“Incoming with the Sparrow,” Caleb muttered into his walkie-talkie. Sam swallowed back a flare of irritation at her security code name. All members of the royal family were designated as birds: the Eagle for the king, the Swan for the queen, the Falcon for Beatrice, the Bluebird for Jeff. It was only a couple of years ago that Sam had learned why security always called the second child Sparrow.
It was Sparrow as in spare. As in not the heir. Sam was the extra child, an insurance policy: a living, breathing backup battery.
The herald, who stood at attention at the Door of Sighs, didn’t dare remark upon Sam’s tardiness. He waited as she reached into her beaded clutch to reapply her lip gloss, a custom peony shade. She’d been offered a multimillion-dollar licensing deal for it—the company wanted to call it American Rose and put Sam’s face on the tube—but she’d turned it down. She liked the idea of the lip-gloss color being entirely her own.
When she nodded at him, the herald stepped into the ballroom and thumped his enormous golden staff on the floor. The sound rebounded over the noises of the party: the clink of wineglasses, the scuffle of leather soles, the low hum of gossip.
“Her Highness Samantha Martha Georgina Amphyllis of the House of Washington!”
Samantha shot Nina one last glance and stepped into the ballroom.
Hundreds of eyes darted toward Samantha, gleaming with calculation. They were all wondering how much weight she’d gained abroad or how much her gown cost or how envious she was of her older sister. Sam tried not to flinch. She’d forgotten just how big a full court function really was, with every last noble and politician in attendance, even the life peers, even their spouses.
White-gloved waiters brushed past with flutes of champagne, and a string quartet played jazz music in the background. Swaths of holiday greenery were draped throughout the room, decorated with poinsettias and enormous red velvet bows. In one corner stood the palace’s official Christmas tree, its branches laden with old-fashioned garlands of popcorn and cherries, the way the royal family had decorated trees for a hundred years.
Sam caught sight of Jeff outside. The French doors had been thrown open, courtiers spilling out on the colonnaded terrace to cluster beneath spidery heat lamps. Several of the twins’ friends were already out there. Jeff met her gaze, his eyes flashing with unmistakable warning, just as an arm closed around Samantha’s elbow like a vise.
“Samantha. We need to talk.” Queen Adelaide looked coolly elegant in a strapless black dress, her glossy hair pinned back with antique diamond clips—the ones that George II had famously won from the French King Louis XVI in a game of cards. The Louisiana Gamble, people called that bet, since it had resulted in France ceding the Louisiana Territory to America.
“Hi, Mom,” Sam said cheerfully, though she knew it was useless.
“That isn’t the gown I laid out for you.” Adelaide had the unique ability to scowl and smile at once, which Sam had always found terrifying, and also a little impressive.
“I know.” Sam had ignored the dress her mom had selected, choosing instead a one-shouldered gown covered in silver sequins: far too edgy and inappropriate for an event this formal, but Sam didn’t care. Her riotous dark hair was loose and messy, as if she’d just tumbled out of bed. She’d also borrowed her grandmother’s choker from the Crown Jewels collection, made of enormous cabochon rubies interspersed with diamonds—but instead of fastening it around her throat, she’d wound it around her wrist in a chunky tangle, making the elegant stones into something almost sexy.
Sam had long ago resolved that if she couldn’t be beautiful, she should at the very least be interesting. And she wasn’t beautiful, not in the traditional sense—her forehead was too wide and sloping, her brows too heavy, her features too starkly hewn, like those of her distant Hanoverian cousins.
But people tended to forget all that the moment Samantha began talking. There was a nebulous, infectious energy to her, as if she were somehow more alive than everyone else. As if all her nerves were sparking at once, just below the surface.
The queen steered her daughter firmly to one side of the ballroom, far from any eavesdropping ears.
“Your father and I are disappointed in you,” Adelaide began.
What else is new. “I’m sorry,” Sam said wearily. She knew the script, knew it was easier to just tell her mom what she wanted to hear. She’d managed to avoid her parents when she landed late last night, and they had been too busy with preparations for the ball to confront her today. But she’d known she couldn’t put them off forever.
“Sorry?” the queen hissed. “That’s all you have to say for yourself after running away from your security officers? Samantha, that kind of behavior is inexcusable! Those officers put their lives at risk for you every day. Their job is, literally, to step between you and a bullet. The least you could do is show them some respect!”
“Did you already give this speech to Jeff?” Sam asked, as if she didn’t know the answer. Jeff always emerged from trouble completely unscathed.
It wasn’t fair. Despite how progressive America claimed to be, there was still a sexist double standard quietly underpinning everything. She and Jeff were proof of it, like in those scientific studies where they treated twin babies the same except for one key variable, then tracked how it affected them.
The variable here was that Jeff was a boy and Sam was a girl, and even when they did the exact same thing, people reacted to them differently.
If the paparazzi caught Jeff on an expensive shopping spree, he was splurging for a special occasion, while Samantha was spoiled.
If pictures surfaced of Jeff visibly drunk and stumbling out of a bar, he was blowing off some much-needed steam. Samantha was a wild party girl.
If Jeff talked back to the paparazzi, he was simply being firm, protecting his privacy. Samantha was a ruthless bitch.
She would have loved to see how the press might react to Beatrice doing any of those things, but of course Beatrice never stepped a toe out of line.
Sam knew that none of it was Jeff’s fault. Still … it was enough to make her wish she could change things. Not that she had any power to do so.
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” she protested weakly. “We didn’t hurt anyone. Why can’t you just let me enjoy my life for once?”
“Samantha, no one has ever accused you of failing to enjoy your life,” Adelaide snapped.
Sam tried not to reveal how much that stung.
Her mom heaved a sigh. “Please, can you at least try to be on your best behavior? This is a big night for your sister.”
Something in her tone gave Samantha pause. “What do you mean?”
The queen just pursed her lips. Whatever was going on, she didn’t trust Sam with it. Per usual.
Sam half wished that she could go back to that moment in Thailand when she’d turned to Jeff, an eyebrow raised in challenge, and dared him to make a run for it. Or earlier, even, to the days before her mom looked at her with such evident disappointment. She remembered the way her mom used to smile at her when Sam came home with stories of her day at school. Adelaide would hold her daughter in her lap and French-braid her hair, her hands very gentle as they brushed the sections and pulled them over one another.
But Sam knew it wasn’t any use. No one cared what she really thought; they just wanted her to shut up and stop stealing media attention from picture-perfect Beatrice. To stand in the background. To be seen and never heard.