Majesty (American Royals, #2)(85)

Inside was a pair of Minnie Mouse ears: the special bridal ones, covered in white sequins and affixed with a miniature veil.

Beatrice felt an aching pressure in her chest that pulled her somewhere between laughter and tears. She placed the ears on her head, not caring that they would ruin her updo. Compared to the tiaras she usually wore, they were curiously light.

Teddy reached to adjust them, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I wish we could elope to Disney World, so you’d get the wedding of your five-year-old dreams, but I think a few people might be disappointed. So, since I couldn’t bring you to Disney World, this seemed like the next best thing.”

His hand was still cupped around her chin, tilting her face up. Moonlight traced the sweep of his eyelashes, caught the startling blue of his eyes.

“I’m so in love with you,” Beatrice blurted out.

Her hands flew to her mouth in shock, the way a cartoon character’s would. She had just said it, had told Teddy she loved him without a second thought, which was so unlike her that she wondered if it had really happened. She never spoke without thinking.

Teddy opened his mouth—but before he could answer, earth-shattering thunder reverberated through the room, and the skies split open in a downpour. Beatrice realized with a start that her window was still open. The curtains whipped up in the sudden wind, rain slanting inside to splatter the carpet.

Together she and Teddy grabbed the massive windowpane and wrestled to bring it down. The wind roared into the room like an angry spirit, flinging raindrops into their faces.

Finally the window fell into place with a clatter.

After the violence of the storm, the silence felt suddenly terrifying. Beatrice turned slowly to face Teddy, her heart hammering as erratically as the patter of rain outside. And yet—she knew she had meant what she’d said.

“I love you,” she repeated. As she spoke, something seemed to move and settle deep within her; the very tectonic plates of her being shifting, to create space for this new revelation. She loved Teddy, and, of everything that had happened, that was perhaps the greatest gift of all.

“I didn’t see it coming,” she said helplessly. “I wasn’t expecting it and I wasn’t prepared for it, and I’ll understand if you don’t…if you can’t…”

Maybe all that Teddy could give her was the partnership they’d agreed to that night in Walthorpe. He had only ever promised her his hand, not his heart.

Yet Beatrice found that she wanted both.

“Bee—of course I love you.”

His hand reached for hers. Beatrice thought she was trembling, but then she saw that he was the one trembling. The storm seemed to be raging all around them, and here they were, suspended in the eye of it.

“I didn’t expect to fall for you, either,” Teddy said hoarsely. “When we first met, I didn’t even know how to date you. I thought you were…not a person, almost, but an institution. I figured that getting engaged to you was either very brave or very foolish,” he added, with a smile.

“Probably both,” Beatrice managed.

Some of the rain had misted in his hair, turning its strands a darker burnished gold. A few droplets ran down the edge of his jawline. Carefully, Beatrice reached out to brush them away. In the distance, the city lights still glowed in the rain, like sodden fairies.

“It’s my fault,” Teddy said softly. “At the beginning I didn’t try hard enough to get to know you. All I saw was the tiny fraction of you that you show the world—and, for some stupid reason, I assumed that was all there was.”

Teddy’s hand was still gripping hers. He traced his thumb lightly over her skin, drawing small, invisible circles on her palm. Beatrice’s blood turned to smoke in her veins.

“But now I know there’s so much more to you than you let on. You’re funny, Bee, and driven, and you’re smart as hell. Now…I like to think I know all of you. Even the parts that everyone else is too superficial or impatient to see.”

He lifted her left hand, studying the engagement ring that glittered there. Then, to Beatrice’s surprise, he pulled that hand to his mouth and kissed it—not gently, the way a courtier might have, but with an urgent roughness.

“For me, tomorrow will be all about the two of us,” he told her. “Not the thousands of people crowded into that throne room, or the millions of people watching on TV, but us. As if we were two ordinary people getting married at city hall, or at Disney World, or in a backyard.”

Beatrice’s heart raced faster and faster. She wished, desperately, that they were one of those couples, and their relationship could be just that—a relationship, without the fate of nations or dynastic futures hanging on its success.

She wasn’t afraid of marrying Teddy—she wanted to marry him—but she feared all the spectacle and ceremony of it, for reasons she didn’t understand.

Teddy gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look up into his face. Beatrice softened, breathing him in like summer air.

“I should get going,” he decided, and stepped away.

A new, resolute steadiness took hold of Beatrice. Knowing exactly what she was doing, and what it would mean, she caught Teddy’s arm and tugged him back toward her—tugged both of them through the door to her bedroom.

“Bee, I don’t…”

“We’re getting married tomorrow.” She felt the clasp of her dress trembling at her throat, where her pulse was racing.