“Oh, I—um, I forgot that photo was still out.” It was an odd thing for Daphne to say. She seemed to realize that, and hurried to recover. “It’s funny that you and I were both in Telluride, but we never really spoke to each other.”
“It’s not that surprising. I went out of my way to avoid you.”
There was a beat of awkward silence. Then Daphne said, “Because I was with Jefferson, and you were jealous?”
Yes, Nina thought, but there was no point in digging up old feelings. “Because you were so irritatingly perfect.”
Daphne made a strangled noise. “Please. You of all people know how far I am from perfect.”
“Look, there’s yet another thing we can agree on. We’re finding more and more of those these days,” Nina quipped. “What I meant was, you fit in on those trips, while I clearly didn’t. You had the right clothes; you knew the names of all those people at the New Year’s Eve party; you were even better at skiing than I was.”
“You thought I fit in?” Daphne shook her head. “I was constantly checking my etiquette book, terrified that I would do or say the wrong thing.”
“At least you had an etiquette book! Everything I learned about etiquette, I learned from Jane Austen.”
“That sentence should be the title of your memoir,” Daphne observed, and Nina surprised herself by chuckling.
It was strange to think that Daphne had been just as nervous on the Washingtons’ vacations. Daphne projected such unassailable confidence that Nina had always assumed she was a spoiled aristocratic brat: that she was numb to the Washingtons’ staggering wealth, that the sight of liveried footmen around every corner was as commonplace to her as it was to the royal twins.
She was learning, now, that she’d been wrong about a lot of things. Maybe she should reexamine her tendency to make snap judgments about people and their backgrounds.
“Anyway. About Gabriella.” Nina felt suddenly desperate to get them back on task. It was disarming, sitting on Daphne’s bed like this, looking at photos as if they were normal people—as if they were friends.
“We need a new plan,” Daphne agreed.
“Should we break into her room again? It kills me that we don’t know what was on her computer,” Nina said, but Daphne shook her head.
“Even if we figured out a way to get inside, there’s no guarantee we would find anything. It’s too risky.”
“It was risky last time, and we did it then!”
“That was at a crowded party,” Daphne insisted. “How would we explain ourselves if we got caught?”
Nina’s brows drew together. “You saw her do cocaine. Can we find a way to report her, get the police to do a search of her house?”
“You know the police won’t search someone like Gabriella Madison based on an anonymous tip. We need proof.”
“What we need is Gabriella’s Achilles’ heel,” Nina mused. “What’s her weak point, and how can we use it to trick her?”
Daphne smiled. “You sound like me.”
It was true; at some point, Daphne’s way of thinking had rubbed off on her. Nina found that slightly disconcerting.
“Tell me everything you know about Gabriella,” she decided. “Maybe there’s something we’re not thinking of.”
Daphne recounted the Madisons’ family history, which Nina already knew, and a lot of things Nina had never heard: A rumor that Gabriella wanted to be an “influencer,” only to quit when her parents cut her off in retribution—they thought it was tacky. Stories from high school, about girls Gabriella had bullied and trouble she’d gotten into, which her family had then promptly gotten her out of. When Daphne told her that Gabriella had failed physics at her lycée in Paris but had gotten into King’s College anyway, Nina frowned.
“That can’t be right. A passing grade in high school physics is required in order to matriculate,” she said angrily. “At the very least Gabriella should’ve had to take summer school.”
“The university made an exception for her, because apparently ‘science is different in France.’ ” Daphne lifted her hands to make little air quotes around the phrase, rolling her eyes.
“Are you kidding? Science is not different in France! That is literally the core tenet of physics—that its laws are universal!”
“Don’t you know by now that laws aren’t universal? They’re different for people like the Madisons.”
Nina sat with that for a minute, then gave an angry sigh. “We’re not any closer to figuring out a plan. What makes Gabriella tick? Aside from her massive ego.”
Daphne’s head snapped up. “That’s it. Her ego!”
“Yes, she’s so full of herself that she literally owns a statue of her own face. How are we going to turn that against her? Tape a mirror to the bottom of a swimming pool?”
“We’re going to do what you did at her party, when she caught you lurking in the upstairs hallway. We’ll flatter her into a false sense of security.”
“How?”
“It has to be me this time,” Daphne said slowly. “I’ll pretend to be her friend, make her believe I want to be part of her entourage, and get her to reveal something incriminating.”
“You want to sweet-talk your way into Gabriella’s inner circle? That could take years.”
“It won’t, because I’m going to really sell it. I’ll make Gabriella believe that I think she’s superior in every way—smarter, better, prettier.”
“You’re not capable of groveling that convincingly. We should probably practice.”
“Very funny,” Daphne said lightly, though her mouth curled upward a bit. Then she glanced at Nina with an unreadable expression. “You’re right, though. I’m not very good at giving up attention. That’s always been my real flaw.”
“I’m sorry, we’re limiting ourselves to one flaw?”
“As if you’re perfect,” Daphne retorted, and Nina shrugged.
“I never said I was.”
“I should hope not. You’re unbelievably stubborn—”
“Okay,” Nina cut in, “that’s the pot calling the kettle black—”
“You’re incapable of taking feedback or constructive criticism—”
“You care too much what people think!”
“You’re too nice!”