Page 23 of American Royals II: Majesty
It was hard not to wish, sometimes, that life had cast her in a different role.
“That’s not what I meant,” Teddy said gently. “I just…I used to want to escape into a fantasy world, too.”
Of course, Beatrice thought. Teddy knew what it was like to grow up under a heavy set of expectations. He had reasons of his own for agreeing to this engagement, probably reasons that had to do with his family.
He certainly wasn’t marrying her because he loved her.
“Teddy—what are wedoing?”
“Right now we’re sitting on the floor of a closet, in the dark. Though I have to say, I still haven’t figured out why.”
She shook off a bizarre desire to laugh. “I meant the wedding,” she clarified. “We can still call off the whole thing.”
Teddy was silent for a moment.
“Is that what you want?” he said at last.
Beatrice couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked her that. People asked her plenty of other things: whether she could attend their charity dinner, or could she turn toward their camera for a photo, or would she recommend their cousin for a position in the royal household. It felt like she couldn’t even walk through the palace without being trapped in a small hail of requests.
But no one asked what shewantedanymore. As if the moment she’d become the queen, she’d stopped having any sort of desires at all.
Beatrice realized with a sick sense of guilt that she’d done the same thing to Teddy. In all her anguish over what the wedding was costing her, she hadn’t even considered what he was giving up.
He’d cared about Samantha, and Sam had feelings for him, and still Beatrice had asked him to go through with this. She longed, suddenly, to broach the topic, but she felt like she’d forfeited the right to discuss Samantha with Teddy.
“I just—I doubt this is what you thought your wedding would be like,” she said hesitantly.
Teddy shrugged. “I never spent any time thinking about my wedding until this year,” he told her. “Did you?”
“Actually…when I was little, I thought I was going to get married at Disney World.”
She felt Teddy struggling to stifle a laugh. Color rose to her cheeks as she rushed to explain.
“When I was five, I begged my parents to take me to Disney World. The girls at school had all been talking about it….” And she had wanted, desperately, to fit in with them, to actually follow the conversation at the lower school lunch table for once.
“We had to go after the park closed,” she went on. “We couldn’t be there with the other guests, for security reasons. And—”
“Wait, you got to ride Space Mountain withno lines?” Teddy cut in.
“Please, five is too young for Space Mountain. Though I did ride the spinning teacups so many times that it gave my Revere Guard motion sickness,” Beatrice recalled, and Teddy chuckled. “When I saw the castle that night, all those princess characters were there. And I don’t know, I guess I knew I was a princess, and I figured that was where princesses got married.”
Beatrice didn’t admit that she hadn’t recognized the women in colorful ball gowns as fictional characters. She hadn’t seen any of their movies—so she’d assumed they were real princesses, as she was.
“A Disney World wedding,” Teddy said slowly. “Are you sure it’s not too late to change locations? The look on Robert’s face alone would be worth it.”
Beatrice chuckled at that—but as the laugh traveled out of her chest, it transformed into a single, ragged sob. Then somehow she was laughing and weeping at once, crumpling forward and hiding her face in her hands.
She didn’t expect Teddy to reach for her.
He wiped away the tears on first one cheek, then the other, his thumb brushing ever so lightly against the damp fan of her lashes. Beatrice’s breath caught as his hand cupped around her face, his palm cradling the back of her neck. She was startled by how much she wanted to close her eyes and lean in to him.
Some part of her felt guilty for that desire, as if it was a betrayal of everything she’d felt for Connor.
Except that she and Connor were over, and it had been weeks—months, really—since anyone had touched her like this. Aside from those few frantic kisses the afternoon he left, Connor had hardly even dared to hug her since her dad died. Beatrice hadn’t realized how desperately she had craved this: the simple human comfort of feeling another person’s skin on hers.
“Beatrice…” Teddy pulled his hand away, as surprised by his gesture as she was. “If we really are doing this, I want to ask you something.”
“All right.” She leaned back, and her gown rustled with the movement, a dry sound like wind raking through autumn leaves.
