Majesty (American Royals, #2)(93)
By the end of today, she was determined that she and Jefferson would be back together, officially.
Her gaze drifted forward, to the breathtaking jewels and crowns that gleamed in the rows before her, where the foreign royalty were all seated. Daphne had never seen so many heads of state in a single room. She glanced from the Duke of Cambridge to his wife, who was pregnant with their fourth child, yet managed to look as coolly chic as ever in a high-necked maternity gown. The eighty-four-year-old German king had come here in person, rather than sending his children to represent him: a singular honor, but he’d had a soft spot for Beatrice ever since she lived at Potsdam for a summer, studying German. Behind him sat the Italian and Spanish princesses, who, incidentally, were both named Maria. And finally, there was Tsar Dmitri and his wife, the Tsarina Anastasia: Aunt Zia, Jefferson had always called her, though really she was his fifth cousin twice removed. The Romanovs’ famous pink-diamond tiara glittered ostentatiously on her head.
Daphne sat up straighter, flashing her brightest, most social smile—only to freeze as a siren blared into the throne room.
For a split second, everyone was too stunned to react.
No one coughed or rustled their skirts or squeaked their shoes on the floor; no one even seemed to breathe. The only movement was the gentle swaying of the ostrich feather that the Grand Duchess Xenia wore in her hair.
Daphne had been afraid plenty of times in her life. Afraid of Himari, afraid of public shame, afraid of her own mother. But the fear that now sliced into her chest was somehow sharper and more visceral than any she’d felt before.
Her mind distilled down to a single, panicked thought: Ethan. Was he hurt was he okay what had happened where was he?
Bulletproof panels slid over the doors to seal the exits. And then the silence broke.
Security guards lunged forward, forming a protective phalanx around the guests. Private bodyguards were sprinting toward the various foreign royals, their movements quick and dangerously precise. The room dissolved into a swirling riot of sequins and diamonds and ragged shouts.
One of the guards fought to be heard above the turmoil, begging everyone to stay calm and remain in their seats, but no one was listening. People hurtled down the aisles in search of friends, tripping over the hems of their gowns, overturning chairs in their haste.
Daphne climbed up onto her chair, for once not caring whether she seemed elegant or princess-like. Shock had broken her perfect veneer and her anxious, pent-up self was pushing through. She craned her neck, scouring the crowds for any sign of Ethan, who was probably far in the back.
When she spotted him, she let out a throaty gasp. He was standing next to Nina, her hand gripped tightly in his.
Daphne scrambled down from her chair, yanking up her skirts as she started into the crowds. Muttering breathless apologies, she pushed through the dukes and marquesses and earls, all the way to the lower-ranking peers, trying desperately to avoid her parents. These were all familiar faces, yet they blurred senselessly together in Daphne’s brain.
At last, there he was—standing to one side of the room, mercifully alone. Knowing Nina, she’d probably run off to find her parents.
Daphne plowed through the intervening courtiers as if they were so many blades of grass.
“Ethan,” she breathed, when she’d reached him. She just barely restrained herself from reaching for his arm.
“Sorry, I don’t know where Jeff is,” he said curtly.
“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Can it wait?” he demanded, with a touch of his usual sarcasm. “As you may have noticed, we’re in a bit of a situation.”
“Ethan—please.”
Something flickered behind Ethan’s dark eyes, but his expression was as inscrutable as ever. “All right.”
Before he could refuse, Daphne grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along the edge of the room, past the earls and marquesses and dukes she’d just elbowed her way through. Past stone-faced security guards, men tapping frantically on their phones, women in billowing gowns.
Normally Daphne would have worried about being with Ethan like this, in such a public place. Yet normality had crumbled to pieces around her. She felt like she was no longer Daphne Deighton at all, but someone else entirely.
Or maybe this was the real Daphne Deighton, and the other one—the polite, impeccable Daphne she’d invented for the press—had shattered, revealing the yearning and anxious girl underneath.
Behind the raised dais that held the thrones, the vaulted space was transected by small side rooms. Candles glowed with long tongues of flame, the same flickering red-gold as Daphne’s hair.
She tugged Ethan into a side chapel, where rows of triangular pennants hung from the ceiling. Each was a different color, and stitched with a coat of arms, one for each of the current Knights and Peers of the Realm. The more recent additions—men and women King George had invested with knighthoods at last year’s Queen’s Ball—were toward the front, while the older peers were at the back, their flags faded with age. When a peer died, their pennant was removed from the throne room so that they could be buried with it.
“What do you want?” Ethan asked warily, his arms crossed.
Already the atmosphere in the ballroom was shifting. Now that the initial moment of fear had passed, people were talking in less hysterical tones: exchanging theories about what had happened, debating whether security had caught the culprit, wondering what the media would say about all this.