Majesty (American Royals, #2)(110)
The walls seemed to shrink in on her. No matter how hard she sucked air into her lungs, Daphne felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Jefferson started to reach for her hand, then paused, as if realizing he should ask her permission. “I love you, Daphne,” he told her, and she knew that in that moment that he meant it—really meant it, so much more than all the times he’d said it back when they’d dated in high school. “I was…I hoped…Would you wear this?”
She felt herself teetering on the edge of some great precipice, as if she had finally scaled the top of a peak she’d been climbing her whole life. And now that she was finally cresting the top, she wasn’t even sure why she was here.
Once she stepped out into the world wearing that ring, everyone would know that she and Jefferson were back together—more than that, even. That they were sworn to each other, that they had reached an understanding. A signet ring wasn’t an engagement ring, yet that script W unquestionably marked her as one of the Washingtons.
The moment the paparazzi snapped a photo of Daphne in that ring, her entire world would change.
People would start taking bets on everything from their engagement to future baby names. Porcelain companies would surreptitiously begin their designs, in hopes of being granted the commission for her commemorative wedding china. Daphne would become the center of a whirlwind of breathless speculation.
And someday when she and Jefferson were married, she would soar to the top of the social hierarchy, and become the third-highest-ranking woman in the realm. Everyone would be obligated to curtsy to her. Except, of course, for Samantha and Beatrice.
It was everything she had struggled for all these years—her greatest moment of triumph. Yet Daphne’s lungs had frozen. She didn’t know how to say yes. To accept the ring, and everything that came with it.
As if she were a marionette being pulled by a string, she lifted her right hand. It trembled only slightly.
Daphne sat absolutely still, powerless to move, as Jefferson slid the signet over her ring finger. It slipped easily over her knuckle to settle at the base of her finger. The ring still felt warm from the heat of his skin.
“Thank you,” she managed, though it came out almost a whisper. “I didn’t…I wasn’t expecting this.”
Jefferson laced their fingers and squeezed her hand. “I love you, Daphne,” he said again. “I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out—and for everything I put you through—but I promise that things will be different this time. We have each other, and that’s what matters more than anything.”
We have each other. Jefferson no longer had anyone else, because Daphne had taken them all from him—had torn his best friend from him in a fit of spite.
And to reach this moment of triumph, Daphne had ensured that she was just as alone as the prince now found himself.
Dimly, she realized that she hadn’t actually told Jefferson I love you in return. She needed to. She should open her mouth and say it; it would be easy, just three simple words. Hadn’t she said them countless times before without meaning them?
The afternoon slanted through the windows, to fall in a play of light and shadow over the planes of the prince’s face. His Highness Jefferson George Alexander Augustus, Prince of America, was still waiting for her answer.
Since she was fourteen her life had revolved around him: winning him, keeping him, trying to hurt anyone who got between them, hurting herself instead. Daphne had plotted and schemed and manipulated, had burned bridges and scorched earth in her efforts to draw him back to her side. And now he was here, and it was all over at last, and the only thought running through her head was what an utter fool she had been, to build her life around the wrong boy.
It was too late to change course. Her chance for a future with Ethan was gone. And now that Daphne was here, confronted with the future she’d spent all those years striving for, no one could ever know what it had cost her.
No one could ever know that the smiles she gave Jefferson were smiles she should have showered on Ethan, the boy she’d loved, only to realize it too late. No one could know that she had paid for the highest of titles with the greatest of heartbreaks. And she would never tell them.
She remembered what Nina had said this morning: that Daphne would get everything she had ever wanted, only to find that she was completely alone.
Daphne looked at Jefferson and gave him the answer he expected, the answer her parents wanted her to give—the Deighton answer.
“I love you, too,” she assured him, her face frozen in her beautiful, perfect smile. “And I’m so very happy.”
Beatrice had never seen the palace in such upheaval. Especially not when she was the cause of it.
Security and footmen and party planners swarmed the halls, searching for something to do, for an answer that no one seemed able to give. In all their centuries of history the Washingtons had never experienced anything like this: a royal wedding that wasn’t. It was especially chaotic given that the Lord Chamberlain had just handed in his resignation, leaving his assistant in charge.
If only Beatrice had been confident enough to fire Robert months ago. He’d never really been working for her; he’d been working for an outdated notion of what her role should be. And she could never become the queen she needed to, not with him undermining her efforts.
She remembered, suddenly, what her father had said that final morning at the hospital: It won’t be easy for you, a young woman, stepping into a job that most men will think they can do better. Harness some of that energy of yours, that stubbornness, and stick to your beliefs.