“Yeah,” Sam said absently. “I guess not.”
* * *
Marshall pulled out his phone and held it before him like a mirror as he turned his face back and forth. “This is amazing. I don’t even recognize myself.”
“I know!” Sam swept her hand to indicate the football stadium, the ant-sized players swarming far down on the field. “It’s so much more fun up here, isn’t it?”
When she’d shown up at his apartment in LA this afternoon, a makeup artist in tow, Marshall had stared at her in blank confusion. It wasn’t until the woman explained her job—she worked on that new zombie show—and began pulling beards and wigs from an enormous trunk that he understood what was going on.
“Wait a second,” he’d asked Sam, eyes glinting with mischief. “Are we going out in disguise?”
They had both watched in amazement as the makeup artist used bronzer to thicken Sam’s nose, shaded her jawline to make it look square. Once she’d added sunglasses and tucked Sam’s hair into a cropped strawberry-blond wig, she’d transformed the princess into a completely different person.
“I do wish my disguise didn’t involve a beard,” Marshall said now, tugging at the furry monstrosity that was stuck to his face with adhesive.
“You look like one of the characters from that Viking show.” A smile curled at Sam’s lips. “I wonder what R.J. and Ashley would say if they could see us.”
“They would probably wonder what we’re doing up here. R.J. and Ashley seemed like the type who’d rather watch from one of the suites.”
Sam and Marshall were up in the nosebleed section, in the second-to-last row of the stadium. No one else was around except a few teenage boys, and Sam and Marshall’s protection officers in a neighboring row. Sam had to admit, it was much better this way: no private box, no tour of the locker rooms, no meeting the players or shaking hands with the team’s owner or being gifted a custom jersey. No one snapped photos or even spared them a second glance. They were just two fans sitting outside on a fall afternoon to watch a football game.
Marshall laced his hands behind his head and leaned back lazily. “This must be what it feels like to be an ordinary person.”
Sam tilted her head, considering. “If we were ordinary people, what do you think we’d be like?”
“Well, we both know I’d be a movie star, so I’d be famous either way.”
“I seriously doubt you can act,” Sam pointed out.
“Just look at this face.” Marshall stared at her, making such a funny expression beneath the beard that she laughed. “I wouldn’t need to act. This face alone would get people into theaters.”
Sam nestled her head onto his shoulder contentedly. He smelled clean and warm, like summer and sunshine.
“What would you be?” Marshall asked. “A professional scuba diver? Oh, I know—you would lead those haunted ghost tours in New Orleans!”
Sam smiled, but for some reason, she didn’t want to engage in the fiction of it anymore.
“When I was younger, I was so jealous of Beatrice. I used to wish that I was the future queen instead of her. I didn’t want to become…” She swallowed. “Irrelevant, I guess. I didn’t want history to forget me.”
An awful part of Sam had been relieved when Beatrice postponed her wedding to Teddy, because it meant that the appearance of little mini-Beatrices—Sam’s eventual nieces and nephews, who would push her ever further down the pecking order—was delayed. It meant that Sam was still important, for just a little while longer.
Marshall’s gaze met hers, his dark eyes intent. “Do you still wish that you were the queen?”
A whistle blew on the field; Sam didn’t even glance down at the game.
“Honestly…I don’t know.” She turned the question back on him. “What about you?”
He spoke slowly, searching for the right words. “I don’t know either. My whole life I’ve taken for granted that I’m the future duke, but it’s all been tied up in anxiety, because I knew my grandfather was disappointed in me.”
And now she was yet another reason for the duke’s disappointment, Sam thought guiltily.
“I’m so happy at the Napa house,” Marshall admitted. “If I wasn’t me—I mean, if my family weren’t dukes—then it would be nice doing something like that full-time. Planting seeds and watching them grow, worrying about rains or droughts instead of, you know, whether I’m an adequate symbol for America’s racial dialogue.” He sounded almost wistful as he added: “I’d be outside all the time. Chop my own firewood, cook burgers on a grill, become friends with the neighbors. Hopefully there would be an ocean nearby, so I could teach the kids to surf.”
He flushed; that last part, about kids, must have slipped out accidentally. Sam secretly adored it. She so rarely got to see this side of Marshall, the sweetness beneath all the snarkiness and wit.
“You want to be a farmer?” she asked, because she realized she needed to say something.
“Doesn’t have to be farming. I just wish sometimes that I could live a quieter life. I mean, look at what we’re doing now—can you imagine being able to live like this all the time? To go places without worrying about what kind of impression you’ll make, or whether it will reflect poorly on the duchy. To just stay in the same place all year, actually feel grounded.”
Sam thought of what Alexei had said about Hawaii. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad, to do what Franz had done.
It was strange: she used to daydream about stealing the spotlight from Beatrice, and now here she was, wondering what it would be like to live the completely opposite sort of life, one that was wholly private. Maybe that was part of becoming an adult. When you were thirteen you felt so sure of everything, so certain about what you wanted and what you thought the world owed you—but what you wanted as a teenager wasn’t the same as what you wanted at twenty, or, Sam guessed, at thirty.
Maybe growing up meant letting go of the desires that no longer fit you, and discovering new ones buried in layers of yourself that you hadn’t known existed.
“Marshall,” she said, tugging his gaze away from the field. And because she didn’t know how to articulate all of this, she did what she always did: let her actions speak for themselves. She looped her arms around Marshall’s neck and lifted her face to his, kissing him right there on the lips. In public, in front of the entire stadium.
And no one looked their way.
They stayed like that all afternoon, just enjoying each other, soaking in their temporary cocoon of privacy.