Chapter 13 #2
Alexandra did know. She hated it with every fibre of her being, but she knew it.
The crown was not just a title. It was a responsibility that extended beyond her own needs, beyond even her need to hold Florence.
If she walked into Latimer Hall and something went wrong, the succession would pass to Frank, who was eight years old, and the country would be thrown into exactly the kind of instability that Arthur wanted.
"There's a compromise," Julia said. "We establish a safe house near the property.
MI5 maintains several in the Surrey area.
Alex, you travel there with the security team and wait.
You'll be minutes from Latimer Hall. The moment Florence is recovered, she's brought directly to you.
You'll be the first thing she sees when she's safe. "
The room held its breath while Alexandra processed this.
Every instinct in her body wanted to refuse.
She was Florence's mother. She should be there when they opened the door.
She should be the one who walked into that room and lifted Florence into her arms and said I'm here, darling, Mummy's here.
The idea of waiting in a different building while her wife did what she could not.
It was a particular kind of agony, the agony of a woman whose duty had always required her to stand back from the things that mattered most.
But Julia was right. She was always right about this. The crown was not optional. It did not bend to personal need, not even need this desperate.
Erin looked at Alexandra. Their eyes met across the table, across the maps and the screens and the analysts, and the conversation that passed between them was silent and complete.
I'll bring her home, Erin's expression said.
I know you will, Alexandra's replied. Be careful, she added, without words.
Always, Erin answered, also without words.
"Agreed," Alexandra said. The word tasted like sacrifice. "I'll go to the safe house. Erin leads the team."
"I want to go with Mummy Erin," Frank said stubbornly. "I can help. I'm not afraid."
"I know you're not afraid, darling. You're the bravest boy I know. But you're going with me because I need you with me. Can you do that? Can you be brave for me at the safe house?"
Frank's face worked through the competing claims of wanting to help and wanting to be needed. The second one won. "Fine. But I'm staying up until Florence is home."
"Deal."
Matilda, still on Vic's hip, pressed her face into Vic's shoulder and said nothing.
Alexandra reached out and squeezed her daughter's hand.
Matilda squeezed back, a small, firm pressure that carried the weight of a child who understood more than she could articulate.
Of the three triplets, Matilda had always been the one who processed inward, who absorbed the emotional temperature of a room and held it quietly in her body.
The gesture said everything her words didn't.
Helena was already coordinating, her fingers moving across her tablet, her voice crisp with instructions to the MI5 team.
"Alpha team approaches from the rear at oh-five-hundred.
Bravo team covers the front. Sergeant Kennedy will be with Alpha.
Safe house Foxglove is fourteen minutes from the property by car.
I'll have it prepared for the Queen's party. "
The room was transforming. The sluggish, watching energy of the past five days was gone, replaced by something sharp and purposeful, the coiled readiness of people who had been waiting for a target and finally had one.
Analysts were printing maps. Officers were on phones.
The monitors were showing the live drone footage of Latimer Hall, its Georgian stone pale in the fading light, its windows dark except for one on the first floor where a lamp was burning behind drawn curtains.
That lamp. That window. Florence was behind those curtains.
Alexandra stared at the image until her eyes burned.
A Georgian country house with a gravel drive and a walled garden and smoke rising from a chimney, looking for all the world like an illustration from a National Trust brochure.
A beautiful house. A terrible prison. Florence was in there.
Her eight-year-old daughter, who was afraid of spiders and loved ponies and said thank you for today every night before bed, was somewhere behind that stone facade.
"We're coming, baby," Alexandra whispered.
Nobody heard her. The room was too loud, too busy, too full of the urgent machinery of rescue.
But she said it anyway, pressing the words into the air like a prayer, because five days of waiting had taught her that prayers were all she had left and she would not stop saying them until Florence was in her arms.
They left the control room as a group and moved through the castle toward the front entrance.
The building was alive with movement: staff carrying bags, officers checking radios, a driver pulling vehicles around to the forecourt.
One of the labradors was barking somewhere, excited by the sudden activity, and Audrey had hauled herself up from her usual spot in the hallway and was watching the commotion with the resigned expression of an elderly dog who had seen too many crises to be impressed by this one.
The castle that had been their refuge and their prison for five days was suddenly a staging ground, and the change hit her the moment she stepped into the corridor.
Alexandra could feel it in the quickened pace of the staff, in the sharpened voices of the security officers, in the way Helena was moving through the corridors with a walkie-talkie pressed to her ear and her stride purposeful and fast. After days of waiting, of watching screens, of holding together by sheer force of will, something was finally happening.
Matilda pressed close to Alexandra's side as they walked.
Her small hand found Alexandra's and held on, and Alexandra could feel the tremor in her daughter's fingers, not fear, but the sympathetic vibration of a child who felt everything the adults around her were feeling.
Frank was talking rapidly to Vic about tactical approaches, using terms he'd clearly picked up from overhearing Erin’s conversations.
Hyzenthlay walked in silence, her face composed, her hazel eyes taking in everything.
Alexandra walked beside Erin. Their hands found each other between them, fingers interlocked, and Erin squeezed once, hard, fierce, a communication that needed no words. Erin's hand was warm and strong and bandaged and it was the most reassuring thing Alexandra had touched in five days.
The evening air hit them as they stepped outside.
Cool and clean and carrying the smell of grass and the first hint of autumn and the distant, earthy scent of the kitchen garden's herbs.
The sky was streaked with orange and purple, the sun already below the horizon, and the first stars were appearing in the darkening east. The forecourt was lit by the castle's exterior lamps and the headlights of three black cars idling on the gravel, their engines running, their drivers standing at attention.
A security officer spoke into a radio and a gate opened somewhere in the darkness and the lead car's headlights swept across the gravel.
Alexandra looked at the cars and then at Erin and then at the sky where the stars were multiplying in the darkness, and the adrenaline that had been building since the control room finally crested and filled her completely: hot and bright and terrifying and wonderful, like the moment before a rollercoaster drops.
They were going to find Florence. After five days of fear and helplessness and the slow, corrosive erosion of hope, after the waiting and the crying and the terrible performance of normalcy for the children, they were finally moving.
They were finally doing something. The engine of rescue had started and it would not stop until Florence was home.
Erin kissed her. Quick and hard, in front of the cars and the officers and the children and the cool evening air. It was not a royal kiss. It was the kiss of a woman going into a situation that might be dangerous, pressed against the lips of the woman she was leaving behind.
"I'll call the moment I have her," Erin said. Her green eyes were fierce and certain and Alexandra believed her with every atom of her body.
"Bring our girl home."
"I will."
Erin turned and got into the lead car. Alexandra watched it for a moment, the dark glass, the running lights, the gravel crunching beneath the tyres, and then she got into the second car - a limo- with Julia, Vic, and the children.
Matilda climbed into her lap. Frank pressed against her side.
Hyzenthlay sat in the front seat and adjusted her seatbelt with methodical care. Security vehicles lined up behind them.
As the convoy pulled away from the castle, Alexandra pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window and watched the grounds recede in the darkness. The castle's lights grew smaller behind them. The road unspooled into the evening. And she thought: Hold on, Florence. We're coming.