Majesty (American Royals, #2)(38)
Daphne had felt an odd pang of surprise that he was out with Nina so late on a Saturday, though that was precisely what she’d asked of him. Good, she’d replied curtly.
She didn’t care what Ethan did, as long as he kept Nina far from the prince, clearing the way for Daphne to make her move.
“This is a great setup,” she said now, coming to stand behind Jefferson. “How did you get the tent?”
He rummaged beneath the table for a bag of ice cubes and scooped some into a red plastic cup. It always amused Daphne that he and Sam were some of the richest teenagers on earth yet still insisted on drinking out of those cups like regular college students. “Oh, the tent isn’t for us. There’s a garden party tomorrow,” he replied mischievously.
Jefferson poured soda over the ice before handing the cup to Daphne. She loved that he hadn’t even needed to ask: that he just made her drink, the way he always had.
Then again—being the perfect, well-behaved girlfriend hadn’t really worked out for her last time. Daphne had a feeling that Nina drank at parties.
“You forgot the vodka,” she said lightly.
“Right—sorry.” Covering his surprise, Jefferson poured some into her cup. Then he grabbed himself a beer and led her away, toward the far corner of the tent and into a temporary bubble of privacy.
“It’s going to be a rough cleanup, getting rid of all this before tomorrow’s party,” Daphne observed, kicking one heel behind the other.
The prince shrugged. “We’ll be fine as long as nobody does anything stupid. Myself included.”
“You, do anything stupid?” she teased. “Like that time you played darts, and were so off target you hit the painting of Lord Alexander Hamilton on the other side of the room?”
“Hey, I hit him right in the eye. You could say that I have awesome aim,” Jefferson protested. “Or what about the time I led everyone on a tour of the dungeons, and accidentally locked us all inside?”
“You keep calling that room a dungeon, but it’s just a basement.”
“There’s also the party we had over winter break sophomore year, when Ethan and I unpacked a box of Fourth of July sparklers. That was the night I met you, actually,” Jefferson reminisced, in a softer tone.
Daphne smiled. “I thought those sparklers were a terrible idea, but I still lit one. I guess I wanted to impress you.”
The prince spun his beer bottle in one hand. “I remember seeing you out there on the terrace, laughing and holding that sparkler. The way it lit up your face…I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
For some reason, Daphne remembered what Ethan had told her earlier this year. Jeff doesn’t know you like I do. All he sees is what you look like, which is a damn shame, because your mind is the best thing about you. Your brilliant, stubborn, unscrupulous mind—
Daphne swept that thought forcibly aside. Why was she thinking about Ethan right now, anyway?
“Then you dropped that sparkler on the grass, and everyone started shouting,” Jefferson went on, chuckling.
As if any of that had been an accident. “I tried to stamp out the fire with my heels!” Daphne recalled.
“Luckily for you I was right there. With a beer.”
“And I shouted at you not to, because I thought beer would feed the fire even more!”
“Nah, that’s just liquor,” Jefferson pointed out. “Beer works as a firefighting tool. After all, it’s mostly water.”
“You were sixteen,” she teased. “Two years too young to be drinking one.”
“It’s not my fault that most things worth doing are against the rules,” he replied with an easy grin.
Daphne knew this was her moment to make a play for him. But she couldn’t be obvious about it; the last thing she wanted was for Jefferson to feel pursued. She had to lead him onward without him ever even realizing.
“Didn’t we stay up so late that we went out for breakfast?” she asked, as if the night hadn’t been etched in her memory. Flush with victory, Daphne had lingered at the palace until nearly dawn, when the only people left were the twins’ closest friends. She’d wanted nothing more than to go home and collapse onto her duvet, but she’d forced herself to rally. There was no telling when she might get another chance like this.
So Daphne had brightened her eye makeup and reapplied her lip gloss. She’d opened a bottle of champagne, though she had no intention of drinking any—the pop of the cork always made things seem festive—and then, as everyone was passing the bottle around, she’d asked, “Should we go get some breakfast?”
“You’re right; we ended up at the Patriot!” Jefferson exclaimed, naming the bar at the nearby Monmouth Hotel. “I haven’t had those hash browns in ages.”
“Me neither,” Daphne said nostalgically, almost wistfully. “After tonight, I’ll need that kind of carb-fest to recover.”
She was always doing this with Jefferson: laughing in delight when he proposed something, as if it was his idea and not one that she’d quietly led him to. Skirting him around topics she would rather avoid, finding ways to bring up the ones she did. She managed him, the way she always had, and always would.
“You know what, we should go tomorrow,” Jefferson said, and Daphne smiled as if the suggestion surprised her.