“Marshall,” his grandfather cut in, “I hope you’re not distracting the princess from her duties.”
Sam hurried to answer. “Of course not, Your Grace. If anything, Marshall is making things easier on me.”
“Still, perhaps it’s best that he give you a bit of distance. I know how important your presence at the conference is. After all, the whole purpose is to forge connections with your fellow monarchs and heirs.”
Sam bristled. Was the duke implying that she’d been playing hooky in order to skip around town with his grandson?
“I’ve spent a lot of time with Princess Louise, actually,” Sam fibbed. “She’s hosting a reception soon, and Marshall and I are going.”
Really, Sam had only spoken to Louise in passing—and from what Beatrice had said, it sounded like Louise was throwing more of a house party than a networking event—but Sam figured a bit of exaggeration wouldn’t hurt anyone.
The table dissolved into several conversations at once. Marshall and his grandfather debated how bad this year’s drought would be, Sam asked Rory in more detail about her classes, and Marshall’s mother and grandmother wondered if they could get someone they disliked kicked out of their church choir.
“Monica just doesn’t have any range,” Marshall’s mother was saying. “I mean, even Marshall or Rory could sing better than she does.”
“You can sing?” Sam asked Rory, who laughed.
“No, that’s the point: neither of us has a shred of musical talent. Marshall was so bad he actually got cut from an elementary-school skit.”
“I wasn’t cut!” Marshall protested, jumping into their discussion. “I was just demoted from the chorus, since I was so woefully off-key. I played a tree.”
“A tree,” Sam repeated, fighting very hard not to laugh.
“I had to wear green and stand there with my arms lifted.”
“And he couldn’t even manage that! He let his arms fall partway through,” Rory exclaimed.
“I got tired, okay?”
“The skit was three minutes! It was one song!”
The entire table erupted in good-natured laughter.
Finally, when her chuckling had subsided, Sam spoke up. “Marshall may not be able to carry a tune, but he’s definitely creative. I can’t wait to have him on our charades team at New Year’s. Jeff and I lose every year.” Sam felt a pang at the thought of that game; their dad used to play with the twins, against Beatrice and their mom.
Marshall’s grandfather lifted an eyebrow. “New Year’s?”
Sam glanced at Marshall, who was staring at his plate. She hadn’t meant to offend anyone or imply that she was pulling rank. “Sorry,” she said haltingly. “I didn’t mean to steal Marshall away. I just hoped he could come with us to Telluride.”
“That sounds lovely, but I’m afraid he won’t be able to make it. He’s got a lot of obligations at home,” his grandfather said smoothly.
Obligations? When she and Marshall had talked about it, he’d made it sound like his family was rarely together on New Year’s Eve, that there wasn’t even an official event for the duchy. He usually just went to a friend’s party in Malibu.
“I understand.” Sam tried to sound upbeat. “We can talk about it in a few months and see if your plans have changed. Marshall, maybe you can come for just a day or two—”
“Marshall’s plans aren’t changing.” Any trace of warmth was gone from his grandfather’s tone. “He’s the future duke, and he needs to be here. This isn’t up for discussion.”
Sam didn’t dare say more. Marshall still wasn’t looking at her, instead staring vaguely down at the table.
When Rory stood to go to the bathroom, she looked at Sam in a way that made Sam rise to her feet and join her.
“I, for one, am still hungry,” Rory whispered, when they’d left the dining room. “Want an ice cream sandwich?”
“Absolutely.”
Sam followed Rory to a mudroom off the garage, which held a jumble of gardening tools and old shoes. A refrigerator hummed against one wall. Rory opened the freezer door at the top and reached behind bags of frozen vegetables to pull out a box of ice cream sandwiches. She handed one to Sam.
“Grandpa keeps these here so Jojo won’t catch him,” Rory explained. “She thinks he needs to cut back on desserts.”
As Sam bit into the ice cream, she stepped closer to the refrigerator. It was covered in photos held up by magnets—nothing like the formal portraits that were framed in the living room, but casual family snapshots, messy and chaotic and full of love.
Sam recognized three-year-old Marshall in a photo at the beach: peeking out from behind his mother’s legs, wearing the mischievous expression that Sam knew so well. Marshall at age five, sitting on a horse that was a thousand times bigger than he was. Marshall at his high school graduation, Marshall playing water polo, Marshall with his grandmother up in the mountains.
There were other photos—some of Rory, and some of what Sam assumed were Marshall’s cousins—but Marshall certainly took the lion’s share.
“From these photos, it looks like your grandparents really love Marshall. But they’re so hard on him. On all of you,” Sam added clumsily.
“No, you’re right—they’re stricter with Marshall, since he’s the future duke. Grandpa always says that he can’t cut Marshall any slack, because the world never will. That in politics, no matter what good you do, you’ll always face criticism.”
Sam swallowed her bite of ice cream. “That’s why governing is so hard, isn’t it? You have to balance all these different viewpoints, try to understand where everyone is coming from, and then decide the right path forward.”
“Sounds like you’ve been thinking about this,” Rory observed.
“I had a lot of time to think on tour this summer.” Sam reached up to straighten one of the photos that had gone askew. “We don’t get to choose whether we rule. It’s chosen for us, because the best rulers are the reluctant ones. People who want to lead, people who are in it for the fame and power—those people will never put the country first.”
“You’ve been reading Socrates,” Rory said appreciatively, and Sam smiled.
“I thought you were a computer science major.”
“I like to think of myself as a Renaissance woman,” Rory quipped.
Sam crinkled her ice cream wrapper into a little ball, then tossed it into the trash can. Still just as good as she was in elementary school. “Okay, now I really do need to use the bathroom,” she confessed, and headed inside.