And when he glowers at me, I take great pleasure in shutting the door in his face.
AN REIS
The official start of the Scottish season, An Reis is the annual horse race held along the southern border. The words mean simply “the Race,” and it’s said the tradition began during the “rough wooing,” when Henry VIII harried the lowland Scots in the hopes of taking young Mary, Queen of Scots, for his son’s bride. What was once a test of horsemanship is now, like Ascot farther south, more a social event these days, and attendants of An Reis are just as serious about their headgear as their southern neighbors. A favorite of the younger set of Stuarts, this year’s An Reis should also prove an excellent opportunity for Royal Watchers to observe Prince Alexander with his new fiancée, the American Eleanor Winters. Rumour also has it that Eleanor’s younger sister, Daisy, will be accompanying them this year, providing the Florida high schooler with her first taste of the life her sister is stepping into this winter.
(Prattle, “Och Aye, We’ve Got the Scoop on the Best Events of the Scottish Social Season!” April Issue)
Chapter 13
“I am not wearing that.”
I’m in Ellie’s room at Sherbourne Castle, the early morning sunlight spilling in through lace curtains. It had surprised me that Ellie and Alex weren’t sharing a room, but I didn’t like to think about that part of their relationship, so I hadn’t said anything. There are certain things about her sister a girl should maybe not know.
Ellie looks like summer come to life, standing in a pale pink dress and cream-and-rose heels, her blond hair shiny and smooth underneath a hat that matches her shoes, a little pink netting covering her eyes, a riot of flowers at the crown. It’s a silly hat, don’t get me wrong, but it looks right on her. She’s doing that Ellie Thing where everything that touches her manages to get an extra sheen of class.
I don’t possess that particular talent, which is why the green monstrosity currently spreading its tentacles on the bed is not going to look nearly as fetching on my head.
Ellie places her hands on her slim hips, that massive emeraldand-diamond ring nearly blinding me as it catches the light. This is not your big sister, that ring seems to remind me, this is a future queen, which means she’s going to make you wear that ugly hat.
Sure enough, the corners of Ellie’s mouth turn down. “It’s tradition,” she says. “The big silly hats. Haven’t you seen My Fair Lady?”
“I have,” I tell her, moving over to the bed to poke at the thing she calls a “hat” but I think might actually be a papier-mâché rendering of the Loch Ness monster. “She wore a pretty hat,” I remind Ellie. “Much like you are wearing a pretty hat. This”—I flick the furled brim of the hat—“is not a pretty hat. In fact, it’s not a hat at all. I think someone just threw some velvet and tulle together, and dyed everything lake-monster green.”
“That hat is a one-of-a-kind piece,” Ellie informs me. “Made especially for you by Lady Alice Crenshaw, who is not only my friend but whose family has been making chapeaux for the royal family for centuries, Daisy.”
“Okay, I was going to listen to you about this, but then you said ‘chapeaux,’ and my brain shut down with how pretentious that was.”
Ellie closes her eyes for a second. In another life, she would have already started yelling. The lake monster comment would’ve done it. But that was a different Ellie, one who didn’t feel watched every second of her life.
That thought makes me feel a little ashamed of the fit I’m throwing over something as silly as a hat, a feeling that only gets stronger when Ellie walks over to the bed, picking up the hat and studying it with critical eyes. “I told Alice you had reddish hair now, so she picked out this color especially for you.”
With that, she crosses over to plop the hat on my head. For something that appears to mostly be made of fluff and feathers, it’s surprisingly heavy. Ellie tugs at the netting, trying to perk up some of the feathers, frowning. “It would look better if you weren’t scowling, Daisy,” she finally says, and I step away from her, making shooing motions with my hands.
“It’s hard not to make a face when you’re wearing something like this,” I remind her, but when I go to look in the mirror, I can admit that hat isn’t too . . . all right—it’s still really, really bad—but it does look a little like the stuff those girls wear in the blogs Isabel showed me. At least I fit in. And it matches my dress.
That had been waiting for me in a garment bag when I’d gotten up this morning, and I’d cringed as I’d pulled down the zipper, sure I was going to see something completely boring with a high neck and long sleeves and no personality at all.
But the dress is actually really pretty. It’s green, like my hat, with cap sleeves, a nipped-in waist, and a fuller skirt, almost like something out of the fifties. The little white gloves that go with it just add to the effect, and it’s just different enough not to be boring.
Maybe Glynnis has better taste than I thought.
The cars are coming to get all of us in less than an hour now, taking us the thirty minutes or so south to the racing grounds. Apparently, this particular horse race is super fancy and, according to Glynnis, “a vital part of the social calendar for the summer.”
The most vital thing I’d had on my social calendar this summer had been Key West, finishing up my summer reading for school, and maybe visiting the new pool they’d built at the Hibiscus Club, the sort of cut-rate country club we belonged to in Perdido.
Instead, I’m wearing a Disney Villain hat and about to go watch a bunch of horses.
With a bunch of cute guys.
I’d seen a few of the “Royal Wreckers” this morning at breakfast. Sherbet, of course, then the two guys whose actual names I couldn’t remember. Spiffy and Dons were their nicknames, but I dare you to say the name “Spiffy” out loud with a straight face. So I hadn’t talked much to any of them, and I hadn’t seen Miles or Seb, either.
Remembering last night makes my stomach give a little nervous twist, and I glance over at Ellie. She’s staring in the mirror, fidgeting with her own hat, and while I really don’t want to get into the whole Seb thing, it suddenly occurs to me that he might mention it today, and that it would be way worse if El hears it from him first.
“Soooo,” I start, and Ellie immediately spins away from the mirror, blue eyes wide.
“Oh god, what happened?” she asks, and I hold up both hands.
“How did you know I was going to tell you that something happened? Maybe I was just about to lead into how pretty that shade of pink looks on you. Because it does, by the way, look really nice with your skin tone, and—”