American Royals

“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?”

Sam idly spun her beer bottle on the bar’s marble surface. “I think he wanted us to learn to share. It didn’t work, of course. When my dad caught us fighting over Blankie, he took a pair of scissors and cut it clean down the middle. Now we each have half.”

Teddy looked at her—really looked at her, those blue-blue eyes meeting hers for a beat longer than was socially acceptable. Sam found herself desperate to know what he was thinking. What he thought of her.

“Being a twin sounds rough. Makes me glad my siblings are all younger,” he concluded.

Sam lifted one golden-brown shoulder in a shrug. At least she hadn’t been fighting with Beatrice; the king would have just given Blankie to her without a second thought.

“And I’m pretty glad my sister had a teddy bear instead of a blanket,” he went on, with another flash of those damned dimples. “Otherwise what would people call me?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Blankie Eaton has quite the ring to it. At the very least it’s memorable.” Sam tried to fight back a smile, but the smile seemed to be winning. “So, Teddy-like-a-teddy-bear, are you dreading tonight’s ceremony as much as I am?”

“Should I be?”

“You’ve clearly never attended the Queen’s Ball. My dad and Beatrice have to knight each of the candidates for nobility, individually, in alphabetical order. It’s like the world’s worst high school graduation, except each graduate gets a patent of nobility instead of a diploma.”

“Sounds like I was wrong about it being too early in the night for double-fisting.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Sam clinked her bottle to his, not caring that it was bad luck to cheers with beer—or was that only in France?—and took a sip. It felt like the rest of the room had retreated behind a hazy curved glass, like there was no one at this party but the two of them.

“I have to ask.” Teddy’s voice was warm, and a little husky. “Why are you hiding here at the bar, instead of working the room like the rest of your family?”

“Trust me, the rest of my family is doing just fine on their own. Right now my sister is talking with the German ambassador, in German,” Sam told him, and rolled her eyes.

“Wow,” Teddy said slowly. “That’s so …”

“Obnoxious?”

“I was going to say impressive,” he replied, and Sam flushed at being caught out. But it often felt as if Beatrice went out of her way to make everyone else look like slackers.

When she was little—it felt very long ago, now—Sam used to think of herself as smart. She loved to read, spent hours listening to stories about the former kings and queens, and had a sharp memory for details. But then she started at St. Ursula’s, and that innate cheerful confidence was systematically whittled away from her.

She didn’t have her older sister’s patience, or her head for numbers, or her desire to chair clubs and committees. On more than one occasion Sam overheard the teachers talking about her in low voices: She’s no Beatrice, they would say, with evident frustration. Gradually Sam was galvanized into believing it. Beatrice was the smart, beautiful future queen, while Sam was just the Other Washington Sister.