American Royals (23 page)

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 sweatshirt 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.

Out there in the rest of her life, Beatrice had to be unwaveringly strong. But here, for just a little while, she could set down her burden, could lean on Connor’s shoulders and close her eyes.

Even after her sobs subsided, she kept her arms wrapped around him, relishing his quiet strength.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Her face was still pressed against Connor’s chest, so that she felt his answer rumble softly through her. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She leaned back and wiped at her eyes. Her face was streaked with tears. “I came in here to seduce you,” she said, with a strangled laugh, “and then I cried all over you instead.”

“Let’s rain-check the seduction, please,” Connor replied, and then his tone grew more serious. “You know that you can cry all over me anytime. I’ll always be here for you, Bee.”

Beatrice nodded, though she wasn’t quite certain that was true. Not once Connor found out that she and Teddy were engaged.

She looked at him for a long, searing moment, trying to fix his face in her mind, as if she were pressing her father’s Great Seal into a medallion of wax. And then she leaned in to kiss him.

She focused on the feel of his mouth, the roughness of his cheek against hers, committing every last detail to memory—so that someday, when she was trapped in a political marriage, she could look back on this moment, and remember what it felt like to be truly loved.

Sam trailed along the downstairs hallway, lost in thought. She was debating whether to head over to King’s College and try to see Nina.

Sam hadn’t been able to get hold of her friend since the news about Nina and Jeff broke. She’d been calling and texting nonstop, but the only response Nina had sent to all her messages was
Thanks for checking in, but I’m not ready to see anyone.

I’m not
anyone, Sam had wanted to reply.
I’m your best friend.
Or at least she’d thought she was.

Best friends didn’t keep secrets this big from each other, did they?

Sam had to admit, she’d felt an initial twinge of weirdness at the knowledge that her twin brother and her friend had been hooking up for weeks without telling her—had been sneaking around the entire trip to Telluride, right under Sam’s nose. It was a little hurtful that she’d found out about their relationship from the
tabloids,
the same as the rest of America.

But that initial flush of discomfort was followed by an overwhelming wave of protectiveness. The tone of these articles, not to mention the comments, was absolutely vile. Sam wanted to publish a rebuttal, or better yet go on television and tell everyone what Nina was really like—but the palace’s press secretary had put a gag order on her
and
Jeff the moment the story broke. The best Sam had been able to do was post a flurry of comments in support of Nina, under a series of aliases.

She’d tried to get some answers from Jeff, but he just had a lost-puppy look about the whole thing. Apparently Nina wasn’t answering his calls, either.

The first morning after the articles came out, when she hadn’t heard anything from Nina beyond that single text, Sam had asked her protection officer to drive her to the Gonzalezes’ house. She’d elbowed past the scattered paparazzi to ring the doorbell. When Nina’s mamá answered, she took one look at Sam and shook her head. “She went back to campus.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks. I’ll head over now.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Isabella said uncertainly. “Having you there might only make things worse.” She cut her eyes toward the paparazzi, who were still gathered on the front lawn like scavengers surrounding their prey.

“Oh—all right. Will you tell her I came by?” Sam had shoved her hands into the pockets of her down-filled jacket.

That was three days ago, and Sam still hadn’t heard anything from Nina.

She paused now at the entrance to the Grand Gallery, a long room lined with portraits of all the American kings, in order. At this end stood the massive painting of George I after the Battle of Yorktown, smiling benevolently, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Next came his nephew George II, a bit pasty and narrow-eyed for Sam’s taste, and then his son King Theodore: the one who died as a child, whom teddy bears—and probably Teddy Eaton—were named for. And so on, all the way through the official regnal portrait of Samantha’s own father, George IV.

Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned around, expecting one of the footmen or bureaucrats, and was delighted to see Teddy instead. He was walking slowly, lost in thought.

She and Teddy hadn’t gotten a moment alone together since their illicit kiss in the hot tub. She’d seen him a few times since their return from Telluride, always at crowded functions, when he was officially there with Beatrice. But their eyes would meet across the room, and Sam would know, with a hot glow of certainty, that he was thinking of her.

In those moments, every inch of her felt so eager and alive that she had to forcibly restrain herself from taking his arm and dragging him away with her.

“Hey. I didn’t realize you were coming over today.” She reached for Teddy’s hand, but he neatly detangled himself from her grip and took a step back. The motion was like a bucket of cold water tossed over her head.

“I can’t—not right now. I’m here to see Robert,” Teddy told her.

“Standish?” Sam wrinkled her nose in a frown. “What on earth for?”

“To discuss the press announcement.”

“Press announcement?” Sam asked blankly.

Teddy was silent for a moment. A series of emotions flickered over his face, too fast for her to read. “I assumed you knew. Beatrice and I had agreed to tell our families. But I guess she wanted to save the surprise.”

Sam’s heart struck a strange rhythm in her chest. “Tell your families what?” she asked, too quietly, because some part of her already knew and refused to face it.

“About our engagement.”

The shock of it vibrated through her.

Teddy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Beatrice asked me to marry her, and I said yes.”

Tiny white lights danced before Sam’s vision. She felt short of breath, like one of her ancestors, constricted in a corset and gasping for air.

Teddy took a cautious step toward her, but Samantha stumbled back, holding up her hands to warn him off. “I can’t believe you,” she said viciously. “Are you seriously going to marry my
sister
?”

He winced. “I’m sorry that I kissed you in Telluride. It wasn’t fair to Beatrice, or to you.”

“You can’t go through with this,” Sam insisted, ignoring his mention of the hot tub. This was much bigger than a single kiss. “Teddy, you can’t marry Beatrice just because your family expects it of you.”

Steel flashed in his eyes. “I’m sorry, but you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Why not?” she pressed. “You’ve already lectured me about deciding what to do with
my
life! So now I’m asking you the same question. Is this really what you want—to marry Beatrice?”

“Don’t make me answer that,” Teddy said stiffly.

“If you don’t actually want to marry her, then why did you say yes to her proposal?”

“I said yes because you can’t say no to the future queen, not when she asks a question like that!”

“Yes, you can. It’s easy!” Sam argued. “You open your mouth and tell her
no
!”

“I’m sorry.” Teddy’s voice was so hoarse, so defeated, that it seemed unrecognizable. Those piercing blue eyes were filled with remorse.

Rage shot through her like a flash of summer lightning. “Fine. If this is really how you want it to be.”

“It
isn’t
how I want it to be, but I told you, I don’t have a choice.”

“
Everyone
has a choice, Teddy. And you, apparently, choose this.”

His features contorted in pain, but he didn’t answer. She didn’t really expect him to.

“Let me tell you something. If you think this marriage is going to give you a position of power, you’re wrong.” Sam spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable—even the punctuation, even the spaces between the words—with terrifying care. “You’ll be forced to set aside your own desires to support Beatrice.
She
will be in the limelight and in the driver’s seat, not you. Your children will have the last name of Washington.” She took a dark pleasure in Teddy’s anguish at her words.

“Beatrice will prioritize herself, and what she thinks is right for the country.” She glanced away, her tone falling to a whisper. “I would have
always
put us first.”

“Sam …,” he said brokenly.

She shook her head. “Like I told you when we met, only my friends call me Sam.”

Teddy hesitated another moment, then seemed to think better of it. He swept her a low, formal bow before heading down the hallway.

Sam leaned her palm against the wall and took a few ragged breaths. The portraits along the gallery seemed to be staring at her, their jaws tightened in judgment, their eyes cold and disappointed. As if they were silently telegraphing their displeasure at her—the worthless spare daughter, the flighty and ridiculous Sparrow.

As if they, too, would choose Beatrice over her.

Before she’d thought it through, Sam was storming upstairs to Beatrice’s suite, barging past her bewildered Revere Guard without even bothering to knock. She slammed the door behind her with a resounding thud.

Beatrice was seated at her desk, her hands poised over the keys of her laptop. She glanced up at Samantha’s arrival and gave a watery smile. “Hey, Samantha.”

“You proposed to Teddy.” Sam was gratified to see her sister flinch.

“I guess news travels fast in this place.”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself? I can’t believe you would do this to me!”

“Do this to you?” Beatrice gave a puzzled frown.

“I
like
Teddy! I’ve liked him since the Queen’s Ball. And I met him first,” Sam cried out, unable to stop the sudden flow of words. “Or didn’t he tell you that he spent the entire ceremony making out with
me
?”

Beatrice inhaled sharply, but her expression remained unchanged. “I’m sorry that you have a crush on my fiancé—”

“It isn’t a crush!” Sam cut in. “I really like him, okay?”

“You like everybody, Samantha.”

She was speaking in a calm, level voice, which somehow made Sam even angrier, as if the more rational Beatrice got, the more out of control Sam wanted to spin. She was seized by an irrational desire to grab hold of something—a whorled glass paperweight, maybe—and hurl it against a wall, just to watch it shatter.

“I know that Mom and Dad asked you to date him, but why did you have to jump all the way to a
proposal
? Don’t you feel like you’re rushing things? Or are you that desperate to remain the center of attention?”

A darker, heavier emotion flitted behind Beatrice’s deep brown eyes. “As always, you have no idea what’s really going on,” she said cryptically. “I hate to break it to you, Samantha, but not everything is about you.”

“Trust me, I know that. It’s all about
you,
” Sam shot back.

Beatrice bristled. “I don’t know why you’re so upset. You’re the one who can do anything you want, and no one even cares.”

“Exactly!” Sam cried out, triumphant.
“No one cares!”

She was shouting by now. Some rational part of her realized that the staff must have heard. That was the downside of living in a palace—that nothing was private, certainly not her tears or hysterics.

At Sam’s words, Beatrice seemed to fold inward, like a balloon that was deflating. “Sam, I would trade with you in a heartbeat.” Her whisper was so quiet that Sam wasn’t quite certain she’d heard.

Beatrice seemed utterly broken; the sight of her like this slammed into Samantha’s anger, twisting it into something else.

Except—Beatrice had won. She had Teddy; she had the throne; she had
everything.
So why did she seem so miserable? She looked as sorrowful as Teddy had been, as if this engagement had somehow been forced upon them both. But they didn’t get to play the victims here. Not when she was the real casualty of this engagement.

“Forget it.” Sam started toward the door. “You and Teddy clearly deserve each other.”