well enough. She was glad she had. It would not have made her recovery any easier.

Lord Setchley was caught in a bind. He could not defend the Queen for two reasons, because he was upset with her and because it was suspicious for a man with a mysterious lover to defend any woman at all. And yet she did not deserve this either. Not quite. Just a little. He changed his mind about that on an hourly basis.

Life went on and he could not dwell for too long on his wounded feelings. He could live off them forever if he did not watch out, but in that case he would be stuck and he would not be moving forward.

He was strong, he told himself, but he was weak enough to be glad that she had cancelled their meetings when Friday and Monday came around eventually. A fire that was not completely out could always be rekindled.

Yet he knew they could not keep avoiding each other. Next Friday might be the day. She had not cancelled that meeting yet. He did not really believe in her illness. Nothing had been specified and it was unlikely that an innocent flu could keep her ill for two weeks.

"If the Queen is not better on Friday," said Howard, "you really have to ask her to sign some things anyway." He was suspecting a great deal, but he was not in any position to bring the matter up, or so he had been thinking up till now. The situation was getting out of hand. He was seeing the pile of documents grow and there were things that could not be done until certain documents were signed. The Queen was clogging up the entire system with her illness.

"As if I could."

"She'll want to do you a favour." And that was a subtle hint.

"No, no, no, Howard," Lord Setchley said determinedly. "She doesn't. She's probably seeing everyone else except us. Favours are out of the question."

Howard looked reflective. "Do you mean to say you're the reason for her illness, My Lord?"

Lord Setchley held up his hands. "I said something to her, but I swear it wasn't bad enough to make her fall ill."

Howard cleared his throat. "She is a woman, as you well know."

"Queens usually are. It's kings that aren't."

"Could it be hormones, My Lord?"

"Hormones?" He frowned. "Why haven't her hormones bothered her ever before?" She had never been ill before.

Howard coughed discreetly. "I don't know, My Lord. Hormones are quite a private matter."

"Then why do you presume I know anything about it!" Lord Setchley exclaimed.

"I thought that perhaps she had divulged the nature of her illness to you in private. I thought you were…er…"

"I was…?"

"…er…friends." He cleared his throat again.

"Why do you keep coughing?" Lord Setchley asked suspiciously. "It lends a rather sinister aspect to the whole conversation, as if you believe friends to have a very special meaning. Howard, will you just spit it out?"

"What, My Lord?" Howard asked cautiously. All these years he had worked on not being direct and now the Prime Minister wanted him to spit it out. He could not do it.

"Whatever you secretly believe."

"I don't believe anything secretly."

"You do!"

"It's not my place to say it," Howard hedged.

"I am ordering you," said Lord Setchley, hitting his desk with the palm of his hand. "Let's have all your beliefs and suppositions about me. Sit down."

Howard sat down and shifted in his seat nervously. "Well, the previous Prime Minister didn't spend half as long talking to the Queen."

"So?"

"And afterwards he was usually frustrated. You are not. You obviously get along with her."

"Well, that's shocking," Lord Setchley commented.

"And you and she were born on the same day."

"Is that significant?"

"The previous Prime Minister was a good thirty years older than the Queen and he was married."

"Is that significant?"

Howard continued. "Only insofar as that Prime Ministers always call a woman if they have some problem. Usually their wife."

"I don't have a wife." Lord Setchley began to see where Howard was heading.

"No, My Lord. But you do not differ much from the other Prime Ministers in that respect. You would agree with me that you definitely have one woman you always call."

"Do I?"

"Who is always the first person you call when you travel abroad?" Howard asked. "From Madrid, for instance?"

"I had business to discuss with her, Howard."

"Shall we say that not every Prime Minister would have come up with this business, My Lord?" Howard asked diplomatically. "It was an excuse to call." He studied the Prime Minister's face. "I'm not entirely sure about Brazil. We had two women with us, of whom one doesn't have the right figure or hair colour to be the woman in the photograph. The other one does. The woman might also have been local, but in that case her bikini would have been a trifle more daring."

Lord Setchley was amazed at Howard's observations. "I can't say I've studied any local bikinis." He bit off his tongue. If he had not seen any local bikinis, it automatically revealed which bikini he had seen. "I suppose that reveals everything, doesn't it?" he said dryly. "What exactly did you notice in Brazil?" He wondered if Howard was not more perceptive than he had ever given him credit for.

"Lots of bikinis, My Lord, one even more flimsy than the other. Yet this photograph showed you with a woman with more textile on, so it made me wonder." Howard disliked to admit this side to his character and he could only do it to a man who had proven himself equally susceptible to female charms.

"Yes, but you realised all this at home, not there."

"I didn't notice anything there, because I didn't know there was anything to notice until I got back," Howard said with irrefutable logic.

Theodora felt concerned about Elizabeth. At first she had been thinking Elizabeth was really ill, but when her friend continued to be depressed and listless, she had begun to suspect something else. After bothering Elizabeth long enough she had discovered the source of the problem.

"Henry," was all Elizabeth had wanted to say.

It had taken another day for Theodora to learn more. She knew who Henry was and she had always thought they got along too well, although Elizabeth had never alluded to liking him more than what was expected of her.

Elizabeth's studied indifference right after the scandal had set off the first alarm bells and her reactions in the weeks afterwards had convinced Theodora that Elizabeth had a serious thing for Henry, but she still was not certain if this meant she had also been the mysterious woman or if she was merely jealous of that woman. Her opinion of Henry depended on that. She would think less of him if he had kissed another woman when he could have had Elizabeth. Theodora knew that reports of her friend's difficult character were grossly exaggerated.

Henry's calling Elizabeth from Madrid in the middle of the night had given Theodora two choices. Either Henry took his job too seriously, or he missed Elizabeth. She still admitted to being an optimist and a romantic and she had concluded that Henry also had a thing for Elizabeth. Everything pointed to that.

"Henry said I was a manipulative bitch," said Elizabeth tonelessly a day later.

While Elizabeth was being this generous with information, Theodora could not interrupt her. She waited for more.

Elizabeth's eyes filled with tears. "You might be surprised, Teddy. He keeps breaking my heart. Because I can't have him."

Teddy was not surprised that this was the problem. "Yes, you can." After all, she had spoken with the man and he had admitted that he missed his mystery woman.

"No, I can't."

"You can't have Henry and your job and his job. That's impossible, but it doesn't mean you can't have Henry." It did not seem like a mission impossible to Teddy.

"I want Henry and my job. Henry wants his job. Doesn't work."

"And he wants you."

"Don't know. Not well enough."

Teddy sighed. "Linnie, you can't expect him to give up everything for you. You need to give a little as well."

"I don't want an unemployed Henry either," Elizabeth said stubbornly. "I want it all and I can't have it, yet I keep having to meet with him. Besides, he might not want me. He hasn't tried to get me."

Teddy hugged her. "Oh, Linnie!" First she should let Elizabeth talk and then she could think of a way to help her. If this was the way Elizabeth felt about it, it would indeed be difficult.

She was not the type to betray Elizabeth's confidence and she would not test her ideas on anyone else. It was definitely a difficult case and she did not blame Elizabeth for reacting the way she did. She did not know what she would have done in the same situation.

Mary had got over her fear of calling because the phone was never answered anyway and she had tried to call Elizabeth at least once a day. On Monday she got through all of a sudden and it startled her so much that she broke the connection. She called again immediately. "Sorry. I was surprised you answered."

"Who is this?"

"Mary."

"Hi Mary." It sounded surprised.

"I'm calling because…" Why was she calling? "I don't know. I think I wanted to know what happened."

There was a brief silence. Elizabeth was surprised to hear that Mary knew anything had happened at all. "That is really complicated."

"And you don't want to tell me about it," Mary asked in understanding. "Are you still there?" she asked hesitantly when it took very long.

"Yes. I haven't been feeling well. Can I call you back another time when I feel better and when I've thought about it?" She needed to think.

"Yes, of course." Mary was relatively pleased with that. It did not mean that Elizabeth did not want to talk to her at all. It probably meant that she did not know how much she could say. She hoped Elizabeth would really call. So many people said they would call and then they never did.

Elizabeth wondered if talking to a girl of fifteen was going to help her. The girl had called her, so she had to be interested in how she was doing. Or was Mary only interested in how her uncle was doing? She wanted to know what he was feeling too. Perhaps Mary could tell her. If she called Mary she could try to find out, without telling Mary everything. On the other hand, she had already let her guard down once in front of the girl. Mary would know she was a human being and not many others did, Teddy excepted.

But telephones were not safe. People might be tapping hers. She had always been warned not to discuss any important things over the phone. Maybe she could meet Mary somewhere near Oakhurst. There were plenty of locations near the school that were out of sight.

She called Mary back and they agreed on meeting on Saturday in a place not far from the school. And she would take Teddy.

Henry ate at Amanda's house that evening. She was surprised at his subdued manner. Usually he talked far more. "Is anything wrong?" she asked. "I thought the polls were favourable again."

"Do polls matter?"

"You're the politician. I thought they mattered to you."

"Don't know." Perhaps things like love were more important.

Amanda exchanged a frown with her husband. Something was wrong with Henry. He was not his usual self. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I can't," Henry said.

"Why not?" Amanda believed you could talk about anything, especially to people you were close to.

"Because I don't want anyone to know. Too many people know already."

"How many?" She could guess what those people knew. Henry had no other secrets.

"About four."

"And it hasn't leaked out yet? What makes you think I'll leak it? Who are these people that are so important that they're allowed to know?"

"Me, her, Howard and her friend -- and I think they both guessed it. They're not going to talk."

"You have very little control over her, though, if she's in Brazil." She said that in a deliberate attempt to hear him deny it. If he knew the woman's friend knew, he had to have seen her somewhere.

"Is she?" he asked. "You don't know that."

Which meant she was probably not in Brazil. Amanda let the matter of her exact location rest for a while. She changed the subject. "I have been missing one voice in this entire circus."

"Whose?"

"The Queen's. I had expected her to fire you. She's rather conservative, isn't she?" At least, that had been in the papers again.

"She might still do that. We didn't part on the best of terms after our last meeting."

"She has refrained from speaking her mind. I found that very odd. Since she was there." Amanda got a sudden idea when she spoke those words. It fit. Too well. Two women had not spoken and they had both been there. The press had known about one, but she was not mentioned -- they only mentioned the one whom they had not known about. There was a suspicious and complementary pattern in that.

"She was there. Exactly," Henry said with a hint of bitterness in his voice.

"Henry…" It fit even better now.

He looked away, knowing what she was beginning to think. He was unable to deny it if she asked. He could not fool his sister.

Amanda's eyes betrayed her excitement. "You don't mean…" She shot another look at her husband, but he was not following her yet. He did not know Henry as well as she did.

"I'm suspecting I do mean what you're asking," Henry said in resignation. He wanted her to voice it so he would really know.

"Not her?" Amanda needed to see a picture of the woman in question and she dragged a magazine out of a pile. She found a decent photograph and studied it. "Her?"

Henry glanced at the picture, although he knew it would be the right one. "Yes."

"Henry! How could you?"

"Are you against her?" he asked cautiously.

She studied the picture some more. "She looks pretty enough, but how fake is it? How obnoxious is she?"

"There is nothing fake about her and as for her being obnoxious…I did call her a manipulative bitch, but I didn't really mean that. I think." He took the magazine from her and looked at the picture. "It's a pity it wasn't taken from up close." He would have liked to show them a better picture of the woman he liked.

His brother-in-law inspected the picture as well. "I don't know about your taste, Henry." She looked rather old-fashioned.

"There's nothing wrong with my taste. You would know that if you met her."

"But that was in Brazil," said Amanda after a moment. She had not noticed anything recently, which meant that it must have ended. Or not. Elizabeth had gone to Mary's school. She had not considered that so important before, but it had become a significant fact now. "She went to Oakhurst for you."

"Yes, but that had nothing to do with anything and at any rate, it was before…" Before their argument. Henry decided not to mention the argument, if it could even be called that. It was too complicated for outsiders. He decided to focus on Oakhurst. "She was going to Oakhurst anyway. It had nothing to do with me, really. She only offered to convey my apologies to Mary." It had been as simple as that. They should not look for a deeper meaning.

Amanda stared at him as if she could not quite believe him. It was hard to accept the Queen would to that, given the reports about her personality. "Henry…are you fooling yourself? She spent an entire day with your niece. She didn't have to do that. She did it for you."

"Oh," said Henry. He had not wanted to see it like that in case it was not true, but Amanda was usually right about such things. "Still, that doesn't mean we've got a future."

Amanda glanced at her husband, wondering if he was thinking the same thing she was thinking. "I don't know if you've got a future," she said. "That depends on you." A queen would remain a queen, but Henry would not always stay the PM.

"On me? On her, you mean. She's the one who's impossible."

"But if you love her, Henry, she can't be that bad," his brother-in-law remarked. "And Mary likes her. I've never heard Mary like any of your women friends before."

"Anyway," Henry concluded. "It can't come to anything because of what we are and that is the root of the problem." What would the world say? It was highly irregular, to say the least and considering how they had focused on his kiss, they would find this even more interesting.

Besides, he did not know if he could give up his job to play second fiddle without anything constructive to do with his life. Was Elizabeth really worth the sacrifice? Why could they not keep their jobs? That would suit them both much better, but the rest of the world would have a problem with that.

In one sense he was glad he had got his biggest secret off his chest, but he also knew his sister would not rest until she had solved this problem. And it could not be solved.

It was Friday. She looked the same, but not quite. Her face was pale, but she did not look ill. Her eyes were watchful and reserved as always, but there was something else in her expression now and he could not define it. Perhaps a sad determination. Henry could guess what her determination was about: him, but his heart jumped up briefly at her sadness. Sad was good. It meant she was not happy with the situation and that she wished it could be different.

But it could not be different; that was exactly the problem. Their jobs would always be between them. The flicker of hope was quickly extinguished. The Queen would remain the Queen and he would remain her loyal servant. He was not even Henry here. The Prime Minister curtseyed with a gesture of mockery.

"Don't." She did not appreciate his mockery and turned around.

From behind she looked tense. He contemplated laying his hands on her shoulders to ease the tension out of them, but that would be wrong. Until he knew what she was about, he should not do anything.

She was standing in front of a window, so he stood in front of the adjoining one, gazing out. They had stood like this once before. It had been warm outside then and there had been some pretty warm tension between them, nothing like this chilliness. He studied her profile, all unwavering persistence. Relax. You can do it, he wanted to tell her. I've seen you do it. But he kept the words inside. "Artemis," escaped his lips involuntarily. He had almost been torn apart by fellow politicians just because he had consorted with Artemis. To him it seemed an apt comparison.

"Doesn't fit," she replied, not taking her eyes off the park scene outside.

"It does."

"I disagree," she said with abrupt syllables.

"Artemis punished a man who saw her and then let him be torn apart by his own --"

"Stop!" Elizabeth sounded strained. "Please stop!" It was imperative to be calm in front of Henry, but it was very hard. She knew he rarely lost his head in times of crisis, so there was no telling what he might do if she acted out of character. She would rather not take the initiative in something as sensitive as this. Suppose he did not react? Suppose he pushed her away? She could not take that.

When she judged herself to be sufficiently under control, she turned around. He was not looking at her anymore. "About the current situation in the world," she began. They had to move on, keep their minds on neutral topics.

"What about it?" He recognised that strategy and he felt a pang inside. She did not want him. She desperately tried to push him away by coldly changing the subject. Well, he would not force himself on anyone who did not want him. He had that much dignity.

"We're going to discuss it."

"Why are we going to talk to this girl tomorrow, Linnie?" Theodora asked. She had just been told she needed to come with Elizabeth to talk to some girl.

"You're not. I am."

"But why?" Why was Elizabeth going and why did she need someone to hold her hand?

"Because she's obviously concerned about the whole situation."

And because Elizabeth only wanted to talk to someone about Henry, Theodora added to herself. She knew she would never be able to get Elizabeth to admit that. However, it was rather suspicious to go to such great lengths just to reassure a girl she had only met twice. "And this is Henry's niece, you say?" That made even less sense.

"Yes."

"Why should Henry's niece be concerned?" And more importantly, why should they be concerned about Henry's niece?

"Her parents are dead."

So Henry was some kind of parent to her. "That makes more sense," said Theodora, who could see beyond the surface of this case. One always had to distrust girls who tried to reconcile their fathers with women. Everything reeked of an ulterior motive. If Elizabeth did not see it, she was either blind, or she had an ulterior motive of her own that was more compelling.

But Theodora was never averse to a bit of matchmaking either. She wondered if Henry's niece was any good at it.

Her car parked at the designated place fifteen minutes earlier than the time they had agreed on, but Mary was already there. She had come on her bicycle. "Who are they?" she asked, glancing at the men who had come with Elizabeth. There was also an older woman with her. It frightened her a little. She did not want to be talking to a whole group of people. Only the two women approached her, however.

"Don't mind them. They'll stay back. And this is my friend Teddy, who knows everything. Can we go to that little restaurant further down the road?" Elizabeth asked, glancing up at the sky. Everything was wet already and it looked as if more rain was coming. "It's a bit wet outside."

"If you don't mind being seen," said Mary, but she doubted that anyone would recognise Elizabeth like this. Her hair was in a braid and she was wearing ordinary trousers. She would not have recognised her either if she had not spent an entire day with her a short while ago.

"No, that'll be alright." They walked around the bend without speaking and sat down in the small restaurant. "Are you hungry?"

"A little." Mary was glad Elizabeth took charge. Now that she was here, she was a little afraid of bringing up the subject they were supposed to discuss, especially in front of the woman named Teddy.

"We'll have something to eat," Elizabeth decided and they made their selection from the menu. They should not talk it out before they had even had anything to eat. "Well," she said when their order had been taken. "What did you want to ask me?"

Mary looked at the table uneasily. While Elizabeth's expression was kind, it was also reserved, as if she was not prepared to speak freely. She wondered if it was strange to ask a question about something that had happened a while ago. "Can I say everything?" she asked with a glance at Teddy.

Teddy smiled. "Yes, you can. I know everything about Elizabeth, even things she hasn't told me. I don't know everything about you, except that you're Henry's niece and other things Elizabeth told me about you."

"Do you know Henry?" Mary was surprised. She wondered what Elizabeth had told Teddy about her.

"I also know some things about Henry that he hasn't told me," she chuckled. "But go on, dear."

Mary looked at Elizabeth and inhaled. "Why…why did we leave so suddenly when we were in that other restaurant where you were having that meeting with Henry? He didn't want to say anything about it, so I didn't think you had ended your meeting in a normal way."

"Why do you want to know?" Elizabeth asked, but not unkindly. She was a little disappointed not to learn more, having hoped that Henry had revealed his feelings to the children, but by the sound of it he had not said a word.

"I just don't want anyone to feel hurt," Mary said in a small voice. She cared about her uncle and she thought she might care about this woman as well.

Elizabeth looked at the table too. "It wouldn't be your fault if people felt hurt," she said very softly. Would it be Henry or her Mary was concerned about?

"So you do feel hurt," Mary stated. That was a start. Things were starting to slide.

"Maybe, but you can't do anything about it." Elizabeth smiled gently. That was a lie. The coating of ice around her heart was already beginning to melt because of the girl's concern.

"I don't know yet." Mary was not convinced by Elizabeth's words. Her eyes had said something different, if she had seen this correctly.

That puzzled her companion. "No?"

"Henry feels hurt," Mary tried. That sparked off a little interest in Elizabeth, she noted, and some amusement in Teddy.

"Does he," Elizabeth said evenly. "I wonder why."

Teddy had vowed she would keep quiet as much as possible and thought of this promise with regret. There were some very good things she could say now.

They were given their soup and their tea and they had to stop talking for a while. "He won't say why," Mary resumed. "In fact, he hasn't even admitted that he feels hurt, but I know he does." He is just like you, she added to herself.

"Hmmpphh."

Mary nearly smiled at this sign of disinterest. She could see Teddy shared her opinion. Maybe it was not so bad that Elizabeth had brought a friend. It gave her some courage to see the friend agreed with her. "You came here, so you obviously want to talk to me. Tell me."

The tiny crack that had appeared in Elizabeth's façade was in danger of widening. Stuff wanted out, but she did not want to let it out.

It was impossible to ask the Queen if she was in love. Besides, Mary did not think she knew enough about the subject to advise people. Someone Elizabeth's age would know much more about it. However, if it was true she could see what a problem it would be. Queens could only fall in love with suitable people. What if she had fallen in love with Henry? She would not be able to tell anyone about it. Suddenly things clicked in her brain and she knew. "Do you look nice in a bikini?"

Elizabeth stared back impassively. "Maybe. I don't know." She could have known that a schoolgirl's mind would immediately jump to romance. It would be a very long time before she lost the associations she now had with bikinis.

This answer made Mary uncertain. Had she been wrong? But it had seemed so logical. She looked at her soup and then at Teddy, but Teddy was looking at her soup as well. Apparently things were not as clear as they seemed. While she had not expected Elizabeth to admit anything, she had been expecting her to show more of a reaction.

Elizabeth ate her soup as well. She wondered how Mary could know, even though this whole case of cherchez la femme was so obvious. Everyone had been looking for the woman too far away up to now, when all they would have had to do was look at the information that was right in front of them. Henry had been kissing a mysterious woman. Why had no one yet thought of suspecting the woman Henry had actually accompanied to Brazil? Did people have to be reminded of the fact that queens were women and not kings in dresses?

"Well," Mary said thoughtfully as she finished her soup. "I wish it could be you, if it has to be someone." She could only say that, if she was not getting an answer.

"You wish I could be what?"

"The woman in the bikini." She looked up, fearing she had been too bold. She did not even know for certain; she only suspected it.

Elizabeth pretended to concentrate on the last bit of soup on her plate as she thought of what to say. "If there was any future for the woman in the bikini, her identity would undoubtedly have been revealed already, don't you think?" she asked calmly. She did not know why Mary wanted it to be her.

"Yes, it does seem as if…" Mary paused. She should accept the future, no matter how disappointing it was. "Pity. You would have made a nice Mummy, I'm sure."

Elizabeth swallowed and then smiled, but it cost her a considerable effort. "Thank you. I think that's the kindest thing someone's said to me in a long time." It would have been nice, but it could not be.

Teddy placed an arm across Elizabeth's shoulders as a precaution. That had been a kind, but very dangerous comment. It was her job to hand the Queen a handkerchief if she needed one, but this was more effective.

"But you mustn't hold Henry's words against him," Mary said quickly, before either of them would cry. That blinking was a sign of danger.

"How would you know he said something unkind?"

"I'm guessing. Did he?"

"You shouldn't guess. If you start wondering what happened, you'll start wondering what might have happened instead." Things began to look a little foggy for Elizabeth.

"Is that what you did when you were ill?" Mary inquired.

Elizabeth shook her head automatically. "No. It's wrong to do that."

And it would never bring her anywhere if she did not, Mary realised. "But that means you're not seeing the possibilities…"

Elizabeth smiled wistfully. "The impossibilities." For a brief moment she lost herself in a contemplation of what could never be. Then she pulled herself together and shook the thoughts out of her mind. Teddy would undoubtedly interfere if she spoke any of them.

"Possibilities bring happiness; impossibilities bring pain," Mary would think. Nobody would want to feel pain. Why would someone choose to focus on the impossibilities rather than the possibilities?

"Do you have to…" Even thinking about the word brought pain. The tears she had just conquered by blinking furiously were again in danger of appearing.

Mary had been trying to call her uncle more often, but his phone was always on voicemail. The few times she had got through, he had avoided the subject and chosen to not to hear her hints. It would be embarrassing to orchestrate a reconciliation between two people who were not willing and she would never know until they told her some more. This meeting with Elizabeth was reassuring her a little, but Elizabeth's pain was not enough evidence to go on.

She had been happy to read that her uncle's popularity had gone up again, although she was not sure it was doing him any good at the moment. What if he could not bear to hear about impossibilities either? Surely that would be a sign of something.

She recapitulated. Something had happened between Henry and Elizabeth in Brazil, but only there -- they had not continued it at home. Then, people had found out about it and there had not been any chance to continue anything anymore, if they had even wanted to. Had they? Right now she would think the one instance had shocked them enough -- for the time being. She smiled hopefully. It had made a deep impact. That meant there was hope for them. They had known each other for a while, so this had not come out of the blue. Something was definitely there that they were not admitting.

"Don't plot anything that will be even more painful," Elizabeth warned her. She had seen that smile, as if there was a way out.

"What's there to plot?" Mary asked. "You said you weren't the woman in the bikini and she's the one Henry's pining for." She wondered if she was going too far. Maybe she should remember she was speaking to the Queen, although Teddy was looking amused and it was obviously alright.

Elizabeth was good at hiding what she was thinking and feeling. She stared back at the girl seriously. "Shall we stop talking around it?" she suggested. "Henry is not the type to pine and I shouldn't be talking about these things with you at all." She was being all too obvious about her feelings and she should not be.

"You need to talk to someone who knows Henry and there is nobody else who does," Mary reminded her quietly. "Or would you tell someone about it? I wish you wouldn't, because they might not be discreet and they might tell others. It would affect me as well if other people came to hear of it." She continued when Elizabeth did not answer. "Anyone who wants Henry, gets me and the boys as well, so…"

Elizabeth did not want to comment on whether she wanted Henry or not. "And anyone who gets you, gets Henry as well?" It sounded very much as if Henry was being offered to her via some indirect route.

"Hmm. Yes."

"Mary…"

"Yes?" Mary asked anxiously.

Elizabeth sighed. "Anyone who gets me, gets the Queen as well. I am sure she's not at the top of everyone's Christmas list." Mary should know what she was getting herself into if she continued this campaign. She might not like that all that much.

"Well, that's just because people don't know she can be had."

Elizabeth chuckled in spite of herself. She felt more relaxed now what she knew that nobody would ever hear about what they were saying and she was feeling happy that somebody wanted her for herself. Someone liked her personally and liked her well enough even to want her for a mother. However impossible that wish might be, it was still gratifying. "Oh girl!"

"Isn't it just a job?" Mary said with a hopeful look.

"Sometimes."

"So, how does kissing the Prime Minister fit into this job? Would you kiss every Prime Minister?"

Teddy laughed outright at this and Elizabeth looked disturbed. "Shut up, Teddy. The Queen wouldn't kiss any…people in function."

"Off-duty Prime Ministers, then," Mary said.

"Those might possibly be kissed by someone. The Queen wouldn't kiss any people at all, though." This earned her a snort from Teddy. Elizabeth was glad she had taken Teddy, though. It did help her to put things into perspective. If Teddy snorted, she was probably saying something strange and she was -- it was rather idiotic to say the Queen would not kiss any people at all. The point was taken.

"So the Queen wouldn't kiss the PM, but Elizabeth might kiss Henry?" Mary asked impertinently. Why not push her luck when the other woman was not showing any signs of being bothered by the way she was being addressed?

Elizabeth nodded reluctantly. The Queen would never answer such a question, but right now she did not think she was in function and Elizabeth definitely longed to speak to someone about it. Teddy did not have enough distance to see it anymore, she thought. "There's the Queen, there's Elizabeth and there's Linnie, just like there's the Prime Minister, Lord Setchley, Livius and Henry. It's all a matter of slipping into the appropriate role at the appropriate moment, but it got a bit confusing when Linnie wanted to talk to Henry and she was stuck with Livius instead. See, he's got this frustrating intermediate layer that can go both ways. I tried to figure out who he was, but I got lost myself and then he got lost too and he called me a manipulative bitch."

Mary frowned. "That sounds very confusing." No wonder people got confused if they saw themselves as three or four different characters. She was glad she was simply Mary.

"Brazil was easy." Elizabeth smiled, forcing herself to think of the happier occasions. "We knew who we were and what we wanted. But you mustn't think I grabbed him and…"

Mary giggled. "Oh no! I couldn't imagine that."

Elizabeth stared into space dreamily. "It was just…I felt I had to go there and it just happened."

"Because I wasn't with you to keep an eye on you," Teddy commented with a wink at Mary. "I would have dragged them off that balcony as soon as I found out." She caught Elizabeth's confused glance. No, she did not disapprove of kissing per se, but really, a balcony was not the most appropriate spot. "If you'd insisted on kissing the man, who'd I be to forbid it? I'd only tell you to do it indoors and out of sight." She tapped her forehead and rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, Mary, I really despair of her…"

Elizabeth closed her eyes as if she had not been listening. "I probably shouldn't have worn my bikini."

"Well, going out onto that balcony naked wouldn't have been a good thing," Teddy said dryly, with a wink at Mary. "But it probably would have happened with or without that bikini."

"Yes," Elizabeth sighed. "It was inevitable. He knew I would have come to him at some point. He said so."

"See!" Mary grinned triumphantly. "There is so much more that you're not willing to see."

"And all these things are quite obvious to a fifteen-year-old?" she mocked, but in reality this was exactly the sort of thing an insecure person wanted to hear. The corners of her mouth curled up involuntarily.

"Fifteen-year-olds aren't necessarily stupid and you have no idea how stupid older people sound to me."

"Thank you. I take it that means me." Elizabeth could well believe she was stupid, but she was too good-natured to take offence. She was very much reassured that the two people who knew both supported her.

Henry did not think his meeting with Elizabeth had been satisfactory. Afterwards he had been feeling very down, as if he had missed an opportunity to change his life. He had felt this deeply and even two days later he still felt it.

This was, strictly speaking, his day off, but he always had enough to do. He tried, but he could not concentrate. How could he get this work done while she was occupying his mind? He feared he had hurt her by calling her Artemis, as if all of this had been her fault.

It was raining outside and the world looked gloomy. Perhaps he could be cured by going to see the children. David and John played football on Sundays and they were likely to be busy despite the weather, but Mary would be in. He phoned her just to make sure and asked her to meet him.

He did not know he had suggested the same place Elizabeth had suggested yesterday. Mary wondered if the waitress was going to comment on it. The force of habit guided her to the same table and she took the same chair as the day before, so that Henry sat where Elizabeth had been sitting. "I didn't know you were free today," she said.

"Not really." Henry looked troubled and ran a hand through his hair. "But I found it hard to concentrate on world problems at the moment."

"Why? Are things really bad right now?"

"Even if I could solve them, it wouldn't be…" he searched for an appropriate word. "…fulfilling. Not at the moment."

Mary looked out of the window. She thought she understood that a little. "Yeah…it's too far away." Their own concerns were more important.

"I had a meeting with the Queen on Friday."

She knew about Artemis, Actaeon and the dogs, so she was curious what Henry was going to say about it. "Oh?"

"She didn't look very healthy."

Mary raised her eyebrows. Elizabeth had not commented on Henry's looks and he had never commented on hers either. "Well, she hasn't been feeling well lately, has she? I read that." She recalled the day before and tried to remember if she had thought Elizabeth looked ill.

"She still isn't feeling well," he said carefully. "If I'm judging it correctly."

She feigned ignorance. "What's wrong with her then?"

Henry sighed and stared away for a while before he began to speak, his eyes still unfocused. "She's not giving in to her feelings."

"Oh. Should she?"

"I don't know. It might be worse if she did that."

Here was another person who did not know what he wanted. Mary shook her head. Love came first and the other stuff would sort itself out. "Then why are you saying that?"

"I don't know. It's all very complicated." He looked at her. "You aren't asking me what her feelings are." He had expected her to be interested in that.

"Er…I know what they are."

Henry looked surprised. "How? Did she tell you?"

"I can sort of guess. Some things are too obvious," said Mary with a grin. "Even to stupid fifteen-year-olds. I asked her if she looked nice in a bikini." The look on Henry's face was wonderful and she grinned even more. She could not keep that news from him. She had to let him know she had been talking to Elizabeth. "I got her to talk."

"What did she say?" He still had not regained his composure. Elizabeth had talked to Mary? When? Why?

"She evaded the issue for a bit at first, but eventually she gave in. Just like she did with you, I suppose."

"The Queen has been confiding in you?" he asked incredulously.

"She's human. She needed to talk to someone and I'm the only person who knows both of you."

"No, you're not," Henry said automatically, thinking of all those officials and politicians and perhaps some other people. It was true that those people knew him less well than Mary did, but she could never know Elizabeth really well. They had met only twice. "How much do you know?"

"She only admitted that she kissed you," Mary said matter-of-factly.

Henry could not help blushing. He happened to think one should avoid talking about such matters and especially to children, unless of course it concerned others and not himself. In that case he might mention it if it was not too shocking. "I can't believe she told you that!" Which words had Elizabeth used? What had she said exactly?

Mary grinned apologetically. "Like I said, some things are too obvious."

You've got our wedding already planned, haven't you?" Henry asked wearily. He was still embarrassed.

"I don't know. She never told me she loved you. I hope she does, because I like her, but it's not up to me to interfere in that. I can't make her love you and I can't make you love her." Mary looked at her uncle's face very carefully. "So…?" He should now tell her he loved Elizabeth.

"Why are you interfering?"

"I like her. You like her too, don't you? Don't tell me you'd kiss people you didn't like." Mary looked at him anxiously.

"Yes, I like her." That did not even begin to cover it. "But you cannot try to set up any two people you happen to like." There were so many more things that had to be taken into consideration.

"Sure. Why not?" Mary said with youthful enthusiasm.

He sighed. "You've met her only three times."

"But you've met her more often and you like her." That was enough of a recommendation. She could usually trust in Henry's opinion of someone.

"She's the Queen."

"She doesn't behave like one," Mary shrugged.

While there were certainly times at which Elizabeth behaved normally, Henry had seen enough instances in which she had definitely acted with all the arrogance and superiority that were expected of a queen. "Mary, you don't know any queens. You can't compare."

"As if you know any others! She can't have been behaving very queenly to you if you took the liberty of kissing her." Mary looked mischievous. She was enjoying this.

"Now, hang on a sec! You make it sound as if I am to blame for everything that happened, when she came to me." Henry felt he had to set things right.

"But you didn't send her away and you didn't remind her that she was the Queen."

"There are moments when I stop thinking, Mary," Henry had to confess with a deep sigh. "Now can we stop talking about it?" He spent a few minutes looking out of the window. The day had not brightened and neither had his mood. "This has only made the problem worse."

"How?"

"We used to be able to ignore it." But if she started telling people and people started talking to him about it, they could not ignore it any longer.

"She said something like that too when she left," Mary remembered. "Wasn't she just too pessimistic? You told us that if we ever had any problems with each other, we should talk it out and not let it get in our way."

He did not really see her point. "Darling, that had to do with fights."

"I don't see the difference. If I have a fight with David…"

"I didn't have a fight with her."

"But you weren't nice to her. She said so."

"She wasn't nice to me!" Henry protested.

"There you have it -- a fight," Mary said smugly. "Talk it out!"

Sunday passed quietly for Elizabeth. No relatives had got drunk in night clubs in town the night before and none celebrated their birthdays. She sat on the couch and kept up with the tabloids, not so much to see what they wrote about herself, as to see what was new about Henry, but that her distant relative George would succeed her was interesting enough for her to read the article. George had never betrayed any interest in succeeding her, only in wasting his allowance on parties, drinks and women.

Elizabeth was born when her parents and everyone else had already given up any hope of continuing the Royal line and she had been their only child. They had been very protective of her, yet the pressure on her had been enormous. It was no simple task to take over the burden that had been carried by several generations -- she had no siblings, her father had no siblings and her grandfather had been an only child as well. Every time they had managed to save the dynasty at the last moment, but it had been hanging by a thread for at least one hundred years.

Even before he died her father had expressed his disappointment in her inability to find a suitable marriage candidate, but fortunately she had then still had the excuse of being young. Nowadays it was different. The entire country had already given up on the possibility that she would ever get married and produce an heir and some committee had dug up distant relatives a few years back, in case they would be needed to succeed to the throne.

Elizabeth disliked them, but marrying just so they would never come to the throne was taking matters a bit far. Anyway, she would have to be dead before anything like that could ever happen and if she was dead, she would not see how they ruined everything. Still, their speedy rise to fame had corrupted them and she continually had problems with their behaviour. They could not handle their sudden status. She doubted if they had even known their connection to the Royal Family before they had been approached. Some good breeding and values had definitely got lost over the generations and they proved impossible to instil.

The Royal Family thus essentially consisted of Elizabeth and her mother. People had never had any problems with them. It was only after the introduction of the 'cousins' that expenses and costs had tripled and the public had begun to complain.

Lord Setchley had cut their allowances back to the bare minimum after he had been appointed. The only reason why he had not cut them completely was because some of his party opposed such a measure. The long-lost relatives had no style or breeding, as far as he was concerned. He had imagined degenerated 'cousins' ogling after his own title and he had not liked that. He had looked at Elizabeth and said, "if I'd been you, Madam, I'd marry an old prince and have A.I. He would probably even die before you had the heir and you'd be rid of your husband as well as your cousins."

But this would be difficult -- a doctor had once told her she would probably not be able to have any children and then he had died very soon after, so there was no way she could ask for a second opinion. Theoretically she could, but interest in her had grown, so she could never visit any doctors without the reason for the visit leaking out to the press. She did not know how this happened, but it always did, despite the doctors' obligation to stay silent.

How else could she be reading about this secret in this tabloid now? She had been thinking nobody knew. It had still only been a speculation passed off as the truth, but it would not be wise to pay any attention to it openly.

She had come to ignore the doctor's use of 'probably' for sanity's sake and it had practically slipped her mind that he had in fact phrased it like that. At the time she had been too young to doubt or question his words. She had been sad, but the doctor's words were the truth and she had told herself she had better not count on anything, so she never had.

Heirs to the throne only married to produce more heirs, but if that was not possible, why should they get married? The doctor's verdict had rather taken away the necessity to get married to someone she did not love before time ran out. Elizabeth would rather stay alone than be confronted with the fact that the diagnosis had actually been right.

She was not against marriage at all, should she meet anyone she fell in love with, but love should come first and not the heirs. This was not quite the same as what the article claimed was her opinion, which they called medieval. Elizabeth shrugged at it. People who believed this had to be pretty stupid.

Her mother knew about everything. It was perhaps she who had set up that committee -- Elizabeth was not certain. She was only glad that her mother had never bothered her about getting married and such, after Elizabeth had torpedoed her suggestion of secretly adopting the baby that a lady-in-waiting would carry for her. That had been about twenty years before, but it had still come to mind when Lord Setchley after he had made his suggestion. "People around me invent the strangest ways of getting me an heir!" she had bitterly told him. "You don't even win first prize."

He had stared at her for quite a while with his blue-grey eyes and he had said nothing. She could not know what he had wanted to say, however, but there had definitely been something he had been thinking. She could not even guess, because his stare had been a mixture of understanding and mischief, a difficult combination.

Now, two years later she was still wondering. In her fantasies of the past two years he had mostly sounded flirtatious, but she knew her fantasies were never realistic. Yet he could not have been serious, because he would not have understood everything, only part of it. She tried a few answers in her mind, but she had forgotten the exact look that had been on his face.

"Linnie?" her mother called her attention. She was knitting, as always. Elizabeth's yellow cardigan was the product of her needles as well.

"Yes?" Elizabeth blushed guiltily.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Nothing."

"Who are you thinking of?"

"No one. I was just…" Elizabeth frowned. "…reflecting on life's mysteries."

"Nothing remains a mystery," her mother commented. She held up her knitwear. "What's this going to be?"

It was still unidentifiable to Elizabeth. "I don't know." She did not see the connection to life.

"It's still a mystery right now, but when it's finished, you'll know what it is."

"I should hope so. Life is an unfinished piece of knitting?" She sounded sarcastic. It was always dangerous to accept domestic wisdom too quickly.

"Certainly. With many different colours and patterns."

"What does mine look like so far?" Elizabeth asked in curiosity, not that she believed in her mother's ideas.

"Quite simple?"

"Simple?" she cried. Her life was anything but simple at the moment. It was a mess.

"Not to you, of course. Yet. It's got two colours that you might not interpret correctly. You might think the first colour is peace and that the second colour stands for turmoil, but they don't, because you can't see yet what these colours will be up to in the top half of the sweater."

"Do I need to send you to a home yet, Mum?" Elizabeth wondered. This explanation sounded insane.

"Don't be so disrespectful, Linnie. Listen to what I say. No wonder you don't know what you're doing with your life. You do not look and listen, when everything is there."

Madrid had left Henry with a few important matters to solve, only he could not solve them all by himself. He needed the support of some of his foreign colleagues, but in Madrid they had not yet come across as very eager. More action was needed to draw them over the line.

Perhaps he could invite them over. The privilege would surely flatter them, even if they knew it was for a reason. But before he could do so, he would have to think hard on what exactly he wanted them to do or say. He called a few people for advice.

The lights were on till late in the Prime Minister's sitting room that night.

Howard had received a tabloid that he thought might be of importance to the Prime Minister. He took it to him the following morning. "Look at this, My Lord. George will be the new King."

"George. That nitwit?" Lord Setchley scoffed.

"I'm not personally acquainted with him." However, Howard thought he might agree with this description.

"Why are you showing me this, Howard?"

"Perhaps you know people who might be interested in knowing what the result of a certain action would be."

"What I am interested in is what you mean precisely." Howard-speak was always ambiguous and hard to follow. After two years of exchanging ambiguous words and looks with the Queen Lord Setchley was understandably rather frustrated by that sort of thing now that it had turned into a mess and he wished to hear plain words and clear sentences.

"We had previously ascertained that I am aware of your…er…" Howard coughed. "Friendship with Her Majesty. Should this friendship lead to her abdication, My Lord, she will be succeeded by George. It doesn't seem very desirable."

"It's the woman or my job then, according to you," Lord Setchley concluded. "Give me that article." He had only read the headlines so far. "Who decided that this George is next in line?"

"His parents had him first."

"Abilities don't come into this sort of thing, do they?" He sighed and began to read the article. While most of it was about George, there were also some passages about Elizabeth and that was what he was most interested in. He read those three times. "Howard…?"

Howard had begun to do his work in the adjoining room. He returned when he heard his name being called. "Yes, My Lord?"

"Do you think this is true?"

Howard could guess what he meant. "It's a tabloid. It's hardly respectable."

"But this part. About her…her…er…"

"Her not being able to have children?"

"Yes."

"I can't say, My Lord. But if you asked me --"

"That's what I'm doing," Lord Setchley interrupted sharply. Could he just have the answer, please?

"I would say…no. It's too dramatic an explanation for why she hasn't married. People don't buy that thing to read about pathetic losers who haven't got married at age -- how old is she? -- people buy that to read sad and dramatic stories." Howard glanced at him slyly. "Would this in any way influence your decision?"

"What decision?"

"To choose her or your job."

Lord Setchley looked appalled at the insensitivity. "This will have nothing to do with it. I hope it's not true, but that's for another reason. I just don't want her to feel any pain." He wished she was there so he could ask her and possibly do something about it, but every time he wanted to talk to her he remembered that she would probably not want to talk to him right now. He bent his head, trying to see some significance in her behaviour towards the children. The poor girl!

Howard watched him silently for a minute and then left the room. The Prime Minister had it bad, very bad.

Mary had now talked to both of them and she hoped they would keep her informed, which they probably would not do. Adults never remembered there were children who were interested and who wished to be informed about what they did. It made her think of her little brothers and she called David. He was only ten, but he might have been thinking about this unbeknownst to anyone.

"Have you heard from Henry?" she asked.

David was eating something and he spoke indistinctly. "Yeah, he pook uth poo thee Harry Popper."

"What?"

He swallowed audibly. "He took us to see Harry Potter."

"When?" Henry had not told her that.

"Pfffooo…" David could not remember that right away. "Saturday."

He had come to talk about other matters with her on Sunday, which must be why he had not mentioned this at all, Mary guessed. Still, she would have liked to know. "Did he say anything?"

"He said hello and bye and then some stuff in between," he summarised.

"Have you ever wondered what would happen if Henry got married?" Maybe Henry had talked about it to the boys, although that seemed unlikely given his gloomy state yesterday.

"He probably wouldn't have time to take us to Harry Potter ever again," David answered promptly. "He said he probably wouldn't have time to take us for a second time, because of work, so if he got married, he certainly wouldn't have time."

"You'd get a mother who would be able to take you." She tried to gauge his enthusiasm.

"An evil stepmother."

"What if she wasn't evil?"

"Of course she'd be evil. John and I would be mean to her. We'd put spiders in her neck." He chuckled at the prospect.

"Even if she took you to Harry Potter again?"

"Maybe not if she took us twice," David relented.

"Why have you invited the Queen?" asked one of the foreign politicians meeting the Prime Minister for an informal dinner at his residence. He had been expecting an all-men chat where they could talk freely. Queens were people who would expect a formal conversation. Besides, queens did not know anything. They were merely an archaic remnant of former times. He was none too pleased to hear they were waiting for one to arrive.

"Our political system requires it," Lord Setchley replied. That was nonsense, of course, if it concerned an informal dinner party such as this one. He had invited her because she was the joint ruler and it was only fair to let her in on this. Besides, he missed her and he wanted to see her again.

"Does it? Can't that be changed?" the man frowned. He came from a republic and did not know what to think of queens.

"Why, she's better trained than all of us put together. She's been trained from birth." Lord Setchley heard something downstairs. "I believe she has arrived. Excuse me for a moment." He stepped out to greet his last visitor. The soft light in the hall made her look much younger than she actually was and he felt a sharp pang inside when he realised there was nothing he could do. He would always have a soft spot for her and at the moment that spot was still extremely soft.

In the company of strangers they had to behave and tonight they would have to put their differences aside for the sake of the country. He shook the cold hand she hesitantly extended to him. It was if that touch made all of his reservations about her disappear. Whatever he had been thinking and fearing, he could not remember that now. He only felt happy to see her, especially when he saw her face begin to relax. "I have some gentlemen here who are very suspicious of queens," he whispered. And they would be even more suspicious if they saw her in that close-fitting brown combination. "I should turn on a few more lights."

Elizabeth looked a little puzzled. She had expected him to act colder and more distant. Instead, he was his old self as if nothing had happened. She was glad, though. She had not been looking forward to an evening full of tension. "Why?" He had a nice warm hand, but propriety of course dictated that he drop hers as soon as the appropriate length of time for a handshake had passed. There were still other people hovering in the background -- his staff, her staff. Despite her resolutions, she was beginning to feel herself crumble again. Henry had that effect on her. It had been so easy to resolve to stay strong when she had been at home, but now that she was here and he was giving her those merry whispers again, it was becoming very hard indeed. She supposed he was not doing it with the purpose to unbalance her. It was just his nature and she actually liked it. She could never be angry with him for being like that. Some more resolve went out the window with that realisation, she thought in resignation.

"You look young in the dark."

She shot him a reproachful look, but she was not offended. "Prime Minister! Why is it so bad that my wrinkles aren't showing right now?" What was she doing? She was flirting with him as if flirting and kissing had not gone wrong once before, but she could not help herself. It was impossible to stay cool. She had succeeded once, but she had not looked at him then. Now she had to and she could not help but notice once again that he was devilishly handsome. She could be cool with devilishly handsome men, she thought illogically, so that was not what was making her flirt. No, that was that look in his eyes, that hint of something that invited her to flirt in order to see just what it was.

He could barely suppress a smile. "Older people are taken more seriously." And some women with wrinkles were damn attractive, he added to himself. Notably the one standing before him right now. "Not that I don't take fifteen-year-olds seriously, but you know what I mean." He did not know why he said that. This was neither the time nor the place to become personal. He had guests upstairs.

"You'd better mind your words. I know what you mean, but other people might easily misconstrue that remark if they didn't know your niece," Elizabeth warned him. She preceded him up the stairs when he gestured invitingly. "But, I am willing to stay a little bit longer to discuss your niece and her --" she said over her shoulder and caught him staring at her legs. "…er…opinions." His niece had obviously talked to him and they certainly needed to discuss that sometime. Maybe it was a bad idea to stay longer -- unless he did not like her legs.

"Er…yes." His eyes travelled upwards reluctantly.

She smiled politely and moved aside. "Would you please lead the way, Prime Minister?" She was a firm believer in equal opportunities.

His expression was too innocent. "But there is nothing to be seen, Your Majesty."

"Let me be the judge of that." He was pretty interesting to look at. Certainly without the suit, but the suit looked great on him as well.

"And you were going to stay a little bit longer, you said?" he asked hopefully, moving past her.

"Given our present situation I do not think it would be wise," Elizabeth replied after she had heard the very distant sound of an alarm bell going off in her mind. This was Brazil all over again.

Henry glanced down. All the staff had disappeared from the hall and they were alone, save for the open door to his sitting room upstairs. "This night is starting off on the wrong note. It's so different from what I had expected. Would you care to step into the side room to sort things out before we continue on to my other guests?" He was afraid his attention would be completely focused on her and not on his guests.

Elizabeth gaped. "The side room?" She could hazard a guess. "Henry!" This was not the right occasion.

"Well, I wouldn't mind doing it here, but what if one of my guests stepped out? Come on, Linnie," he pleaded softly.

She cast down her eyes and continued up the stairs, pausing at the top. Her heart raced as if climbing the stairs had been a real effort. This was stupid, stupid, stupid, but he was right -- they had to sort things out before they continued. "Where's your side room?" He smiled widely and gestured at a door. He opened it for her and showed her in. Elizabeth stood inside and shook her head. "What do you want?" she asked a little fearfully. It was a pretty small side room and not much could be done in there, not that she was willing to participate in anything indecent -- or was she? What did he have in mind?

"I want to hear you're not angry with me."

"Is that all?" She could hardly believe it. She must have a dirty mind and she blushed.

He decided to be bold. "I'm sorry for what I said to you. I know you love me. That's not what I want to hear. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether you're upset with me."

"No. You?" It had been unusual to hear him phrase things so directly and it did not really register yet, used as they were to vagueness. She felt nervous.

"No." He was relieved by her answer, but he studied her face closely to see if his bold guess had been correct. Did she really love him?

"Good." Elizabeth waved her hands nervously when she realised what he had just said. He knew she loved him. Did she? She did. Did he love her? He was not upset with her at any rate. Maybe he did. "How can we behave in front of your guests?" That was going to be impossible now. She would be smiling stupidly all the time if he spoke to her and even if he did not.

"Yes, that's going to be a problem," he agreed, his face breaking into a slow smile. That was his answer. Only love could make this woman misbehave. She loved him. "I don't know."

She thought about it as she gazed back at him, feeling very strange. She wondered if her muscles could keep up this stupid grin the entire evening. "Well, Henry. I'd rather have you kiss me now than have you look as if you might want to all evening. It's bound to be noticeable." That was not only common sense. In fact, her words were motivated by a great lack of common sense as well. What was she thinking of, inviting him to kiss her?

He pulled her into his arms before she could take that back. He could see she was already beginning to regret speaking her mind. It had been nothing worth regretting. "No, I'll just hold you."

"But my perfume…" Elizabeth realised. She loved just to be held as well.

"I like it," he answered with his eyes closed. He would be able to feel and smell her forever. "I love you, Linnie. You worry about the stupidest things." Who would care about perfume?

"It's going to be all over your clothes," she said worriedly. Anyone noticing that would know they had embraced. And he loved her! But she could not just go and abandon all reason just because of that, could she? She struggled valiantly.

Henry opened an eye as he considered that problem. "I don't usually embrace men, so how could they possibly notice I smell like a woman? I'm far more worried by the possibility that one of them might embrace you and find out you smell like a man, because then they'd wonder what you've been doing."

"I never let politicians embrace me."

"Don't you." She was embracing one now and this was not the first time either. He turned his head a little so that their lips brushed against each other. Then he pulled away. "I'll be able to manage now. Thank you." They needed some sense now. She had enough presence of mind for both of them, which was good, but if he had not known she loved him, he would have been seriously worried when she had only been concerned about his perfume after he had just told her he loved her. "Linnie, you did hear me say I love you, didn't you?" he asked, just to be sure. He would like for the message to have got through.

"Yes, I did. I'll get back to you about that when your guests have left." She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. "Promise."

"You're a damn frustrating woman."

There was one other important thing on Elizabeth's mind. "Henry, what shall I call you in there?" She looked worried. Calling him Henry would perhaps sound suspicious. She did not really know how other queens treated their politicians. Maybe she should have researched that first.

"Whatever you like, Elizabeth." Henry's eyes gleamed. "I do like it when you call me Prime Minister."

"They were eating out of your hand!" The Prime Minister was delighted. "How did you do that?" The evening had been a great success, as far as he could judge the situation. They had managed to convince his foreign colleagues to take certain very important decisions they had been hesitating about.

"The same way I used to be able to make you eat out of my hand," the Queen replied. She yawned and leant back in the lazy chair she was sitting in. Did she really have to get into that cold car soon? This was far more comfortable.

Henry sat down and rested his head on her knees. "I still eat out of your hand."

"Henry, please don't give me the puppy dog routine," she asked. She would nearly stretch out her hand to pet him.

"We need to talk. We need to sort out how we ever got into this mess and how we could get out of it."

"Prime Minister, you don't mean to tell me that you're unaware of the fact that many women find you attractive?" she asked lazily. "If anyone got anyone into this mess, it was you."

"Er…" Henry wondered what he could reply that did not sound conceited. "Your Majesty, I'm probably just as unaware or aware of this, as you are of the fact that you're equally attractive. But I fell for your brains, of course."

She frowned at him teasingly. "And you were always such an honest man."

"Move over." He wriggled himself next to her in the lazy chair. "The problem is that we fell in love when we shouldn't have."

"Everyone should fall in love." She could only speak happily. This was marvellous, to be sitting like this with Henry.

"But not with the PM if they happen to be the Queen."

"There's no rule for that, even though I grant you that it's a fairly unusual occurrence. Or it could just be that none of my colleagues dare to admit it."

"So…" said Henry. He was all for settling the matter once and for all.

"I don't know. I haven't resolved anything yet. Do you love me better than your job?" That was still the main problem and it was not an easy one.

"I could ask you the same thing," he said evasively.

"With the difference that you may easily be replaced," she reminded him. "Who will replace me if I resign?"

"George, most likely."

"I don't want George."

These late nights were becoming a habit this week, Henry reflected as he helped Elizabeth into her coat, but he knew it could not be any different. He had not asked her if she had really never got married because she could not have children, because it had seemed callous to bring up something painful when she was relatively happy and relaxed -- there was always that coolness she could not quite get rid of.

She had not brought the matter up either and why should she? She would not be aware that he had read that article. Nor had they agreed to get married yet, so there had not been any reason for them to discuss it.

Maybe if he asked she would even wonder why he wanted to know. She might think he believed it mattered, when he did not. He only wanted to say it did not matter and yet he was thinking about it too much. Perhaps it did matter. Suppose she would keep a distance because she was afraid he would like her to have a child?

Henry shook off these thoughts. And he had said Elizabeth worried about the stupidest things! He was running ahead of himself. Before he started thinking about problems that came with a marriage he would first have to sort out the problems that came with loving someone he was not expected to love.

They were still no closer to a real solution when Elizabeth left, but considering that breakfast news would soon start, she had thought it best to leave and get some sleep, even though they had been sitting quite cosily. The frosty air outside woke her up a little and she dug her hands deeply into her pockets for the few seconds that it took her chauffeur to open the car for her.

He stifled a yawn and she realised he had been waiting the entire time, probably cursing her because he wanted to go home. He had every reason to curse her. "Sorry I'm late," she said. This was the first time she had ever excused herself to a chauffeur, so it was no wonder he looked stunned. "But the PM and I --"

"No need to excuse yourself, Madam," the chauffeur said hastily.

"We could not come to an agreement about a matter of great importance." She leant back and looked at the dark city outside. Either there were no people in these buildings or they were fast asleep, as they should be. Only the wicked got no sleep. The wicked…had only been talking this time, but still…they were wicked…

But even wicked women could fall asleep if they were tired enough.

"Madam!" Her blissful slumber was rudely terminated by the voice of the chauffeur.

Before she opened her eyes she could already feel the cold air coming into the car. He was holding the door open for her to get out. She blinked. "Have you been standing there long?" she asked, afraid that she had kept him waiting another time. As she stumbled out of the car, she tried to look at her watch.

"No, Madam." The chauffeur saved her from falling over.

"Oh God," Elizabeth muttered in embarrassment. She was glad it was dark so no people with cameras would be around to witness this farce. "I have not been drinking." What would the man be thinking?

She was glad to reach her bed, finally, and she did not even bother to change out of her clothes.

Theodora arrived at work a few hours later. At this time Elizabeth was usually having breakfast, but a brief chat with the culinary staff told her they had not yet received the sign to prepare it. She knew Elizabeth had dined at Henry's residence the night before. Had she even come home? It was fairly unthinkable that the Queen should stay away for the night unannounced, especially to stay with a man, but one could never be completely certain. Just because it had not happened before did not mean it could never happen, certainly not if she had been dining with Henry.

A trip into Her Majesty's personal apartments would provide the answer to the question whether she had arrived home. She found Elizabeth asleep in her bed, albeit fully clothed. The brown sleeve sticking out from under the covers did definitely not belong to a night gown. Theodora did not know if it relieved her to find Elizabeth at home -- the unprofessional side of her would have liked it if her friend had stayed with Henry.

Theodora deduced that while Elizabeth had come home, she had come home very late and had been too tired to change. It was best not to wake her yet. With a shake of her head she pulled the covers back far enough to undress her friend. She collected the clothes and hung them over her arm. Her nose caught a whiff of some distinctly male perfume and she sniffed the collar of the blouse. Yes. Her nose had not deceived her. Whatever Elizabeth had been doing, she had definitely been in close contact with a man. It had better be Henry.

She carried the clothes out of the room, telling the maid that no attention was required for another few hours. To pass the time she went to talk to the old lady, the Queen Mother, who would be knitting in her usual spot.

"Hello Teddy."

"Hello Aunt Sophia." The Queen Mother was not her aunt, merely an old friend of her mother's, but Theodora had always called her Aunt Sophia.

"Is Linnie still asleep?" It sounded as if she already knew the answer would be yes.

"Yes, I just checked on her."

"She came home at five o'clock."

"How do you know?" Theodora was surprised. Nobody else had been able to tell her that.

"I was awake. I saw her arrive. Was she drunk?"

"No, she wasn't drunk." Elizabeth had not smelled of alcohol, only of a man's perfume, but she did not mention that. Elizabeth's mother was eighty. She might have problems with such information.

"He doesn't like me, you know," Elizabeth's mother remarked.

"Who doesn't?" Theodora looked startled, although she had no doubt about which man she was talking about. There was only one man who could be connected to their previous conversation. It was just that the Queen Mother had taken an awfully big leap over the intermediate steps that should have led to this remark -- either that or she could read minds.

"The Prime Minister. I don't know why. I hardly know him and I don't dislike him at all."

Only then did Theodora notice what Sophia was knitting. "Baby socks, Aunt Sophia?" she asked with her eyebrows raised. The only baby in the extended family she knew was 'Second Cousin' Maude's, but she doubted that Maude, nouveau riche extra-ordinaire, would let her baby wear home-made socks. Perhaps it would make a difference if they had been knitted by the Queen Mother.

"Well, I can only do it when Linnie is still asleep," Sophia said as if this was an explanation. "She'd be upset and she wouldn't understand at all."

Yes, Linnie would definitely be upset if she saw her mother knit baby socks for Maude. Theodora nodded in understanding.

"I had some yellow left over from her cardigan, you know. She loves that cardigan."

Theodora did not love the cardigan, so she smiled politely and poured herself some tea.

When Elizabeth woke up again it was lunchtime and someone had undressed her down to her underwear. Her clothes were gone. Presumably they were being washed. She did not have to worry too much about them. They were always washed and returned by the invisible people.

A new outfit was already waiting for her, but she would take a shower first. As she passed a mirror, she stopped to study her figure. The maids had better not compare it to the bikini picture. Something like that would never occur to anyone who saw her in the dress that hung waiting. It was rather voluminous, even for a ball gown.

After her bath she drank tea, dressed in a bathrobe. She knew the routine today. Soon the decorators would come to turn her into a beautiful woman. She mockingly called them the decorators, because if it had been up to her she would never use them.

The hairdresser came at the same time as the toast. Elizabeth was happier with the latter, though the hairdresser was not as bad as the make-up people. She disliked people messing with her face and she never saw a difference afterwards.

But her eyes gleamed when she finally beheld herself in the mirror, complete with jewellery and gloves. Yes, she would much rather go like this. It was only a pity that it took them all so long. She was hungry again. But then doubt struck. Should it not be toned down? She looked far too attractive. Suppose the public was stupid enough to believe she had been at the Prime Minister's place dressed like this? No, she needed not fear. In all likelihood she would undo any attractiveness by stumbling out of a car again.

There was nothing spontaneous about a ball that was attended by the Queen. The guest list was known in advance and her dancing partners were chosen and approved of days before the event. The opportunities for embarrassment were thus restricted, for what would one do if the Queen were asked to dance by someone she absolutely did not want to dance with?

She usually danced with the most important men at the ball -- they expected to be shown this courtesy. Quite often they were also over sixty. This time, she was led to the dance floor by a man who was only about fifty.

When they were safely dancing, he spoke to her. "I'm Henry's brother-in-law, Tom."

Elizabeth tightened the loose hold she had on him and her eyes widened. "You are?"

"Yes. I'm married to his sister." Tom smiled at her pleasantly, as if he was not telling her anything shocking at all. "He was at our house last week."

"I suppose he told you."

He was a bit surprised by that frightened look in her brown eyes. "Yes, he did."

She was unable to meet his eyes. "Oh. And what do you think?"

To his surprise she seemed a bit afraid of what he might think. She was looking away and it gave him the opportunity to study her features. From this short distance he could see that, except for a little around the eyes, she was wearing hardly any make-up. She would be looking the same without, he assumed, and that would be quite attractive. He had not thought much of her when he had studied that picture and before that time he had not looked at her pictures all that well. Today her dress was better than the one in the picture. Perhaps Henry did have taste after all, but her personality remained to be judged. Tom noted that she was not at all bitchy and he had been expecting that a little. He could usually hear it in the voice, but hers was pleasant and rather sweet, he would say. More points to Henry. "I hope you and Henry can work this out."

An uncertain smile appeared on her face as she briefly glanced at him. "You knew you'd be dancing with me. You have been preparing this conversation for days." The advantage was all on his side. He would not be feeling overwhelmed by the sudden revelation he was dancing with his possible sister-in-law.

"I have," he said with a sparkle in his eyes. She had a sense of humour.

"I have not, obviously."

"From which I can only conclude that you never tell Henry whom you'll be dancing with." Otherwise she would have known who he was. Henry would have told her.

"That's right."

"When we last saw him he was rather despondent," Tom said carefully. Elizabeth seemed a lot less despondent to him. Either something had changed or she was simply not as affected as Henry was.

"I know. We were discussing things until five this morning," she said softly, looking around to make sure nobody could hear her. "He had some foreign politicians over that we had to talk to, but I had to stay a bit longer to talk it over, you understand," she whispered. "It doesn't mean things are sorted, but we've defined our standpoints and we're now in an impasse."

"You don't seem to mind much."

Something lit up her entire face. "Not yet. What he said will satisfy me today. Tomorrow I might despair again."

Tom had introduced her to Amanda after the dance. His instructions had been that he had to make sure the Queen was not left alone for a second until he had made sure she was spoken to by someone else, preferably the most important person at the ball, but he was important enough to keep others at bay. It had seemed rather strange to him that none of these arrangements actually allowed Elizabeth any freedom of choice, but perhaps he was too lowly to have been involved in a consultation of her wishes. The whole night appeared to be planned thoroughly and with each player sticking to the script.

"I can deviate from the programme, yes," Elizabeth smiled in response to their question. "You were my last scheduled dance. Didn't they tell you I had to be entertained afterwards?" She was glad that someone had broken the routine. It would get them into some trouble, possibly, but she would tell them it would not have come from her.

"Can I get you both anything to drink?" Tom asked. They both asked for something non-alcoholic and he stepped away to get it. He believed it was alright to leave the ladies alone for a few seconds. He could trust his wife to handle this properly.

"He was ill this week," Amanda confessed. "But I told him he must go, because he'd dance with you and quite frankly, we were immensely curious. We had seen you at the funeral, but we didn't know about you and Henry then, so we didn't really pay attention."

Elizabeth noticed that Amanda looked a little like Henry. It was reassuring somehow to see something familiar, as if he was here with her. She was fascinated. Henry would have spoken his mind just like that, in the same tone, with the same smile.

"Tom will have told you that we spoke to Henry last week," Amanda said confidentially. "How are things at the moment?"

It was very clear what sort of things she was referring to, but Elizabeth only saw the attention as positive. This was someone who wished things would go well, or perhaps she gave Amanda the benefit of the doubt because she was Henry's sister. "Better. Not solved, though."

"Better is a good start."

"I'd rather have a good ending. Wouldn't anyone suspect me if I talked to you?" Elizabeth asked hesitantly.

Amanda did not think so. "Who would know I'm Henry's sister? Do you only speak to sisters of people you're involved with?" she said with a teasing smile. Surprisingly, it was rather easy to talk to Elizabeth. She did not object to answering and she kept a polite little smile on her face, whatever she said, as if she was either apologising or mocking herself. Amanda forgave Elizabeth her short answer. She could not expect her to give a detailed analysis of her relationship with Henry already.

"Not so loud!" Elizabeth begged anxiously, but with the standard apologetic smile. "I'm never involved with anyone."

"Never?" Amanda raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Not even secretly?"

"God, no. Nothing I do is ever a secret. I hope I managed to conceal from everybody that I came home at five o'clock this morning, but it would be amazing if I did. I can't exactly spend a night with anyone without people noticing." She had never minded that much.

"Not even half a night with Henry?"

Elizabeth nervously touched her necklace and straightened it, although it hung perfectly straight. "I made him stand in front of the window at regular intervals so it wouldn't appear that we were…er…" She smiled again faintly, but it did not look sincere.

Amanda detected a blush on Elizabeth's cheeks. Appearances were everything, it seemed. Even now she was trying to appear composed when she was not. Before she could say anything about it, Tom returned with the drinks and sat down. "I apologise if my prior knowledge took you by surprise," he said.

"That's alright. Everyone has prior knowledge about me. I'm quite used to it."

"But it can't be nice," Amanda remarked.

"Oh," Elizabeth shrugged. "It doesn't throw me off balance anymore. I can keep my face under control quite well and think quickly, I think. Unless…" Here her eyes twinkled a little. "It's knowledge of a specific nature." Her hand was still on her necklace and suddenly her expression changed to one of shock. "My necklace is still at Henry's house!"

Henry had found the necklace and he had driven it to the palace after having stared at it for a few minutes. It was probably worth thousands and she might be worried about it. He did not trust anyone else to take good care of it.

"She's not home," the Queen Mother said gleefully, guarding the fortress with her pointy needles. She was knitting something yellow. "Didn't she tell you?"

Henry felt the barb. No, Elizabeth had not told him. "Why do you presume I came to see her?"

"You dislike me, dear boy. You couldn't have come to see me."

She knew how to make him feel like a schoolboy. "I…er…" Henry dug in his pockets. "I came to bring this." He held out the necklace.

"Is that a gift?" The Queen Mother peered at it over her spectacles. "Why haven't you wrapped it?"

"It's not a gift. She left this --"

"She?"

He inhaled and suppressed an irritated sigh. "Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth left this at my house."

"Sit down. Where in your house did she leave this?" Elizabeth's mother took the valuable necklace and carelessly deposited in one of the overflowing pockets of her pink cardigan. A great assortment of rubbish was in there already.

Henry stared at it in apprehension. The woman was going senile. She would never remember in which pocket she had put it, if she remembered taking it at all. "In my dining room." He did not understand why she asked.

"Your dining room?"

"You might not recall that she came to dine with me last night. Her necklace kept beating against her soup bowl. She took it off."

"Impossible," the Queen Mother decreed. "My Elizabeth does not eat like a peasant." She continued knitting stoically. The second yellow baby sock was nearly finished.

Henry shot heaven a pleading look. He was sure Elizabeth could eat like a proper lady in her mother's presence, but it was a fact that last night her necklace had been in danger of dipping into the soup, for one reason or another. He had not blamed it on a peasant-like posture, but rather on the length of the necklace.

"If the necklace was indeed beating against anything, it was not the soup bowl."

"If you say so!" he exclaimed, eager to end the discussion.

"Of course. Elizabeth came home at five o'clock this morning," she revealed to him.

"Probably, yes." She had left his house at five to five and traffic was light in the early morning.

"I shall not tolerate such behaviour."

"She's an adult," he protested. This was preposterous. Elizabeth should be free to come and go as she pleased.

"I was talking about you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You. I did not foresee this forty years ago. Here, hold this for me while I show you something." She gave him the knitting pens.

Henry stared at what he had been given -- a yellow baby sock. It was the same colour as Elizabeth's cardigan. He watched as the Queen Mother returned with an old photo album. He did not see what this had to do with him. Perhaps it was standard procedure for visitors.

"This was Elizabeth," she said, showing him a black and white picture of a tiny baby. "We were so happy with her. We'd given up all hope because I was forty, you see."

To Henry all babies in black and white pictures looked the same. He certainly did not recognise Elizabeth. He did not even recognise her mother. "What does this have to do with --"

"Be quiet! I will not have you ruin my daughter."

"Am I trying to?"

"I know what you're up to with your irresponsible behaviour. I'm keeping a close eye on you. You shall do as I say. One, you must make it possible for Elizabeth to get married without asking parliament for permission. Two --"

Henry interrupted. "How will this prevent her ruin?" He should think it would ruin her more easily.

"Ignorant boy!" she scolded him. "Trust in me. Two, you shall make sure that the man who gets my daughter pregnant will marry her."

He stared at her. "But…" Elizabeth could not get pregnant. Her mother obviously did not know that.

"You shall make sure that the man who gets my daughter pregnant will marry her. Promise me that."

"I promise, but I thought…"

"I know what you're thinking and that is very dangerous indeed. He shall marry her. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Henry said reluctantly. It would kill the old woman if he told her the truth and he was not that cruel, so he said nothing.

"Then we understand each other, Livius?" The Queen Mother looked at him piercingly.

"Yes, Madam," he answered, but he was not entirely sure of it. He wished she would not call him Livius, but he supposed that was exactly why she was doing it. Elizabeth had not got that habit from a stranger.

"And you will keep an eye on Elizabeth. As soon as she betrays signs of being pregnant, you will take the appropriate action."

Well, that would be easy, considering she would never get pregnant. He could easily promise to take action. "Yes, Madam."

Her sharp gaze did not miss a thing. "Do not take this promise lightly, Livius. The Royal Family's existence depends on it."

There was one thing he certainly did not understand and that was why Elizabeth could not do this herself, but since there would be no symptoms to watch out for, this was a relatively academic question and he did not ask it.

Part Two Continued...
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