THE DAY AMELIA AND Arthur’s sister, Princess Violet, went to Imogene’s gravesite in one of the Crown’s chauffeured cars was unseasonably warm and sunny. Outside, the landscape was beginning to bloom into spring. In her lap Amelia held a bouquet of lilies.
Amelia had been twelve when Imogene died, and she still remembered it clearly: From coming downstairs one morning to find the television on and her mother in tears, to attending the state funeral and watching the hearse make its slow, somber way through the streets. She remembered, too, Charlie’s quiet, awful grief. He and Imogene had been friends before Imogene and Arthur had even begun dating.
Now Amelia was part of that sad, strange saga as well and in a way she could never have foreseen. Not when she was twelve and not even a few mo
