The heavy wooden door swung inward. Beatrice took an instinctive step forward—but when she saw who stood there, she went still.

Robert Standish slipped through the door, his steps surprisingly light for such a ponderous man. “Your Majesty,” he hissed. “What are you doing here?”

Beatrice had to remind herself to keep breathing—inhale exhale inhale exhale, over and over in succession.

“I could ask you the same question,” she said carefully. “Are you trying to close Congress yourself?”

Through the sliver of open doorway, she could just see a glimpse of the House of Tribunes: several hundred seats arranged on either side of the aisle, and at the far end of the room, a carved wooden throne.

Three hundred and sixty-three days a year, that throne sat empty. It was purposefully left so: perhaps to remind Congress of the silent presence of the monarch, or perhaps to remind the monarch that they had no say in the legislative branch. Only when the monarch ceremonially opened and closed each session of Congress could this throne be occupied.

And now Robert was trying to keep her from it.

“Of course I am,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, without an ounce of contrition. “In any case when the monarch is not able to preside over the opening or closing of Congress, the monarch’s designated representative shall do it.”

Anger swelled in her chest. “I didn’t designate you! And if I did designate a representative, it should traditionally be my heir,” she added, remembering a time when she was much younger, when her grandfather had been ill and her father had presided over Congress in his stead.

The chamberlain scoffed. “You can’t honestly mean that you would have sent Samantha.”

“Her Royal Highness, the Princess Samantha,” Beatrice corrected.

She was dimly aware of Charles, watching this exchange with unconcealed fear. But Beatrice couldn’t worry about him. She had much bigger problems.

“Your Majesty, you’re not welcome here,” Robert said firmly.

“You can’t honestly expect me to—”

“If you don’t leave, you could incite a serious constitutional crisis.” When she still didn’t move, his lips thinned into a frown. “Now is not the time for this.”

“You keep saying that!” Beatrice burst out. “I’ve been queen for months now! When will it be time?”

“When you are married!”

She drew herself up to her full height, wishing she’d worn taller heels. “I am the Queen of America,” she said again. “It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m married.”

He raised his eyes heavenward, as if silently cursing her stupidity. “Beatrice. Of course it matters. Having a young, single woman as the figurehead of America—it makes the entire nation feel unsettled, and juvenile, and emotional. God, most of the men in this room have children older than you.”

She hated that he’d referenced the men in this room, as if all the female members of Congress didn’t even bear mention.

“Just…wait until you have Teddy by your side,” he added. “Maybe then it will be easier for people to take you seriously.”

Robert wasn’t smiling, but his eyes gleamed as though he was. It reminded Beatrice of the girls who’d made fun of her in lower school, who’d spoken cruel words in deceptively kind voices, their faces underlit with malicious delight.

Until this moment, Beatrice hadn’t realized just how adamantly Robert was working against her.

He didn’t do it openly, like the people who booed her at rallies or left nasty comments online. No, Robert’s way of opposing her was far more insidious. He’d been systematically undermining her: whittling away at her confidence, distracting her with the wedding, twisting the Constitution’s intention to keep her from acting as queen.

And her own Congress had let him. Beatrice didn’t know what had happened—whether they had withheld her invitation on their own, or whether Robert had asked them not to invite her—but did it matter? Either way, the invitation hadn’t come.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered.

“I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing it for America,” Robert said stiffly. “You should know that there is no room for personal feeling in politics.”

The Imperial State Crown slipped backward, and Beatrice hurried to grab at it before it could clatter loudly to the floor. Seeing the gesture, Robert bit back a smile.

Shame rose hot to her cheeks. She felt suddenly foolish, like a glassy-eyed doll dressed up in a paper crown.

At least the closing session of Congress, unlike the opening session, was never televised. Otherwise, this image would have been all over the newspapers tomorrow: Beatrice, knocking at the door of her own Congress, being told that she couldn’t come in.

* * *

Later that night, Beatrice sat up with a weary sigh. Moonlight poured like cream over the hardwood floors, making everything feel deceptively peaceful.

Restless, she threw back her covers and walked barefoot to the window.

Earlier, when she’d confronted Robert Standish, her body had been flooded with white-hot adrenaline. Yet now…Beatrice just felt exhausted, and unsettled.

And she missed Teddy. It felt like he was the only person she could talk to, lately—the only person rooting for her, instead of rooting for her to fail. But he and his brothers were spending the weekend at their Nantucket house, which, true to her word, Beatrice had quietly repurchased.

She hesitated a moment, then pulled out her phone and dialed the palace’s air traffic control line. “I need the plane,” she said smoothly. “How soon can it be ready?”

The life of a queen had plenty of restrictions, but it had its perks, too. And for once, Beatrice intended to use them.

When she reached Eagle III—the smaller of the royal family’s private planes, much smaller than the massive Eagle V—the pilot didn’t ask why she’d insisted on leaving in the middle of the night. He didn’t even protest when Beatrice opened Franklin’s crate before takeoff and pulled him onto her lap. She sat there like that, letting the puppy nuzzle her face with his wet nose, for the entirety of the ninety-minute flight to Nantucket.

Finally her car pulled up the secluded driveway, and the Eatons’ beach house came into view. It was a large home, yet unassuming, with traditional cedar shingles and a white sloping roof. And there was Teddy, waiting on the wraparound front porch, wearing jeans and a Nantucket red hoodie.

The sight of him broke whatever threads remained of Beatrice’s self-control. She flung open the car door and ran forward to throw her arms around him, to lean her head against the solid plane of his chest.

When she stepped back, Teddy didn’t ask any questions, just grabbed two mugs from the railing of the porch. “Coffee?” he offered, in a normal, upbeat tone. As if it weren’t strange of her to have shown up like this, without warning.

She curled her hands around the mug, touched by his thoughtfulness. “Sorry to wake you up so early. I just—I needed to talk to you, and it couldn’t wait. Or at least, it felt like it couldn’t wait.”

“I like getting up early. Sunrise is the best part of the day here, you’ll see.” Teddy glanced toward the ocean. “Should we go for a walk?” He whistled for Franklin, who bounded forward from where he’d been exploring the muddy grass beneath the porch.

When they reached the beach, Beatrice kicked off her shoes. The sky was a dusky purple overhead, stars scattered over its canvas like frozen tears, though at the edge of the horizon she saw the first pearly hints of morning.

Franklin raced ahead to the dark line of the surf and splashed gleefully along its edge. Beatrice and Teddy followed. They sat down in the sand, their feet planted before them, so that the foam-kissed waves just barely brushed their toes.

For a few minutes they were both silent, watching Franklin sprint up and down the beach, his tail wagging furiously. Each time he ventured into the water, he would let out a little yelp of delight before retreating.

“He’s gotten so big,” Beatrice mused aloud. Putting off the topic she’d come here to discuss.

Teddy nodded. “Puppies grow up too fast. Blink and you miss it.”

Everything was happening too fast. When she was younger, Beatrice had thought time moved so slowly, that a year was an eternity to wait for something. Now it felt like physics had twisted and time had accelerated, and she wasn’t sure how to keep up.

She used to be so certain of everything, but now she felt certain of nothing. If only she could rewind the clock to before her father died: when everything had been so clear-cut and simple, when everything made sense.

The ocean rippled before her, its surface a molten silver. As always, the sight of it calmed her a little. Beatrice loved how small it made her feel, that the sheer size of it dwarfed everything, even America itself.

“I lost a showdown with Congress yesterday. Or, really, with Robert,” she said at last.