Sorrow glinted in Beatrice’s eyes. “I know. But I still miss him, so much. I love Uncle Richard, but he’s not the first person I would’ve picked to walk me down the aisle.”
Sam stood up a little straighter. “Do you want me to talk to Mom? She should have agreed to walk with you from the beginning.” Queen Adelaide was down the hall in the Blue Chamber, along with Teddy and his groomsmen; she’d chosen to let Jeff lead her down the aisle, rather than walk with Beatrice—as her husband would have, if he were still here.
“It’s fine.” Beatrice shook her head at Sam’s expression. “Don’t be hard on Mom. Today is supposed to be a joyful day, for all of us. I won’t ask her to do something that would cause her pain.”
Sam blinked. “Bee—what if you walk yourself?”
At her sister’s stunned look, she rushed to explain. “Hear me out. You’re the queen, the highest-ranking person in this country. The only person who can give you away is yourself. So why don’t you walk down the aisle alone?”
Beatrice glanced down, her hands twisting in the fabric of her robe. Her silver sequined heels glinted in the light.
“I…plenty of people will be angry,” she said nervously.
Sam hated that her sister was right. A young woman heading down the aisle by herself—it was a snub to convention, a blatant show of independence.
“Maybe they will,” she acknowledged. “But what better way to start changing their minds?”
Beatrice hesitated, then tipped her chin up, her expression stubborn and quietly resolute. Sam couldn’t help thinking that she looked startlingly like their father when he’d been on the brink of a decision.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
There was a knock at the door, and Robert Standish peered into the room. “Your Majesty, the hair and makeup artists are here to do final touch-ups. Then Wendy Tsu will help you into your dress.”
The room was about to dissolve into a small hurricane of hairspray and lipstick. Sam cast a pleading glance at her sister, who laughed in understanding. “You can go, Sam,” Bee said. “Just don’t stay away too long.”
“Thank you,” Sam breathed.
Ignoring the curious stares of footmen and security guards, she started restlessly down the hallway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the palace thronged with so many people. The throne room was probably full by now; the guests had been told to arrive almost an hour before the ceremony, for security reasons.
The only place free from all the chaos was the winter garden, a small space tucked into the side of the palace. At the center of its brick courtyard stood a potted lemon tree, which only grew in this climate thanks to the assiduous care of the palace groundskeeper.
“Sam?”
A lean, blond figure unfolded himself from one of the benches, and Sam swallowed.
“Teddy. What are you doing out here?” she asked self-consciously.
A hesitant smile curled over his features. He wore the ceremonial navy and white of the Dukes of Boston, his dress coat complete with tails and stitched in golden thread. Even his white gloves were fastened with gold buttons. Sam knew, in a distant and unaffected part of her mind, that he looked impossibly handsome.
“The same thing as you,” Teddy said. “I needed a breath of fresh air before all the handshaking and small talk.”
“But you’re so good at all that stuff,” she observed.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I like doing it, though.”
The silence that fell between them was less awkward than Sam might have expected. She realized that she hadn’t been alone with Teddy since that day at the Royal Potomac Races all those months ago, when he’d told her he was marrying her sister.
“Sam—”
“Teddy—”
They both broke off with a flustered laugh. “You first,” Sam insisted, and he cleared his throat.
“Sam, Bee and I…I mean…”
When had he started using that nickname? Hearing it tugged at something in Sam’s chest.
“I know,” she said, her eyes burning. “You really love her, don’t you.”
To his credit, Teddy held her gaze. “I don’t know how to begin apologizing to you. I mean, there’s nothing in McCall’s Etiquette about how to handle something like this.”
“I think we’re leagues past anything McCall could’ve anticipated,” Sam replied, but Teddy didn’t smile at her joke the way Marshall would have.
“Exactly,” he said earnestly. “I’m sorry I made such a mess of things. I never should have…”
At his anguished look, Sam took an instinctive step forward, placing a finger over his lips. “Whatever you were going to say, don’t. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you.”
She was the antagonist in Beatrice and Teddy’s love story, and if she hadn’t been in the way, they might have discovered how they felt about each other so much sooner.
“It takes two people to make out in a closet. Don’t carry all the blame for this, okay?” She tried to smile at him. “I’m happy for you and Bee. Really.”
A breeze shot into the garden, rustling the leaves on the lemon tree, lifting the smells of soil and damp and citrus into the air.
Teddy’s eyes gleamed with gratitude and relief. “I’m happy for you, too. You and Davis seem really great together.”
“You—what?”
“Sam, you’re so complicated,” Teddy said gruffly. “You’re impulsive and brilliant and sophisticated and sarcastic. There is so much to you, and I’ve never seen anyone who complemented all of that, who could keep up with you, until Marshall. You two make sense together. More sense than you and I ever did.”
“I—thanks. That means a lot,” Sam said awkwardly. She looked into Teddy’s luminous blue eyes and added, “I’m really glad that Beatrice has you.”
“I’m glad she has you, too.”
They exchanged a complicit smile. In that moment, Sam knew that she and Teddy understood each other, because they shared one very important thing—they both loved Beatrice. Being the queen was a near-impossible job, but between the two of them, they might be able to support her through it.
“I realize this is painfully cliché, but do you think we could stay friends?” Teddy asked.
Friends. Sam didn’t have many of those, at least, not friends she could trust. Certainly not friends who knew her as well as Teddy did. “I would love that.”
She hesitated a moment, but given everything they’d been through, she figured she could hug Teddy. She started to pull him into an embrace. But before she could, he put his hands on her shoulders, and leaned forward to drop a single kiss on her brow.
There was nothing romantic in the gesture; it was decidedly old-fashioned, and sweet. As if Teddy was quietly acknowledging their messy history, and putting it behind him.
Sam felt all her grief and love and loss welling up in her. She blinked rapidly, trying not to cry. She had made so many mistakes, time and again—but at last everything was clicking into place, the way it was meant to all along.
“What the hell?”
Marshall stood in the doorway, looking at them in outraged horror.
Sam and Teddy sprang apart as if scalded. Which, she realized, probably made them look even guiltier.
“Marshall—let me explain,” she pleaded, taking a step toward him. He recoiled, and Sam fell back, wounded.
Teddy held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Look, it’s not what you think—”
“So this is who you’ve been using me to make jealous,” Marshall cut in, his eyes on Sam. “When you told me that your mystery guy was taken, I never thought you meant he was marrying your sister.”
Teddy was still talking in a low, urgent tone, explaining that this was all a misunderstanding, that he and Sam were just friends. But Sam’s ey
es must have betrayed her, because Marshall retreated another step.
“I assume this is why you wanted me as your date? It was all a last-ditch attempt to make Eaton here jealous?” He barked out a sharp, defensive laugh. “What did you think he would do, call off the royal wedding?”
“No, I—I never wanted—” Sam stammered, but Marshall was already gone.
She stumbled into the hallway and saw that he’d taken off in the direction of the throne room.
“Marshall!” she cried out. He heard her, and started walking even faster.
It was so stupid, so completely immature of them to be racing through the palace like a pair of shrieking children. Sam kept shouting for Marshall to please just talk to her, but he broke into a jog, refusing to turn around.
She yanked the skirts of her gown as high as she could, now hurtling down the hallway in a full-out sprint, fighting to stay steady in her satin pumps. Stunned footmen and staff flung themselves out of her path. Sam ground to a halt at the back stairs—had Marshall headed up to the second floor?
As she hesitated, a tall stranger turned the corner.
He walked with bold, tense strides, his shoulders stiff. Sam looked at him for a moment in puzzled confusion, only to remember who he was.
Connor Markham, Beatrice’s former Guard.
She stiffened in a hot flush of panic. Oh god. Connor was here because she had found his wedding invitation in Beatrice’s desk—and sent it.
Sam watched, her lips parting in horror, as Connor lifted a fist to knock at the entrance to the Brides’ Room. The door swung open, and Robert Standish frowned up at him with disdain. “I’m sorry,” he snapped, “but who are you?”
And then Beatrice, in a faint voice: “Connor?”
Sam edged closer, looking past Connor to her sister’s face.
It was a naked storm of emotions. Agony, confusion, and, most tellingly, a bleak sort of uncertainty.
In the silence that followed, Sam realized what she had to do.
She took off running in the opposite direction.
Connor was here.
Shock splintered through Beatrice with an almost physical impact, reverberating in her very bones. She tried to move, to breathe, but all she could do was stand there in the Brides’ Room and look at him.
She was fully dressed for the wedding, a human mannequin at the center of yards of white fabric. The train of her gown curled around her like a great slumbering animal. A beautiful combination of veils cascaded over it all: the tulle one that her mother had worn and, beneath, a Chantilly lace that had been in the family since Queen Helga. The light caught in the tulle, glittering on the diamonds of her tiara.
“I’m Connor Markham,” she was dimly aware of him saying. “I’m here to see Beatr—I mean, the queen.”
Understanding sparked in Robert’s eyes, and he shook his head. “Well, Connor Markham, Her Majesty can’t see you right now. As you might be aware, she’s about to walk down the aisle in twenty minutes.”
“It’s all right,” Beatrice heard herself say.
She’d spoken numbly, as if in a trance. What else could she do? Now that Connor was here, she had to speak to him alone.
Connor and Robert both turned to look at her. “Robert,” she clarified, “we need the room, please.”
“Right now?” the chamberlain demanded.
Connor let out a low growl. And even though he was out of uniform—wearing a tux, and, unlike all his years as a Guard, not carrying a single weapon—he still looked broad and imposing, every line of his body radiating a fierce, coiled strength. Beatrice saw Robert wilt a little beneath that glare.
“You have two minutes.” He pulled the door shut behind him, leaving Beatrice and Connor alone.
This room was already small, with the clothes rack along one wall, the makeup artist’s table tucked into a corner. Now it felt even smaller. Connor seemed to take up more space than he should have, as if he’d dragged all their memories in here with him.
Connor was here, just a few feet away, standing there with military straightness, watching her. Connor, whose arms had held her, whose mouth had kissed her, whose hands had brushed away her tears when she’d learned that her father was dying.
Beatrice couldn’t meet his gaze. Her eyes fell to his neck, where—below the starched white of his collar, if she unbuttoned it—she knew she would find the edge of his tattoo, a sweeping eagle that covered the planes of his chest.
She wanted to say how sorry she was, and how hard it had been, telling him to leave. She had daydreamed this moment a thousand times, and still she didn’t know how the daydream ended, whether she told him to get out—or kissed him.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“I was hoping you could tell me.” At her confused look, Connor fumbled in the front pocket of his tuxedo jacket and withdrew a heavy piece of paper. His wedding invitation. It looked tattered and well traveled, its beveled edges worn down, as if Connor had kept it on his person since the day he’d received it. As if he’d pulled it out again and again to look at it, to check whether it was real.
Beatrice sucked in a panicked breath. She hadn’t seen that invitation since the day she tucked it in her hidden desk drawer. She’d meant to lock it away, as firmly as she’d locked away her feelings for Connor; but clearly someone had found it, and mailed it.
“I wasn’t going to come,” Connor said urgently. “I have no desire to watch you marry someone else. But then I kept wondering why you invited me—and I worried that maybe you wanted me to come, that you needed someone to help you get out of all this.”
Oh god. He thought Beatrice had personally invited him. Of course he did—how could he have known that his invitation was a matter of protocol, that she’d actually tried to prevent him from receiving it?
“Bee,” Connor said helplessly. Hearing the nickname on his lips, the amount of history fused into that single syllable, nearly broke her. “I had to see you, just once,” he explained. “To make sure that you’re okay.”
Of course I’m okay, she started to say, but for some reason the words froze in her throat. The bodice of her gown was pressing too sharply into her ribs. She’d thought she was okay, but that was before Connor appeared, unfairly dredging up feelings she’d thought were long buried.
It was too much, happening far too fast—
An angry, high-pitched siren blared through the room. The sound of it lifted the hair on Beatrice’s arms.
It was the palace’s emergency system, roaring to life.
Beatrice had heard that siren only once before, five years ago, when the palace engaged in a massive security overhaul. Their entire family had done a day of emergency training, learning how to untie themselves if their wrists were bound, how to drive a car backward at high speeds—Jeff especially had loved that one—and, most of all, how to react if the palace was under attack.
This alarm wasn’t anything like the alarm that had gone off at last year’s Queen’s Ball, when someone had accidentally started a fire on the South Portico. This alarm meant a massive security breach. A gunman, or, more likely, a bomb.
Had someone meant to assassinate her at her wedding? And, oh god—where was her family? What about Teddy?
Beatrice watched, frozen in place, as Connor’s years of training kicked in. He whirled about, his fists raised, his back to Beatrice. He wasn’t her Guard anymore, yet here he was, still trying to protect her.
“Connor!” she shouted, finally finding her voice. She stumbled forward, her heels catching in the enormous length of her train.
She saw Connor’s gaze whipping around the room, searching for something that might serve as a weapon. The thought was almost funny—what did he expect to do, fight off an assailant with an eyelash curler?—except that she knew Connor’s body might well be the only thing between her and a
bullet.
Even though he was no longer her Guard, he was ready to protect her life with his own.
Cursing, Beatrice grabbed great handfuls of her skirts and shoved them impatiently aside. She’d thought she loved this dress, but now it was just an impediment slowing her down. She needed to hurry, needed to get out—
A steel-lined security panel shot out of the doorway’s top molding. It slammed down into the floor, sealing them in.
Daphne clasped her hands demurely in her lap, trying not to look too pleased with herself.
She’d felt the envy of the other guests as the usher led her all the way to the front of the room. Daphne was seated in the sixth row, next to Lord Marshall Davis—of course, they couldn’t actually sit with the royal family until they married into it. Her parents, meanwhile, were all the way back in the nosebleed section with the other low-ranking royals.
Behind her, the throne room was a vibrant sea of color. A royal wedding, like a coronation or the opening ceremonies of Congress, was one of the few moments in which the peerage could wear their coronets and robes of rank. When they’d left for the wedding, Rebecca Deighton had been dressed in all the insignia she was entitled to as wife of a baronet; which, unfortunately, wasn’t much. Just a six-rayed coronet—done in silver gilt, not gold like a duchess’s—and a cloak with one yard of train, its ermine edging limited to the prescribed two inches. Each additional rank, of course, merited an additional inch of trim.
At court, these were things of crucial importance.
For an instant Daphne seemed to almost stand outside herself, to marvel at the absurdity of it all—but then she remembered who she was, what she had done to reach this point, and her vision cleared.
She skimmed her hands over her gown: a crimson one with a sinuous trumpet silhouette and gold-stitched roses that traced down the left side of her body. She stood out like a living cinder. Or, more accurately, a torch.
Daphne was aware that most people said redheads should never wear red, but those people had clearly never seen her. The dress had a richer, more purple glow than the fiery red-gold of her hair. Besides, red was the color of power, and Daphne needed all the power she could get right now.
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