Chapter 2 #2
Alex was sitting on the edge of Frank's bed, smoothing his hair back from his forehead while he protested that he wasn't tired.
He was clearly exhausted, his eyes heavy-lidded, his voice taking on the high, strained quality it always got when he was fighting sleep.
Matilda was already tucked in, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and even, one hand resting on the ear of a stuffed rabbit.
"Mummy Erin!" Frank sat bolt upright. "Tell Mummy Alex I'm not tired."
"You look knackered, mate," Erin said, and Frank's face crumpled into outrage.
"I'm not."
"He's been yawning for twenty minutes," Alex said.
She looked up at Erin and smiled, and even after a decade of marriage, that smile could still crack something open in Erin's chest. The tension from the garden party was there in the tightness around Alex's eyes, the slight strain at the corners of her mouth.
But the smile was real. It was the smile she kept for this room, these children, this life they'd built.
Erin crossed the room and bent to press a kiss to the top of Frank's head. He smelled of soap and toothpaste and the faintest trace of grass from the garden. "Close your eyes, Frank. The sooner you sleep, the sooner it's morning."
"Morning is ages away."
"It'll come faster if you stop talking."
Frank considered this logic, found no holes in it, and lay back down with the aggrieved sigh of someone conceding a battle he fully intended to win next time. Erin tucked the duvet around him and gave the Lego on his pillow a pointed look, which Frank returned with an expression of pure innocence.
"Florence," Alex said softly, turning to the third bed. "Time to settle."
Florence was sitting cross-legged on her duvet, still in her pyjamas, her braid loosened from the day into soft waves around her face.
She didn't look tired. She looked electric.
Her blue eyes were bright in the lamplight and she was practically vibrating with a suppressed energy that Erin recognised immediately, because she'd felt it herself before every mission, every operation, every moment when something exciting was about to happen and your body knew it before your mind caught up.
"I can't sleep yet," Florence said. "I'm too excited."
"What's got you buzzing?" Erin sat on the edge of the bed, and Florence's legs uncrossed and stretched out so her feet rested against Erin's thigh. A small, automatic gesture of closeness that Florence would have been mortified by if anyone outside this room had witnessed it.
"The weekend! We're going to the estate and Auntie Vic said she'd take me out on the bridle path and we can go through the woods jump some logs and there's a stream where the horses like to paddle and drink and Percy hasn't been out properly in ages and Auntie Vic said if I'm good she'll let me try a canter on the long field—"
"Breathe, Flo."
Florence gulped in air and carried on. "—and she said she'll be riding Thompson because Excelsior died years ago and Thompson is massive but Auntie Vic says she can ride anything and I believe her because she was in the Olympics and—"
"I know," Erin said, grinning. "I've seen the medal. She makes everyone look at it."
"It's a gold medal, Mummy Erin. You'd make people look at it too."
"Fair point."
Alex caught Erin's eye across the room and the look they shared was so full of love and amusement and that bone-deep gratitude for their children that Erin had to look away or risk doing something embarrassing like tearing up.
Florence at eight was already the most beautiful blend of both of them: Alex's beauty and composure, but Erin's intensity, that crackling energy that ran beneath the surface like current through a wire.
"One ride," Erin said, holding up a finger. "Saturday morning. Auntie Vic will take you. Officer Jennings will be with you. You stay on the path, you listen to Vic, and if she says turn back, you turn back. Deal?"
Florence stuck out her hand. "Deal."
Erin shook it solemnly. Florence's hand was small and warm and her grip was surprisingly firm. She pumped Erin's hand twice, the way she'd seen people do on the news, and Erin had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep a straight face.
"Now lie down," Erin said. "Both eyes shut."
Florence wriggled down beneath the covers.
Erin pulled the duvet up to her chin and smoothed the hair from her forehead, the way she had done every night since Florence was a newborn and Erin had sat beside her incubator in the NICU, watching the monitors, counting breaths.
Florence had been so small then. Three pounds two ounces.
Erin could have held her in one hand. The doctors had told them to prepare for the worst and Erin had refused.
She had sat in that plastic chair for six weeks and told Princess Florence, Florence Kennedy, through the glass, that she was going to be just fine.
That her mums were here. That they weren't going anywhere.
"Mummy Erin?"
Florence's voice was quieter now, the excitement draining out of it and leaving something else behind. Something careful.
"Yes, love?"
Florence picked at the edge of her duvet. Her eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past Erin's shoulder. "Grandmama says some Queens don't last."
The room went very still.
Erin heard Alex's breath catch, a small, sharp intake that she covered by pressing her lips together. From across the room, Erin could feel her wife's whole body go rigid, that particular frozen quality Alex got when something hit a nerve she couldn't protect.
"When did Grandmama say that?" Erin kept her voice light. Easy. As though Florence had asked about the weather.
"Today. At the party. When you were getting drinks.
" Florence's fingers pleated the duvet hem.
"She said it to the lady with the big hat.
She said some Queens are meant to rule and some are just keeping the seat warm.
And then she looked at me and said, 'Your mummy is very brave, but brave isn't always enough. '"
Erin's hands went still on the duvet. Something hot and dark rose in her chest, a rage so pure it was almost calm.
She could feel it spreading through her body like a slow fire, settling in her shoulders, her hands, her jaw.
Cecilia had said that. To Florence. To their eight-year-old daughter, who listened at doorways and watched faces and understood too much.
She glanced at Alex. Her wife's face was white.
Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers interlocked, knuckles bloodless.
She was staring at Florence with an expression that Erin recognised, the one that meant she was fighting to keep her composure because the alternative was to fall apart, and she would not fall apart in front of her children.
"Florence." Erin leaned forward and cupped her daughter's face in both hands.
Florence's cheeks were warm and soft and her blue eyes, so like Alex's, searched Erin's face with that old, wary look that no eight-year-old should possess.
"Listen to me. Your mummy is the Queen. Not because someone is keeping a seat warm, not because she's waiting for someone better.
Because she earned it. Because she works harder than anyone I've ever known, and she loves this country, and she loves you and Frank and Matilda more than anything in the world. And she will be Queen of this country for very many years to come.”
Florence's eyes glistened. "But Grandmama said—"
"Grandmama says a lot of things, and not all of them are true.
" Erin's voice was low and steady, and she was aware of Alex behind her, silent, listening, needing to hear this too.
"Some people say things to make themselves feel bigger.
That's not your problem to carry. Your only job right now is to be eight and ride ponies and read your book and let us worry about the rest. Yeah? "
Florence nodded slowly.
"And I promise you." Erin bent and pressed her lips to Florence's forehead, holding the kiss, breathing in the clean smell of her daughter's hair. "I will always, always keep you safe. No matter what."
Florence's arms came up and wrapped around Erin's neck, tight and fierce, and Erin held her back just as tightly.
Over Florence's shoulder, she looked at Alex.
Her wife's eyes were bright with unshed tears, her jaw set, her hands still clenched in her lap.
The look they shared was not one they could have translated into words.
It held fury and love and fear and the particular, ferocious resolve of two women who had fought for every inch of the life they'd built and would burn the world down before they let anyone take it from them.
Erin eased Florence back onto the pillow. "Sleep now. Big weekend coming."
Florence closed her eyes. Within minutes, her breathing deepened and evened out, her face losing that careful, watchful quality and softening into the simple peace of a sleeping child. Frank was already snoring softly. Matilda hadn't stirred.
Erin stood and crossed to Alex. She took her wife's hand and led her out of the room, pulling the door closed with a quiet click.
In the corridor, beneath the soft light of the wall sconces and the faint smell of lilies, Alex sagged against her.
Erin caught her, one arm around her waist, and held her upright.
"She said that to Florence." Alex's voice was barely audible. "To our daughter."
"I know."
"She looked at Florence and told her I'm not enough."
Erin turned Alex to face her. She put her hands on her wife's shoulders and ducked her head until their eyes were level.
Alex's blue eyes were swimming, the tears she'd held back in the bedroom close to spilling.
She was trembling slightly. The composure that held her together in front of the world was peeling away, layer by layer, the way it always did when it was just the two of them.
"You are enough," Erin said. "You are more than enough. Cecilia is a bitter, jealous woman who lost her power and can't stand watching you succeed. That is not a reflection of you. That is a reflection of her."
Alex pressed her forehead against Erin's collarbone. "I know that. In my head, I know that."
"Then let it in the rest of the way."
They stood like that for a long time. Erin's hand moved to the back of Alex's neck, her fingers threading into the soft hair at her nape, holding her close.
Alex's breathing slowed. The corridor was quiet around them: the distant sound of a television from the staff quarters, the creak of the old building settling, the tick of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall.
"We should get some sleep," Erin said eventually. "Long drive tomorrow."
"Helicopter."
"Same thing."
Alex pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes were still damp but there was a ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "They are absolutely not the same thing."
"Details." Erin brushed her thumb across Alex's cheek, catching a tear that had escaped. "Come on, Mrs Kennedy. Bed."
Alex's hand found hers and held on tightly as they walked down the corridor to their room. The palace was quiet. The children were sleeping. The security plans were solid and the team was in place and everything was exactly as it should be.
But Erin kept hearing Florence's voice in her head, small and careful in the lamplight. Grandmama says some Queens don't last.
And beneath the rage, beneath the love, beneath the steady calm she wore like armour, something cold settled in Erin's gut. The instinct that had kept her alive through fifteen years of close protection. The one that told her, in a voice she'd learned never to ignore, that something was coming.
She tightened her grip on Alex's hand and said nothing.