Majesty Read online

  “Of course,” he said gruffly. “It’s not like anyone else would understand.”

  “I’m not sure,” Beatrice repeated, the same thing she’d said a dozen times already. She stared at the mirror, where the wedding gown—long-sleeved, with a voluminous tiered skirt—was reflected back at her. She looked like a stranger.

  Queen Adelaide cast an apologetic glance at the designer before turning to her daughter. “Why don’t you walk around a little, see how it feels?”

  Beatrice sighed and took a few steps forward. She wished Samantha were here, if only to hear the sarcastic commentary she would have provided on all these dresses. Except Sam had gone completely MIA. Normally Beatrice wouldn’t have given it another thought; Sam frequently skipped the events on her official schedule. This time, though, Beatrice knew her sister was punishing her for announcing her wedding date.

  In typical Sam fashion, she was acting like she didn’t care—Beatrice had seen her at the museum gala, flirting outrageously with Lord Marshall Davis as if to prove something. But when Beatrice had tried to talk to her later that night, her sister had slammed the door in her face.

  Sunlight slanted through a stained-glass window on the opposite wall, turning the wooden floor into a dancing carpet of color. They were in the throne room, which had temporarily transformed into the official headquarters for Beatrice’s Wedding Dress Search. Footmen had carried in massive trifold mirrors and a seamstress’s platform, as well as an enormous screen so she could change in privacy. The palace had even closed for tours, which only fanned the nation’s speculation about what might be going on today, and whether it was about the wedding.

  Beatrice would have preferred to do all this at the designers’ ateliers. But apparently it was too risky: someone might see her, and leak the secret of which fashion houses were in contention to make what people were already calling the wedding dress of the century. As it was, the designers had still been forced to sign lengthy nondisclosure agreements, and drove in long, circuitous routes to the palace in unmarked cars.

  Honestly, Robert was treating her gown like a state secret that needed to be protected as vigilantly as the nuclear codes—codes that Beatrice still didn’t know.

  There were so many things she should be doing right now: studying the latest congressional report, composing speeches, arranging her first diplomatic visit. Anything, instead of standing here like a human mannequin while designers whipped various gowns on and off her body.

  Over the past week, whenever Beatrice had tried to do her actual job, some obstacle had always arisen. Her schedule was too crowded and she needed to wait; the timing wasn’t right and she needed to wait. Robert kept telling her that—wait, wait, wait—but what was she waiting for?

  She glanced over at him. “Robert, can you set an audience with the new Senate majority leader? I should meet with him, now that he’s been nominated. And we’ll need to begin planning my speech for the closing session of Congress.” It was one of the government’s oldest traditions that the monarch opened Congress in the fall, and closed it before the summer recess.

  Beatrice’s heart quelled a little, at the realization that she would dismiss a Congress her father had opened just ten months earlier.

  Robert shook his head. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. You cannot meet with Congress until after you are crowned. It would be unconstitutional.”

  Beatrice knew the Constitution backward and forward, so she knew that, technically speaking, he was right. The article in question had been written out of a very real eighteenth-century fear: that if the succession were ever in doubt, contenders to the throne might bully their way into Congress and attempt to take over the government.

  “I can preside over the closing session as long as Congress invites me,” Beatrice reminded him. That invitation, another archaic tradition, was one of the many checks and balances that the Constitution had established between the three branches of government.

  The chamberlain glanced at Queen Adelaide for support, but she was chatting with the gown’s designer. He turned back to Beatrice with an oily smile. “Your Majesty, you will deal with countless congressional leaders over the course of your reign. They are fleeting and temporary, coming and going every four years. What difference does it make if you miss a single session?”

  “It makes a difference because it’s the first congressional ceremony of my reign.” Didn’t he see that?

  “Your Majesty,” Robert cut in, and now there was a distinct note of warning in his tone, “it would be best if you waited to meet with Congress until after your wedding to His Lordship.”

  She felt like she’d been slapped across the face. The coronation of a new monarch always took place a year after the previous monarch’s death, which meant that Beatrice wouldn’t be crowned until after her wedding. She’d thought it was just another tradition, but she realized now that Robert didn’t want her addressing Congress—or really, doing anything involved in the governance of America—as a young woman on her own.

  He wouldn’t really approve of her until she had Teddy at her side.

  The chamberlain glanced back down at his tablet, as if he expected Beatrice to drop the issue. Something in that gesture, in the sheer dismissal of it, made the air burn in her lungs.

  “I need a minute,” she announced.

  Ignoring everyone’s disapproving frowns, Beatrice hurried out into the hallway. Her new Guard, thankfully, didn’t follow. Unlike Connor, who would have caught up with her in a few steps, put his hands on her shoulders, and asked how he could help.

  Connor. Beatrice clutched great handfuls of her dress to keep from tripping as she hurtled around a corner. She felt like she was trapped in one of her nightmares, running away from something without ever being able to run fast enough—

  She froze, her white satin heels sinking into the rug, as she caught sight of Teddy.

  He immediately threw a hand over his eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to see you in your wedding dress. That’s bad luck, right?”

  “Don’t worry. This is not going to be my dress,” she heard herself say.

  Slowly Teddy opened his eyes and took in the volume of her ivory skirts. “Oh, good. I didn’t know it was possible to cover a dress in so many ruffles.”

  To her surprise, Beatrice smiled. She glanced uncertainly down the hallway. “Were you here to see someone?”

  “You.” Teddy cleared his throat. “I mean—I wanted to give you this,” he said, and she realized he was holding out a brown paper shopping bag.

  Before she could answer, Queen Adelaide’s voice sounded behind them. “Beatrice, are you all right? We’re getting behind schedule.”

  Some strange impulse seized hold of Beatrice. Before she could second-guess herself, she’d thrown open the nearest door, which led to a narrow linen closet. Teddy cast her a puzzled look, but followed her inside.

  When he pulled the door shut behind him, the overhead light clicked off.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered into the dimness.

  Beatrice felt hot and prickly with embarrassment, and maybe with adrenaline. Had she really just run away from her mom? It was the sort of spontaneous, heedless thing that Sam usually did.

  “I needed a hiding spot.”

  “Fair enough,” Teddy replied, as if her explanation made sense.

  Beatrice slid to the floor and hugged her knees. Her gown poufed up around her in a sea of petticoats and flounces. After a moment, Teddy lowered himself to sit next to her.

  “I was going to save this for when we had a little more space, but you clearly need it now.”

  He held out the bag, and Beatrice pulled it into her lap. Inside was a recyclable takeout box marked with a familiar D logo. “Were you in Boston this morning?” she breathed, incredulous.

  “I had it couriered.”

  She tore o
pen the box to reveal an enormous butterscotch brownie, as big as the bricks that lined the walkway outside the palace. “How did you know?”

  “You told me, that night at the Queen’s Ball. You said that Darwin’s brownies were the only thing that got you through exams. I figured, with everything that’s going on, you could use a little de-stressing right now.”

  For a moment Beatrice just stared at him, caught off guard by his thoughtfulness. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered a throwaway comment she’d made months ago.

  “I didn’t get the wrong thing, did I?” he asked, seeing her hesitation.

  In answer, Beatrice grabbed the plastic fork and stabbed eagerly into the brownie. It was gooey and sweet and reassuringly familiar.

  When she looked over, she saw that Teddy was staring at her, a corner of his mouth lifted in amusement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so…unroyal,” he admitted.

  “There’s no elegant way to eat a Darwin’s brownie, and it’s never stopped me before.” Beatrice held out her fork. “Want to try it, before I devour the whole thing?”

  She’d made the offer automatically—it was what she would have done with Jeff, or Sam, or, well, Connor—but when Teddy hesitated, she realized what she’d said. There was something decidedly intimate about eating from the same fork.

  “Sure,” he replied, after a beat. “I need to see if it lives up to the hype.”

  As she passed him the brownie, Beatrice’s knee brushed against his beneath the ivory spill of her skirts, and she quickly pulled it back. Teddy pretended not to notice.

  “This is a pretty good hiding place,” he observed. “Did you come here a lot when you played hide-and-seek?”

  “Actually…when I was little, I read that fantasy series about the wardrobe. I once searched every last closet in the palace, hoping I’d find a doorway to another world.”

  Beatrice wasn’t sure why she’d confessed that. She blamed the cool oaken silence of the linen closet, or the fact that she was alone with her fiancé—instead of surrounded by people, as they usually were—and he was being so unexpectedly nice.

  “You went looking for magic doors to Narnia?” Teddy asked.

  She tried not to be hurt by his surprise. “I know, no one ever thinks of me as the imaginative type.”

  While Samantha and Jeff had run all over the palace, pretending they were pirates or knights or adventurers, Beatrice was in etiquette lessons or working her way through an endless reading list. Their childish impulses had been indulged; hers had been quietly denied.

  No one wanted their future monarch to waste time playing. She was meant to be duty-bound, as plodding and obedient and steady as an ox at the plow.

  It was hard not to wish, sometimes, that life had cast her in a different role.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Teddy said gently. “I just…I used to want to escape into a fantasy world, too.”

  Of course, Beatrice thought. Teddy knew what it was like to grow up under a heavy set of expectations. He had reasons of his own for agreeing to this engagement, probably reasons that had to do with his family.

  He certainly wasn’t marrying her because he loved her.

  “Teddy—what are we doing?”

  “Right now we’re sitting on the floor of a closet, in the dark. Though I have to say, I still haven’t figured out why.”

  She shook off a bizarre desire to laugh. “I meant the wedding,” she clarified. “We can still call off the whole thing.”

  Teddy was silent for a moment.

  “Is that what you want?” he said at last.

  Beatrice couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked her that. People asked her plenty of other things: whether she could attend their charity dinner, or could she turn toward their camera for a photo, or would she recommend their cousin for a position in the royal household. It felt like she couldn’t even walk through the palace without being trapped in a small hail of requests.

  But no one asked what she wanted anymore. As if the moment she’d become the queen, she’d stopped having any sort of desires at all.

  Beatrice realized with a sick sense of guilt that she’d done the same thing to Teddy. In all her anguish over what the wedding was costing her, she hadn’t even considered what he was giving up.

  He’d cared about Samantha, and Sam had feelings for him, and still Beatrice had asked him to go through with this. She longed, suddenly, to broach the topic, but she felt like she’d forfeited the right to discuss Samantha with Teddy.

  “I just—I doubt this is what you thought your wedding would be like,” she said hesitantly.

  Teddy shrugged. “I never spent any time thinking about my wedding until this year,” he told her. “Did you?”

  “Actually…when I was little, I thought I was going to get married at Disney World.”

  She felt Teddy struggling to stifle a laugh. Color rose to her cheeks as she rushed to explain.

  “When I was five, I begged my parents to take me to Disney World. The girls at school had all been talking about it….” And she had wanted, desperately, to fit in with them, to actually follow the conversation at the lower school lunch table for once.

  “We had to go after the park closed,” she went on. “We couldn’t be there with the other guests, for security reasons. And—”

  “Wait, you got to ride Space Mountain with no lines?” Teddy cut in.

  “Please, five is too young for Space Mountain. Though I did ride the spinning teacups so many times that it gave my Revere Guard motion sickness,” Beatrice recalled, and Teddy chuckled. “When I saw the castle that night, all those princess characters were there. And I don’t know, I guess I knew I was a princess, and I figured that was where princesses got married.”

  Beatrice didn’t admit that she hadn’t recognized the women in colorful ball gowns as fictional characters. She hadn’t seen any of their movies—so she’d assumed they were real princesses, as she was.

  “A Disney World wedding,” Teddy said slowly. “Are you sure it’s not too late to change locations? The look on Robert’s face alone would be worth it.”

  Beatrice chuckled at that—but as the laugh traveled out of her chest, it transformed into a single, ragged sob. Then somehow she was laughing and weeping at once, crumpling forward and hiding her face in her hands.

  She didn’t expect Teddy to reach for her.

  He wiped away the tears on first one cheek, then the other, his thumb brushing ever so lightly against the damp fan of her lashes. Beatrice’s breath caught as his hand cupped around her face, his palm cradling the back of her neck. She was startled by how much she wanted to close her eyes and lean in to him.

  Some part of her felt guilty for that desire, as if it was a betrayal of everything she’d felt for Connor.

  Except that she and Connor were over, and it had been weeks—months, really—since anyone had touched her like this. Aside from those few frantic kisses the afternoon he left, Connor had hardly even dared to hug her since her dad died. Beatrice hadn’t realized how desperately she had craved this: the simple human comfort of feeling another person’s skin on hers.

  “Beatrice…” Teddy pulled his hand away, as surprised by his gesture as she was. “If we really are doing this, I want to ask you something.”

  “All right.” She leaned back, and her gown rustled with the movement, a dry sound like wind raking through autumn leaves.

  “Will you be honest with me?”

  Whatever Beatrice had expected, it wasn’t this.

  “Look—I know there will be things you don’t want to share,” he hurried to add. “Some things you can’t share, because of who you are. When that happens, I’d rather you just admit that you can’t tell me something, instead of feeling like you need to lie. And I swear that I will do the same.”

  The room had
become very small and still. Beatrice’s heart pounded against the rigid corset of the gown.

  She wondered what secrets Teddy was trying to keep from her. Was he worried she would ask him about his history with Samantha? Or was he asking this for her sake, because he somehow knew about her and Connor?

  Whatever his reasons, Beatrice saw the wisdom in Teddy’s request. He was right.

  There might not be love between them—but there could be trust, if they built it. And trust might allow for privacy, even secrets, but never for lies.

  “I agree. Let’s always tell each other the truth.”

  Teddy nodded and stood, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. His grip was warm, and steady, and firm.

  For some reason, Beatrice thought back to the day she’d proposed. She remembered how utterly strange Teddy’s hand had felt in hers.

  It didn’t seem quite so wrong, this time.

  Daphne was very quiet as she browsed the rack of silk tops, her ears straining to catch the conversation of the women behind her. She didn’t dare alert them by turning around, so she couldn’t see their faces, but she sensed from the quiet intensity of their voices that they were discussing something scandalous.

  She hadn’t come to Halo, her favorite boutique, with the express intent of eavesdropping—but Daphne had long ago learned to keep her ears and eyes open.

  If she learned something good, she could pass it to Natasha at the Daily News. Daphne had been slipping her gossip items for years now, in exchange for favorable coverage from the magazine. Or, if it was really good, Daphne might even find a way to use it for her own ends. Like that time years ago, before she and Jefferson were dating, when she’d caught Lady Leonor Harrington in a back stairwell with one of the palace security guards.

  Daphne had assured Lady Harrington that she would keep the secret—but had also gently suggested that the noblewoman sponsor her application to the Royal Ballet Guild, notoriously the capital’s most exclusive charity group. Then Daphne had convinced the security guard to let her into the palace a few times at big events, when no one would notice an extra guest.