“I’m sorry.” Nina felt awful that they’d had to find out like this: from the media, instead of from her. “I wanted to wait until I figured out whether there was anything real between me and Jeff.”
“And is there?”
She glanced around their open-air first floor, with its warped wood dining table, ferns and succulents cascading off various surfaces. Along one wall, an old library ladder had been repurposed as a bookshelf.
“I thought there was,” Nina admitted. “Except …”
“It’s a very big except.” Her mamá heaved a sigh. “Trust me—I know firsthand how it feels, being pulled into the orbit of the royal family. It’s a lot to sign on for. We would understand if you wanted to walk away from it all.”
“Is that what you think I should do?” Nina asked slowly.
“Yes,” Isabella declared, just as Julie said, “Not necessarily.”
Her parents glared at each other over Nina’s head. Clearly, they hadn’t had time to get their official verdict ready before her arrival.
“This is exactly what I always worried would happen,” her mamá went on, reaching to gently tuck back a strand of Nina’s hair. “From that very first day I interviewed at the palace and found you running around with Samantha, I worried about you. Living this royal life when you aren’t actually royal … it messes with your sense of reality. And now you’ve been forced into the spotlight, where all those awful people can judge you. It’s too public.”
“Your job is public,” Nina reminded her. “People write hateful things about you all the time.”
“I’m a grown woman, and I took on this job knowing exactly what it entailed!” Isabella burst out. “You are eighteen years old! It isn’t right that people are saying all these disgusting, heinous things about you. It’s vile, it’s perverted, it’s—”
Julie cast her wife a warning glance, then turned back to Nina. “Sweetie, you know all we want is for you to be happy. But …” She paused, hesitant. “Are you happy?”
If her mom had posed this question a week ago, Nina would have said yes without hesitation. But even then, she’d been leading a double life.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. How could she still be with Jeff, knowing what America thought of them? “The things those people wrote …”
Her mom placed her hands firmly on Nina’s shoulders. “Don’t you dare worry about what those people think. They are small-minded and jealous, and frankly, I feel sorry for them. The people who love you know you for who you are. The rest is all just noise.”
At least she would always have this, Nina thought gratefully. No matter how utterly messed up the rest of the world became, at least her family would always be on her side. “Thank you,” Nina whispered.
They leaned forward, and all of them held each other tight in the same three-person hug they’d been doing since Nina was a toddler.
Her phone kept buzzing, but Nina ignored it. She had no idea when she would be ready to talk to Jeff. Maybe she never would.
BEATRICE
What did one wear to one’s own proposal? Beatrice thought, with an oddly clinical sense of detachment. Something white? She settled on a long-sleeved creamy lace dress and matching heels.
“You look beautiful,” Connor told her when she stepped into the hallway, and started across the palace toward the East Wing. “What’s the occasion?”
She felt color rising to her cheeks. “No reason.”
Beatrice had been in a silent, screaming turmoil since the conversation with her father a few days ago. Every morning she would wake up next to Connor with a bolt of happiness—and then the knowledge of her dad’s sickness would hit her all over again, flooding her body with excruciating waves of grief. Yesterday’s news about Jeff dating Sam’s friend Nina hadn’t even been enough to snap her out of it.
She and Connor had just reached the Oak Room when a figure appeared at the opposite end of the hallway. Right on time, of course.
“You didn’t tell me that this meeting was with Theodore Eaton.”
“Connor …,” she said helplessly.
“I’m kidding, Bee.” He turned to her with a smile so genuine, so intimately trusting, it knocked the air smack out of her chest. “I promise I won’t be a jealous idiot anymore. I know what’s real and what’s just for show.”
He leaned forward, lowering his mouth toward hers—momentarily forgetting that Teddy was right there, halfway down the hall and closer every second, because Beatrice knew from the look in his eyes that he was going to kiss her.
She made a strangled sound deep in her throat. Connor startled to awareness. He managed to turn the movement into an abbreviated bow, as if he were responding to some command of hers. His face impassive, he went to stand near the door.
Beatrice forced herself to smile at Teddy. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course I came. You don’t exactly ignore a summons from the future queen.” He said it lightly, but the words twisted like a knife in her gut.
Her posture as rigid as a ballerina’s, Beatrice stepped into the Oak Room, and Teddy followed.
She’d chosen the Oak Room for its privacy. She could have invited Teddy to her sitting room, but that felt too intimate—which was ridiculous, really, given the conversation they were about to have. But the Oak Room was the type of place nineteenth-century courtiers might have gone to whisper treasonous secrets. It had only one window, and was lined in heavy oaken panels the color of dark honey, so thick that no sound escaped.
This conversation would be painful enough, without Beatrice having to worry that Connor might overhear from the hallway.
She had broached this topic with her father the other day, once her initial wave of shock had begun to subside. Any proposal would have to come from Beatrice. Like so many queens before her—the British Queen Victoria, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, supposedly even Mary, Queen of Scots—she would have to ask the question herself. That was just part of being next in line to the throne. She was so stratospherically high in the hierarchy that no one could presume to ask her for her hand in marriage.
“Teddy,” Beatrice began, sounding formal and tense even to her own ears. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“Okay,” he said hesitantly.
How different he felt from Connor, who had looked at her just this morning with such clear, vibrant love. Compared to that, Teddy was a stranger. Yet she was about to ask him to spend the rest of his life with her.
She dug her fingernails into her palms, trying to remember the words she’d memorized. Think of it as a speech, she reminded herself, like you’re addressing Congress.
“Teddy, in the time we’ve spent together, I feel like I’ve gotten to know you. Or at least, I know the important things. Your love for your family, your warmth, your thoughtfulness.”
He was looking at her so intently that Beatrice had to close her eyes. She couldn’t say what she needed to, not beneath the scrutiny of that gaze.
“I know all the important things,” she repeated, her voice wobbling only a little, “which is why I’m ready to ask you this. I know it might seem … fast, or rushed. But trust me when I say that I have reasons for asking you now.
“Being with me wouldn’t be the easiest decision of your life. Or the simplest,” she said earnestly. “So I want you to really think this over. You don’t have to answer right away. Teddy—”
She had practiced this part before a mirror, struggling to meet her own gaze. But no matter how many times she said it, the sentence failed to make sense. It just didn’t sound like it had anything to do with her.
“Will you marry me?”
Teddy stared at her with visible incredulity. “Are you sure?” he said at last.
“Would you believe me more if I got down on one knee?”
She was curiously glad when Teddy laughed at that. “Sorry,” he said swiftly, “I just didn’t think …”
I didn’t either, Beatrice silently agreed. Not this soon�
��really, not ever.
She held his gaze. “I believe that you and I could accomplish great things together. That we could be a fantastic team. But I understand that it is a sacrifice to be wedded to the Crown.” To be wedded to me, when we both know that we don’t love each other.
She didn’t insult Teddy by reminding him of the implications of his decision. He knew it just as well as she did. If he said yes, if they went through with this, it would be for life. As her grandmother always said, divorce was something only the European royals did.
Teddy was silent. He seemed to be reaching some decision deep within himself, various weights and tumblers falling into place in his mind. His eyes held hers, and Beatrice saw that he’d guessed what was going on: maybe not everything, because he couldn’t know about her relationship with Connor, but enough.
He reached to take her hands in his. The shock of his touch was like a bite.
To her consternation, Teddy knelt before her and bowed his head. A beam of sunlight sliced through the window to touch upon his golden hair.
“You don’t have to …,” Beatrice began, but fell silent at Teddy’s next words.
“I, Lord Theodore Eaton, solemnly swear that I am your liege man. I will honor and serve you in faith and in loyalty, from this day forward, and for all the days of my life. So help me God.”
Teddy had just sworn the Oath of Vassal Homage. The words that peers of the realm recited upon the accession of a new king.
He was speaking to her not as a woman he was going to marry, but as his future sovereign.
Beatrice glanced down, marveling at how strange and awkward his grip felt, as if their hands were puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. It felt fundamentally wrong, but she supposed she would get used to it in time.
There was a scripted response to the oath—I humbly and gratefully accept your service—but it didn’t feel right. Beatrice settled for gently pulling on Teddy’s hands, to tug him to his feet.
His blue eyes met hers, and he nodded. Beatrice knew in that moment that they understood each other, both of them conscious of the pledge they were making—and what they were giving up.
“Thank you for entrusting me with your future happiness. I swear that I will try to be worthy of the honor you are doing me.” Teddy sounded as if he was accepting a job offer, which, she supposed, he was.
Teddy might not be the love of her life, but he was so many other things—honorable and true, reliable and steady. He was the type of man a girl could lean on in an ever-shifting world.
She just hoped it was enough to build a life on.
“So I can take that as a yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” he assured her.
Slowly, with a quiet reverence, Teddy kissed her.
Beatrice had sensed that this was coming, and tried not to think about it too closely—not to think anything at all. But it took every ounce of her willpower not to recoil from the feel of Teddy’s lips on hers.
Just this morning she had been tangled in bed with Connor, their kisses so electrified that they sizzled all way down each of her nerve endings, while this kiss felt as empty as a scrap of blank paper. She wondered if Teddy sensed her reluctance, if that was why he kept the kiss so swift and chaste.
Beatrice cleared her throat. “One more thing. I know we’ll both share the news with our families, but would you mind if we didn’t tell anyone else, just until the press announcement? I don’t want to risk a media leak.”
She didn’t need Connor finding out any earlier than he absolutely had to. Maybe it was selfish, but she wanted as much time as possible with him before he knew.
She didn’t think he would look at her the same way once he learned what she’d done.
“Press announcement?” Teddy glanced down at their hands, and his eyes widened. “Should I bring you a ring?”
“You could pick one out from the Crown Jewels collection and give it to me at the press conference,” Beatrice offered, and managed a smile.
Teddy nodded. Normally when the heir to the throne proposed, he brought his fiancée a ring from the royal vault. Except that every heir to the throne up till now had been a man.
Beatrice had considered bringing Teddy a ring today, but honestly, she hadn’t been able to face the thought of going down to the vault to pick one out. It would make all of this feel too sharply real.
“That sounds great. I’ll call my parents now with the good news, but don’t worry, I’ll swear them to secrecy,” Teddy replied.
Beatrice nodded her thanks. She had to force herself not to reach up to her lips, where that unfamiliar kiss still lingered, now grown cold.
Beatrice paced across her room with all the caged panic of a jungle cat. It was almost midnight, and Connor still wasn’t here.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, not after what had happened today. She kept envisioning the way Teddy had knelt before her like a medieval knight, swearing to forever bind his life to hers. It was too much, far too fast, and her heart simply couldn’t keep up.
Before she could second-guess herself, Beatrice had pulled an old college sweatshirt over her pajamas. She ducked out of her suite and started soundlessly across the palace: down a series of hallways, then up another flight of stairs. The marble floor pushed the cold up through the soles of her slippers.
She only had to knock at Connor’s room once before the door cracked open.
His eyes widened when he saw her standing there. He reached for her arm to quickly pull her inside, then shut the door behind them.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered, looking as if he would rather shout at her for her recklessness.
“I just …” She swallowed. “You didn’t come, and I needed to see you.”
“How did you even know which room was mine?”
“I looked it up. Top security clearance.” She tried to sound flippant, but she knew he heard the tremor in her voice.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
She blinked back her tears, looking around the room as she took a moment to collect herself.
It was small but very tidy, the narrow bed made with crisp military precision. On a wooden dresser stood a series of framed photographs: Connor and his family at a theme park; Connor and his sister as small children, their arms thrown around a golden retriever puppy. And then, to Beatrice’s surprise, a picture of her and Connor from her Harvard graduation. She barely remembered taking that photo.
“We need to replace this. You’re not even looking into the camera,” she informed him.
“I would,” Connor said carefully, “but this is the only picture of you and me.”
Oh. Beatrice’s mind flew to all the photos people had taken of her and Teddy—hundreds, maybe thousands of them—in magazines, all over the internet. She hated herself a little, for not taking more pictures with Connor while she had the chance.
“What’s going on?” he asked again. “Do you want to talk about it?”
When she didn’t answer, he put a hand on the small of her back, as if to steer her out the door. “Then you really need to leave.”
Beatrice stubbornly shook her head. “You’ve been in my room plenty of times. Why should this be any different?”
“Because my reputation doesn’t matter, and yours does.”
At the rough edge to his voice, the light that burned in those eyes, some tether deep within Beatrice snapped.
Just this morning she and Teddy had agreed to get married. Though it had felt more to Beatrice like a political alliance than anything romantic. She remembered their kiss, so remote and chaste, and shivered.
Other girls got to marry for love. Beatrice might not be free to make that choice, but she still deserved to experience love—real love, in all its heat and passion—at least once before she signed her life away.
If she couldn’t have a future with Connor, then she would have to live fully in what little time she did have.
“I’m not leaving.” Beatrice yanked her s
weatshirt over her head and took a step forward. “I came because … I wanted …” She swallowed and tried again. “If you’re going to break your vow, I figured you should break it all the way.”
Connor’s expression faltered, his eyes raking over her pale, drawn features. He took a shuddering breath and set his hands on her shoulders. “I want you more than anything, Bee. Believe me. But this …” He glanced down at her with hesitation. “It doesn’t feel right. You seem too upset to make this kind of decision. Are you sure you’re okay?”
No. My dad is dying, and I’m going to marry Teddy Eaton, when I really just wish that it could be you instead.
Beatrice was trembling. The shaking began in her hands, spreading up her arms and down her legs so that her whole body was suddenly quivering. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, her breath coming in short gasps. Her spine curled inward, her shoulders hunched—
Just as he’d done in the cabin, Connor gathered her in his arms and carried her, still shaking uncontrollably, to his bed.
Beatrice buried her face in his chest and sobbed. She couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go. Not now, not ever. She clutched tighter at him, her hands digging so fiercely into his back that she was probably leaving scratch marks, as if she could forcibly anchor them both here, in this moment. Connor said nothing, his hand stroking the dark sheet of her hair.
She couldn’t bring herself to share the whole truth with Connor, but maybe she could tell him part.
“My dad has lung cancer,” she whispered into his shirt, now wet with her tears. “He doesn’t have much time left.”
Connor pulled back a few inches and gazed into her red-rimmed eyes. His face was blazing with love. But no matter how adamantly he Guarded her, some threats weren’t physical. Some things he couldn’t protect her from.
“Oh, Bee,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
There were no other words, but Beatrice didn’t need them. She stayed folded in the safety of Connor’s embrace, letting the tears flood through her. She thought she might shatter from how nice it was, to simply be held by someone who loved her.
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