Majesty (American Royals, #2)(21)

Before she could answer, Queen Adelaide’s voice sounded behind them. “Beatrice, are you all right? We’re getting behind schedule.”

Some strange impulse seized hold of Beatrice. Before she could second-guess herself, she’d thrown open the nearest door, which led to a narrow linen closet. Teddy cast her a puzzled look, but followed her inside.

When he pulled the door shut behind him, the overhead light clicked off.

“What’s going on?” he whispered into the dimness.

Beatrice felt hot and prickly with embarrassment, and maybe with adrenaline. Had she really just run away from her mom? It was the sort of spontaneous, heedless thing that Sam usually did.

“I needed a hiding spot.”

“Fair enough,” Teddy replied, as if her explanation made sense.

Beatrice slid to the floor and hugged her knees. Her gown poufed up around her in a sea of petticoats and flounces. After a moment, Teddy lowered himself to sit next to her.

“I was going to save this for when we had a little more space, but you clearly need it now.”

He held out the bag, and Beatrice pulled it into her lap. Inside was a recyclable takeout box marked with a familiar D logo. “Were you in Boston this morning?” she breathed, incredulous.

“I had it couriered.”

She tore open the box to reveal an enormous butterscotch brownie, as big as the bricks that lined the walkway outside the palace. “How did you know?”

“You told me, that night at the Queen’s Ball. You said that Darwin’s brownies were the only thing that got you through exams. I figured, with everything that’s going on, you could use a little de-stressing right now.”

For a moment Beatrice just stared at him, caught off guard by his thoughtfulness. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered a throwaway comment she’d made months ago.

“I didn’t get the wrong thing, did I?” he asked, seeing her hesitation.

In answer, Beatrice grabbed the plastic fork and stabbed eagerly into the brownie. It was gooey and sweet and reassuringly familiar.

When she looked over, she saw that Teddy was staring at her, a corner of his mouth lifted in amusement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so…unroyal,” he admitted.

“There’s no elegant way to eat a Darwin’s brownie, and it’s never stopped me before.” Beatrice held out her fork. “Want to try it, before I devour the whole thing?”

She’d made the offer automatically—it was what she would have done with Jeff, or Sam, or, well, Connor—but when Teddy hesitated, she realized what she’d said. There was something decidedly intimate about eating from the same fork.

“Sure,” he replied, after a beat. “I need to see if it lives up to the hype.”

As she passed him the brownie, Beatrice’s knee brushed against his beneath the ivory spill of her skirts, and she quickly pulled it back. Teddy pretended not to notice.

“This is a pretty good hiding place,” he observed. “Did you come here a lot when you played hide-and-seek?”

“Actually…when I was little, I read that fantasy series about the wardrobe. I once searched every last closet in the palace, hoping I’d find a doorway to another world.”

Beatrice wasn’t sure why she’d confessed that. She blamed the cool oaken silence of the linen closet, or the fact that she was alone with her fiancé—instead of surrounded by people, as they usually were—and he was being so unexpectedly nice.

“You went looking for magic doors to Narnia?” Teddy asked.

She tried not to be hurt by his surprise. “I know, no one ever thinks of me as the imaginative type.”

While Samantha and Jeff had run all over the palace, pretending they were pirates or knights or adventurers, Beatrice was in etiquette lessons or working her way through an endless reading list. Their childish impulses had been indulged; hers had been quietly denied.

No one wanted their future monarch to waste time playing. She was meant to be duty-bound, as plodding and obedient and steady as an ox at the plow.

It was hard not to wish, sometimes, that life had cast her in a different role.

“That’s not what I meant,” Teddy said gently. “I just…I used to want to escape into a fantasy world, too.”

Of course, Beatrice thought. Teddy knew what it was like to grow up under a heavy set of expectations. He had reasons of his own for agreeing to this engagement, probably reasons that had to do with his family.

He certainly wasn’t marrying her because he loved her.

“Teddy—what are we doing?”

“Right now we’re sitting on the floor of a closet, in the dark. Though I have to say, I still haven’t figured out why.”

She shook off a bizarre desire to laugh. “I meant the wedding,” she clarified. “We can still call off the whole thing.”

Teddy was silent for a moment.

“Is that what you want?” he said at last.

Beatrice couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked her that. People asked her plenty of other things: whether she could attend their charity dinner, or could she turn toward their camera for a photo, or would she recommend their cousin for a position in the royal household. It felt like she couldn’t even walk through the palace without being trapped in a small hail of requests.