Her Royal Highness (Royals #2)(54)

“Where did you get those?”

Saks sits up on her bed, crossing her legs. “I have my sources.”

She pulls the first glossy issue off the stack, setting it down with a thwack on the bed between us. The word “MAJESTY” is printed on top in curling letters.

“This is the latest issue,” Saks tells me. “And there’s a whole feature on Flora’s brother Alexander and his fiancée. Her name is Eleanor Winters, she’s American, we’re obsessed.”

Flicking open the magazine, she points to a picture of a blond woman with her cheek on Prince Alex’s shoulder as they stand in a garden. “Right,” I say, remembering Lee telling me about that. “I sort of know about her.”

“And this is her sister, Daisy,” Saks goes on, flipping another page. This one shows a redhead in jeans and T-shirt, her arm linked with a handsome guy also dressed way down. “She’s dating the chief Royal Wrecker, Miles Montgomery. Well, he was chief Royal Wrecker, he and Seb had some kind of falling-out, not one hundred percent sure it’s been sorted. Miles went to America to win Daisy back, so the story goes, and this is them there. We’re slightly obsessed with her, too.”

“They’re still fighting,” I say. “Seb mentioned this guy. Said he was dead.”

Clucking her tongue, Saks flips another page. “That’s a shame. The rumor was he was a calming influence on Seb. He’ll need that now that I’ve declared him a lost cause.”

I look up at her, tugging at the ends of my hair. “Wait, what? Since when?”

She reaches for another magazine, this one dated just last week. Opening it to a page showing Seb in a soccer jersey, she taps the picture with one hot pink nail. “Midlothian Hearts,” she tells me, like that makes sense.

Seeing my confusion, Saks clarifies, “A football team. My father is a passionate Arsenal supporter.” Shaking her head, she sighs. “Like Romeo and Juliet. Daddy would never approve of my marrying a Hearts fan, even if he is a prince.”

I stare at her for a long beat before laughing and pressing my forehead to her shoulder. “Saks, I really love you,” I tell her, and she beams at me.

“Thank you, darling. It’s mutual.”

Then she reaches into the magazines and pulls out a slightly trashier-looking one. “So you know all about Seb already, really.”

“More than I wanted to.”

“And you lived with Flora, so I guess you know all you need to there.”

Feigning a casual air, I pick a magazine out of the stack. “Never hurts to learn more.”

Saks tilts her head down, fixing me with a look, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she takes the magazine I’m holding back, tosses it aside, and hands me another one.

“This was a special issue all about Flora for her sixteenth birthday,” she says, and sure enough, there’s Flora on the front, smiling in a plaid-lined trench coat. She’s accepting flowers from an old lady in the crowd, and over her head, the headline reads, “Sweet Sixteen!”

“Neat,” I say, and then I try to shrug, but I’m pretty sure it looks like I have a muscle spasm in my shoulder. “I’ll look through this, I guess.”

Sakshi rolls her lips together, holding back a smile, and then she pats my arm. “You can keep it.”

An hour later, I’m alone in the room, lying on my bed, reading every word of that magazine. It’s a total puff piece, a tribute issue to how great Flora is, but it’s still kind of cool, seeing so many pictures of her throughout her life.

Flora in a christening gown.

Flora and Seb as toddlers, hand in hand and weirdly solemn in fancy clothes.

A surprisingly awkward Flora at around twelve or so, braces winking as she grins at the opening of a children’s literature exhibit.

Plenty of Flora surrounded by very pretty girls as she gets older.

Those are the ones I keep staring at. Maybe they’re all just friends, but some of them were probably more than that, and as I look at shiny head of hair after shiny head of hair, thin, long legs in designer jeans, perfect figures in ball gowns, I am suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I’m wearing old leggings and a hoodie that reads GEOLOGY: IT’S GNEISS!

There’s a knock at the door as it opens, and I shove the magazine under my pillow, flipping over onto my back with a paperback copy of The Mill on the Floss in hand.

“Hey!” I say to Flora, who stands in the doorway, watching me suspiciously.

“Quint,” she says. “I wanted to see if you wanted to study downstairs, but . . . What were you doing?”

I wiggle the book at her. “Reading.” Not actually a lie, after all.

She keeps staring at me, but finally seems to accept that answer, walking over to the bed and dropping down on the edge.

Then she frowns at me.

“What does your shirt say?”

“It’s a pun,” I tell her, tugging at the hem. “Gneiss/nice. See, that’s a real geology joke.”

I wait for an eye roll, but instead she looks over at the rocks on the dresser. “I see you’ve settled into your new room, then.”

“It rocks,” I say solemnly, and she bursts into those giggles that are so unprincesslike, but so cute.

Then, surprising me, she gets up and walks over to the dresser, tapping her nails along a few of my specimens.