Majesty

by Katharine McGee

  Then Marshall was lifting her back up—slowly, his eyes still fixed on hers. Sam struggled to breathe. She felt herself flush from her neck all the way to the roots of her hair.

  “Not bad, my little ham Sam-wich,” Marshall murmured, effectively shattering the tension between them. Sam rolled her eyes and detangled herself from his arms.

  As they resumed their places, she told herself that her elevated heart rate was from the physical exertion. It definitely had nothing to do with the fact that, for a moment there, she’d thought Marshall was about to kiss her.

  The gates of Washington Palace had been designed for maximum visual impact, carved with intricate scrollwork and interlocking Ws. As Daphne and Himari gave their names to the security guard and he waved their taxi through, Daphne felt that there was something gratifying about all the grandeur.

  She loved an imposing door or gate, provided she was on the inside.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, when they’d gotten out of the car. Himari was uncharacteristically quiet.

  The girls had seen each other nearly every day since Himari had been discharged from the hospital. At first they’d remained at the Marikos’ house, flipping through magazines, making up for an entire year’s worth of lost conversation. Then, at the doctor’s recommendation, they’d slowly returned to their old activities: getting their nails done, or strolling down the sidewalks of Hanover Street, admiring the window displays.

  “I’m a little nervous. But mostly excited.” Himari nodded at the stoic-looking footman who gestured them through the front doors and toward the back lawn.

  Daphne nodded, though she felt uneasy. “I’m just surprised your parents agreed to let you come.”

  “My doctor wants me to get back into my old routine, to help rebuild my neural recognition networks. The more I act like my old self, the better chance I might remember everything I’ve forgotten.” Himari saw Daphne’s concerned look, and sighed. “If it makes you feel better, I promised my parents that I’m not drinking, not even a sip. Since I still have no idea what happened last time.”

  Whenever Himari made comments like this, Daphne worried her friend was baiting her, trying to trap her into saying something incriminating. So she said nothing. Then again…Himari wasn’t even glancing her way.

  It was that enchanted twilight hour when the sun was just setting, and for an instant, the sky became as dazzling as noon. It illuminated the terraced flower beds, their white mountain laurels scattered over the ground like handfuls of snow. In the orchard beyond, Daphne could see that the cherry trees had exploded into bloom.

  Their steps crunched over the gravel as they followed the other guests toward an enormous white tent. Daphne recognized it as the same tent that the palace erected for the monthly garden parties—dull afternoon affairs, with flat champagne and cherry tarts. Seeing that familiar setup at night was strangely exhilarating. It lent everything a touch of mischief, made them all feel like children who were sneaking out past curfew, and might get away with it.

  When they walked in, Daphne immediately caught sight of Ethan across the tent, and looked away. She hated that she could so easily pick him out of a crowd—that she knew the contours of his body, even from a distance.

  “Oh my god,” Himari whispered. “Is that Marshall Davis with Sam?”

  Daphne followed her friend’s gaze. Sure enough, the future Duke of Orange was standing there next to Samantha, his arm slung carelessly around her waist. “That’s a new development,” she mused. Though it honestly shouldn’t have surprised her, given what reckless partiers they both were.

  As she and Himari headed farther inside, there was a distinct lull in conversation. People began elbowing their neighbors, pointing out in hushed whispers that Himari had arrived.

  Daphne reflexively reached up to loop an arm through her friend’s. “Are you okay? Want me to take you home?”

  “No.” Himari bit her lip in indecision. She didn’t look vengeful or dangerous at all; she looked…vulnerable. “I just—I didn’t expect everyone to stare so much.”

  Of course, their classmates all knew that Himari had woken up: after emerging from a ten-month coma, she was something of a celebrity. She’d told Daphne that a few reporters had even called her house, asking for an exclusive interview, but Himari’s mother had turned them down. “We don’t talk to the media in this house,” the Countess of Hana had replied, with cool disdain. She still subscribed to the old aristocratic belief that if your name appeared in the paper, it meant something had gone horribly wrong.

  “Don’t worry. Five minutes from now everyone will be focused on whatever stupid thing Samantha and Marshall do next,” Daphne said firmly. “Besides, if people are staring, it’s because you look fantastic.”

  Himari choked out a laugh. “My mom said the same thing. I guess months on a liquid diet will do that.”

  “I meant your clothes,” Daphne replied, amused.

  “Oh, I texted Damien an SOS this afternoon, and he brought this by. I couldn’t go out in any of my old things. They were all hopelessly out of fashion,” Himari said dramatically.

  Unlike Daphne—who recycled outfits as often as she could get away with it, who accepted free gifts from up-and-coming designers because she couldn’t afford new jewelry—Himari had never worried about money. Even now she was wearing a lavender jumpsuit and matching sequined clutch that Daphne had seen on the mannequin at Halo just yesterday.

  There was a swirl of excitement nearby. Daphne turned to see Prince Jefferson standing a few yards away. He was wearing a white golf shirt that made him look especially tan, and smiling that eager, boyish smile of his, the one that most of America had fallen desperately in love with.

  “Jefferson,” she breathed, as she and Himari both curtsied at the same time, to exactly the same depth.

  The prince waved away the gesture. “Please don’t. I always hate it when people do that.”

  “It’s nothing,” Daphne started to say, but Himari interrupted.

  “Jeff, when girls curtsy, we aren’t doing it for you. We’re doing it for us.”

  Daphne stiffened, wondering if her friend was being flirtatious, but Himari only added, “I like making people scurry out of my way. And the bigger my dress, the farther they have to scurry.”

  Laughing, the prince pulled Himari into a hug. “This is exactly why I’ve missed you,” he joked, then stepped away, his tone becoming more serious. “Himari, I really am sorry. I don’t know what happened that night, but it happened at our party. Sam and I feel terrible.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Himari assured him, and Jefferson smiled, relieved.

  Of course it wasn’t Jefferson’s fault, Daphne thought. It was hers. She wished she could get the same absolution from her friend—but she knew she never would.

  He nodded toward a table laden with drinks. “I’m thirsty. You guys coming?”

  Now that Jefferson had broken the ice and talked to Himari, everyone else was surging forward. They began peppering her with questions: How was she feeling? Did she dream all those months? What was the first thing she said when she woke up?

  Daphne hesitated. Jefferson had stepped ahead, the crowds parting before him as he walked, but Himari lingered, reveling in the sudden flurry of attention. She met Daphne’s gaze. For a moment, something flickered in Himari’s eyes, but then she gave a little jerk of her chin to say, Go ahead. Daphne hurried to catch up with the prince.

  It was her first time alone with him since the Royal Potomac Races, though Daphne had done her best to keep tabs on him. She was pretty sure he still hadn’t invited a date to Beatrice’s wedding.

  And he hadn’t been spotted with Nina, either, though Daphne knew better than to make assumptions. Just because they weren’t together publicly didn’t mean that nothing was going on in private. Last time, Jefferson and Nina had been hooking up for w
eeks before Daphne—and then the media—found out.

  And wasn’t Ethan supposed to be handling the Nina situation for her? The few times Daphne had checked in, he’d replied with vague one-line answers. Then, last weekend, she’d lost patience and dialed his number—only for Ethan to decline the call.

  You can quit with the harassment. I’m with Nina right now, he’d texted, before she could try him again.

  Daphne had felt an odd pang of surprise that he was out with Nina so late on a Saturday, though that was precisely what she’d asked of him. Good, she’d replied curtly.

  She didn’t care what Ethan did, as long as he kept Nina far from the prince, clearing the way for Daphne to make her move.

  “This is a great setup,” she said now, coming to stand behind Jefferson. “How did you get the tent?”

  He rummaged beneath the table for a bag of ice cubes and scooped some into a red plastic cup. It always amused Daphne that he and Sam were some of the richest teenagers on earth yet still insisted on drinking out of those cups like regular college students. “Oh, the tent isn’t for us. There’s a garden party tomorrow,” he replied mischievously.

  Jefferson poured soda over the ice before handing the cup to Daphne. She loved that he hadn’t even needed to ask: that he just made her drink, the way he always had.

  Then again—being the perfect, well-behaved girlfriend hadn’t really worked out for her last time. Daphne had a feeling that Nina drank at parties.

  “You forgot the vodka,” she said lightly.

  “Right—sorry.” Covering his surprise, Jefferson poured some into her cup. Then he grabbed himself a beer and led her away, toward the far corner of the tent and into a temporary bubble of privacy.

  “It’s going to be a rough cleanup, getting rid of all this before tomorrow’s party,” Daphne observed, kicking one heel behind the other.

  The prince shrugged. “We’ll be fine as long as nobody does anything stupid. Myself included.”

  “You, do anything stupid?” she teased. “Like that time you played darts, and were so off target you hit the painting of Lord Alexander Hamilton on the other side of the room?”

  “Hey, I hit him right in the eye. You could say that I have awesome aim,” Jefferson protested. “Or what about the time I led everyone on a tour of the dungeons, and accidentally locked us all inside?”

  “You keep calling that room a dungeon, but it’s just a basement.”

  “There’s also the party we had over winter break sophomore year, when Ethan and I unpacked a box of Fourth of July sparklers. That was the night I met you, actually,” Jefferson reminisced, in a softer tone.

  Daphne smiled. “I thought those sparklers were a terrible idea, but I still lit one. I guess I wanted to impress you.”

  The prince spun his beer bottle in one hand. “I remember seeing you out there on the terrace, laughing and holding that sparkler. The way it lit up your face…I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

  For some reason, Daphne remembered what Ethan had told her earlier this year. Jeff doesn’t know you like I do. All he sees is what you look like, which is a damn shame, because your mind is the best thing about you. Your brilliant, stubborn, unscrupulous mind—

  Daphne swept that thought forcibly aside. Why was she thinking about Ethan right now, anyway?

  “Then you dropped that sparkler on the grass, and everyone started shouting,” Jefferson went on, chuckling.

  As if any of that had been an accident. “I tried to stamp out the fire with my heels!” Daphne recalled.

  “Luckily for you I was right there. With a beer.”

  “And I shouted at you not to, because I thought beer would feed the fire even more!”

  “Nah, that’s just liquor,” Jefferson pointed out. “Beer works as a firefighting tool. After all, it’s mostly water.”

  “You were sixteen,” she teased. “Two years too young to be drinking one.”

  “It’s not my fault that most things worth doing are against the rules,” he replied with an easy grin.

  Daphne knew this was her moment to make a play for him. But she couldn’t be obvious about it; the last thing she wanted was for Jefferson to feel pursued. She had to lead him onward without him ever even realizing.

  “Didn’t we stay up so late that we went out for breakfast?” she asked, as if the night hadn’t been etched in her memory. Flush with victory, Daphne had lingered at the palace until nearly dawn, when the only people left were the twins’ closest friends. She’d wanted nothing more than to go home and collapse onto her duvet, but she’d forced herself to rally. There was no telling when she might get another chance like this.

  So Daphne had brightened her eye makeup and reapplied her lip gloss. She’d opened a bottle of champagne, though she had no intention of drinking any—the pop of the cork always made things seem festive—and then, as everyone was passing the bottle around, she’d asked, “Should we go get some breakfast?”

  “You’re right; we ended up at the Patriot!” Jefferson exclaimed, naming the bar at the nearby Monmouth Hotel. “I haven’t had those hash browns in ages.”

  “Me neither,” Daphne said nostalgically, almost wistfully. “After tonight, I’ll need that kind of carb-fest to recover.”

  She was always doing this with Jefferson: laughing in delight when he proposed something, as if it was his idea and not one that she’d quietly led him to. Skirting him around topics she would rather avoid, finding ways to bring up the ones she did. She managed him, the way she always had, and always would.

  “You know what, we should go tomorrow,” Jefferson said, and Daphne smiled as if the suggestion surprised her.

  “You don’t think you’ll be sleeping in?”

  “Who knows if I’ll sleep at all!” Jefferson pulled his phone from his pocket. “Look, I’m setting a ten a.m. alarm right now.”

  “Then let’s do it,” she agreed, and shifted just a little closer to him.

  Though he could be wildly adventurous, Jefferson also craved familiarity and routine. Which was why Daphne would win him in the end. She was the first, most public, and most addictive of all his habits. And she didn’t intend to let him forget it.

  They talked for a while longer, but it was impossible not to lose someone at a party like this, so Daphne was unsurprised when Jefferson’s old rowing team interrupted them. They descended on him in a pack, rowdy and good-natured and already drunk, shouting that they needed him for a round of shots. Daphne smiled indulgently and let them drag him off.

  When she found Himari again, her friend’s eyes flashed with concern. She pulled Daphne aside, lowering her voice. “Daphne—Nina Gonzalez is here.”

  Daphne looked across the tent to where Nina stood uncertainly next to Sam and her new boy toy, or whatever he was. “I had a feeling she’d show up.” Now Daphne really needed to find Ethan and make sure he was sticking to their plan.

  “She’d better stay far away from Jeff,” Himari exclaimed. “Honestly, I still don’t understand how they started dating in the first place. How could he have gone from you to her?”

  “Exactly,” Daphne replied, feeling vindicated for the first time in months.

  Himari grimaced. “I can’t decide which is worse: her black fingernails or those weird feather earrings. Do you think she made them herself?”

  “Out of what, a pigeon?” Daphne replied, and her friend snorted.

  “Are we sure Jeff didn’t fall and hit his head that night, too?”

  It was such a transparent effort to cheer her up that Daphne’s chest swelled with gratitude. And she knew then that her friend wasn’t playing her—that Himari truly didn’t remember what happened the night she fell. Daphne knew it with an instinctive, bone-deep certainty, the way you know that you need to breathe in order to live. She just…knew.

  At the
realization, Daphne felt some long-missing piece of her click into place.

  There are no second chances in life, her mom had always told her. You’d better do everything right the first time, grab hold of every opportunity, because you won’t get another one.

  Yet through some extraordinary twist of fate, Daphne was actually getting a second chance. Time had rewound itself to a year ago, before she and Himari had their falling-out, before everything went so horribly wrong.

  Daphne wasn’t accustomed to feeling grateful. In her mind, she was entitled to everything she had, because she’d worked so damned hard for it. She bargain-shopped and charmed people, clawed her way up the social ladder and defended every inch of gained ground. She came up with elaborate schemes, and when those fell through, she always had a backup plan.

  Now, for the first time in her eighteen years, Daphne Deighton felt humbled, because she’d received a gift that she truly didn’t deserve.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said hoarsely, and pulled Himari in for a quick, fierce hug. “I really missed you.”

  After all this time, she had her best friend back.

  Beatrice unzipped her cocktail dress and fell back onto the four-poster bed of her guest room at Walthorpe, blinking up at its canopy. The red fabric was shot through with threads of gold, making her feel like she’d floated inside a sunset.

  Their day in Boston had been a whirlwind. She and Teddy had done several official appearances—a photo op at city hall, a reception at Harvard Medical School—because of course, Beatrice never got an actual day off.

  Yet she didn’t mind so much anymore, now that she wasn’t doing these events alone. It was such a relief to walk into a room and know that she only had to talk to half the guests, because Teddy would take the other half. Then, afterward, she and Teddy would spend the car ride comparing notes about the people they’d met, laughing at what someone had said.