“I can’t understand why he’s doing this, especially after he kissed you as recently as the League of Kings!” Sam scrolled through the article without actually reading it. “What is he thinking? Beatrice is in the hospital!”
“He’s probably doing this because Beatrice is in the hospital.”
It was a surprisingly cynical comment from Nina, but she had a point. The palace’s PR team were experts at deploying happy stories when they needed to distract the media from anything negative or damaging.
And now that Beatrice was hurt, there would be a whole different kind of pressure facing Jeff. Their mother had probably pressured him to get married, to secure the all-important line of succession. After all, that was what had happened to Beatrice when their father was diagnosed with cancer: he’d asked Beatrice to announce her engagement to Teddy, to reassure America of their family’s future.
“We need to go talk some sense into him! Just because Beatrice is hurt, it’s no reason to rush into a wedding.”
Nina laughed weakly. “You go talk sense into him. I refuse to venture anywhere near that situation. Even if he is marrying someone who doesn’t love him.”
“Okay, that’s a bit harsh,” Sam protested. “I know Daphne can be a lot. But she genuinely cares about Jeff.”
Nina seemed like she was biting back an angry protest. It made Sam doubt her claims of being completely over Jeff.
“Oh, before I forget—” Nina dug into her bag, then tossed Sam a set of keys. “I’ve had Albert all this time. You left some stuff in the backseat, too. A laptop, an old hoodie, a pair of spin shoes…”
Albert was Sam’s nickname for her lemon-yellow Jeep, which she’d lent to Nina before the League of Kings conference, since Nina didn’t have a car.
She placed the keys back in Nina’s palm. “That’s okay, you keep Albert. He’s a little flashy for going incognito, and according to my family, I’m not even in town.”
Her words sounded mournful, even to her own ears.
Sensing her mood, Nina leaned back and reached for the remote. “Should we watch the hot-but-terrible new Darcy and see what we think?”
“Absolutely,” Sam agreed. If only for a little while, she wanted to hold off the tidal wave of emotion that threatened to crash over her.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Bee,” Sam whispered, alone in Beatrice’s hospital room the next morning.
The figure in the hospital bed was a pale shadow of her sister, like a pencil sketch that someone had blurred and smudged. A breathing mask was fastened over Beatrice’s nose and mouth, and various tubes and IVs were hooked into her arms. There was something almost translucent about her skin, as if Sam might be able to peer through her eyelids and see the dreams flickering over her brain.
At the sound of voices moving down the hall, Sam looked up. She knew who was coming. Only one person in America was always at the center of a crowd, the planet around which the rest of the world quietly orbited. The monarch—or, in this case, the Acting King.
The group turned the corner, and a half dozen conversations fell silent as everyone saw her through the glass windows. Sam realized, belatedly, that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, like in her old walk-of-shame days. Her cheeks grew hot.
Jeff spoke softly, and the people around him darted off in all directions like a school of fish.
“Jeff,” she exclaimed, the moment he stepped into the room. “I can’t believe…”
She started toward him, only to pause at his expression.
“Well, we can all believe it because we’ve had to,” Jeff said wearily. “We’ve been living with this for weeks while you were off drinking rosé in the Maldives.”
At his words, she flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know?” he repeated, disbelieving. “Where were you, Sam?”
“We sort of…went off the grid.” She fumbled for something she could tell Jeff without betraying Marshall’s trust. “We needed to be far away, to get some space.”
“Right,” Jeff said slowly. His eyes traveled to her hair, then her tanned, freckled arms. “You and Marshall needed space, because everything has been so unbearably hard on you. Because no one in history has been under the kind of pressure that you two have suffered.”
“I’m not—”
“News flash, Sam, you’re not the only one under pressure. Pressure is wondering if your older sister has taken her last breath! Pressure is taking an indefinite leave of absence from college while you rule in your sister’s place, because America is already hanging on by a thread, and what other choice do you have? Pressure is trying to keep those thoughts to yourself so that no one realizes how totally unequipped you are to deal with it all!”
He broke off, frustrated, and Sam was suddenly aware how much older her brother looked. The habit of command had settled over him, carved new lines around his mouth.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to go through this alone,” she whispered.
“But I did go through it alone, Sam. We’ve all been calling and texting you for weeks without a single reply.”
“My phone has been off! I thought it was better this way. I never imagined…”
Jeff looked away. “I tore apart my room at Bellevue looking for a note from you. I kept thinking, surely Sam has left me some kind of explanation, or at least a goodbye. You wrote a note for Beatrice, after all, and Anju said you texted Nina.” His jaw tightened as he glanced swiftly back up. “You never even thought of me, did you?”
“I’m sorry.” Sam knew how utterly inadequate the words were.
Her brother turned toward the window. “I looked for you, you know. Even after Mom and Aunt Margaret and Anju all said to stop, that you would turn up when you wanted to be found, I kept looking.”
Sam felt like something had splintered in her chest.
Jeff laughed hollowly. “Do you have any idea how many false sightings there have been of you? You’ve been spotted at a club in Tel Aviv, buying healing crystals at a voodoo shop in New Orleans, working a fishing boat off some island in Hawaii. I had a team chasing down all the leads that sounded plausible, but they always came up empty-handed.”
Sam’s throat was closing up; she swallowed. “I know I didn’t make this easy on you, but it’s so clear that you’ve done a fantastic job managing things. I’m really proud of you, Jeff.”
“It’s all Daphne. She’s been helping me navigate everything.”