Page 75 of Rivals
“Will you come with me?” Louise begged. “I know it’s a lot to ask this late in the conference. I should probably just call Siri or Bharat or Alexei. But they wouldn’t understand.”
Of course. Beatrice knew, to her own great sorrow, what it was like to lose a parent—and then succeed that parent as ruler. To feel like you were stepping out onto a vast stage, alone and terrified.
“Please,” Louise said again, clearly unnerved by Beatrice’s silence. “I can’t do this without a friend.”
A friend.Beatrice had never had one of those, not the way Sam had Nina. To be honest, she’d always been jealous ofthose two: the way they could talk about anything without explaining the backstory, could launch into an anecdote with oblique references that no one else understood, yet that made perfect sense to the pair of them.
“Of course I’ll come,” she promised.
As she was throwing some clothes into an overnight bag, she called Teddy.
He hadn’t mentioned his statement of renunciation since he’d arrived in Boston, and Beatrice certainly wasn’t about to bring it up. It felt like a silent, hulking presence at the fringes of all their conversations—something she skirted around, because she didn’t know how to acknowledge it, now that it had happened.
Beatrice had always known that whoever married her would have to give up everything. Yet each time she saw that document, it hit her in a way it hadn’t before. Teddy was sacrificing his role, his purpose, hisidentityin order to be with her, while Beatrice’s life remained completely unchanged.
It made her feel slightly dizzy with guilt.
“That’s great news, that Louise’s dad is better,” Teddy said, once Beatrice had explained that she was heading to France. “But, Bee—are you sure that this is the right time to leave? You’re supposed to be hosting hundreds of world leaders right now.”
“It’s just for a night, and Sam can handle things in my absence.”
After the photo shoot, Sam had told her that she and Marshall were trying to figure things out. Beatrice wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly—the fundamental imbalance at the core of their relationship was still there—but she tried to be happy as long as Sam was happy.
She was rooting for them, even if it meant that Sam would eventually face the same problem Beatrice had, and end up asking the man she loved to give up everything for her.
“Louise is my friend,” Beatrice went on, willing Teddy to understand. “She needs me, and I want to be there.”
“Then that’s all there is to it,” he agreed.
Gratitude flooded her chest. “How are things at home?”
Teddy talked for a few more minutes—about how Lewis and Livingston had both used a dating app under fake names and ended up going out with the same girl; about how a pipe had burst, flooding Grandma Betty’s house, and everyone in the family was so relieved that she would finally buy new furniture, except she replaced it all with the same floral pattern from the seventies. “They don’t evenmakethat fabric anymore,” Teddy recounted. “Grandma Betty called the manufacturer and bullied them into producing some especially for her, so she could reupholster her new furniture to look just like the old.”
Beatrice joined in his laughter, but a nervous apprehension flickered deep in her gut. Teddy was pulling back. He stuck to light, easy subjects, never mentioning the work of the duchy or the fact that he was handing over his lifetime of knowledge and training to his younger brother.
She hoped that she hadn’t asked too much of him. But every time she thought of bringing it up, the words froze in her throat.
“I have to go,” she told him at last. “I love you. I’ll call you when I’m back from Paris, okay?”
She could imagine the warmth of Teddy’s smile as he replied, “Love you, too. Travel safe.”
Within the hour, Beatrice was on the Bourbons’ plane, flying to France—the quick way, straight over the Arctic Circle. When they reached Paris, they touched down in a private airfield and transferred to a waiting car.
She glanced over at Louise, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet for the entire flight. Shortly before landing she had changed into a long-sleeved dress and tights, not applyingany makeup except a sheer lip gloss. Without her signature leather jackets and burgundy lipstick, she seemed younger, more vulnerable.
Actually, she looked a lot like Beatrice used to, before she’d started imitating Louise.
Beatrice could tell that her friend needed space, so she waited until they reached the ornate golden gates of Versailles before speaking. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Louise’s voice shook. “I haven’t spoken to my father, truly spoken to him, in so long.”
Beatrice wondered exactly what that meant. Had King Louis emerged from a coma after some debilitating injury, like Himari, the girl who’d fallen down the palace’s back staircase? Or was it a mental illness?
The palace rose up before them, stately and serene, afternoon sunlight flashing in its hundreds of windows. Stone cherubs and gods peered down at them from the roof, which was lined in gold tracery as delicate as lace.
Their car hadn’t even come to a complete stop before Louise threw open the door. The staff were lined up outside the front steps, row upon row of footmen and maids and chefs and valets, all wearing the Bourbons’ blue-and-white livery. Louise sprinted up the front steps without even a pretense of dignity, ignoring the way they all swept into curtsies and bows at her arrival.
Beatrice found Louise in the north wing, at the end of a hallway. A nurse in cream-colored scrubs was speaking to the princess in rapid French.
