Royals

by Rachel Hawkins

  Dad turns the paper back to face him, snapping the pages. “Glynnis should be thrilled,” he tells Ellie. “This article is practically fawning all over Daisy.”

  “What?” Ellie and I ask at the same time.

  “No one’s ever liked Argie,” Seb says from his spot near the window. He’d been the one to show us to our rooms when we came into the palace today, which had surprised me. I was even more surprised that he was just . . . hanging out here, drinking tea, but he hadn’t shown any signs of leaving.

  “Argie?” I repeat, then work out that that’s a nickname for the duchess. Probably not one anyone uses to her face.

  “She’s the worst kind of snob,” Seb continues, stirring his tea. “Daisy giving her a right bollocking probably did her some good.”

  “I didn’t . . . I don’t even know what that means,” I say, leaning back against the sofa. Everything in this room is done in shades of rose and gold, and I think every pillow, every lampshade, every drape has been weighted down with tassels. Outside the windows, the afternoon has gone dark and rainy.

  Seb looks up from his tea and grins at me, a dimple flashing in his cheek. “It means you told her off. And there’s nothing the Scots love more than a mouthy lass.”

  I wrinkle my nose, looking at the stack of papers in my dad’s lap.

  How does Ellie stand it, that constant itch at the back of her brain that tells her people are talking about her, people are always talking about her, and that both the best and worst things she could ever hear about herself are just a few clicks away? How does that not make anyone insane?

  There’s a brisk knock at the door to the sitting room, but before any of us can say anything, Glynnis is striding in. I’ve begun to realize she doesn’t ever walk anywhere. It’s all striding, marching, trooping . . . she was probably a heck of a general in a past life.

  “Just the girl I was looking for!” she says brightly, but her eyes are laser-focused on me, and I swallow hard.

  “Hi, Glynnis,” I say, waggling my fingers.

  Her smile doesn’t drop as she addresses the entire room. “So, bit of a rocky start, but we’re here now, and I think course correction should be easy enough.”

  Course correction doesn’t exactly sound great, but I guess it’s better than what I’d been expecting, which was something like, “Some time in the dungeons will do wonders for Daisy’s attitude!”

  “If I could just steal Daisy for a wee bit . . .” Glynnis continues, holding her thumb and forefinger apart.

  “Sure,” I say, but it comes out like a squeak, and to my surprise, El gets to her feet, too.

  “Mind if I come with?” she asks, and I shoot her a look of gratitude. I don’t really think Glynnis is going to imprison and/or eat me, but having Ellie along for whatever is about to happen seems nice.

  “Bring them back in one piece!” Dad calls cheerfully, opening another paper with my face on the front. Then he frowns, thinking. “Well, two pieces. Their two separate bodies, that is.” He waves a hand. “You know what I mean.”

  “Of course,” Glynnis says through a tight smile, and I have to roll my lips inward not to giggle.

  Ellie doesn’t look nearly as amused, sighing a bit as she steps closer to me, and the two of us follow Glynnis out of the room.

  “Are we going to the—” I whisper, but Ellie cuts me off with one lifted hand.

  “Hush.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going ask.”

  We’re going down some stairs now, big, wide stone ones with shallow grooves in the center from hundreds of years’ worth of feet.

  “You were going to make a joke about dungeons or drawing and quartering. Something weird. Something Dad would say.”

  “Both offensive and also kind of true,” I concede.

  We pass under several portraits of Alex’s ancestors and finally come to a set of double doors carved with unicorns.

  One of my favorite things about Scotland so far is that the unicorn is their national animal. You really can’t hate a country where that’s the case.

  The doors open up into a well-lit room that’s a lot more spartan than the other rooms I’ve seen in the castle so far. There aren’t little knickknacks resting on every available surface, and there’s only one sofa and two chairs as opposed to a whole showroom floor’s worth of furniture.

  One wall is completely lined with mirrors, and I catch a glimpse of myself, my hair very bright in this room that’s mostly gray and white.

  And then I see the table against the window, clothes draped across it.

  Skirts, sweaters, slacks, a few dresses that come kind of close to 1950s housewife . . .

  “Oh my god,” I murmur. “Makeover montage.”

  “What?” Ellie asks, walking over to the table.

  But it’s Glynnis I turn to. “Makeover montage, right? This is the part where you give me a bunch of conservative clothes, maybe fix my hair, some upbeat song plays, and at the end, I’m gonna look at myself in this mirror”—I walk to the back of the room, reaching out to touch the glass and widening my eyes, lips parting—“and I say something like, ‘Is that . . . me?’ And then everyone claps and tells me I look great, and I do look great, but deep inside, I’m afraid something within me has irrevocably changed.”

  I turn, and Glynnis and Ellie both stare at me.

  “Have neither of you ever seen movies?” I ask, putting a hand on one hip.

  “It’s just new clothes, Daisy,” Ellie finally says, and I roll my eyes, going to stand next to her.

  “You’re exactly zero fun,” I tell her, my eyes scanning over the clothes lined up for me.

  They’re all . . . fine, really. Boring colors, mostly, definitely Ellie Wear, but nothing too terrible.

  Ellie is flipping through a catalog Glynnis has left lying on the table, and she pauses on a page with several ballgowns on it. “Oooh,” I say, pointing at one that seems to be a mix of tartan patterns, all purple and green and black. The skirt is wide and floofy, and a narrow green ribbon belt separates it from the purple strapless top, and I tap the page. “Can I get one of these?”

  Glynnis looks over Ellie’s shoulder and makes a tutting sound. “You may have an occasion to wear a ballgown, but that one is a bit . . . out there.”

  “I like out there,” I say, but Ellie is already closing the book and handing me a gray cardigan.

  “Go try this on,” she says, nodding toward a screen set up in the corner, and I frown, taking the sweater from her.

  “You’re less than zero fun,” I tell her.

  “Something that should be fun is your friend Isabel’s visit,” Glynnis calls out as I step behind the screen and I poke my head out the side.

  “Is that all set up? Isa coming, the Ash Bentley signing . . .”

  Gathering up more clothes from the table, Glynnis nods. “She’ll be here the day after tomorrow, just in time for the signing.” Then she flashes that predatory smile at me.

  “Won’t it be nice to surprise her with your new look?”

  Ah. I get it. This is the payment for getting an Isa visit—I princess up.

  Well, sister-of-the-princess up.

  As I slip the cardigan over my shoulders, scowling at the little pearl buttons, I wonder if even Isa is worth looking like my own grandmother.

  Chapter 17

  The palace puts Isabel up at the Balmoral, the same fancy hotel we’d stayed at when we came to Edinburgh. I was finally getting used to saying, “the palace” did this, “the palace” thinks that. Ellie said it so naturally, and so did Glynnis, that I could almost forget that “the palace” meant some weird cabal of people who made all the decisions for anyone even a little bit related to the royal family.

  In any case, this was one time when I was really happy with the palace. The Balmoral was gorgeous, and I knew Isabel would love it, e
specially after I told her that J. K. Rowling finished the last Harry Potter book in one of the suites. That would send Isa into geek heaven.

  I didn’t get to see her when she’d gotten in the night before, but the next morning, I hop in the back of a black town car (another thing to get used to) and head straight for the hotel.

  No one takes a second glance at me when I walk through the front doors, which is a relief. I’d thought after the race, my face might be getting a little more familiar, but then I remind myself that famous people stay at this hotel all the time.

  I take the elevator—sorry, the lift—up to the sixth floor and walk down the hall to Isabel’s room, my head already full of plans. It’s not a huge walk from the hotel to the National Museum of Scotland, so we can do that first, see some art, look at weird Scottish knickknacks, maybe say hi to an ancestor or two of Alex’s. From there, it’s a short walk to Greyfriars Kirkyard, which is both beautiful and super creepy. Very much Isabel’s bag. Lunch at Nando’s, tea and some cake, and then we get to go see Ash Bentley speak and sign books at this amazing little bookshop on Victoria Street. The perfect Isa and Daisy day.

  Stopping in front of room 634, I knock a funny little knock, three quick taps, two louder ones with my fist, and after a minute, the door opens just a little bit, Isabel’s face appearing in the crack.

  Her red, teary, kinda snotty face.

  “What happened?” I cry.

  Isa opens the door wider to let me in. The second I slip into the room, the door shuts behind me and Isabel’s face crumples. “It’s Ben,” she says, spitting out her boyfriend’s name like it’s a bad word, and uh-oh.

  Isabel and Ben have always been the nicest, most stable couple I know. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times I wished Ben wasn’t in the picture, but that was only in moments when I was feeling a little lonely, and maybe a little envious. On the whole, he was a good guy, and it definitely wasn’t like Isabel to cry over him.

  “What about Ben?” I ask, taking her arms and steering her toward the little sofa in the suite. She’s wearing one of the white hotel bathrobes, her black hair still wet from the shower. A room service tray is untouched on the table, so I pick up the silver pot of coffee and pour her a cup, putting in plenty of sugar the way she likes. She takes it from me but doesn’t drink, her gaze focused somewhere around her bright orange toenails.

  “He sent me this email,” she sniffles. “While I was flying across the freaking ocean, my boyfriend was typing me out his thesis on why we should maybe take some time apart this summer.”

  I sit down heavily on the sofa. “What?”

  “That’s what I said!” Isa takes a sip of the coffee, shuddering a little. “Look at this.”

  She fishes her phone out of her robe pocket and hands it to me. The email is already open.

  “I just saw it,” Isabel says. Her voice is still wavering, but she’s not crying anymore. “Literally got out of the shower, sent him a text to say I was here safe, and he asked if I’d checked my email yet. That’s all he said. Three years of dating, he knows he’s breaking up with me in an email, and not ‘glad you’re safe, but we need to talk when you get a chance,’ just ‘have you checked your email?’” She takes another sip of coffee, her hair dripping water onto her robe. “Are you done reading it?”

  “Um, almost,” I say, but the truth is, Isabel wasn’t lying about this being a thesis. It’s like two thousand words of Ben’s feelings and concerns, and while I like Ben, I really don’t need this much of him.

  But I skim it enough to see his general point—because Isabel is going to be gone for nearly a month, and Ben is going up to see his grandparents in Maine, he thinks they should use this time as a sort of “test run” for college, to see what it’s like being apart . . . before they’re apart? I don’t know, I’m not following Ben’s logic, and I suspect this is more about wanting to make out with girls in Maine than any sort of journey of the soul he and Isa should take as a couple.

  “It’s total bullshit,” she says flatly, echoing my own thoughts. “He’s probably got a thing for some girl in Bar Harbor.”

  “At least he’s not planning on cheating?” I say, but it’s the wrong thing to say, and we both know it. Isabel takes a deep, shaky breath.

  “But what if he already has?” she asks in a small voice, and then she’s crying again, and there’s this entire story coming out about how Ben was weird after his trip to his grandparents’ last year, that there was this girl, Carlie, on his Facebook that he’d only added after that trip, that she didn’t have a location listed, but all her pictures sure looked like Maine, and as all this spills out, I sit there, stunned.

  Finally, when the saga of Ben and Carlie has come to an end, I blink at Isabel. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  Isabel gets up from the sofa, sighing as she makes her way to the massive desk and a box of tissues concealed in a marble-and-gilt box. She picks up the whole thing, shaking her head slightly at the over-the-top packaging, then sits down again, tucking one leg under the other.

  “You had so much going on this year,” she says, pausing to blow her nose. “With Ellie and all the weirdness . . .” She gestures around the room, at the giant bed, the expensive furnishings, the fancy tissue box, too, probably. “This. And I wasn’t sure, and I felt so dumb, you know? Ben and I have been together forever, and I thought I was being paranoid, and I hated that. Also—”

  “Saying it out loud would’ve made it feel true,” I finish, and Isa looks up, her dark eyes wide. “Exactly,” she breathes, and I nudge her leg with my knee.

  “See? That’s why you should’ve told me. I get this kind of thing.”

  I lean back into the sofa, nearly swallowed up by the striped cushions. “You’re important to me, Isa, and things that are important to you are important to me. No matter what’s going on with my sister.”

  My sister.

  Who’s the reason I’m here this summer.

  Which, in turn, makes her the reason Isa is here this summer. Would Ben still have sent that email if we’d gone to Key West like we planned?

  I almost say that out loud, the words right there on the tip of my tongue, but then Isa gives a shuddery sigh and tilts her head to the side.

  “What are you wearing?” she asks, and I tug at the hem of my cardigan. I’m wearing the green one, not the gray one, at least, but it’s over a white sleeveless blouse and my jeans have creases down the legs. I’m even wearing little pearl studs in my ears.

  “Nothing interesting,” I assure her, and she nods, but then her lips start wobbling again.

  Okay, so scrapping the museum and bookstore idea. That stuff is fun, don’t get me wrong, but this is an emergency situation, and hey, I now have some pretty cool stuff at my disposal, stuff I know Isabel has been excited about. Why not use just a little bit of it?

  I lean forward. “You wanna go to the palace?”

  Chapter 18

  The tour I give Isa of Holyrood is definitely not as thorough as the one the tourists get, and most of the impressive parts are on display for the public, but Isabel, dedicated reader of royal blogs, is thrilled with this behind-the-scenes look. We stop in one of the parlors, and she touches a sofa covered in tartan pillows. “So, like, the queen sits here?” she asks, and I lean against a doorway. “Yup,” I reply. “Puts the royal bum right on it. When she’s here, which she’s not right now.”

  Alex’s parents still aren’t back from Canada, which, to be honest, is quite the relief. Next week, though . . .

  No, not even contemplating that.

  We leave the parlor and head down one of the long hallways. It’s not as cluttered as Sherbourne Castle was—fewer paintings and knickknacks, but then again everything that belongs to the Bairds technically belongs to the country, so maybe most of their stuff is in museums—but it’s . . . grand. High stone ceilings arch overhead, and there
’s this heavy feeling in the air, like all that history is seeping into the rock.

  We stop near a thick window that looks down on one of the inner courtyards, watching a line of visitors snaking past. The glass is old and wobbly, same as the windows at Sherbourne, making everything outside blurry.

  “It’s a palace,” Isabel says, turning to me.

  “Well, yeah,” I joke, “that’s why it’s right there in the name. Kind of gives it away.”

  Isabel’s bag slides from her shoulder to the crook of her arm. It’s so weird seeing something so familiar—Isabel, her black hair caught in a messy braid, her jeans frayed at the knee, that stupid bag she loves so much, made up of different squares of tweed—in this completely foreign place. A good kind of weird, don’t get me wrong. I’m so happy to see someone who isn’t a Fliss or a Poppy that I could cry. Suddenly, I wonder if this is what Ellie felt like when I’d showed up earlier in the summer. Worlds colliding and all that.

  “Your sister is going to be a princess,” Isabel says, as if she was just now realizing that.

  “Yup,” I say with a shrug. “And then she’ll be a queen, and one day she’ll have a kid who’ll be king or queen, which is actually the weirdest part of all this.”

  Isabel thinks that over, blinking. “Holy crap, yeah,” she says, widening her eyes. “Will you have to bow to your own niece or nephew? Do you think Ellie and Alex will let you hold them?”

  I roll my eyes, grabbing her hand and tugging her toward the side staircase that leads to our private apartments. “Yes, believe it or not, they let commoners touch the king baby.”

  That makes her laugh, and as we head to another part of the palace, she doesn’t even mention all the paintings on the wall, the bizarrely lush carpets, or how everything that could be gilded has been, the gold dull under the surprisingly dim lights. Ellie said that Alex’s dad used the lowest-wattage light bulbs he could to save money, something that made no sense to me, seeing as how these were people who lived in multiple castles and had a literal fleet of fancy cars.