Royals (Royals #1)(20)
If I’d thought that Mr. McDougal seemed rage-y before, it’s nothing to how he looks now. Face purple, he gives this huge shout and lunges for Seb just as Spiffy and Dons pull the swords from the wall, metal scraping along stone as the points of the swords drag on the floor.
“Duel!” Spiffy shouts, and for the first time, I realize just how drunk he and his brother are. Like, crazy drunk.
And now they’re armed with swords that look like they were last used about three hundred years ago.
“Stephen!” Alex says, stepping forward to snatch the sword away from him, but before he can, Dons rushes forward with his own sword.
Straight at the farmer and Seb.
Chapter 9
Some good things that happened this afternoon:
1) Mr. McDougal did not press charges and accepted both Alex’s sincere apologies and his offer to meet the queen upon her return from Canada.
2) We managed to get to Sherbourne Castle just as a huge rainstorm swept in, literally walking up the front steps as the bottom seemed to fall out of the sky, drenching everything.
3) No one actually got stabbed. Dons had been trying to toss the sword to Seb in some sort of cool maneuver, but it ended up just clattering to the floor before it could do any damage.
4) . . .
No, that’s it. Those were the good things that happened today, and the rest was a complete disaster.
The castle, however, is gorgeous. Well, parts of it are. The entire back end of it appears to be a ruin, but the main building is exactly what I would’ve dreamed of as a kid had I been into the whole princess-and-castle thing. There’s even a turret with a flag flapping in the wind, and it’s easy to imagine standing there, watching, like, Braveheart come riding in from battle, all blue-faced and yelling about freedom.
As Ellie and I step through the big double doors of the castle, I scoot closer to her and whisper, “So is there a reason you failed to mention that Alex’s brother and all his friends are basically human dumpster fires?”
“Shhhh!” Ellie hisses, looking around her, but Alex is talking to Miles, and the rest of the Royal Wreckers are heading back to the parlor, laughing, punching each other, basically a walking advertisement for bad decisions.
“I thought Flora was the only one who was a mess,” I add, still whispering. “Is she here?”
Turning back to me, she smooths her hair with her hands, probably drawing power from its mystical shininess. “We’ll see her once her school term is over,” Ellie says, “and as for Seb and his friends, I know they can get a little out of hand, but—”
“Out of hand?” I whisper back. “Ellie, that was full-scale insane. There was nearly a duel! Seb, like, tried to steal some dude’s house! And you’re worried about our family being embarrassing?”
“No one is worried our family will embarrass me, first of all,” she says, and I scoff.
“Okay, sure.”
Ignoring that, she goes on. “And those are Seb’s friends, not Alex’s.”
“Are you sure about that?” I ask.
I glance over to see Alex thumping Miles’s shoulder in that way boys do, and Miles shoots a quick look at me before heading off in the same direction as the other Wreckers. Only Ellie, Alex, Sherbet, and I are left in the main foyer, and while I want to ask Ellie more about Seb, Alex is already walking toward her, one hand out.
“Drink, darling?” he asks, like we’re in a Masterpiece Theatre show about murder in the 1930s or something.
Ellie sighs and places her hand in his. “Yes, please,” she says, and off they go, violins probably swelling on the soundtracks inside their heads.
As I watch them go, I wonder: Is this why Ellie kept things so separate? Was it less to keep us from embarrassing her new fancy-pants family and more to make sure we never knew how not perfect her new life was?
That’s . . . interesting to think about.
Sherbet moves closer to me, hands in his pockets. “Shall I show you up to your room?” he asks, and I nod. I wouldn’t mind holing up somewhere private for a little bit.
“Follow me,” Sherbet says, jerking his head toward the main staircase.
As we walk along, our footsteps muffled by the thick carpet on the steps, I glance around again at all the stuff. Paintings fill up all the wall space, and little tables covered in clocks and porcelain eggs and miniature portraits are scattered everywhere.
“How would you know if anything went missing?” I ask, and Sherbet turns, looking at me and then around again as though he’s just now noticing that his house is full of things.
“Huh,” he says, gripping the banister with a long-fingered hand. “I’m not sure we would know, really.” He laughs then, some of his dark hair flopping over his forehead. “Most houses like this are stuffed to the gills,” he says, continuing up the stairs.
“I guess owning a place for like a thousand years will do that,” I reply, and he laughs again, stepping onto the landing.
“Yes, that, but also, families like ours would always make sure to have extra trinkets lying about in case anything caught the monarch’s eye when they visited.”
I stop just behind him, looking at an end table littered with all sorts of bits and bobs: a magnifying glass with a jeweled handle, a thumb-sized naughty shepherdess figurine, a leather-bound journal so old the spine is flaking. “What do you mean?” I ask, and he looks back at me, eyebrows raised.