American Royals

A dark SUV had already pulled up alongside the private jet, its driver rushing out to collect their luggage from the plane’s cargo hold. The snow fell more heavily now, fast and thick as rain, obscuring Beatrice’s vision. It dissolved in icy sparks on her skin.

She bundled herself into the backseat of the waiting car. Connor slid in alongside her, bringing a cold rush of air in with him.

“Your Royal Highness,” the driver said hesitantly, as he backed out of the parking lot, “I have more bad news. They just closed both highways due to unsafe road conditions. There’s no way you’ll make it to Telluride tonight.”

Barely an hour later, she and Connor were standing in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Montrose. It wasn’t exactly what Beatrice was used to, but her options had been fairly limited, given that it was late at night and in blizzard conditions.

The woman who owned the property had been nearly apoplectic with anxiety when she realized her guest’s identity. She had signed the standard NDA, of course, but she’d still insisted on trudging here through the storm to open the front door herself. There was a lot of curtsying and Your Majestying, which Beatrice acknowledged with a smile. She didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that Your Majesty was an honorific reserved exclusively for the king and queen.

When the woman finally retreated, Connor cleared his throat. “Sorry there wasn’t anything more … spacious. I’ll sleep on the floor, of course.”

Oh. Beatrice hadn’t fully registered that there was only one bed.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You should at least take the couch.” To hide her confusion, she knelt before the fireplace and began to build a fire.

“Let me do that,” Connor offered, when he saw what the princess was up to. Beatrice shook her head.

“My grandfather taught me to build a fire. He said it was a critical life skill.” Methodically, she stacked larger logs atop the smaller ones, adding bunched-up newspaper as tinder beneath. “Besides, it’s nice for me to get to do something useful, for once. I don’t often have the chance.”

“Everything you do is useful,” Connor insisted.

A lock of hair fell into her eyes; Beatrice blew out a breath to toss it back. “You know what I mean.”

She flicked the side of the lighter and touched it to the kindling. There was something deeply satisfying about watching the flame curl steadily upward. When she was certain that it wouldn’t gutter out, Beatrice retreated to the couch, pulling her feet up beneath her to sit cross-legged. Connor hadn’t moved from where he stood against one wall, his body tensed in the usual Revere Guard stance. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, as if he was scanning the room for possible threats.

“You can come sit down, instead of growling over there in the corner.”

“Maybe I like growling.” Shadows from the fire flickered over his features.

“Not when there’s no one to growl at.” It was the closest they’d come in weeks to their normal easy banter. “How could anyone possibly get here through that storm? You’re officially off duty for the night,” she insisted.

Cautiously, Connor came to sit on the couch, leaving a generous space between him and Beatrice. He took one of the faded taupe pillows and put it on the seat next to him like some kind of safety barrier.

They sat there for a while, watching the fire dance tranquilly before them. Eventually Connor stood to toss on another piece of wood. The flames blazed and popped contentedly in response. Beatrice imagined she could see various shapes there, stars and pinwheels and trumpets all melting and re-forming in columns of red-gold light.

“Do you remember the time it snowed like this at school?” she asked as he returned to the couch. It might have been her imagination, but he seemed to settle a little closer than before.

“Winter Storm Nemo,” Connor recalled. “We got so much snow that the entire campus shut down for days. We had to live on cereal.”

Beatrice smiled at the memory. The dining hall had been closed all day long, so Harvard ended up sending someone through the snow to hand-deliver food to each of the dorms. It was nothing but a milk crate containing some prepackaged cereal. She and Connor had made a picnic of it, sitting on her floor as they ate dry Cheerios and played Trivial Pursuit.

“And then we built that awful snowman,” she replied. When they woke the next morning, Beatrice and Connor, along with most of the student body, had ventured out into the quad. For once, no one was in a rush to get anywhere. People were laughing and starting snowball fights, while groups of girls in furry boots and pom-pom hats took heavily posed pictures. They were the type of girls who normally pretended to fawn over Beatrice, yet she was so bundled up in her scarf and jacket that no one noticed her. She and Connor were free to make their absurdly lopsided snowman, which kept toppling over despite their best efforts. “Remember how some of the kids in my dorm built an igloo and tried to hotbox it?”

“I think snow days make people reckless,” Connor said, then paused as he seemed to realize what he’d said—because this, too, was a snow day.

Before Beatrice could answer, her stomach gave a loud, angry rumble. She flushed, trying not to feel self-conscious. “Guess I didn’t eat enough popcorn on the plane.”

Connor rose to his feet. His silhouette glowed like warm amber against the fire. “Why don’t we do a little investigating?”