The guests were still here in the great hall, though many of them had left their seats to mill about. They had reached the dessert portion of the meal; footmen appeared at the table with platters of three types of cake: a chocolate raspberry, a lemon chiffon, and a crisp white cake with almond frosting. Daphne wondered numbly if these had been the flavors of wedding cake at the reception Beatrice had canceled.
She caught sight of Gabriella a few tables over, deep in conversation with her father, who looked more arrogantly smug than ever, and the Emperor of Japan. Gabriella must have felt Daphne’s gaze on her because she glanced up, and a slow, eager smile spread over her red lips. She looked like she’d been expecting this conversation all night: looking forward to it, even.
Gabriella murmured something to her father, curtsied deeply to the emperor, then cut across the room. “Hello,” she said sweetly, pulling out the empty chair next to Daphne.
Bharat’s date—Daphne had already forgotten his name—said hi to Gabriella, then excused himself to go hunt down more cake. Maybe he felt the tension gathering in the air, thunderous as a summer storm.
“How dare you?” Daphne was still smiling, because at an event like this you never knew who was watching, but her words were like daggers. “I thought we had an agreement.”
Gabriella laughed, a sound like a crystal champagne flute smashing into pieces. “That was your mistake. I never agreed to anything.”
“No, your mistake,” Daphne seethed. “I would have actually held up my end of the bargain and deleted that video if you’d protected my family’s title. But instead you came after us, so I went after you. I sent that video to the Daily News, Gabriella. What do you think your parents will do when they see it? Send you to rehab? And what about your adoring public?” Daphne lowered her voice, adopted a slightly mocking tone. “Now you’ll never be able to fulfill your lifelong dream of modeling for Nigel!”
“Poor Daphne,” Gabriella said slowly. “Don’t you realize that my parents couldn’t care less about that video? I’ve been getting drugs from Daddy’s dealer for years.”
Daphne blinked, and Gabriella laughed that high-pitched, strident laugh again. “Daddy always made up these flimsy excuses about why Julien was showing up at the house, pretending he was an intern with sensitive documents, when we all knew those folders were filled with cocaine and weed. When I asked Julien to start bringing some to me, he didn’t even flinch. So I hate to break it to you, but my parents already know, and they can’t be bothered to do anything about it.”
That might have been one of the saddest things Daphne had ever heard.
“Still, I didn’t exactly want that video making the rounds of the internet. I have a reputation to uphold, especially with my many philanthropies. Like the Youth Charity League.” Gabriella made a disapproving tsk noise. “But when you were blackmailing me, you made the mistake of mentioning the Daily News. Come on, Daphne, don’t you know that Daddy has been golf buddies with the owner since college? That paper would never slander our family.”
She stared at Daphne with such caustic disdain, it transformed her beautiful features into something ugly. And Daphne wondered, suddenly, why the world rewarded people like Gabriella, people who inflated their own self-image by making others feel small. What right did Gabriella have to look through other people like they were invisible?
“I feel sorry for you,” Daphne told her.
Vaguely, she remembered Nina saying the same thing to her once, when Daphne had treated Nina just as cruelly as Gabriella was now treating her.
Nina, who approached everyone with empathy and warmth—even Daphne, her sworn enemy. Nina, who placed an intrinsic value on other people for the simple fact that they were people, and had feelings that could hurt.
It struck Daphne that Nina was more a lady than Gabriella would ever be, no matter how common the world might say she was.
“You feel sorry for me?” Gabriella scoffed. “God, you’re even stupider than I thought. I knew exactly what you would do tonight, Daphne, and you played right into my hands.”
Daphne looked up at that. “What?”
“I wanted you to send in that video. When you mentioned the Daily News last week, it got me thinking about all these never-before-seen photos of you and Jeff that have leaked recently,” Gabriella said smugly. “I told Daddy that someone would email in a video of me tonight. That if it came from the same email address all those photos had come from, we’d know the culprit was you. And I was right.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Daphne sounded braver than she felt.
“You thought all I was going to do was strip your father of his miserable little title? Daphne, no one messes with me and gets away with it.” Gabriella was still smiling, her teeth bared. “I’m not done yet.”
Daphne liked to think that she was prepared for anything. She always had a plan; and if that failed, she had a backup plan; and in the worst-case scenario she had an escape route.
Yet for once her mind was utterly blank.
She felt like one of those women in an ancient myth who’d been turned into a statue, unable to move or speak as Gabriella braced an arm on the back of her chair and twisted her torso around, letting her hair fall in a glossy cascade down her back. “Hey, Jeff! Come sit with us!”
It was a violation of protocol to shout across a party like that; a few queens and princes sniffed disdainfully. But of course Jefferson didn’t mind. He bounded toward them, then sprawled easily in the chair across from Daphne.
“Hey, guys. How’s it going?” When neither woman spoke, his smile faltered a little. “Um…did I miss something?”
Gabriella didn’t waste any time. “What you’ve missed is that your girlfriend has been selling photos to the press.”
Jefferson looked at Daphne, his brow furrowed in confusion.
She swallowed. “I—it’s not like that—”
“I’m sorry, what is it like?” Gabriella said crisply. “Did you or did you not sell photos to the Daily News?”
Daphne’s mind whirled at hyperspeed, searching for a way out of this, but came up blank. Jefferson was staring at her, stricken.
“Daphne?” he prompted.
How many times had she lied to him? And yet, when she needed to most, she couldn’t bring herself to tell another lie—not to Jefferson, not anymore. Maybe she was weary of all the subterfuge and deceit.
Maybe she’d started to realize what it meant to be a decent human being, even if she’d come to that realization far too late.
“I did,” she confessed, and he recoiled as if stung. Daphne leaned forward. “Please, let me explain.”