Page 16 of Rivals
Daphne hesitated in the doorway. “I’m on my way to orientation. Can we talk later?”
“You’re not going to orientation,” her mother replied. “Sit down.”
There was a flinty resolve in her tone that Daphne didn’t dare contradict. She walked to the opposite armchair and perched on its cushion, tucking one ankle behind the other as if she were at a tea party rather than in her own home. The habits of protocol were deeply ingrained in her by this point. And it was impossible to relax around her mother.
“Our family is in trouble,” Rebecca said without preamble.
“Financial trouble?”
There never seemed to be enough money in the Deighton household; they were always a mere breath ahead of their creditors, always outspending their means. Unlike the other girls at St. Ursula’s—who could snap up a dozen couture gowns like they were a sleeve of macarons—Daphne cobbled together her wardrobe on a shoestring budget, through aggressive online shopping and monitoring of the sale rack. Once when Jefferson had given her an expensive handbag, Daphne bought a knockoff version of the same purse from a street vendor, then sold the real one to a resale shop. Jefferson would never know the difference, and she’d gotten three new cocktail dresses from the proceeds of that bag.
“Yes, we’re in financial trouble, but that’s the least of our worries,” Rebecca said impatiently. “The real problem is that we might lose our title.”
Everything went silent. There was no noise, no cars passing or wind whistling through the trees. It felt like the rest of the world had dissolved, like there was nothing and no one except the two of them, alone, in this house.
“Lose our title?” Daphne whispered.
“The Conferrals and Forfeiture Committee will review your father’s case next month. If they find him guilty of ungentlemanly behavior, they’ll strip him of his baronetcy.”
“What did hedo?”
Her mother sighed. “He gambled, Daphne. On you.”
Daphne listened, stunned. Apparently, when she and Jefferson were broken up last year, the Vegas odds on a Daphne-Jefferson wedding had dropped from one in three to one in twenty. Peter Deighton couldn’t resist those numbers.
“He placed the bet under a fake name. And he almost got away with it, untilPeopledid that feature on you last month and included a photo of our family. One of the bookies saw the picture and recognized him. He reported Peter’s behavior to the gambling commission, which then reported it to the Duke of Virginia,” her mother said wearily.
“Lord Ambrose Madison?” What did Gabriella’s father have to do with this?
“He’s chairman of the Conferrals and Forfeiture Committee.” Rebecca drummed her red-painted nails against the side of the armchair. “Ambrose could have let it go, the way he would’ve done for one of his cronies. Those men always cover each other’s backs, help each other hide things that are far worse than a bit of gambling,” her mother said bitterly. “Instead, Ambrose submitted your father’s title for formal review.”
“Because he’s as snobby and cruel as his daughter?”
“Because he and Peter have hated each other for years. You didn’t know?” her mother asked, at Daphne’s surprised look. “Why do you think Gabriella goes out of her way to attack you? Their family has always despised ours.”
“I thought it was because we’re…”
“Newly noble, yes,” her mother finished for her. “Ambrose never forgave your father for daring to outshine him. He’d grown up as a future duke, praised since childhood for talent and brilliance that he didn’t possess, and then Peter Deighton came along—a second-generation baronet, the lowliest title on the rung—and refused to suck up to Ambrose like everyone else did. If anything, I think your father poked fun at him forbeing awkward and ungainly.” Rebecca lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Obviously, Ambrose couldn’t allow that.”
Daphne pictured the Duke of Virginia as a teenager: the sort of self-important, red-faced boy who bragged loudly about his family’s connections. She felt an unexpected pride in her father for refusing to kowtow to him.
“When you started dating Jefferson, it just about killed the Madisons,” her mother went on. “The duke and duchess clearly assumed that Gabriella would be the one to become a princess.”
Daphne’s stomach turned. If she went from being the daughter of a baronet to an utter nobody, it would be much harder to marry into the royal family. No commoner had ever done it.
“Are you saying that the duke wants to revoke Father’s baronetcy because ofme? Because he wants to clear the way for Gabriella to make a move on Jefferson?”
“Revenge, spite, jealousy—why else does anyone do anything in politics?” her mother asked bluntly. “The Madisons think we’ve overreached, that you should never have presumed to date a Washington in the first place. Lord Ambrose wants to take us all down a peg.”
Daphne gripped the edges of her chair until her knuckles turned white. “Gambling isn’t illegal,” she pointed out, and her mother gave a mirthless laugh.
“The committee isn’t ruling on whether Peter’s behavior was illegal, just whether it was ungentlemanly. In poor taste.”
Daphne knew enough to be frightened. The Conferrals and Forfeiture Committee focused more on the conferrals part of their job—recommending candidates for knighthood to the sovereign—than on the forfeiture part. Still, they had stripped plenty of titles over the years. In the nineteenth century it had been for dramatic reasons: adultery, treason, evenmurder. These days the cause was usually embezzlement or tax evasion.
Or, apparently, gambling on your daughter’s chances of becoming a princess.
“We have to stop this,” Daphne thought aloud. “I can talk to Jefferson after class tomorrow, see if he can help.”
