Page 106 of American Royals
Jeff’s hands drifted lower on her back. Nina stepped a bit closer, hooking her arm around him, to tuck her head over his shoulder. Her body felt tingling and alert, her blood humming with the words she hadn’t yet dared speak aloud.
Nina had been so afraid that she would lose sight of herself amid all the glamour and protocol, the inherently public nature of their relationship. But instead she’d found something much greater.
She loved Jeff.
And even though she had always known it—even though her love for Jeff went so far back that she could hardly remember a time before she loved him—Nina let herself learn it all over again.
BEATRICE
Beatrice felt like a mechanical wind-up doll, reciting the same few sentences over and over: We are so glad you could make it; Thank you for the warm wishes; We are both thrilled.
She couldn’t afford to think too closely about the import of her words, or she might actually faint. Already she felt sweat sliding down her back beneath the stiff fabric of her dress.
Somehow it managed to evoke bridal without actually looking like a wedding gown—its silk panels a shade of cream so dark that it verged on light gold, adorned with taffeta detail. Her hair was styled in an intricate updo, the Winslow tiara perched on her head. Diamonds blazed like teardrops in her ears.
Countless nobles stood before her in order of precedence, all of them waiting to congratulate her and Teddy on the engagement. They wound around the side of the ballroom in a near-interminable queue. Beatrice kept imagining them breaking into dance, like some kind of aristocratic conga line.
She glanced over at her sister, who’d planted herself resolutely to Beatrice’s left, as if Beatrice might suddenly need to lean on her for support. Ever since their conversation in the kitchens, Beatrice had noticed a new maturity to Samantha. She wasn’t the same princess who’d laughed her way blithely through high school. There was a new edge to her, a new weight to her words.
Sometime in the last year, while Beatrice hadn’t been paying attention, her little sister had grown up.
Beatrice had held it together through the dukes and marquesses, but they were still only halfway through the earls, and she felt herself beginning to fray. The line of courtiers seemed to stretch on and on forever.
Teddy—she still couldn’t think of him as her fiancé—rested a hand on her back in a silent gesture of support. Maybe he’d noticed her drooping a bit.
“Robert.” Beatrice turned to the chamberlain. “Could we take five?”
Robert’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Your Royal Highness, it is customary for newly engaged members of the royal family to receive congratulation from all the gathered peers at the start of the celebratory ball.” One of Robert’s greatest skills was telling royalty no without actually saying the word.
To Beatrice’s relief, Teddy cut in, his voice firm. “It’s all right, Robert; we can pause. Or if you don’t think it’s inappropriate, I’m happy to accept congratulations on the princess’s behalf.”
“Thank you.” Beatrice shot Teddy a grateful look. Gathering her plentiful skirts with both hands, she slipped out of the ballroom.
The moment she turned in to the hallway, Beatrice began to run. She didn’t care where she was going as long as she kept moving, away from that room where everything was printed with an interlaced B and T. Beatrice didn’t even remember giving her approval for that wedding monogram, but she supposed she must have. Everything related to the wedding had become a blur.
She stumbled past one of the downstairs sitting rooms, where the guests had deposited their gifts at the start of the night, only to halt in her tracks.
“Connor?”
He stood near a wooden table that groaned beneath the weight of presents, most of them wrapped in ivory or silver paper. Although Beatrice and Teddy had insisted that all they wanted were charitable donations, everyone seemed determined to shower them with gifts.
“I know I wasn’t invited,” Connor hurried to say. He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a sweater that brought out the blue-gray of his eyes. In his hand was a box tied with satin ribbon. “I just wanted to give you this, before …”
“Thank you,” Beatrice said, because she had to say something, and her mind was currently incapable of forming any other words.
The right thing to do was to walk onward, away from Connor. To return to the ballroom, where her fiancé—and all the rest of her predictable royal future—awaited her.
Instead Beatrice stepped inside, pulling the door soundlessly shut.
“There’s no need, Your Royal Highness,” Connor said, a sharpness to those last three words. “I know you have to get back to your party.”
“Please don’t Your Royal Highness me.”
He crossed his arms defensively. “What do you want from me, Beatrice? You made it perfectly clear how things stand between us. We’ve already said goodbye,” he reminded her. “I just hope you’re happy with the choices you’ve made.”
“Maybe I’m not.”
It came out barely a whisper.
