Okay, maybe this is why Dr. McKee decided I should room with Saks instead.
I come out of my reverie to see a long expanse of Sakshi’s thigh peeking out from beneath her skirt as she leans down to rummage under her bed.
“Poppet, I thought you’d never ask,” she says, coming back up with a stack of magazines. She flops them onto her green bedspread, grinning.
“Where did you get those?”
Saks sits up on her bed, crossing her legs. “I have my sources.”
She pulls the first glossy issue off the stack, setting it down with a thwack on the bed between us. The word “MAJESTY” is printed on top in curling letters.
“This is the latest issue,” Saks tells me. “And there’s a whole feature on Flora’s brother Alexander and his fiancée. Her name is Eleanor Winters, she’s American, we’re obsessed.”
Flicking open the magazine, she points to a picture of a blond woman with her cheek on Prince Alex’s shoulder as they stand in a garden. “Right,” I say, remembering Lee telling me about that. “I sort of know about her.”
“And this is her sister, Daisy,” Saks goes on, flipping another page. This one shows a redhead in jeans and T-shirt, her arm linked with a handsome guy also dressed way down. “She’s dating the chief Royal Wrecker, Miles Montgomery. Well, he was chief Royal Wrecker, he and Seb had some kind of falling-out, not one hundred percent sure it’s been sorted. Miles went to America to win Daisy back, so the story goes, and this is them there. We’re slightly obsessed with her, too.”
“They’re still fighting,” I say. “Seb mentioned this guy. Said he was dead.”
Clucking her tongue, Saks flips another page. “That’s a shame. The rumor was he was a calming influence on Seb. He’ll need that now that I’ve declared him a lost cause.”
I look up at her, tugging at the ends of my hair. “Wait, what? Since when?”
She reaches for another magazine, this one dated just last week. Opening it to a page showing Seb in a soccer jersey, she taps the picture with one hot pink nail. “Midlothian Hearts,” she tells me, like that makes sense.
Seeing my confusion, Saks clarifies, “A football team. My father is a passionate Arsenal supporter.” Shaking her head, she sighs. “Like Romeo and Juliet. Daddy would never approve of my marrying a Hearts fan, even if he is a prince.”
I stare at her for a long beat before laughing and pressing my forehead to her shoulder. “Saks, I really love you,” I tell her, and she beams at me.
“Thank you, darling. It’s mutual.”
Then she reaches into the magazines and pulls out a slightly trashier-looking one. “So you know all about Seb already, really.”
“More than I wanted to.”
“And you lived with Flora, so I guess you know all you need to there.”
Feigning a casual air, I pick a magazine out of the stack. “Never hurts to learn more.”
Saks tilts her head down, fixing me with a look, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes the magazine I’m holding back, tosses it aside, and hands me another one.
“This was a special issue all about Flora for her sixteenth birthday,” she says, and sure enough, there’s Flora on the front, smiling in a plaid-lined trench coat. She’s accepting flowers from an old lady in the crowd, and over her head, the headline reads, “Sweet Sixteen!”
“Neat,” I say, and then I try to shrug, but I’m pretty sure it looks like I have a muscle spasm in my shoulder. “I’ll look through this, I guess.”
Sakshi rolls her lips together, holding back a smile, and then she pats my arm. “You can keep it.”
An hour later, I’m alone in the room, lying on my bed, reading every word of that magazine. It’s a total puff piece, a tribute issue to how great Flora is, but it’s still kind of cool, seeing so many pictures of her throughout her life.
Flora in a christening gown.
Flora and Seb as toddlers, hand in hand and weirdly solemn in fancy clothes.
A surprisingly awkward Flora at around twelve or so, braces winking as she grins at the opening of a children’s literature exhibit.
Plenty of Flora surrounded by very pretty girls as she gets older.
Those are the ones I keep staring at. Maybe they’re all just friends, but some of them were probably more than that, and as I look at shiny head of hair after shiny head of hair, thin, long legs in designer jeans, perfect figures in ball gowns, I am suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I’m wearing old leggings and a hoodie that reads GEOLOGY: IT’S GNEISS!
There’s a knock at the door as it opens, and I shove the magazine under my pillow, flipping over onto my back with a paperback copy of The Mill on the Floss in hand.
“Hey!” I say to Flora, who stands in the doorway, watching me suspiciously.
“Quint,” she says. “I wanted to see if you wanted to study downstairs, but . . . What were you doing?”
I wiggle the book at her. “Reading.” Not actually a lie, after all.
She keeps staring at me, but finally seems to accept that answer, walking over to the bed and dropping down on the edge.
Then she frowns at me.
“What does your shirt say?”
“It’s a pun,” I tell her, tugging at the hem. “Gneiss/nice. See, that’s a real geology joke.”
I wait for an eye roll, but instead she looks over at the rocks on the dresser. “I see you’ve settled into your new room, then.”
“It rocks,” I say solemnly, and she bursts into those giggles that are so unprincesslike, but so cute.
Then, surprising me, she gets up and walks over to the dresser, tapping her nails along a few of my specimens.
“I never asked,” she says. “Which one is your favorite?”
It’s started to rain outside—again, some more—and the lamplight in the room is dim and cozy.
Feeling more than a little awkward, I get up and walk over to her. Flora is taller than me by several inches, just the right height for me to lean my cheek on her shoulder.
Not that I’d ever do that.
Instead, I pick up the hematite. “This one, probably. Hematite. It’s magnetic, for one thing, which is super cool. And I got this one when my dad took me to Yellowstone in the sixth grade, so it’s special.”
“What about this one?” Flora picks up the piece of rose quartz, holding it in her palm.
We’re standing close together, so close that when she tilts her head to look down at the rock, the ends of her hair brush over my fingers as I tap the quartz.
“That one’s just pretty,” I say. “It doesn’t have any other special qualities.”
Flora’s lips curve up. “I happen to think being pretty is a very special quality.”
“You would,” I huff out on a laugh, but then I look up, and our faces are just . . . right there.
Her lips are right there.
I can smell the lemony soap she uses, can feel the soft, warm exhale of her breath on my face, and if I moved closer—
The blooping sound from my laptop telling me someone is trying to Skype me has us both jumping back, and I shake my head, face hot as I pick my computer up off my bed, answering the call.
It’s Dad, and I smile at him, trying to seem normal.
“Hey!”
“Millipede!” he replies, and then Gus’s face nearly obscures the camera as he attempts to say hi, too.
Laughing, I sit on the edge of my bed. For the next few minutes, Dad and I chat about things back home while Gus babbles and attempts to show me at least three new toys.
When I end the call, Flora is back near the door, watching me. “You miss them,” she says, and I fiddle with the ends of my hair.
“Yeah? As most people do when they’re away from their families. And I won’t get to see them until Christmas break.”
Her brow w
rinkles. “Don’t you have some other holiday before that, you Yanks?”
“Thanksgiving,” I say, flopping back on my bed and wincing as the magazine rattles. Luckily, Flora doesn’t appear to hear it.
“But we can’t afford for me to go back then and at Christmas, so we’re just waiting.”
“Do you want me to buy you a ticket?” Flora asks, like she’s offering to lend me a pair of shoes.
“I . . . what? No,” I stutter out. “I couldn’t accept that.”
“Why ever not?” Flora asks, and I stare at her. There for just a second, we’d had a moment over that rose quartz. A moment when I forgot she was a princess and just thought of her as a beautiful girl.
But she’s also a beautiful girl who would toss a transatlantic plane ticket at someone like it wasn’t anything.
In other words, not a girl for me.
The magazine currently hiding under my pillow should remind me of that.
“It’s just . . . that’s too big, Flora,” I tell her now, picking up my book again. “Way too big. You can’t just throw money at people.”
I can feel her still looking at me, and she eventually gives an airy “Whatever, then.”
Lowering the book, I scowl at her over the top. “Flora—”
“No,” she says, waving a hand. “Just thought I’d offer. Consider it forgotten.”
But I don’t miss the way her eyes slide back to me when she thinks I’m not looking.
CHAPTER 31
“If this is some kind of delayed hazing ritual, you’re all fired from being my friends,” I say, cautiously feeling my way down the hall. Sakshi has both hands clamped around my eyes while Perry holds my hand.
“No hazing,” he promises, “although I’m kind of surprised we didn’t get that here, come to think of it.”
“This place does seem like a peak hazing locale,” Sakshi agrees, and I would roll my eyes if they weren’t covered.
They came up to my room a few minutes ago, promising a “surprise,” and I should’ve known better than to offer myself up to them. Whatever this is, I have a feeling Flora is involved. It’s been a week since our conversation about the plane ticket, and while she hasn’t brought it up again, I know Flora doesn’t give up that easy.
Maybe that’s why I went so willingly with Saks and Perry.
I have a basic sense of where we are. We went down to the first floor, and I can hear the wheeze from that one radiator near the art studio that’s always acting up, but other than that, I am firmly Without a Clue as to what we’re doing down here.
I am, however, really certain that if we get caught, we will never get out of detention.
“Whatever this is,” I warn, “it better be worth it.”
“It is,” Perry promises, and then my nose picks up the smell of . . . sweet potatoes?
Yes, sweet potatoes with that burned-sugar smell of marshmallow, and over all that, the savory scent of sage.
“Guys,” I start, but then Sakshi drops her hands, and I blink.
We’re in the art classroom, and there, spread out on the desk, is a miniature Thanksgiving feast. I spot a small roast bird that’s not a turkey, but smells great, and a couple of china dishes, one heaped with macaroni and cheese, the other holding the beloved sweet potatoes with marshmallows. There’s also a pie and an ancient silver candelabra illuminating the whole thing, but my eyes are drawn to one thing and one thing only.
The girl standing behind the desk, beaming at me.
“Surprise!” Flora trills, clapping her hands together. She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, her hair loose around her face, and she’s smiling at me, a real smile, and I am surprised.
Not by the miniature Thanksgiving she’s made for me, though.
No, what surprises me is the sudden, jolting, and undeniable realization that even though I didn’t want to, I’ve fallen for an actual princess.
Flora’s smile drops slightly, her hands lowering. “Are you not pleased?” she asks, looking down at the food. “Did I get it wrong?”
I have to swallow before I’m able to speak. “No,” I reassure her, stepping forward. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Perry and Sakshi exchange a glance.
“No, it’s perfect,” I go on. “I mean, three actual weeks before Thanksgiving, but still. This is . . . I’m speechless.”
That smile lights up her face again, and my heart thuds so painfully in my chest I’m surprised no one can hear it. My head is spinning and my throat is so dry that I happily gulp down the can of soda Flora hands me.
I immediately regret that decision when a sort of flat bubble-gum taste hits my tongue, and I pull back the can to frown at it.
“Yeurgh.”
“That’s Irn-Bru, Scotland’s national drink, missy,” Flora says, all faux-offended as she takes the can back from me, and when our fingers brush, I swear I feel sparks.
But I make myself give her a look and say, “Didn’t you also think the stag was Scotland’s national animal? And look where that got us.”
“Look where it got us indeed,” Flora counters. “We’re friends now. We wouldn’t have been without that stupid stag.”
She has a point, but all I can think is that that must be where all this started. It wasn’t the laundry or the dance in the orangery or looking at my rocks together—it was that night up there on the hill that led to this moment, me realizing I’m into her. I should’ve seen it then, the way things changed between us.
We eat the rest of our tiny feast happily enough, Flora regaling us with the tale of how she got all this food here in the first place.
“I don’t know how Glynnis managed to find someone who could make this,” Flora added, picking up the spoon in the sweet potatoes and poking around at the dish, “but the woman is a superhero.”
And then Flora’s gaze shoots to me, her teeth dimpling her lower lip.
“Bollocks. Is that too big, too? Having a royal liaison track down food? I know you said the plane ticket was a lot—”
I reach over and touch her arm, shaking my head. “No, that was just . . . using available resources. It’s different from throwing money at something.”
Flora nearly preens at that, lifting her chin with a smug smile. “So I thought.”
Across the desk, I see Saks and Perry glance at each other, something passing between them, but I ignore it.
For now, things feel . . . homey. Nice.
Almost normal.
And then there’s a flash in the window.
Interesting (I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing) news to report out of Scotland today. Princess Flora has managed to keep her nose clean for the last six weeks or so, shocking everyone, I’m sure. Maybe that draconian school they sent her to is working? Or maybe it’s something else. Apparently there’s a mole up there in the Highlands, and not the fuzzy kind. A student has been leaking info on Flora to the press, and according to the source, Princess Flora has gotten very cosy with her new roommate, some girl from Texas named Amelia Quint. So cosy, in fact, that they are roommates no more, according to our source. A few weeks ago, the princess and her new pal were separated into different rooms. Could be they’re just friends, but the source seems to think they’re more. Anyway, here’s a blurry shot of the two of them eating . . . Thanksgiving? With some other people? Who the f*** knows.
Personally, I hope for Flora’s sake she is dating an American girl who might actually have sense, but then I wouldn’t wish Flora on my worst enemy, so it’s a real toss-up here.
(“Princess Flora Does Some Stuff, I Know You’ll All Click on It, I Need to Eat,” from Off with Their Heads)
CHAPTER 32
The photographer they fish out of the bushes is younger than I’d imagined most paparazzi to be. Maybe he’s new, which is why he made the rookie mistake of having his flash on.
Despite Dr.
McKee telling all of us to clear the halls, it feels like the whole school gathers there in the foyer to watch her and Mr. McGregor talk to the local police, as the photographer sits in the back of a police car. I hear the word “trespassing,” and Mr. McGregor, red-faced and fairly bristling with anger, mentions “tarring and feathering” at least four times.
Next to me, Flora is very quiet and very still as she watches.
“They took the SD card from his camera,” I tell her. “And it’s not like he got anything all that exciting. Unless a bunch of teenagers eating yams would sell papers over here or something.”
But Flora shakes her head, long hair swishing against her shoulder blades. “He’ll have sent the pictures on already. He took them on his phone, not with the camera.”
She looks over at me. “That’s their trick. Show up with a big expensive camera, everyone assumes that’s what you’ve used, so no one thinks about the phone.” She turns back to stare out the massive front doors at the scene on the front lawn. “It’s rather ingenious of them, really.”
With that, she turns to head up the stairs, and I follow after her, grabbing her elbow.
“Go tell them that!” I say. “About the phone. Maybe he hasn’t sent—”
But Flora is already moving away. “That’s sweet, Quint, but I promise you, it’s a done deal.”
I watch her vanish up the stairs, and Sakshi comes to stand next to me, following my gaze.
“This is why her mother wanted her to have a security detail up here,” she tells me. “Flora sells more magazines than her brothers put together.”
“Even more than Seb?” I ask, and Sakshi nods before twirling a strand of her long dark hair and turning to face me. Well, to look down at me, what with her being an Amazon and all.
“Do you like her, Millie?” she asks.
Gah. My throat feels tight suddenly, my face probably bright red as I gesture vaguely. “Yeah. I mean, we’re definitely getting along better now, so—”
Her Royal Highness Page 17
