Page 41 of Rivals
Daphne tried, and failed, to hide a smile. “Gabriella is having a birthday party at her family’s house this weekend. You and I will both be there.”
“She won’t let me in the door. I insulted her in front of all her friends,” Nina reminded her.
“She can’t turn you away if you come with Jefferson. Even Gabriella wouldn’t dare tell him no.”
Nina frowned. “And then what?”
“We snoop through Gabriella’s room, look for something incriminating. Or,Ido the snooping while you stand guard.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Anything!Prescription drugs that were prescribed to someone else. Love letters. Sexy photos. A diary would be best, though I doubt we’ll get that lucky.”
Nina sounded dubious. “What if we snoop through her room and don’t find anything?”
“We’ll find something,” Daphne assured her. “Everyone has made a mistake. Everyone is hiding some kind of secret.”
Nina met her gaze, and Daphne wondered if she was thinking of the various secrets she’d buried. Or maybe Nina was so genuinely open and honest that shehadno secrets, and was really just remembering all of Daphne’s. There were certainly plenty of them.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” Nina said at last. “Just to be clear, though, I still hate you.”
“That makes sense, because I still hate you,” Daphne said pleasantly. “I just happen to hate Gabriella more.”
That night, after Daphne had met Jefferson at the palace for dinner—and stayed a few more hours, intertwined with him in bed—she took the palace car service home. She was grateful that Jefferson always insisted upon it, since her parents had sold her car a few weeks ago. But as the sedan pulled up her family’s driveway, Daphne noticed a strange van parked out front.
“Thank you,” she said quickly, throwing open the door before the chauffeur could do it for her. Whatever was going on, she probably didn’t want the palace to know.
The driver nodded and pulled away. The Deightons’ house was as dark as the night sky, the only light coming from a pair of windows on the second floor and the lemon wedge of moon overhead. Daphne started up the driveway just as a pair of men emerged from the front door. They were carrying something bulky beneath a white dust cloth.
“Careful with that one. It’s a real Louis XVI,” Daphne’s mother hissed as she trailed after them. She was all angles and sharp edges: her brows drawn together, her shoulders hunched beneath a puffy coat.
“It’s a little late to have movers here,” Daphne ventured, and her mother sniffed.
“I had them come at night so that the neighbors wouldn’t see. What if they sold photos to the paparazzi? I can see the headlines now: ‘Prince’s Girlfriend Strapped for Cash, Sells Off Family Heirlooms.’ ”
They’re not heirlooms,Daphne thought, but kept it to herself. Aloud she said, “Are things really that bad?”
“Your father hired a lawyer to advise him on this whole…situation,” her mother snapped. “The legal fees are astronomical.”
The two of them headed inside, pausing at the entrance to the living room, or what used to be the living room—the only part of the Deightons’ house with expensive furniture, since it was where they received all their guests. Upstairs, everything was from mail-order catalogs or secondhand.
Where the plush green sofa used to stand, there was now a yawning blank space. The pair of carved wooden tables that used to sit against the far wall, gone. The tasseled ottoman that Jefferson always propped his feet on, gone.
Daphne could practically feel her mother’s frustrationemanating from her in waves, like heat. Rebecca had spent years collecting these pieces, painstakingly scouring estate sales and resale shops, crafting an illusion of generational wealth that fooled no one.
Neither of them spoke as the movers removed the full-length portrait of the old lady in black from its spot above the mantel. The painting, and its placement, implied that she was an illustrious Deighton ancestor, but the truth was that no one knew who she was. When Daphne was little, she used to secretly imagine that the woman was related to her—though she didn’t look especially grandmotherly, with her widow’s garb and stern, unsmiling expression.
Holding the portrait by its wooden frame, the movers carried it unceremoniously outside.
“I’ll buy a couple of reproduction pieces for the living room so that it’s not completely empty. Just don’t invite Jefferson over,” Rebecca said into the silence.
“I won’t,” Daphne assured her, and started up the stairs. “Good night, Mother.”
Well, there clearly wouldn’t be money for college tuition anytime soon.
Daphne got ready for bed, but even with a gel mask under her eyes, she felt too agitated to sleep. Everything was roiling wildly in her brain—her parents’ desperation, her own fear, and this strange new alliance with Nina Gonzalez.
Already their conversation in the library had acquired the sticky, distorted feeling of a dream. It seemed impossible that she and Nina might actually set aside their resentment long enough to take down a mutual enemy.
