“What possible explanation could there be? Daphne, I trusted you!”
While she and Gabriella had been talking in near whispers, Jefferson had raised his voice angrily. A few people glanced over, intrigued, sensing the tension in the air. Daphne felt the low rumble of gossip spreading outward from them, but strove to ignore it.
“I’m sorry! I was desperate. My father was going to lose his baronetcy and my parents told me I can’t go to college and I felt overwhelmed.” Daphne narrowed her eyes at Gabriella. “That’s why Nina and I teamed up against Gabriella. We just wanted her to stop attacking us!”
“Nina? How is she involved in any of this?” Jefferson cut in.
Daphne remembered that Nina’s scholarship had been reinstated, and she wondered, yet again, why Gabriella had done precisely what Nina asked, yet drawn out the big guns to destroy Daphne. A sticky, sickening suspicion began to coalesce in her chest, but she ignored it.
Nina wouldn’t betray her like that.
“Gabriella told her father to take away my family’s title, and she tried to get Nina kicked out of King’s College, so Nina and I spied on her,” Daphne said urgently. Jefferson looked at Gabriella, who feigned shock.
“Those are outrageous accusations,” Gabriella said gravely. “Why would I do anything to hurt Nina? I hardly know the girl.”
This was wrong, all wrong. Daphne realized she was babbling; she felt her credibility slipping away, felt Jefferson staring at her with mounting disapproval.
“We caught Gabriella doing cocaine!” Daphne fumbled to pull up the video on her phone, then shoved it toward Jefferson.
None of them said anything as he watched. Daphne was certain more people were staring at them, but for once, she didn’t care about public opinion. She was far too worried about Jefferson’s opinion.
When the video finished, he slid the phone back across the table, then shook his head at Gabriella. “Honestly, Gabriella, you need to cool it with that stuff. You’re not in France anymore.”
There was a momentary flash of irritation on Gabriella’s face, so lightning-fast that only Daphne noticed it; then her features melted into a mask of contrition. “I know, you’re right,” she simpered. “Actually, I almost never get high anymore, but Daphne asked me if I had any. She was trying to trap me!”
“Because you were trying to trap me!”
Gabriella turned toward Jefferson. “Daphne got some upsetting news tonight, and I’m afraid she hasn’t taken it well. Her father’s baronetcy was taken away because he engaged in some ungentlemanly behavior.”
Gabriella’s concern was false—Daphne could see straight through it, all the way to her false, lying core—but she couldn’t deny what had happened.
“It’s true. I’m not noble anymore.” She held her breath, waiting, tormented and anxious.
And Jefferson shrugged.
“So?” he asked. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“She’s a commoner, Jeff!” Gabriella said commoner as if it were an especially nasty disease.
“Gabriella, can you give us a moment alone?” Jefferson asked quietly.
“Of course,” Gabriella purred. She flounced off in a tossing of hair and swishing of skirts, practically crackling with self-satisfaction.
Daphne’s heart was thudding as Jefferson turned back to her, his voice heavy with disappointment.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” he said carefully, “but, Daphne, when has someone’s title ever mattered to me? You know I couldn’t care less about that.”
Some part of Daphne had known this, hadn’t she? Jefferson wouldn’t have broken up with her because of her family’s loss in status. If she’d been honest with him from the beginning, he would have stood by her—and his support would have protected her, until everyone had forgotten the scandal and moved on.
“I don’t care about titles,” Jefferson went on, “but I do care that you’ve been colluding with the press, selling photos and secrets. Why would you do something like that?”
“I needed money,” Daphne whispered. She was past the point of lying anymore; as if, now that she’d started telling Jefferson the truth, it was a faucet she couldn’t turn off.
“So you sold photos of our private moments, in order to…what? Buy a few new dresses?”
You don’t get it! she wanted to cry out in helpless frustration. Jefferson would never understand how it felt to worry about money, or his position, or, as frivolous as it might seem, what he should wear. He could show up in the same suit to everything, and it wouldn’t matter! Whereas Daphne faced an army of fashion bloggers who scrutinized her every outfit piece by piece, down to speculation on her underwear.
She’d just wanted to look the part of a princess, as everyone expected her to. She hadn’t meant it to come at the expense of Jefferson’s feelings.
“I know I messed up. I just…I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me,” she said hoarsely.
“I’m ashamed of you now.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “Let me fix this, please.”
“I don’t think you can,” Jefferson told her. “You haven’t been acting like yourself for a while now.”
As if he even knew what it was like when she did act like her real self.
“I’ve been dealing with a lot,” she started to say, but Jefferson spoke over her.
“We’re all dealing with a lot, Daphne! I lost my dad this year! That doesn’t mean I have free license to take advantage of the people I love,” he said darkly. “I’ve been trying to make excuses for your behavior, but I don’t know how to explain this. For years, you have been one of the few people I trusted, and I thought you appreciated what that meant.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, because there was nothing else to say.
Jefferson stood and ran a hand over his hair, looking wounded and bewildered. “I have to go.”
Daphne knew better than to chase after him. She just sat there and watched as he walked away.
Samantha found Beatrice at the front of the ballroom, surrounded, as always, by a cluster of people. Though she noted, surprised, that Teddy wasn’t one of them.
“Bee! Do you have a minute?” Sam couldn’t handle the clamor of her own thoughts anymore. She had to talk this out with someone, and as amazing a friend as Nina was, she needed her sister right now.
Especially because some of what she was thinking—hoping—was a problem that only Beatrice could help solve.