Page 10 of American Royals
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” she protested weakly. “We didn’t hurt anyone. Why can’t you just let me enjoy my life for once?”
“Samantha, no one has ever accused you of failing to enjoy your life,” Adelaide snapped.
Sam tried not to reveal how much that stung.
Her mom heaved a sigh. “Please, can you at least try to be on your best behavior? This is a big night for your sister.”
Something in her tone gave Samantha pause. “What do you mean?”
The queen just pursed her lips. Whatever was going on, she didn’t trust Sam with it. Per usual.
Sam half wished that she could go back to that moment in Thailand when she’d turned to Jeff, an eyebrow raised in challenge, and dared him to make a run for it. Or earlier, even, to the days before her mom looked at her with such evident disappointment. She remembered the way her mom used to smile at her when Sam came home with stories of her day at school. Adelaide would hold her daughter in her lap and French-braid her hair, her hands very gentle as they brushed the sections and pulled them over one another.
But Sam knew it wasn’t any use. No one cared what she really thought; they just wanted her to shut up and stop stealing media attention from picture-perfect Beatrice. To stand in the background. To be seen and never heard.
There was a stubborn tilt to her head as she stalked across the ballroom. Well, now everyone could gossip about her gown, which was as blindingly bright as a lit-up disco ball. Her eyes gleamed willful and turbulent beneath their lashes.
Sam was almost to the far doors when she saw her older sister, wearing a prim high-necked cocktail dress, probably her first outfit of the evening: she usually had multiple costume changes for state functions. She was talking to a sharp-featured woman with graying hair. It took Sam a moment to realize that they weren’t speaking English.
She hastened past Beatrice and went to station herself at the bar, edging toward the side so that no one would see her.
Where had Nina gone? Sam pulled out her phone and tapped a quick text: Grabbing drinks, come find me. Then she leaned forward to make eye contact with the bartender. “Can I have a beer?”
He looked at her askance. They both knew that the palace had never served beer at events like this. It was considered too lowbrow, whatever that meant.
“Please,” Sam added, with as sweet a smile as she knew how to give. “Don’t you have at least one bottle back there?”
The bartender hesitated, as if weighing the risks, then ducked below the bar, emerging a moment later with a pair of frosted beer bottles. “You didn’t get this from me.” He winked and turned away, distancing himself from the incriminating evidence.
“Oh, good, I’ve been looking for one of these,” exclaimed a voice to her left, just as one of the bottles was plucked away.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Sam whirled around on her strappy heel.
The boy standing next to her leaned his elbows back onto the bar, a light glinting in his shockingly blue eyes. He looked a couple of years older, around Beatrice’s age, with unruly blond hair and chiseled features. If it hadn’t been for his pair of matching dimples, his handsomeness would have been almost intimidating.
She wondered who he was. Unlike most nobles, who in Sam’s experience were squishy and soft, he had an athlete’s muscular body.
“Easy there, killer. No need to be double-fisting this early in the night.”
“Did you just call me killer?” Sam demanded, unsure whether to be insulted or intrigued.
“Would you prefer Your Highness?” He gave an abbreviated bow in Sam’s direction. “I’m Theodore Eaton, by the way. My friends call me Teddy.”
So he was noble. Very noble, in fact. Though Samantha rather liked that he introduced himself with only his name, when, as the heir to a dukedom, he was technically Lord Theodore Eaton.
The Eatons had been one of the preeminent families in New England since the Mayflower. Some would say that they were more American even than the Washingtons, who, after all, had intermarried with foreign royalty for most of the last two centuries. Teddy’s father was the current Duke of Boston: one of the thirteen original dukedoms, the ones awarded by George I at the very first Queen’s Ball. The Old Guard, those families were sometimes called, because there were no more dukedoms to be had. Congress had put a ban on the creation of new ones back in 1870.
“We just met and already we’re friends? You’re very presumptuous, Teddy,” Sam teased. “Where did Teddy come from, anyway? Is it Teddy like a teddy bear?”
“Exactly that. My younger sister called me that, and the name stuck.” Teddy held out his arms in a helpless, amused gesture. “Don’t I look like the teddy bear you had as a kid?”
“I didn’t have a teddy bear. Just a baby blanket that I very creatively named Blankie,” Sam told him. “Well, I used to have Blankie. Now I only have half of Blankie.”
“Where’s the other half?”
“Jeff has it.” What had possessed her to tell this story anyway? She blamed Teddy, and that disarming smile of his. “Blankie was a gift from our grandfather before he died. He gave it to both of us.”
“One blanket for two people?”
