“Find something on her? What does that mean?”
“Something incriminating. That way we can hold it over Gabriella’s head: threaten to use it against her unless she gives back your scholarship and lets my family keep our title.”
A flurry of emotions darted over Nina’s face, stunned shock giving way to incredulity. “Is this seriously how your mind works? You went straight to blackmail?”
“You’re right,” Daphne said crisply. “We should just walk up to Gabriella and ask her to pretty-please stop bullying us.”
Nina grabbed the cart with both hands and began pushing it again. “Even if that’s true, there’s no way I could work with you.”
Daphne trotted to keep up. “You don’t have to like me, Nina. You just have to team up with me against the person who’s ruining both our lives.”
“Why are you so desperate for my help?”
“This is a two-person job,” Daphne began, but Nina’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion.
“You’re setting me up to take the fall, aren’t you? If you get caught, I’m the one who’ll go down for it, not you!” Nina shook her head. “I’m not going to be your scapegoat.”
“See, this is why I need you—because you’re smart!”
“Did you actually just compliment me?”
“I was stating a fact. You are smart. Smart enough to second-guess me, and I respect that.” Daphne met Nina’s gaze. “But I swear I’m not going to sell you out.”
“Maybe I’ll sell you out,” Nina warned.
“Maybe,” Daphne agreed, “but I don’t think you will. You’re too honorable to betray someone like that. Even someone you hate,” she added, in a softer tone.
Nina said nothing for a long time, but she didn’t tell Daphne to leave, so Daphne stayed. She trailed alongside the cart as Nina reshelved books throughout the biographies section. The silence between them was heavy, but not uncomfortable, probably because neither of them expected the other to fill it. It was a simple, undemanding silence, the kind of silence that falls between two very good friends—or between two people who don’t care about each other at all.
Daphne watched, a bit curious, as Nina led them to a door along one wall marked oversized. She flicked on the lights, revealing a storage room filled with various items that wouldn’t fit on the shelves: atlases with poster-sized pages, scrolls rolled up in cylindrical tubes. Nina pulled an oversized book of maps from the cart and shelved it. Finally she cleared her throat.
“If we were going to do this—and that’s a very hypothetical if—what would our plan be?”
Daphne tried, and failed, to hide a smile. “Gabriella is having a birthday party at her family’s house this weekend. You and I will both be there.”
“She won’t let me in the door. I insulted her in front of all her friends,” Nina reminded her.
“She can’t turn you away if you come with Jefferson. Even Gabriella wouldn’t dare tell him no.”
Nina frowned. “And then what?”
“We snoop through Gabriella’s room, look for something incriminating. Or, I do the snooping while you stand guard.”
“What do you expect to find?”
“Anything! Prescription drugs that were prescribed to someone else. Love letters. Sexy photos. A diary would be best, though I doubt we’ll get that lucky.”
Nina sounded dubious. “What if we snoop through her room and don’t find anything?”
“We’ll find something,” Daphne assured her. “Everyone has made a mistake. Everyone is hiding some kind of secret.”
Nina met her gaze, and Daphne wondered if she was thinking of the various secrets she’d buried. Or maybe Nina was so genuinely open and honest that she had no secrets, and was really just remembering all of Daphne’s. There were certainly plenty of them.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” Nina said at last. “Just to be clear, though, I still hate you.”
“That makes sense, because I still hate you,” Daphne said pleasantly. “I just happen to hate Gabriella more.”
* * *
That night, after Daphne had met Jefferson at the palace for dinner—and stayed a few more hours, intertwined with him in bed—she took the palace car service home. She was grateful that Jefferson always insisted upon it, since her parents had sold her car a few weeks ago. But as the sedan pulled up her family’s driveway, Daphne noticed a strange van parked out front.
“Thank you,” she said quickly, throwing open the door before the chauffeur could do it for her. Whatever was going on, she probably didn’t want the palace to know.
The driver nodded and pulled away. The Deightons’ house was as dark as the night sky, the only light coming from a pair of windows on the second floor and the lemon wedge of moon overhead. Daphne started up the driveway just as a pair of men emerged from the front door. They were carrying something bulky beneath a white dust cloth.
“Careful with that one. It’s a real Louis XVI,” Daphne’s mother hissed as she trailed after them. She was all angles and sharp edges: her brows drawn together, her shoulders hunched beneath a puffy coat.
“It’s a little late to have movers here,” Daphne ventured, and her mother sniffed.
“I had them come at night so that the neighbors wouldn’t see. What if they sold photos to the paparazzi? I can see the headlines now: ‘Prince’s Girlfriend Strapped for Cash, Sells Off Family Heirlooms.’ ”
They’re not heirlooms, Daphne thought, but kept it to herself. Aloud she said, “Are things really that bad?”
“Your father hired a lawyer to advise him on this whole…situation,” her mother snapped. “The legal fees are astronomical.”
The two of them headed inside, pausing at the entrance to the living room, or what used to be the living room—the only part of the Deightons’ house with expensive furniture, since it was where they received all their guests. Upstairs, everything was from mail-order catalogs or secondhand.
Where the plush green sofa used to stand, there was now a yawning blank space. The pair of carved wooden tables that used to sit against the far wall, gone. The tasseled ottoman that Jefferson always propped his feet on, gone.
Daphne could practically feel her mother’s frustration emanating from her in waves, like heat. Rebecca had spent years collecting these pieces, painstakingly scouring estate sales and resale shops, crafting an illusion of generational wealth that fooled no one.