Page 68 of Rivals
“That’s okay. I want to walk,” she said quickly. Better not to spend any more time alone with Jeff.
Yet instead of heading back to the palace, he shrugged. “Then I’ll walk you.”
“Jeff, it’s not very late. You don’t have to.”
“That’s what friends are for,” he told her, smiling.
There was nothing Nina could say to that. She was the one who kept reminding them both that they were just friends.
It would have been like any other guy walking across campus with her, except for the Revere Guard several paces behind them, holding an umbrella in case the skies opened into a downpour. And the car that followed, vanishing and then reappearing as it followed the roads that were meant only for licensed university vehicles and supply trucks.
When they reached Nina’s dorm, she paused at the doorway and looked up at Jeff. Her blood pinged wildly inside her, bouncing off her skin, making everything buzz and tingle.
His dark hair seemed to glow. In the moonlight he was all shadow and silver, like an old black-and-white photo come to life. Come to think of it, there was something historical in the set of his chin, the resolute way he squared his shoulders.
Nina realized that she’d been lying when she’d told Daphnethat she had no romantic feelings for Jeff. But then, she’d been lying to herself, too.
Whatever part of her had fallen in love with Jeff the first time, it was still there—and in danger of falling for him all over again.
He met her gaze, and Nina caught a flash of nervousness, maybe even of longing.
She took a panicked step back, fumbling for her student ID to hide the shaking of her hands. “Good night, Jeff,” she said quickly, and shut the door in his face.
“Ladies!” Lord Colin Marchworth called out, clapping his hands imperiously.
The ladies-in-waiting, all wearing ivory column gowns and elbow-length gloves, reluctantly broke off their conversations. Colin squinted behind his glasses and began pompously directing the young women into position at the front of the throne room.
“Lady Isabelle, move to the back row; you’re too tall. Lady Janet, turn to the side—no, the other way, and drape your arm over the back of that chair—the other arm! Lady Gabriella, a step forward, if you please….”
Gabriella Madison flounced forward. She had the air of someone who expected to be constantly curtsied to, as if she considered herself the highest-ranking person in every room—even now, alongside the queen.
Sam’s palms felt sweaty inside her gloves; she tugged absently at the bodice of her gown, a cloying pink chiffon that her stylist had assured her would be salmon-colored, but instead made Sam feel like a little girl playing dress-up.
Her eyes kept sliding nervously toward the door. The photo shoot had begun with only the ladies-in-waiting—because of course, ladies first—but any minute now the lords attendant would show up. Which meant she would see Marshall.
Beatrice reached over to give her hand a squeeze. “You’ll be fine.”
“I know,” Sam murmured back, unconvinced.
The ladies-in-waiting clustered around them in a perfumed huddle of whispers and rustling dresses. Beatrice kept her eyes trained on Colin, who was fiddling with the tripod of his camera. “I can always pretend to faint, like Jeff did that time in Telluride, if you want to call off this whole thing.”
“I think Jeff pretended he was going to vomit, actually,” Sam recalled, a corner of her mouth lifting in reluctant amusement.
Colin had been the royal family’s official photographer for three decades now. He took all the Washingtons’ official pictures, the ones intended for postcards and coffee mugs and their Christmas photo. When they were children, the royal siblings had posed every year in matching outfits—red-and-green beribboned dresses for Sam and Beatrice, a collared shirt and knee socks for Jeff—usually out in a grassy meadow. As if by taking their Christmas photo outside the palace, they could convince everyone that they were a relatively ordinary family.
“Smile, ladies!” Colin exclaimed, and they all settled into position.
A few minutes later, when Sam felt half-blinded by the flashbulb, raucous male voices sounded down the hallway, and the lords attendant burst into the room.
And there was Marshall.
His eyes flicked up and met Sam’s as if drawn there by magnetism, by gravity. Then the floor seemed to fall out from beneath her, and bile rose up in her throat, and it all came rushing back in a nauseating whirl. The raw anguish in his voice when he’d told her,I won’t walk away from the dukedom, not even for you.
She’d worked so hard to distract herself—with the trip to see Nina, and by focusing on the League of Kings, trying to support Beatrice—but seeing Marshall, Sam knew that she hadn’t healed in the slightest.
Beatrice squeezed her fingers again—just the slightest pressure, a brush of support and sympathy—and it gave Sam the strength to tear her eyes from Marshall’s and paste a smile on her face.
She let Colin arrange her in various positions, placing her hands on the back of Beatrice’s chair or sitting on the steps of the dais, her pink skirts poufing around her. Her smile never faltered, though the entire time she was hyperaware of Marshall in her peripheral vision.
