Majesty (American Royals, #2)(57)
The invitation was heavy, her royal monogram stamped at the top in bright gold foil. Beatrice had never asked how long it took for the palace calligrapher to painstakingly write out each invitation by hand.
An invitation for Connor, to her wedding with Teddy.
They were two names that didn’t belong in the same sentence. Two very distinct parts of her life, about to collide in a spectacular and fiery crash.
Beatrice’s breath came in short gasps. She didn’t want to think of Connor. She had tried to banish him from her mind ever since that night at Walthorpe, when everything with Teddy had become acutely real. But he was still there, a shadowy figure in the corners of her heart.
She couldn’t help imagining what would happen if she actually sent the invitation. She could almost see the emotions flickering over Connor’s face when he opened it: shock, anger, confusion, and finally a wary uncertainty. He would spend weeks debating whether or not to come, would change his mind a thousand times, and then at the very last minute—right when he’d decided against it—he would race to the airport and make it just in time, wearing his old Guard’s uniform—
And then what? Did she expect him to stand there and watch as she married someone else?
Beatrice stared at her family coat of arms, carved in the heavy stone of the mantelpiece: a pair of horizontal lines surmounted by three stars and a roaring griffin. As everyone knew, the stars and stripes of the Washingtons’ coat of arms had been the original inspiration behind the American flag.
Stamped below the crest were the words of her family motto: FACIMUS QUOD FACIENDUM EST. We do what we must.
Beatrice had always assumed that motto was about the Revolution: that King George I—General George Washington, he’d been then—hadn’t wanted to go to war with Great Britain and lead thousands of men to their deaths, but that independence was worth it. Now, however, the motto seemed to take on a new meaning.
We do what we must, no matter if it means letting go of people we care about. No matter what our choices end up costing.
Beatrice nudged Franklin so that he jumped out of her lap, then leaned down and ran her hand along the bottom of the desk. When she felt a latch, she pulled, and the concealed drawer popped open.
There—in a drawer designed two centuries ago, to hide state secrets—Beatrice now kept a single wedding present, tied with a satin ribbon.
It was from Connor. He’d given it to her the night of her engagement party to Teddy. Beatrice still couldn’t bring herself to open it, yet she couldn’t bear to throw it away, either.
She set the invitation carefully on top of the gift, then shut the drawer with a gentle click.
The student center was always crowded in the afternoons, full of people who stopped by to watch the massive communal TVs, or make a halfhearted attempt at studying. Nina was currently sitting at a two-person table with Ethan, tuning out the noise as she planned her upcoming essay on Middlemarch. When he let out a yelp of excitement, she glanced up at the baseball game. “Who’s winning?”
“The Yeti just got a home run,” Ethan explained.
She frowned up at the screen. “Is that the team in red?”
He burst out laughing. “Nina, the Yeti isn’t a team. Yeti is a player—Leo Yetisha, everyone calls him the Yeti? Didn’t you pay any attention all those times we watched games from the royal box?”
“Honestly, no.” She’d either been talking to Sam or stealing glances at Jeff. It felt strange to think about that now. “In my defense, a yeti would be a fantastic mascot. It’s way scarier than the Cardinals or Red Sox.”
“Of course,” Ethan said drily, “the Yeti, famously the most terrifying of all fantastic beasts.”
Nina smiled and stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’m heading over to see Sam.” She hadn’t actually warned Sam she was coming, but Nina thought her friend could use a surprise right now.
In the weeks since the party, Sam and Marshall had gone on a couple of public dates, though it hadn’t distracted people from buzzing about their pool photos. Nina wasn’t a media expert, but even she knew that a raunchy make-out wasn’t the best way to introduce a royal relationship, real or fake.
This was precisely why Nina had warned Sam in the first place. Couldn’t she have found some easier way of making Teddy jealous, instead of involving the media—and hurting Marshall and his family in the process?
Nina wondered if she should reach out to Marshall, ask how he was handling things. She knew firsthand how it felt to be the focus of that kind of tabloid attention, and discrimination. The headlines might not be overtly racist, but the comments undoubtedly were.
“Have fun with Sam,” Ethan said, standing up to give Nina a quick goodbye kiss.
She thought again how nice it was, getting to be with someone without any secrets or subterfuge. No more NDAs, no more hiding in the back of a town car, no more seeing her boyfriend in public and pretending that he meant nothing to her.
When she and Ethan walked across campus, Nina would reach out to catch his hand; when they studied together in the library, Ethan would toss her crumpled-up notes that said things like You’re cute when you’re focused. A few nights ago they’d gone out to dinner, to the tiny sushi place a block from campus, and ended up lingering for hours over a bottomless bowl of edamame. Their conversation had veered wildly from music—Ethan was appalled that Nina could quote entire musicals but not a single Bruce Springsteen song: “We are fixing this now,” he’d moaned, and handed her an earbud—to speculation about their World History professor, and whether he might be secretly writing fan fiction about members of a British boy band.