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of them had a surprisingly evanescent magic. He circulated among the palace cooks and waiters, frankly admiring their work. He was amazed at what they’d accomplished. There were several cheese boards ready for passing that had hard and soft cheeses already breathing their uddery aroma into the late afternoon. As both a tribute and a tease to the Dutch cheese industry, someone had carved a huge round of English cheddar to look like the roofscape of the Dutch village of Gouda. Another expert carver had made a pair of Dutch wooden shoes out of a block of Stilton. These were to sit as centerpieces on tables in an anteroom where cocktails would be served before dinner. In the dining room itself, the long table was covered with a wintry scene of crystal and silver. The spectacle of it all astonished him. Seventeenth-century William and Mary vases from the Victoria and Albert Museum (so a curator told him as she rushed by with insurance forms) filled with orange autumn leaves, orange chrysanthemums, and orange roses, to mark the visiting head of the House of Orange, marched down the center of a long table. He couldn’t stop himself from snapping pictures of all this, though he knew it wasn’t his brief. Everyone assumed that if he’d got past security he was permitted to be taking pictures as official records for the Lord Steward.
    His only chance at fulfilling the newspaper’s commission was when The Queen came downstairs at five in the afternoon to review the tables. She brought the Dutch Queen with her, and the two elderly ladies exclaimed and laughed delightedly at the townscape of Gouda. He photographed The Queen leaning over the cheese village, her skirt riding up over her legs to show well-shaped calves ending in leather pumps with blocky heels cut on the diagonal. “Not bad for eightysomething,” Rajiv thought to himself. The only photo he could get that was in the least compromising was a tiny chat between the two Queens on the terrace overlooking the garden. The Dutch Queen was smoking a cigarette with gusto and The Queen waved away the smoke with a grimace. After he got that, the other undercover chef, afraid that Rajiv’s picture-taking was becoming too obvious, shooed him out of the room.
    Rajiv’s photos created a quandary for the staff at the tabloid newspaper. None of the pictures was in the least embarrassing. The editor with onyx beads who’d commissioned the photos had gone away on maternity leave. Her deputy knew how much they’d paid for Rajiv’s work, so he thought it would be best to run them anyway. He tried to cover for the low smear quality of the pictures by writing some sneering captions. “All this cheese for me?” he put under The Queen leaning over to admire the townscape of Gouda, and “No smoking please, we’re British” under the two Queens chatting on the terrace.
    The effect was the reverse of what the newspaper intended. Instead of the post-Diana resentment of the royal family that the paper had hoped to exploit, the paper’s blogosphere lit up with questions about how to reproduce the William and Mary flower arrangements. Everyone hated smokers, and The Queen wrinkling her nose at Beatrix’s secondary smoke was a hit. Moreover, everyone was ecstatic over The Queen’s shapely calves and her beautifully made heels. A grandmother’s shoes, flexing forward on tiptoe, with the patent leather gleaming in the light, made them proud to be British. Even an American website, Thesartorialist.com, had picked up the photo, sparking a fashion furor for orthopedic footwear.
    L uncheon at the remote cottage on the Balmoral estate was over. The Queen and the rest of the party had taken the dogs for a walk down by the Muick. Luke and Lady Anne remained behind, giving as their excuse that they would straighten up the table, but in fact because they wished for some minutes alone. The equerry was responsible for gathering up the bottles—those that still had anything in them—and taking them