American Royals

Later that evening, Sam yawned as she shimmied into an old T-shirt and silky blue sleep shorts. They had devoured two enormous thin-crust pizzas and watched a bad action movie—the opposite end of the spectrum from Midnight Crown, at least as far as cultural sophistication went. She wished Nina had stayed; there was a guest bedroom next to Sam’s suite that they normally used for sleepovers. But when she suggested it, Nina had gotten a weird look on her face and stammered that she should probably head to campus.

It dawned on Sam that Nina might be going back for a boy. But if she was dating one of her classmates, why hadn’t she told Sam about it?

Sam’s thoughts were interrupted by a hesitant knock.

“Come in,” she called out, and was startled to see her sister, hovering uncertainly at the entrance to her suite.

“I guess congratulations are in order,” Sam heard herself say. “The internet practically broke itself tonight, drooling over you and Teddy.”

“What?”

“You guys are trending nationwide. Hashtag #Beadore.” Sam gave a derisive snort. “Personally, if I was going to smash your names together, I would have gone with Theotrice, but no one asked me.”

“Oh … all right.” Beatrice looked surprisingly young and vulnerable in a silk robe and white pajama set. Her hair, which earlier tonight had been twisted into an intricate updo, spilled in a great dark river over one shoulder. “I didn’t see you at the afterparty,” she went on.

“Nina and Jeff left early with me, to get pizza.” Sam was surprised by the hurt that darted across Beatrice’s face. Was she feeling left out? “Did you want something?” she went on, with a little less bitterness.

Beatrice sighed. “Sorry to bother you. I just … I keep wondering …”

Sam’s resentment began to gutter and die out. She couldn’t remember the last time Beatrice had come to her room like this. They lived just down the hall from each other, but they might as well have been on separate continents.

“What is it?” Sam gestured to her couch, an eighteenth-century love seat that she’d unearthed in palace storage and reupholstered in a bright persimmon-colored silk.

Beatrice sank wordlessly onto the cushions. She glanced around the room with something like confusion, as if she were seeing it for the first time—the mismatched bamboo tables, the multicolored pillows. Sam had the strangest sensation that her sister was trying to figure out how to ask for her advice, or maybe her help.

“Do you think Aunt Margaret is happy?”

Whatever Sam had expected, it wasn’t that. She sat tentatively on the other side of the couch. “What do you mean?”

Beatrice played idly with the fringe of a silk pillow. “Because she was in love with that airplane pilot when she was younger, and Grandma and Grandpa made her give him up.”

“They didn’t make her do anything. Aunt Margaret could have married him if she wanted. But she would have given up her titles and income and status, and relinquished her place in the order of succession. If she’d really loved him, don’t you think she would have chosen him anyway?” Sam had always thought of the pilot as just another of Aunt Margaret’s youthful acts of rebellion. Which Sam could relate to.

“Maybe she did love him, but felt that it was impossible for them to be together, because she was a princess,” Beatrice said softly.

“I don’t know.” Sam shrugged. “She wasn’t the heir to the throne. If they’d gotten married, she wouldn’t have even been exiled or anything. She could have found a way to make her life work.”

Beatrice’s head shot up. “Exiled?”

“A British king tried to marry a commoner and was forced to abdicate over it. He lived in Paris the rest of his life.”

Her sister blanched, hugging the silk pillow tighter to her chest.

Sam shot her a confused look. “Beatrice, what is this really about?”

Before her sister could reply, steps thundered down the hallway, and another knock sounded at Sam’s door. It opened to reveal the king and queen.

“Beatrice! Here you are,” their dad exclaimed, his features creased in a smile.

Of course he hadn’t actually come to Sam’s room looking for Sam.

The queen smiled at Samantha, but then her eyes, too, rounded on Beatrice. “You and Teddy looked like you were getting along tonight. Everyone certainly loved seeing you together.”

Sam wondered if her parents had seen the internet’s wild surge of excitement at #Beadore.

“He’s very nice,” Beatrice replied. Nice—the most meaningless of all adjectives. A word you reserved for distant acquaintances and events you had no desire to attend.

Did Beatrice even like Teddy?

“Of course, it was just a first date,” Beatrice added, as if to explain away her lack of gushing enthusiasm.

Their parents exchanged a glance. “We’ve been thinking the same thing. Which is why we invited Teddy to Telluride for New Year’s,” the king announced proudly.

“You invited Teddy to Telluride?” Beatrice’s voice scraped wildly over the words, with something that might have been panic.

The queen tilted her head, puzzled. “We thought it would be a fantastic way to accelerate things. Help you get to know Teddy in a familiar, low-stress setting.”