“You’re very wise, you know.” Daphne strove to ignore the tears stinging her eyes. “As angry as I am about those emails, I’m also glad you weren’t working with Gabriella against me. This time or last time.”
“I can’t believe you thought I would do that! I barely agreed to work with you, and Gabriella is a million times worse.”
“That’s one of the nicer things anyone has ever said to me.” Daphne’s mouth lifted at the corner. “By the way, can you believe what happened with Gabriella? The way Jefferson exiled her?” Not that it was legally binding or anything. But Daphne had loved the way Jefferson told her to get out of town, that she wasn’t welcome at a party in Washington ever again.
Nina snorted. “I will never forget the look on her face in that moment.”
“Honestly, we should have just involved him from the very beginning, instead of trying to scheme our way through the whole mess.”
“I don’t know, our scheming was kind of fun. I don’t regret it,” Nina said wryly.
Daphne shot her a look. “I clearly rubbed off on you, if you were able to scheme against me so well that you had me fooled.”
“The student becomes the master,” Nina agreed.
“A master, really? You do think highly of yourself.”
“What can I say, I learned from the best. And I didn’t really know how else to get through to you. After all, schemes and subterfuge are sort of your love language.”
Daphne choked out a laugh, and the air in the room seemed to soften.
It was strange, that she and Nina had shared so much. They had been rivals and friends, had both loved the same man, and now here they were, at the end of the road, cautious allies once more.
No, Daphne silently amended, this wasn’t the end of the road.
It was the beginning of one.
Beatrice stood before the double doors that led into the throne room, her heart pounding a staccato rhythm in her chest. Inside, the trumpets crescendoed to a final dramatic finale, then fell silent.
That was her cue.
“Your Majesty?” Anju closed her eyes, as if she regretted what she was about to say. “Are you really sure about this?”
“Yes,” Beatrice promised.
There were many things she felt uncertain of. She didn’t know what had happened for most of the past year, for starters. But this decision—her faith in Teddy, in the solidity of their relationship—was something she knew, with the sort of bone-deep certainty that transcended logic or facts. Perhaps Louise was right and she should think of it as faith.
Beatrice nodded to the footmen standing at attention, and they flung open the doors. She took a single step forward.
The room seemed to draw in a single, collective gasp as everyone realized the bride wasn’t Daphne, but their queen.
Sam and Daphne slipped from a side entrance to stand near the altar in their bridesmaid dresses. They hadn’t wanted to reveal themselves earlier and spoil the surprise.
Beatrice had to hand it to her: Daphne was a genius when it came to public relations. Once she’d learned that Beatrice and Teddy were planning to take over her wedding, some strategic part of Daphne had clicked into action, and she’d lit up like a fuse, incandescent with ideas.
“We should pretend this was always the plan,” Daphne had suggested. “That Jefferson and I were just decoys, protecting you and Teddy!”
It made an odd, convoluted kind of sense. The palace would insist that the whole thing had been a PR masterstroke: that, embarrassed they had postponed one big state wedding, Beatrice and Teddy felt loath to go through the whole thing again, with all the requisite engagement parties and appearances and media attention. So they had sent out Daphne and Jeff as their decoys, readying the nation for a royal wedding while the real royal wedding was planned behind the scenes.
You really thought Daphne and Jeff were engaged? Beatrice imagined Anju teasing the gobsmacked reporters. They’re so young! Of course they weren’t getting married! The reporters would then trip over one another claiming to have seen through the ruse the entire time. Every tabloid would scramble to pull recent photos of Beatrice, with captions about how she was “smiling secretively” or had a “bridal glow.”
Daphne had explained that she and Jeff would wait a few weeks, letting the furor of public opinion calm down, before they leaked the news that they had broken up. Of course, Beatrice could see why Daphne preferred this plan. It offered her a graceful exit. Now she could claim that while she had been a “fake bride” as a favor to Beatrice, she’d come to realize what her own royal wedding might be like, and decided that she and Jeff didn’t belong together. The optics would be much better than if she’d admitted to what really happened—that she’d called it off the day of her multimillion-dollar wedding.
Beatrice couldn’t worry about any of this right now, because Teddy had stepped out from behind the altar and taken his place at the steps. All she could think about was reaching him.
The heavy hem of her skirts kept dragging, forcing Beatrice to kick them out in front of her so that she didn’t trip. She could have asked her mother to walk her down the aisle, or Jeff. But as Samantha had pointed out, there was no one in the country who outranked her, and it felt right that Beatrice should be the one to give herself away.
She was halfway now. Her eyes were still locked on Teddy’s intent blue gaze, and the way he was looking at her sent shivers down her bare arms. This gown wasn’t meant for winter, with its delicate lace-capped sleeves, but that was the sort of inconsequential detail that didn’t really matter.
When she finally reached Teddy, a smile illuminated his features. “I love you so much,” he whispered. “You look beautiful.”
Beatrice reached for his gloved hands and squeezed them in reply.
The Archbishop of Georgetown, an elderly man with kind eyes who had known Beatrice since she was little, bowed to her—the only acknowledgment of her sovereignty that Beatrice would allow. During their brief, somewhat frantic meeting before the ceremony, he had asked to call her Your Majesty throughout the service, which she had apparently agreed to let him do in their first, canceled wedding. As in, Does Your Majesty take this man to be your husband…
This time, Beatrice had refused. It no longer sounded quite right.
“Dearly beloved,” the archbishop began. A microphone was pinned to his robes, but even without it his voice would have carried through the throne room, the soaring baroque arches funneling sound throughout the space.
“We are gathered here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony….”