“I don’t know him,” Beatrice admitted, and Louise barked out a humorless laugh.
“He tried to have a career as an artist. A performance artist. Lots of glitter and eggs and body paint,” Louise said flatly. “His last so-called performance was appearing at the Eiffel Tower in nothing but a red Speedo and red wig, dancing a Scottish jig to a soundtrack of the Vienna Children’s Choir. He got arrested for public indecency; my father called the chief of police and quietly got him released.”
Beatrice couldn’t help chuckling at the image. “As far as art goes, that must have been quite memorable.”
“And yet my father still considers asking the Assemblée to change the law back, pass the throne to Pierre instead of to me.”
Beatrice’s laughter stilled. “Louise—I’m so sorry.”
At least her own father had never made her feel like a second choice.
Louise made an impatient noise. “This is precisely why I’ll never marry. It’s hard enough facing opposition from the country; I can’t face it from my husband, too. I’ll be like Elizabeth I. The Virgin Queen of the twenty-first century! Except…well, you know.”
Beatrice couldn’t tell how much Louise was joking. “You don’t mean that. It would be so lonely to rule alone.”
“It can be even lonelier if you marry the wrong person,” Louise said simply. “My parents are the loneliest people I know.”
That was such an achingly sad statement that Beatrice couldn’t really answer.
“What about Theodore?” Louise asked, after a moment. “He doesn’t mind that you’ll always outrank him, that he’ll come second in his own marriage?”
“He knows what it means to be with me.” Beatrice thought of the signed declaration on her desk, and her heart sank. She wished that she sounded more certain.
“What is he going to do all day, deal with charities and nannies? All the things queens consort used to do?” Louise propped herself on one elbow, seeming genuinely curious.
“Maybe? I don’t know!” Beatrice sighed. “Teddy is sweet and selfless. We’ll figure it out together.”
Louise had a point, though. Teddy’s position was uniquely strange—and even though he was a smart, loving, empathetic man, he was still a man. Would he really be happy when they had a baby someday and Teddy was outranked by his infant child? Would he feel emasculated by the fact that their children would all take her name?
“Then he is special indeed,” Louise told her. “The only man I ever got serious about…he ended up breaking my heart.”
“I’ve had my heart broken, too.”
Beatrice had no idea why she’d admitted that, but the words were out and there was no taking them back. Perhaps she simply needed to say it aloud, since she’d never really spoken it before.
“Really? Who was it?”
“My Revere Guard.” Beatrice had never told this to anyone except Sam; the whole story had spilled out of her after their father died, when she and Sam were both crying over his grave. It felt like a very big secret to tell Louise.
“No!” Louise laughed, a lighthearted sound that made Beatrice’s confession somehow less weighty. “Oh, I had no idea you had it in you! To think, you’re just as cliché as the rest of us.”
“I…what?”
Louise was still swallowing back a giggle. “You’re hardly the first princess to hook up with her bodyguard. It’s practically one of our job requirements.”
“It was more than that!” Beatrice insisted, stung. She and Connor hadn’t just been hooking up; they had loved each other, even if was a first love and not a forever love. “He was my friend, too. One of my only friends.”
Except that Connor had never understood Beatrice, not really. He’d always tried to fit her into a space where she didn’t quite belong. And then Beatrice had outgrown that shape, because that was what people did as they got older: they grew and changed. And instead of growing together, their lives twining ever more tightly together, she and Connor had grown apart.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tease,” Louise went on. “But it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who’s had their heart broken by…”
“By a bodyguard?”
“By a friend.”
Beatrice ventured a guess. “You’re talking about Alexei, aren’t you?”
Louise sat up so abruptly that her hair whipped over her shoulder. “He told you?”
“No, I just suspected.” Beatrice had wondered for a while now if there was something between those two; she’d sensed it from the quick way Alexei always looked to Louise for approval, the way she teased him more than the others, as if to prove he didn’t matter.
“How observant.” Louise seemed grudgingly impressed.
“I don’t understand, though. If he broke your heart, how are you still friends? Isn’t it painful to be near him? Unless…” Beatrice groaned. “You’re still seeing him, aren’t you?”
“Well, what do you expect!” Louise exclaimed. “It’s very rare that Alexei and I are in the same country, let alone on the same private island! You can’t blame me for having a little secret fun.”
“I don’t understand why it has to be secret, though. Can’t you just date?”
“We’re both future monarchs. How would that work? What exactly would Alexei and I do if we ever got married, merge Russia and France into a single nation? They aren’t even contiguous!” she added, as if geography were the only flaw in that plan. “There’s no future for me and Alexei,” Louise concluded, speaking almost to herself. “He would have to give up Russia and come to France as my king consort, or I would have to leave France and go to Russia as his tsarina. There is no way that we can rule our respective countries and be together.”
Beatrice thought of Teddy again, and felt heavy with guilt. She tried to speak her next words lightly. “To think you fell for the one prince you can’t have. Who knew you were such a hopeless romantic.”
“Oh, shut up,” Louise teased, but her lips curled upward all the same. Beatrice was just relieved to have coaxed a smile from her.
She laced her hands over her stomach and stared up at the stars. For once, she did feel rather small, in the scheme of things.
It wasn’t a terrible feeling.
Nina was out with her roommates on Embassy Row, the neighborhood near campus that, despite its pretentious name, was lined with dive bars boasting shot-and-a-beer deals and BYO restaurants. They were at one of those restaurants now, platters of pad thai and fried rice scattered on the table before them.