Majesty (American Royals, #2)(92)
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“I was hoping you could tell me.” At her confused look, Connor fumbled in the front pocket of his tuxedo jacket and withdrew a heavy piece of paper. His wedding invitation. It looked tattered and well traveled, its beveled edges worn down, as if Connor had kept it on his person since the day he’d received it. As if he’d pulled it out again and again to look at it, to check whether it was real.
Beatrice sucked in a panicked breath. She hadn’t seen that invitation since the day she tucked it in her hidden desk drawer. She’d meant to lock it away, as firmly as she’d locked away her feelings for Connor; but clearly someone had found it, and mailed it.
“I wasn’t going to come,” Connor said urgently. “I have no desire to watch you marry someone else. But then I kept wondering why you invited me—and I worried that maybe you wanted me to come, that you needed someone to help you get out of all this.”
Oh god. He thought Beatrice had personally invited him. Of course he did—how could he have known that his invitation was a matter of protocol, that she’d actually tried to prevent him from receiving it?
“Bee,” Connor said helplessly. Hearing the nickname on his lips, the amount of history fused into that single syllable, nearly broke her. “I had to see you, just once,” he explained. “To make sure that you’re okay.”
Of course I’m okay, she started to say, but for some reason the words froze in her throat. The bodice of her gown was pressing too sharply into her ribs. She’d thought she was okay, but that was before Connor appeared, unfairly dredging up feelings she’d thought were long buried.
It was too much, happening far too fast—
An angry, high-pitched siren blared through the room. The sound of it lifted the hair on Beatrice’s arms.
It was the palace’s emergency system, roaring to life.
Beatrice had heard that siren only once before, five years ago, when the palace engaged in a massive security overhaul. Their entire family had done a day of emergency training, learning how to untie themselves if their wrists were bound, how to drive a car backward at high speeds—Jeff especially had loved that one—and, most of all, how to react if the palace was under attack.
This alarm wasn’t anything like the alarm that had gone off at last year’s Queen’s Ball, when someone had accidentally started a fire on the South Portico. This alarm meant a massive security breach. A gunman, or, more likely, a bomb.
Had someone meant to assassinate her at her wedding? And, oh god—where was her family? What about Teddy?
Beatrice watched, frozen in place, as Connor’s years of training kicked in. He whirled about, his fists raised, his back to Beatrice. He wasn’t her Guard anymore, yet here he was, still trying to protect her.
“Connor!” she shouted, finally finding her voice. She stumbled forward, her heels catching in the enormous length of her train.
She saw Connor’s gaze whipping around the room, searching for something that might serve as a weapon. The thought was almost funny—what did he expect to do, fight off an assailant with an eyelash curler?—except that she knew Connor’s body might well be the only thing between her and a bullet.
Even though he was no longer her Guard, he was ready to protect her life with his own.
Cursing, Beatrice grabbed great handfuls of her skirts and shoved them impatiently aside. She’d thought she loved this dress, but now it was just an impediment slowing her down. She needed to hurry, needed to get out—
A steel-lined security panel shot out of the doorway’s top molding. It slammed down into the floor, sealing them in.
Daphne clasped her hands demurely in her lap, trying not to look too pleased with herself.
She’d felt the envy of the other guests as the usher led her all the way to the front of the room. Daphne was seated in the sixth row, next to Lord Marshall Davis—of course, they couldn’t actually sit with the royal family until they married into it. Her parents, meanwhile, were all the way back in the nosebleed section with the other low-ranking royals.
Behind her, the throne room was a vibrant sea of color. A royal wedding, like a coronation or the opening ceremonies of Congress, was one of the few moments in which the peerage could wear their coronets and robes of rank. When they’d left for the wedding, Rebecca Deighton had been dressed in all the insignia she was entitled to as wife of a baronet; which, unfortunately, wasn’t much. Just a six-rayed coronet—done in silver gilt, not gold like a duchess’s—and a cloak with one yard of train, its ermine edging limited to the prescribed two inches. Each additional rank, of course, merited an additional inch of trim.
At court, these were things of crucial importance.
For an instant Daphne seemed to almost stand outside herself, to marvel at the absurdity of it all—but then she remembered who she was, what she had done to reach this point, and her vision cleared.
She skimmed her hands over her gown: a crimson one with a sinuous trumpet silhouette and gold-stitched roses that traced down the left side of her body. She stood out like a living cinder. Or, more accurately, a torch.
Daphne was aware that most people said redheads should never wear red, but those people had clearly never seen her. The dress had a richer, more purple glow than the fiery red-gold of her hair. Besides, red was the color of power, and Daphne needed all the power she could get right now.