Page 42 of American Royals
“What did he say to you?” Jeff asked, clearly confused. Nina shot him a warning glance, silently urging him to drop the subject.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sam said heavily.
She hadn’t told her brother about her and Teddy, but she knew he’d sensed that something was going on. When the twins were children, their emotions had always blurred together: whatever one of them was feeling, the other instantly amplified it. Their nanny used to joke that they were incapable of laughing alone or crying alone. Even now, it was hard for one of them to be happy if the other one wasn’t.
Samantha forced herself to smile. She hated herself for wondering if Teddy was watching—if he even bothered to care how she felt.
“Let’s take a pic,” she suggested, holding out her phone for a selfie. Nina, predictably, stepped aside; she never posed in photographs with Sam. Jeff gave an easy grin and sidled closer as Samantha snapped the photo.
“Are you still Fiona von Trapp?” Nina asked.
Samantha swiped across the screen to add silly cartoon sunglasses atop her and Jeff’s faces. “Jeff is Spike Wales. That’s equally absurd,” she pointed out, fighting back a smile.
The twins’ social media presence was a source of endless frustration in the palace’s PR department. Members of the royal family weren’t supposed to have personal profiles; the only approved account was the palace’s official one, @WashingtonRoyal, which had a full-time manager and photo editor. Ignoring that rule, Sam and Jeff had created private accounts of their own, using fake names, and limiting their followers to their hundred or so closest friends.
It never lasted. Inevitably, the palace discovered the accounts and shut them down. But Sam and Jeff would just decide upon even more outlandish names, pick out cartoon hedgehogs or unicorns or something equally comical for their profile pictures, and start the whole thing over again.
“I’m starving, and these appetizers are bird food,” Jeff announced, draping his arms casually over Sam’s and Nina’s shoulders and pulling them close together. “Anyone want to go home and order pizza? Or we could stop by a Wawa,” he added in a strange tone.
Nina chuckled at that, though Sam didn’t really get why. “We’d better text in the order now,” she said, setting her still-full wineglass on a side table. Of course, no one actually delivered pizza to the palace; they would have to send one of the footmen out in plainclothes to pick it up.
As they headed out of the party and toward the front drive, Samantha reminded herself that it didn’t matter what Teddy thought of her. It didn’t matter that the entire world thought she was less than Beatrice, as long as she had Nina and Jeff. These two people, at least, knew the real her.
Later that evening, Sam yawned as she shimmied into an old T-shirt and silky blue sleep shorts. They had devoured two enormous thin-crust pizzas and watched a bad action movie—the opposite end of the spectrum from Midnight Crown, at least as far as cultural sophistication went. She wished Nina had stayed; there was a guest bedroom next to Sam’s suite that they normally used for sleepovers. But when she suggested it, Nina had gotten a weird look on her face and stammered that she should probably head to campus.
It dawned on Sam that Nina might be going back for a boy. But if she was dating one of her classmates, why hadn’t she told Sam about it?
Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by a hesitant knock.
“Come in,” she called out, and was startled to see her sister, hovering uncertainly at the entrance to her suite.
“I guess congratulations are in order,” Sam heard herself say. “The internet practically broke itself tonight, drooling over you and Teddy.”
“What?”
“You guys are trending nationwide. Hashtag #Beadore.” Sam gave a derisive snort. “Personally, if I was going to smash your names together, I would have gone with Theotrice, but no one asked me.”
“Oh … all right.” Beatrice looked surprisingly young and vulnerable in a silk robe and white pajama set. Her hair, which earlier tonight had been twisted into an intricate updo, spilled in a great dark river over one shoulder. “I didn’t see you at the afterparty,” she went on.
“Nina and Jeff left early with me, to get pizza.” Sam was surprised by the hurt that darted across Beatrice’s face. Was she feeling left out? “Did you want something?” she went on, with a little less bitterness.
Beatrice sighed. “Sorry to bother you. I just … I keep wondering …”
Sam’s resentment began to gutter and die out. She couldn’t remember the last time Beatrice had come to her room like this. They lived just down the hall from each other, but they might as well have been on separate continents.
“What is it?” Sam gestured to her couch, an eighteenth-century love seat that she’d unearthed in palace storage and reupholstered in a bright persimmon-colored silk.
Beatrice sank wordlessly onto the cushions. She glanced around the room with something like confusion, as if she were seeing it for the first time—the mismatched bamboo tables, the multicolored pillows. Sam had the strangest sensation that her sister was trying to figure out how to ask for her advice, or maybe her help.
“Do you think Aunt Margaret is happy?”
Whatever Sam had expected, it wasn’t that. She sat tentatively on the other side of the couch. “What do you mean?”
Beatrice played idly with the fringe of a silk pillow. “Because she was in love with that airplane pilot when she was younger, and Grandma and Grandpa made her give him up.”
“They didn’t make her do anything. Aunt Margaret could have married him if she wanted. But she would have given up her titles and income and status, and relinquished her place in the order of succession. If she’d really loved him, don’t you think she would have chosen him anyway?” Sam had always thought of the pilot as just another of Aunt Margaret’s youthful acts of rebellion. Which Sam could relate to.
“Maybe she did love him, but felt that it was impossible for them to be together, because she was a princess,” Beatrice said softly.
