And if things went according to plan and Daphne married Jefferson, her parents would surely be elevated above a lowly baronetcy. They might become an earl and countess … perhaps even a marques and marchioness.
“We only want what’s best for you,” Rebecca added, her eyes on her daughter’s.
You mean what’s best for you, Daphne was tempted to reply. “I’ll be fine,” she said instead.
Daphne had known for years that she would marry the prince. That was the only word for it: known. Not hoped to marry, or dreamed of marrying, or even felt destined to marry. Those words involved an element of chance, of uncertainty.
When she was little, Daphne had pitied the girls at her school who were obsessed with the royal family: the ones who copied everything the princesses wore, or had Prince Jefferson’s picture plastered on their lockers. What were they doing when they swooned over his poster, pretending that the prince was their boyfriend? Pretending was a game for babies and fools, and Daphne was neither.
Then, in eighth grade, Daphne’s class took a field trip to the palace, and she realized why her parents clung so obsessively to their aristocratic status. Because that status was their window into this.
As she gazed at the palace in all its inaccessible grandeur—as she heard her classmates whispering how wonderful it must be, to be a princess—Daphne came to the startling realization that they were right. It was wonderful to be a princess. Which was why Daphne, unlike the rest of them, would actually become one.
After that field trip, Daphne had resolved that she would date the prince, and like all goals she set for herself, she achieved it. She applied to St. Ursula’s, the private all-girls school that the daughters of the royal family had attended since time immemorial. Jefferson’s sisters went there. It didn’t hurt that Jefferson’s school, the all-boys Forsythe Academy, was right next door.
Sure enough, by the end of the year the prince had asked her out, when she was a freshman and he was a sophomore.
It wasn’t always easy, managing someone as spontaneous and heedless as Jefferson. But Daphne was everything a princess should be: gracious and accomplished and, of course, beautiful. She charmed the American people and the press. She even won the approval of the Queen Mother, and Jefferson’s grandmother was notoriously impossible to please.
Until the night of Jefferson’s high school graduation party, when everything went so horribly wrong. When Himari got hurt, and Daphne went looking for Jefferson—only to find him in bed with another girl.
It was definitely the prince; the light glinted unmistakably on the deep brown of his hair. Daphne tried to breathe. Her vision dissolved into spots. After everything that had happened, after the lengths she’d gone to—
She’d stumbled back, fleeing the room before either of them could see her.
Jefferson called the next morning. Daphne felt a momentary stab of panic that he somehow knew everything—knew the terrible, unthinkable thing she had done. Instead he stammered through a breakup speech that might as well have been written by his PR people. He kept saying how young they both were: how Daphne still wasn’t finished with high school, and he didn’t know what he was doing next year. That it might be better for both of them if they spent some time apart, but he hoped they could still be friends. Daphne’s voice was eerily calm as she told him that she understood.
The moment Jefferson hung up, Daphne called Natasha at the Daily News and planted the breakup story herself. She’d learned long ago that the first story was always the most important, because it set the tone for all the others. So she made certain that Natasha reported the breakup as mutual, that Daphne and Jefferson had agreed it was for the best.
At least, the article ever-so-subtly implied, for the time being.
In the six months since the breakup, Jefferson had been out of town, on a royal tour and then on a rambling post-graduation trip with his twin sister. It had given Daphne ample opportunity to think about their relationship—about what they both had done, and what it had cost her.
Even after everything that had happened, even knowing what she knew, she still wanted to be a princess. And she intended to win Jefferson back.
“We’re just trying to look out for you, Daphne,” Rebecca went on, as gravely as if she’d been discussing a life-threatening medical diagnosis. “Especially now …”
Daphne knew what her mother meant. Now that she and Jefferson were broken up and it was open season again, flocks of girls had started trailing after him. Prince poachers, the newspapers called them. Privately Daphne liked to think of them as Jeffersluts. No matter the city, they were always the same: wearing short skirts and sky-high heels, waiting for hours at bars or in hotel lobbies just hoping for a glimpse of him. Jefferson—oblivious, as always—flitted happily from place to place like a butterfly, while those girls stalked him with nets at the ready.
The prince poachers weren’t really her competition; none of them were even in the same league as her. Still, each time she saw a photo of Jefferson surrounded by a flock of those girls, Daphne couldn’t help feeling worried. There were just so many of them.
Not to mention that girl in Jefferson’s bed, whoever she was. Some masochistic part of Daphne wanted, desperately, to know. After that night, she’d kept expecting the girl to come forward with a sordid tell-all article, but she never did.
Daphne glanced up at the mirror above the sideboard to calm herself.