It's a perfect day for flying. A flock of pigeons take off in a great startled cloud of gray wings, and her eyes track them as they dodge the trees – hard starboard, lads! – and then soar up into the blue freedom of the sky.

She doesn't mean to sigh, but she must, because suddenly her husband is asking her, "Are you all right?"

"Mm? Oh, aye. Just woolgathering," she says, smiling down at him. Her back is to a tree trunk and he is lying on the grass, very scandalously using her lap as a pillow. "It's a lovely day."

Regent's Park in the spring is always lovely. They're on the wide sweep of green by the bandstand, in easy view of the bright clouds of flowers surrounding Queen Mary's Gardens. No airbeasts overhead to frighten the swans and ducks on the water, either.

He acknowledges her statement with a grimace. "It would be lovelier if I didn't have another meeting this afternoon."

"Now, now, Special Military Advisor von Hohenberg," she chides, brushing a strand of red-brown hair away from his forehead. Salted with gray now, it is, but those green eyes are still bright as ever. "No complaints to me. Take it up with the War Ministry. Or better yet, those bastard Germans."

He catches her fingers in his and kisses the knuckles before closing his eyes again. "I'd rather. You've never heard so many people argue so fiercely for so long about so little."

"What're they on about now?"

"That I'm wrong."

The breeze tugs at her hair and clothes. It's warm, but she feels cold. She looks from him to the figures of their children, safe and innocent and enjoying the sunlight. Sophie is coaching her younger brothers on their cartwheels and tumbles. Their laughter is a beautiful sound.

And on the Continent a madman is building up an army to come and take all of that away. She knows that, just as her husband knows it: a certainty in one's bones.

They called it the Great War, the War To End All Wars, but it was only a prelude.

"You're not wrong," she says, softly.

"No," he says. He finds her fingers again. Holds on tightly. "God help us."