American Royals (25 page)

She remembered what she’d researched, when Sam had decided they would get that particular image. The Chinese character was more nuanced than the simple translation of
friendship.
It derived from an older symbol that combined the words for
two
and
hands
—meaning not just a friend, but a friend who helped you out in times of need. A friend you could lean on.

Nina tucked her tattooed wrist beneath her pillow and shut her eyes.

Samantha tapped frantically at her controller, willing her lime-green animated car to go faster. She
always
beat Jeff at this game. That was her favorite part of playing it: the look of shocked dismay on her brother’s face when he lost.

Jeff was hunched over in the armchair next to her, his dark eyes gleaming with the reflected glow of the TV screen. Sam gritted her teeth, whipping her car around the curve of the track, only to collide with the wall in an explosion of cartoon flames.

She expected Jeff to jump to his feet, at the very least to give a low whoop of victory, but he just turned to her with an uneven shrug. “Neither of us is playing all that great,” he pointed out. “Maybe we should call it a day.”

Sam set aside the video-game controller and turned to her brother. “Still no word from Nina?” When he shook his head, she sighed. “She isn’t really talking to me, either.”

“Really? I figured you guys would have made up by now.”

Slowly, her throat nearly closing over the words, Sam related what Nina had said on campus yesterday. That it hadn’t been easy on her, spending so much time with the royal family through the years. How they’d inadvertently shuffled her aside, made her feel inferior. Treated her like an afterthought.

Her brother’s expression hardened, and he muttered a curse. “I can’t believe she felt that way and I didn’t realize ….”

“It’s my fault too. She was my best friend long before she became your secret girlfriend.”

Jeff glanced over, alerted by something in her tone. “Are you angry that I didn’t tell you?”

“Not angry,” Sam admitted. “Just … hurt, I guess. I thought you trusted me with this kind of thing.” Even as she said it, Sam squirmed at her own hypocrisy, because she hadn’t told Jeff about her and Teddy.

Well, she definitely wouldn’t tell him now, given that Teddy had just gotten engaged to their sister.

The overhead motion-detector lights flickered on as their mom strode into the media room.

“There you two are!” the queen proclaimed, her voice laced with impatience. “Samantha, I’ve been looking for you. I need you right now.”

“What for?” Sam asked cautiously.

“Wedding prep. Come on.” Adelaide turned on one heel and led her daughter along the hallway, then down multiple flights of stairs. Sam’s fishtail braid swung back and forth like a pendulum with their steps.

Wedding prep.
Last night, Beatrice had announced the news of the engagement to the gathered family—with Teddy at her side, of course. There had been a lot of hugging and champagne and planning of a full-court engagement party, all of which had made Sam feel slightly ill.

When they stepped into the hallway that led beneath the palace, Sam almost halted in her tracks. “We’re going to the vault?”

The queen cast her a puzzled glance. “Is something wrong? Usually you can’t wait for an excuse to come down here.”

While the Crown Jewels technically belonged to the state, the right to borrow them was granted only at the discretion of the monarch, which meant that right now, the only people with access were the queen, the princesses, and the Queen Mother—and, occasionally, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Evelyn. They usually scheduled a visit before each black-tie event, to coordinate which jewels each of them would wear. Sometimes the queen would bring her favorite dress designer along, so that he could make a gown specifically to showcase a particular item of jewelry.

They were probably here to pick out their jewels for Beatrice and Teddy’s big party.
Another occasion to celebrate Beatrice,
Sam thought dully. What else was new.

She wondered what her mom thought about Beatrice’s lightning-fast engagement. Maybe she was the one who’d pressured Beatrice into it.

“I can’t believe the news about Teddy and Beatrice,” Sam began, testing the waters. “Don’t you think it feels a little fast?”

The queen shrugged. “When you know, you know. I knew that your father was the one by the end of our third date.”

Sam lifted an eyebrow skeptically, but her mom wasn’t finished. “Beatrice clearly felt certain enough in her choice that she didn’t need to wait any longer. She’s always been sure of what she wanted.”
Unlike you
was the silent implication.

“I guess so,” Sam muttered, unconvinced. It was easy to be decisive when all you did was obey your parents’ orders.

They stepped into a shadowed underground hallway. The air was especially cold down here; Sam hugged herself, trying not to shiver in her thin black sweater. A pair of security guards stood to either side of a heavy metal door.

The queen pressed her palm to a biosecurity panel and the door swung inward, revealing that it was almost a meter thick. Sam followed her mom inside, feeling her spirits lift a little in spite of everything.

The room blossomed to life as display tables lit up one by one. Behind the glass panes, against a backdrop of black velvet, gleamed gold and ivory and countless jewels. Sam knew for a fact that nothing down here was insured, because how could anyone begin to assign a financial value to these items? They were all utterly priceless.

This was far and away the most lucrative part of the palace’s tourism revenue: the “Crown Jewels Experience” cost an additional ten dollars per ticket, which almost everyone paid. In the crowded summer months, the entry line snaked around the hallway for hours.

Sam wandered past the first case, the one containing all the ceremonial regalia: the Great Scepter, the Orb of State, the Hand of Justice. Farther along was a collection of delicate porcelain wedding-cake boxes that, remarkably, still contained a slice of cake from every royal wedding. The fondant was solid as a brick by now.

She paused at the crowns and tiaras. There were almost a dozen of them, some heavy and masculine, others delicate and filigreed, including a few child-sized coronets for the Princes and Princesses Royal. Through the first hundred years of America’s history, the kings and queens had commissioned their own crowns for each coronation, until the expense was eventually deemed too great.

Grandest of all was the Imperial State Crown, the one that had been used for every coronation since that of King George III. It glittered all over with stones—at the center was a massive hundred-carat ruby called Heart’s Blood, stolen in the Spanish-American War—and a set of pearls that was said to be from Queen Martha’s necklace.

Sam’s memories of her father’s coronation were hazy; her grandfather King Edward III had died so suddenly. No one had expected George to assume the throne for another twenty years at least.

She remembered the look on her father’s face as he recited the words of the coronation oath: “I swear to you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and to the service of this great nation to which we all belong.”

“Who is he talking to?” she’d whispered to ten-year-old Beatrice, who’d stood next to her, looking awed and maybe a little fearful. But then, Beatrice had known that she was up next.

“Everyone. America,” Beatrice answered.

Sam watched, breathless, as her father reached for the enormous gleaming crown and placed it upon his head.

In other countries, kings and queens were crowned in churches, by priests. But this was America, where the state was the state, with no involvement from any religious entity. Here the monarchs crowned themselves.

“Your Majesty. Thank you so much for making the time,” she heard Teddy say as he walked through the door and into the vault. He started to bow to the queen, who brushed the motion aside and pulled him in for a hug.

“We’re so thrilled for you both,” Queen Adelaide murmured. Sam rolled her eyes.

Teddy stopped short when he noticed Sam. “Samantha. I didn’t know—I mean, I hadn’t expected you to join us.”

The queen’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down at her screen with a frown. “I have to take this,” she said with a resigned sigh. “Why don’t you two get started without me?”

Get started?
Sam felt her chest seize in panic. Were they really here to pick out Beatrice’s
engagement ring
?

Teddy blanched. “That’s all right, we can wait—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Adelaide assured him. “You’re in good hands. Samantha is the maid of honor, after all.”

“I’m not the maid of honor. I mean, Beatrice hasn’t asked me,” Sam muttered.

The queen exchanged a loaded glance with Teddy, as if seeking sympathy for Sam’s obstinacy. “She doesn’t need to ask. She’s your sister; it’s
understood,
” she said crisply. Before either of them could protest, she swept back out of the room, leaving the security guards at the door. “Go ahead; I’ll just be a minute!”

Samantha briefly considered making a run for it. But that was the cowardly thing to do, and the last thing Sam wanted was for Teddy to think he had rattled her. She squared her shoulders and started toward the final row of display cases, the ones that everyone really came here for—the jewelry. One of the security guards unlocked the glass cover before retreating with a nod.

Teddy came to stand next to her. He seemed oddly wary, as if he expected Sam to whirl on him with a barrage of insults any moment now, or maybe pummel him with her fists.

She just looked over the rings, ignoring him.

“I’m hopeless at this,” Teddy ventured, breaking the silence. “They all look beautiful. How am I supposed to choose?” He opened the display case to pull out one of the rings, an elegant platinum band circled with baguette-cut diamonds.

“My grandmother had that one made to celebrate her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.” She wasn’t really sure why she told him that.

“In that case, maybe it has some good luck.” Teddy cast a quick glance at Sam, but she still refused to meet his gaze. Instead she moved sideways along the case, studying the various showstopping jewels nestled inside.

A few of them she slipped on her own finger: a massive thirteen-carat emerald, an oval diamond on a rose-gold band. They were all unquestionably beautiful, but to Sam, their appeal was so much more than the beauty.

They were living fragments of history. Each time she put one on, Sam felt the ghosts of her ancestors whispering to her across the fabric of centuries. The rings made her feel more confident, even majestic.

Not that she would ever be a Your Majesty.

Teddy cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask … are you just angry with me, or is something else going on?”

“Oh, so you’ve decided that now is a good time to start caring about my feelings?”

“Please, Sam. I’m trying here.”

Sam felt the anger seeping from her, just a little. After everything that had happened between them, she didn’t exactly want to get into this with Teddy. But she had no one else to talk to. And he
was
a good listener.

“Nina and I got into a fight. On top of everything else … it just feels like a lot.”

“You miss her.” It wasn’t a question.

“We used to talk constantly, and now all of a sudden we’ve gone radio silent. It feels like half my internal monologue has suddenly switched off.”

“Have you apologized?”

“What makes you think I’m the one who did something wrong?” Sam said automatically, then caught her breath at the wry expression on Teddy’s face. “I don’t know. The things we said to each other … I’m not sure we’ll be able to forgive and forget.”

“Who said anything about forgetting? The point of forgiveness is to recognize that someone has hurt you, and to still love them in spite of it.” The way Teddy said it, Sam knew he wasn’t just talking about Nina anymore.

He reached for one of the rings. It looked very small, centered there on his palm. He quickly put it back. “Which would you pick?”

Her eyes darted to a cushion-cut pink diamond surrounded by a halo of smaller diamonds.

Wordlessly, Teddy took the ring in his hand. He looked at her expectantly.

A hushed spell seemed to have fallen over them. Samantha’s breath caught as she placed her hand in his. Slowly, neither of them daring to speak, he slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

Their faces were suddenly very close. Sam’s heartbeat echoed in her ears. She knew what Teddy’s old-fashioned gesture meant. He was silently willing her to understand that even though their love could never be, because of reasons much more powerful than either of them, he would always care about her.

She swallowed and forced herself to step back. “You aren’t picking for me, though. And this ring doesn’t feel like Beatrice.”

Teddy let go of her hand with visible reluctance. Sam hated herself for how lonely her palm felt without him touching it.

She had never been any good at disguising her feelings. There was something too
immediate
about her face, the way all her emotions played themselves out over her features like the shadows of clouds on water. She turned away, because she knew that if she kept looking at him, he would see exactly what she was thinking.

Teddy reached for a very old ring that had once belonged to Queen Thérèse, the only French-born queen America had ever had. It looked like Beatrice, classic and elegant: a simple solitaire diamond on a white-gold band. They both gasped as a ray of light hit the multifaceted stone, throwing up a glitter of dancing pinpoints that chased themselves over the walls of the vault.