Majesty (American Royals, #2)(45)
“Yep. It’s still here.” Teddy sounded buoyant, and a little proud. “A dry-ice rocket exploded too soon,” he added, for her benefit.
Lewis chimed in from the couch. “I told you we’d get away with it! That was six years ago and Mom still has no idea!”
“Sounds like you guys had fun up here,” Beatrice teased.
“What about you?” Teddy asked. “Surely you went through a rebellious phase at some point—got caught smoking in the cherry orchard, broke a national artifact or two.”
“I once knocked over a vase that my great-grandmother brought from Hesse,” she offered. It wasn’t especially scandalous, but she couldn’t tell Teddy about her real “rebellious phase”—when she’d been in a secret relationship with her Revere Guard. “I tried to glue the pieces back together, but the housekeeper caught me.”
“How did you break it?”
“Long story.” It had been Sam and Jeff’s fault, actually, as so many things were. “My dad grounded me for two weeks. Not for breaking the vase, he told me, but for trying to hide what I’d done. He said that monarchs need to always own up to their actions. Especially their mistakes.”
Teddy looked over sharply, clearly worried she might cry. But to Beatrice’s surprise, and relief, she was actually smiling at the memory. It was nice to know that she could think of her dad and feel happiness, mixed in with all the sorrow.
“Can I get you something?” Teddy wandered to the corner, where a few wooden cabinets were built into the wall. He paused. “I don’t even know what your drink of choice is.”
“Um…” Champagne at formal receptions, wine at state dinners. “I’m fine with whatever’s around,” she hedged, but Teddy must have heard the truth in her tone.
“It’s okay if you’re not a big drinker.”
He was right. Beatrice always limited herself to one, maybe two drinks per night at events like that. “Not really. I can’t afford to get drunk and publicly make a fool of myself.” Hearing her own words, she realized how ridiculous they sounded. “Although…I don’t see why I can’t have a drink right now.”
“Sure,” Teddy said, smiling. “If you want to privately make a fool of yourself, your secret is safe with me.”
He said it in a lighthearted tone, but Beatrice heard the truth in his words. She did feel safe with Teddy. She knew, with an instinctive certainty, that she could trust him.
“All we’ve got is beer.” Teddy knelt to explore the contents of the liquor cabinet. “And some kind of grapefruit vodka, which has Charlotte written all over it.”
It might be deeply un-American of her, but Beatrice had never really liked beer. “I’ll try the grapefruit thing,” she decided. “It can’t be worse than the cherry brandy they always serve after state dinners.”
Teddy lifted an eyebrow but didn’t argue, just turned back toward his brothers. “Does anyone remember if we have plastic cups in here?”
She came over to help him look, opening and closing various cabinets in rapid succession. “Here we go,” she exclaimed, finding a shelf with a few stray coffee mugs. She reached for one and held it out toward Teddy, realizing as she did that it was a custom-made mug, the kind you could order from an internet photo site. It was emblazoned with a picture of Teddy and a long-limbed blond girl.
“Who’s this?” she asked, angling the mug so that her fiancé could see.
He reddened all the way to the tips of his ears. “That’s my high school girlfriend, Penelope van der Walle,” he mumbled. “She made that for me—it’s so embarrassing. I didn’t even realize it was still here. Sorry,” he added, shooting a murderous glance toward his brothers. Neither of them spoke, but their shoulders shook with silent laughter.
“I see,” Beatrice said evenly. For some reason, the thought of Teddy with that doe-eyed girl made her feel hot all over. In a surprisingly territorial way.
Teddy hurried to put the cup back on the shelf. He grabbed a navy mug that said NANTUCKET and reached for the vodka, but Beatrice, her actions fueled by some emotion she couldn’t understand, had already grabbed it. She filled the coffee mug nearly to the brim.
“Drink that slowly, okay?” Teddy eyed her heavy pour with a flicker of trepidation. “It’s meant to be mixed with soda water and lime.”
Beatrice took a sip—and kept drinking. “You’re wrong,” she insisted, when she’d drained at least a quarter of the cup. “This is delicious.”
They wandered over to the couch. Lewis and Livingston were still engrossed in the game, their animated football players racing around a cartoon field. “We used to play this all the time in high school,” Teddy reminisced.
“But weren’t you on a real football team back then?” Beatrice asked. “Didn’t you want to play something else?”
“It’s different when it’s a video game. Totally unrelated skill set,” Livingston explained, and held out the controller. He looked like a younger, stockier version of Teddy, with the Eatons’ trademark blond hair and blue eyes. “Want to play? We could do two on two, me and you versus Lewis and Teddy.”
Beatrice hesitated. “I’ve never played.”