American Royals

Sam had long ago resolved that if she couldn’t be beautiful, she should at the very least be interesting. And she wasn’t beautiful, not in the traditional sense—her forehead was too wide and sloping, her brows too heavy, her features too starkly hewn, like those of her distant Hanoverian cousins.

But people tended to forget all that the moment Samantha began talking. There was a nebulous, infectious energy to her, as if she were somehow more alive than everyone else. As if all her nerves were sparking at once, just below the surface.

The queen steered her daughter firmly to one side of the ballroom, far from any eavesdropping ears.

“Your father and I are disappointed in you,” Adelaide began.

What else is new. “I’m sorry,” Sam said wearily. She knew the script, knew it was easier to just tell her mom what she wanted to hear. She’d managed to avoid her parents when she landed late last night, and they had been too busy with preparations for the ball to confront her today. But she’d known she couldn’t put them off forever.

“Sorry?” the queen hissed. “That’s all you have to say for yourself after running away from your security officers? Samantha, that kind of behavior is inexcusable! Those officers put their lives at risk for you every day. Their job is, literally, to step between you and a bullet. The least you could do is show them some respect!”

“Did you already give this speech to Jeff?” Sam asked, as if she didn’t know the answer. Jeff always emerged from trouble completely unscathed.

It wasn’t fair. Despite how progressive America claimed to be, there was still a sexist double standard quietly underpinning everything. She and Jeff were proof of it, like in those scientific studies where they treated twin babies the same except for one key variable, then tracked how it affected them.

The variable here was that Jeff was a boy and Sam was a girl, and even when they did the exact same thing, people reacted to them differently.

If the paparazzi caught Jeff on an expensive shopping spree, he was splurging for a special occasion, while Samantha was spoiled.

If pictures surfaced of Jeff visibly drunk and stumbling out of a bar, he was blowing off some much-needed steam. Samantha was a wild party girl.

If Jeff talked back to the paparazzi, he was simply being firm, protecting his privacy. Samantha was a ruthless bitch.

She would have loved to see how the press might react to Beatrice doing any of those things, but of course Beatrice never stepped a toe out of line.

Sam knew that none of it was Jeff’s fault. Still … it was enough to make her wish she could change things. Not that she had any power to do so.

“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.