“That sums it up pretty accurately.” Beatrice had seen a couple of the young men across the room during the cocktail hour. She’d managed to avoid them thus far, but she knew she would have to face them after the ceremony.
“How many … potential suitors are there?” Connor went on, clearly uncertain what to call them.
“Why do you care?” Beatrice meant it to sound flippant, but it came out slightly defensive.
“Just trying to do my job.”
Of course. It didn’t matter whether they were friends. At the end of the day, Beatrice was still his job.
When she didn’t answer, Connor shrugged. “They need you back outside. Are you almost ready?”
Beatrice reached for a flat velvet box on the side table and unhooked its clasp. Nestled inside was the Winslow Tiara, made over a century ago and worn ever since by the Princess Royal, the oldest daughter of the reigning monarch. It was breathtaking, the whorls of its lacelike pattern covered in several hundred small diamonds.
She placed it on the hairsprayed nest of her hair and began to pin it into place. But her hands fumbled, the pins slipping from her fingers. The priceless tiara began to slide off her head.
Beatrice barely caught it before it could shatter against the floor.
“Here, let me try,” Connor offered, taking a swift step forward.
Beatrice bent her knees into an almost curtsy, though Connor was so tall he probably didn’t need her to. She felt oddly out of body, like she was swimming through the watery depths of a dream, as she watched him lift the tiara. Neither of them spoke as he used a series of bobby pins to fasten it in place.
The rise and fall of Beatrice’s chest was shallow beneath the silk faille of her gown. He barely touched her, yet every motion, every brush of a fingertip against the back of her neck, felt scalding.
When she stood up again, Beatrice blinked at her own crowned and glittering reflection. Her eyes were still locked on Connor’s in the mirror.
He reached for Beatrice’s cloak, as if to imperceptibly adjust it, though it was already perfectly placed. Was it Beatrice’s imagination, or did he hold his fingers on her back for a moment longer than was strictly necessary?
A flourish of trumpets rebounded down the hallway. Connor stepped back, breaking the moment—or whatever it had been.
Beatrice squared her shoulders and started toward the door. As she turned, the dense blue velvet of her cloak swept majestically behind her. It had to weigh at least fifteen pounds. Her tiara glittered, sending a spray of shadows and lights over the wall.
When they reached the door, Connor instinctively fell back a step, so that he would walk out of the room behind the princess, as befitted both their ranks. It had happened so many times before, yet Beatrice’s heart still fell a little as Connor lingered. She much preferred having him next to her, being able to see his face.
But this was the way things were. Connor was simply doing his job—and so should she.
DAPHNE
You had to hand it to the Washingtons, Daphne thought, from where she sat in the audience of the knighthood ceremony. They really knew how to do pomp and circumstance.
As far as royal dynasties were concerned, they were hardly the oldest. The Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, the Hanoverians, the Romanovs: those families could trace their sovereignty back a great many centuries, or in some cases—the Yamatos had been rulers of Japan since 660 BC—millennia. The Washingtons were such nouveaux arrivés by comparison that they were practically the Deightons of royal families.
But what they lacked in age, the Washingtons more than made up in style.
Hundreds of courtiers sat on wooden benches, facing a dais with three massive thrones. The central and largest was that of King George IV himself, upholstered in red velvet with his interlocking initials, GR for Georgius Rex, stitched in gold thread. Queen Adelaide was seated in the neighboring throne, while the king and Princess Beatrice stood before her, conducting the knighthood ceremony.
Beatrice held out a scroll of parchment—one of the patents of nobility, tied with a red silk ribbon. The robe of state swept behind her, shimmering with embroidery and trimmed in fur.
“Ms. Monica Sanchez.” Beatrice spoke into the microphone pinned to her sash.
One of the figures in the first few pews, presumably Monica Sanchez, jumped to her feet. Her movements were stiff with nervousness, as if she were a marionette whose strings had been cut. Honestly. People got so worked up about meeting the royal family. They seemed to forget that the Washingtons were humans too—who breathed and had nightmares and vomited just like everyone else. But then, Daphne had seen all that firsthand.
Monica trailed up the steps and knelt before the king.
“For the services you have rendered this nation and the world at large, I thank you. From this day forward, I grant you the honors and dignities of a Knight Defender of the Realm.” The king was holding a ceremonial sword, its hilt engraved with the American eagle: not the sword that had belonged to King George I, because that had been lost long ago, but a replica based off an old portrait.
The king tapped the blade of the sword flat against one of Monica’s shoulders, then lifted it over her head to tap the other. Daphne was quite certain that she saw Monica flinch. Probably she’d heard what happened last year, when Jefferson had drunkenly decided to knight people using one of the antique swords on the wall. He’d ended up nicking their friend Rohan’s ear. Rohan laughed about the whole thing, but you could still see the scar.