American Royals

Daphne sensed his uncertainty. And she had known this was coming—that Nina would fling accusations about her to the prince. Which was why she’d come prepared.

Nina was no longer here, and as King George I once said, history is written by the victors.

“I’m sorry. This is all my fault. All this confusion, I mean,” Daphne explained, in answer to Jefferson’s puzzled look. “I told Nina earlier tonight that I blamed myself. I guess she misunderstood.”

“Blamed yourself? For what?”

“She clearly felt out of her depth.” Daphne said it gently, so that it somehow didn’t come out like an insult at all, but more like a quiet observation. “She wasn’t equipped to handle all the attention she was getting. I tried to give her some advice when we went shopping—”

“You went shopping with Nina?”

“We ran into each other at Halo, and I helped her pick out a dress.” Daphne sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have made an effort. She clearly thought I was interfering. I just wanted her to learn from my mistakes.”

Jefferson nodded, silent. He glanced at the fireplace, above which hung a famously unfinished portrait of his grandparents King Edward III and Queen Wilhelmina. The top half was complete, but the bottom dissolved into charcoal sketch lines, the Queen Mother’s dress transitioning from flame-colored paint to wisps of pencil. After her husband died, she refused to let the artist finish the painting; and so it would remain like this, forever incomplete.

“Nina doesn’t like you,” Jefferson said abruptly. He still wasn’t convinced by Daphne’s explanation.

Of course she doesn’t. Daphne gave a serene nod. “I don’t blame her. She knew what I was thinking tonight.”

“What were you thinking?”

Daphne lifted her eyes to meet his, then swept her thick black lashes down over her cheeks.

“How I still feel about you. I won’t say that I’m sorry you and Nina broke up. Because I’m not.”

She let the words fall between them like dice, tossed in some cosmic game of chance, except that Daphne left nothing to chance. Jefferson wasn’t going to kiss her; she knew that much. It was too soon. She just needed to say the words and let them percolate in his mind.

He shifted awkwardly, as if he wasn’t quite certain how to behave around her after what she’d said. Still, Daphne waited a moment. Too many people were unnerved by silence, but not her. She knew what could be accomplished in a beat of silence, if you were willing to let it unfold.

“Thanks for sharing this,” she said at last, and reached across him for the bottle of scotch, to take another long sip before passing it back to Jefferson.

He cleared his throat. “Remember when we came in here and played Apples to Apples?”

“You and Ethan kept trying to make it a drinking game!” Daphne recalled. “It was so long ago, I can’t remember who won ….”

Jefferson gave a sardonic smile. “Not me, if my hangover the next morning was any indication.”

“Wasn’t that a school day?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I begged you to bring a breakfast sandwich to the alley for me.” The students of St. Ursula’s and Forsythe weren’t supposed to visit each other’s campuses, but there was a narrow strip of grass between the two—uninventively called “the alley”—where you could meet between periods for a quick kiss. Or, in Daphne’s case, to deliver Gatorade and a breakfast sandwich to your boyfriend.

“I miss those days.” Daphne’s smile was tinged with nostalgia. “Everything else aside, I miss being friends with you. So many times I’ve caught myself reaching for my phone, because there was something I wanted to tell you, and then …”

Jefferson’s hand was right there on the bar between them. Daphne knew how easy it would be to lace her fingers in his, but she didn’t want to spook him.

Instead she sighed and looked down, the diamonds in her ears swinging and catching the light. “I wish we could be friends again.”

The prince nodded, slowly. “I don’t see why we can’t be.”

Later that night, Daphne started toward the main double doors of the palace. She had just said goodbye to Jefferson—well, goodbye might be overstating it; she had poured him into the helpful arms of one of his security officers. She had briefly considered going upstairs with him, but decided against it. She didn’t want him to think of her as the rebound from Nina, when Nina had always been the rebound from her.

And anyway, they’d gotten too drunk, sliding that fifth of scotch back and forth as they reminisced and laughed over old memories. Daphne decided that it was better to end now, on a high note. She had rekindled the spark, and that was enough for tonight.

Daphne didn’t bother heading back into the party; there was no one else she needed to see, and her parents were long since home. She paused at the front hallway to collect her coat from a footman. Even though she’d taken much smaller sips than Jefferson, she felt the scotch pulsing languidly through her veins. She was quite drunk.

And exhausted. That was the thing about success; it could be even more draining than failure. It had felt like a marathon: all these days and nights of scheming and plotting, breaking apart a relationship and holding herself ready in the wings. She’d been running on fumes and raw determination, and now there was nothing left to hold her upright.