Page 15 of Rivals
Most of all, she hated that America had proven Kelsey right.
Marshall had gotten far more attention than any of Sam’s former romantic entanglements, more attention even than Daphne and Jeff. Some of it came from his reputation—his famous ex-girlfriends, his snarky humor, the fact that he was wealthy and titled and unbearably handsome—but race played a part in it, too. The nation wouldn’t have reacted so vociferously if her sarcastic playboy boyfriend werewhite.
Sam attempted to lighten the mood. “You know this is all worthless clickbait. I mean, there have been so many ridiculous headlines about me. That I’m allergic to water—”
To her relief, Marshall cracked a smile. “That can’t be a thing.”
“That I have calf implants—”
“You do have excellent calves,” he agreed, bending over as if he meant to lift the hem of her gown. She swatted him away.
“But hey,” Sam added, now grinning mischievously, “if you’re worried that people think we’re fake dating, we can always make a sex tape.”
“Somehow I doubt a sex tape would repair either of our reputations.”
Sam shrugged. “I never said we have to release it.”
Marshall laughed at that. “You’re too much, Sam.”
“Let’s blow off the rest of this party. It’s getting late anyway.” She reached for his hand and pulled him back toward the door. “Have you seen the pool downstairs?”
“This house has anindoorpool too?” Marshall asked, momentarily distracted.
“It’s Olympic-sized, and heated.”
“I didn’t bring a suit, though.”
“Somehow I don’t foresee that being a problem.”
Marshall nodded. “Good point. I’m more hydrodynamic without swim trunks anyway. That’s how the professional athletes train when they’re racing at the Olympic Club.”
“Racing? Is that what they call it these days?”
He laughed again, pulling her closer and dropping a quick kiss on her lips.
Samantha had never felt this way about anyone before—like she was grateful to the world simply because Marshall was in it, and at the same time like she wanted to make the worldbetterbecause Marshall was in it.
She loved him. It was as simple as that. And Sam would do anything, would confront all the false accusations and prejudices in the world, to protect that love.
Daphne stood before her full-length mirror, turning back and forth as she assessed her navy dress and cropped blazer. Would people think she was overdressed for freshman orientation? Maybe she should switch to jeans. Her mother always complained when Daphne wore denim—“Beatrice doesn’t wear jeans in public,” she would sniff—but the other students would probably look like they’d just rolled out of bed.
Daphne hated this sense of uncertainty. By now she knew how to dress and what to expect from all the myriad types of royal events, but college was entirely new territory, with a new group of people to win over. Some of her classmates might even become her friends, or at least as close tofriendsas Daphne could allow. Friendship required trust, which required showing someone who you really were.
Daphne couldn’t afford to do that with anyone.
She started down the stairs, moving with slow, graceful steps. When she was a child Daphne used to take the stairs as fast as she could, until her mother had snapped: “Stop it! You clatter down the stairs like a thousand-pound elephant.” Rebecca had promptly enrolled Daphne in an intensive ballet program, the kind meant for future professionals, taught by an old woman who screamed at them in Russian and whacked their legs with a cane if their form wobbled.
Daphne now walked down staircases like a queen, dancedas gracefully as a prima ballerina, and curtsied more beautifully than anyone at court.
“Daphne?”
Her mother sat in the living room, scrolling through something on her phone, probably the royal family’s recent media coverage. Between Kelsey Brooke’s tell-all about Samantha and Marshall and Beatrice’s debacle with the eternal flame, the Washingtons weren’t having a great week.
Daphne hadn’t been all that surprised by the article about Samantha; Jefferson’s twin was always embroiled in some scandal or another, even if most of them were made up. Samantha was just too controversial for the tabloids to resist.
But Beatrice’s slipup had caught her off guard. It was like a highway accident that Daphne couldn’t look away from; she kept tracking the latest hashtags and comments on social media. By now the image of Beatrice—standing there with an empty basin, looking utterly stricken—had been used in dozens of memes, everything fromWhen my date shows up and looks *nothing* like his profile picturetoHow I felt when I got stranded at the airport overnight.
The blue light of the screen illuminated her mother’s face from below, distorting her beautiful features into something eerie. Rebecca looked like her daughter in so many ways, with the same upturned nose and vivid green eyes, though her hair was blond instead of Daphne’s rich red-gold. Sometimes when Daphne looked at her mother, she had the sense that she was staring through a fun-house mirror into the future, seeing herself thirty years from now. She didn’t always like what she saw.
