Page 12 of American Royals
Trumpets sounded from the other end of the hall, indicating that the ceremony would begin in fifteen minutes. The noise was followed by an answering thunder of footsteps as hundreds of people began the slow procession toward the throne room.
Sam’s heart skipped. Etiquette, as well as common sense, dictated that she should lead Teddy to his seat—but she didn’t want to. She wasn’t done with him. She wanted his warm golden energy to be focused on her for just a moment longer.
She grabbed Teddy’s hand and dragged him down the hall, then threw open a nondescript door and pulled it closed behind them.
The cloakroom smelled of fur and cedarwood and Samantha’s Vol de Nuit perfume. A thin light crept in through the doorframe.
Sam was still clutching her beer bottle. She lifted it to her lips, well aware of the juxtaposition she posed: wearing a couture gown and priceless Crown Jewels, chugging a beer. Teddy raised one eyebrow, evidently amused, but he didn’t try to leave.
She set the empty bottle on the floor and turned to face him, the sequined fabric of her dress contorting around her.
“You might be aware that I outrank you,” she whispered, teasing.
“It’s been mentioned once or twice.”
She reached her hands up to his shoulders to pull at the stray end of his bow tie, which fell uselessly to the floor. “I outrank you,” Sam repeated, “and as your princess, I command that you kiss me.”
Teddy hesitated, and for a moment Sam worried that she had misread him. But then his face relaxed into a smile.
“I don’t think monarchs get to make autocratic demands like that anymore,” he said softly.
“I’m not a monarch,” she reminded him. “So, do you refuse?”
“In this instance, I’m happy to oblige. But don’t assume this means I’m going to obey all your commands.”
“Fine with me.” Sam grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him forward.
Teddy’s mouth was warm on hers. He kissed her back eagerly, almost hungrily. Samantha closed her eyes and leaned back into the darkness, falling onto someone’s mink. Her blood bubbled, as light and fizzy as champagne.
On the other side of the door, she heard the bleating pack of courtiers marching toward the throne room. As if by unspoken agreement, she and Teddy held themselves absolutely still, falling ever deeper into the kiss.
It didn’t matter whether Samantha showed up to the ceremony. No one would notice if she wasn’t there. She was only the Sparrow, after all.
BEATRICE
Beatrice kept her eyes shut, reminding herself to breathe.
Once, during the fitting for the flower-girl dress she’d worn at her uncle’s wedding, she had fidgeted so much that her mom had snapped at her not to move a single muscle. So she hadn’t—not even her lungs. Seven-year-old Beatrice had held her breath with such determination that she actually passed out.
“Would you look up, Your Royal Highness?” the makeup artist murmured. Beatrice reluctantly lifted her gaze, trying to ignore the eyeliner pencil prodding at her lower lid. It had been easier to keep her anxiety at bay when her eyes were closed.
She stood at the center of the Brides’ Room, a downstairs sitting room across the hall from the ballroom, named for the generations of royal brides who had used it to change into their wedding gowns. Beatrice had gotten ready here on countless occasions; she often needed to do this sort of quick costume change in the middle of an event. But the room’s name had never before caused her such disquiet.
If everything went according to her parents’ plan, she would be getting ready here again all too soon.
The Brides’ Room was the epitome of girliness, its peach wallpaper hand-painted with delicate white flowers. There was very little furniture: just a small love seat and a side table with a bowl of potpourri made from old bridal bouquets. The space was purposefully empty, to leave room for gowns with thirty-foot ceremonial trains.
A massive trifold mirror stood before her, though Beatrice was doing her best not to look. She remembered how she and Samantha used to sneak in here when they were little, mesmerized by the sight of themselves reflected into infinity. “Look, there are a thousand Beatrices,” Sam would whisper, and Beatrice always wondered with a touch of longing what it might be like—to walk right through the glass and into one of their lives, these other Beatrices in their strange mirror worlds.
There were times when Beatrice wished she were more like her sister. She’d seen the way Sam flounced into the ballroom earlier, patently unconcerned that she was forty minutes late. But then, Sam had always been one for dramatic entrances and even more dramatic exits. Whereas Beatrice lived in fear of what her mother called causing a scene.
She stood now on a temporary seamstress’s platform, surrounded by attendants who had helped her out of her first dress of the night and into her new one, a deep blue gown with off-the-shoulder sleeves. They were rapidly transitioning her from cocktail attire into her more formal head-of-state look. Beatrice felt oddly absent from the scene, as if she were Royal Barbie, about to be covered in accessories.
She remained still as the makeup artist pressed a blotting paper to her nose before dusting it with powder, then reapplied her lipstick. “Finished,” she murmured. Still Beatrice didn’t look at the mirror.
One of the other attendants looped the sash of the Edwardian Order, America’s highest chivalric honor, over Beatrice’s gown. Then she draped the ermine-trimmed robe of state over the princess’s shoulders. Its weight seemed to press down on Beatrice, heavy and insistent, almost as if it wanted to choke her. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.
The attendant reached for a gold brooch. But before she could fasten the cloak around Beatrice’s throat, the princess jerked violently back. The attendant’s eyes widened in surprise.
