Daphne’s stomach turned. If she went from being the daughter of a baronet to an utter nobody, it would be much harder to marry into the royal family. No commoner had ever done it.
“Are you saying that the duke wants to revoke Father’s baronetcy because of me? Because he wants to clear the way for Gabriella to make a move on Jefferson?”
“Revenge, spite, jealousy—why else does anyone do anything in politics?” her mother asked bluntly. “The Madisons think we’ve overreached, that you should never have presumed to date a Washington in the first place. Lord Ambrose wants to take us all down a peg.”
Daphne gripped the edges of her chair until her knuckles turned white. “Gambling isn’t illegal,” she pointed out, and her mother gave a mirthless laugh.
“The committee isn’t ruling on whether Peter’s behavior was illegal, just whether it was ungentlemanly. In poor taste.”
Daphne knew enough to be frightened. The Conferrals and Forfeiture Committee focused more on the conferrals part of their job—recommending candidates for knighthood to the sovereign—than on the forfeiture part. Still, they had stripped plenty of titles over the years. In the nineteenth century it had been for dramatic reasons: adultery, treason, even murder. These days the cause was usually embezzlement or tax evasion.
Or, apparently, gambling on your daughter’s chances of becoming a princess.
“We have to stop this,” Daphne thought aloud. “I can talk to Jefferson after class tomorrow, see if he can help.”
“Absolutely not! You cannot mention this to anyone,” Rebecca breathed. “We aren’t even supposed to know that your father’s nobility is up for review. The committee’s deliberations are top secret.”
Daphne decided not to ask how her mother had found out.
Rebecca leaned forward. “And you’re not going to orientation, because you’ll be withdrawing from King’s College in a press conference tomorrow morning. Given all these recent developments, we can’t afford the tuition.”
“If we can’t pay for college, I’ll apply for financial aid,” Daphne began, but her mother spoke over her.
“Don’t be a fool, Daphne! If you apply for financial aid, people might learn how dire our position is. You cannot seem desperate. What if the press claims that you’re dating Jefferson for the wrong reasons?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, both well aware of the reasons Daphne had started dating Jefferson.
“I don’t understand. What happened to my college fund?” Daphne asked, and her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“We spent it already—on you. Come on, Daphne, you must realize that you are the most expensive asset in our family’s portfolio. We’ve been investing in you for years: your expensive private school; your clothes and salon treatments and orthodontia; the tickets to every charity gala you had to attend with the prince.”
And we’re ready to see a return on our investment, her mother didn’t need to add.
Daphne was surprised to feel a stinging in her eyes, but she blinked it away; she knew better than to let herself cry in front of anyone. Least of all her mother.
“If you won’t let me go to college, what am I supposed to do all year?”
Rebecca frowned at the question. “You’ll keep doing exactly what you were doing before: dating the prince. Tell the reporters that you’re taking a gap year to focus on charity work, if you think it sounds better.”
Daphne strove to remain calm. “It’s the twenty-first century. I doubt anyone will applaud me for just sitting around, waiting for Jefferson to propose.”
“You’ve graduated from high school—which, by the way, is far more of an education than I ever got! Be realistic, Daphne. What were you planning to do with a college degree anyway? Cure cancer? Rebalance the national debt?” Her mother gave a dismissive laugh. “No one wants a nerd for their princess. They want a lady.”
A lady. Like Lady Gabriella Madison. Someone who’d been born to all the titles and gowns.
Unlike Daphne, who’d plotted and schemed for everything she had, who’d gotten this far by relying on her wits.
Except…Daphne had been looking forward to college. Not just because it would keep her close to Jefferson, but for its own sake. Yesterday she had actually pulled out the course catalog and slapped pink Post-it notes on all the classes that interested her—a politics seminar on diplomatic strategy, a psychology class called Obsessions and Delusions. She’d imagined walking across campus, a tote bag of books slung over her shoulder, a cappuccino in hand.
She weighed that daydream against the image she’d been working toward all these years: herself wearing a tiara at last.
The tiara won out.
She’d come too far, sacrificed too much, to stop now. Even if it meant giving up on her chance to go to King’s College.
This was Gabriella’s fault, Daphne thought angrily. Lord Ambrose could so easily have looked the other way, given her father a freebie the way those aristocratic men all did for each other. They cheated on their spouses and committed insider trading, and then they all closed ranks and guarded each other’s backs. Yet they wanted to attack her father for a bit of gambling that hadn’t hurt anyone?
She would show them—Gabriella, Lord Ambrose, all of them—just how wrong they had been to underestimate Daphne Deighton.
Nina couldn’t believe that she and Prince Jefferson were texting again.
It had started small. A few days ago, Jeff had sent a furtive photo of Professor Urquhart at the front of the lecture hall: Doesn’t he look like that guy from A Christmas Carol?
Ebenezer Scrooge? When they were kids, Nina and the twins saw the play every year: His Majesty’s Players performed it each Christmas, and Sam always asked Nina to watch it with her from the royal box.
No. This guy, Jeff had replied, and screenshotted the Ghost of Christmas Past: the one from the animated movie, with a long red beard and pointed nightcap. Nina had choked out a laugh. Come to think of it, there was a resemblance.
Then, after a long evening reorganizing the library’s Royal Records Room, Nina had texted, Your ancestors wrote too many diaries. It’s exhausting.
This is why I don’t keep a journal, Jeff had replied, barely a minute later. I don’t want future generations of librarians sorting through my thoughts.
They don’t need journals. They’ll have all your text messages and emails.
So, a lot of bad inside jokes and GIFs from Sam. Good luck to whoever has to archive all of that.
It was weird, picking up the thread of their friendship as if the events of the past year hadn’t happened—weird, but not impossible. Nina had mentioned it to Sam the last time they’d talked, and Sam had nearly shrieked over the phone. “Thank god,” she’d exclaimed. “Now we can quit being awkward and all hang out together, just like old times!”