“Boarding school,” Marshall said drily, and handed her the sauvignon blanc. Sam hadn’t brought any wineglasses, so she went ahead and drank straight from the bottle. The wine had a crisp tartness that settled on the back of her tongue, almost like candy.
“I’ve always wondered if the stories about you are true.” Marshall caught her eye and grinned. “I’m starting to think they are.”
“No more or less true than the stories about you, I imagine.”
“Touché.” He reached for the bottle and lifted it in a salute.
They passed the wine back and forth for a while. Silence thickened around them, light leaching from the sky as night settled its folds around the capital. Sam felt her thoughts turning brutally, relentlessly, back to Beatrice and Teddy.
She would show them. She didn’t know how she’d show them, but she would do it—would prove just how little either of them mattered to her.
Next to her, Marshall rocked back on his heels. He was always moving, she realized: shifting his weight, leaning against the railing and then away again. Perhaps, like Sam, he felt constantly restless.
“Why are you hiding out here instead of enjoying the party?” she demanded, curious. “Are you avoiding a clingy ex-girlfriend or something?”
“Well, yeah. Kelsey’s in there.” When Sam didn’t react to the name, Marshall let out a breath. “Kelsey Brooke.”
“You’re dating her?”
Sam wrinkled her nose in disgust. Kelsey was one of those starlets who all looked the same, as if they’d been mass-produced by a factory line specializing in doe eyes and big boobs. Her fame had skyrocketed this year when she’d starred in a new show about witches on a college campus who used their powers to save the world—then made it back in time for sorority parties, where they fell into doomed romances with mortals. The whole concept sounded pretty dumb to Sam.
“I was dating her. She broke up with me last month,” Marshall replied, with an indifference that didn’t fool Sam.
He shifted, and the fading light gleamed on a pin affixed to his lapel. It reminded Sam of the American flag pin her dad always used to wear.
Following her gaze, Marshall explained, “It’s the official Orange state logo.” The pin depicted a bear, its teeth pulled back in a menacing growl.
“You have grizzly bears in Orange?”
“Not anymore, but they’re still our mascot.”
An old, familiar instinct stirred within Sam. Knowing that she was being difficult, and deliberately provocative, and a little flirtatious, she reached out to unfasten the pin from his jacket. “I’m borrowing this. It looks better on me anyway.”
Marshall watched as she pinned the bear to the bodice of her dress, perilously close to her cleavage. He seemed torn between indignation and amusement. “You should know, only the Dukes of Orange can wear that pin.”
“And you should know that I’m entitled to wear anything you can wear. I outrank you,” Sam shot back, then blinked at her own words. She’d said nearly the same thing to Teddy last year—I outrank you, and I command that you kiss me. And he had.
“I can’t argue with that logic,” Marshall replied, chuckling.
Sam’s pulse quickened. Her blood seemed to have turned to jet fuel, her entire body buzzing with recklessness. The pain of seeing Teddy with Beatrice felt muffled beneath this new, sharp emotion. “Let’s go back inside.”
Marshall set the bottle down with deliberate slowness; Sam noticed that it was nearly empty. “Right now?” he asked. “Why?”
Because it was fun, because she wanted to stir up trouble, because she needed to do something or she felt like she would implode.
“Think of how furious it’ll make Kelsey, seeing us together,” she offered, but something in her tone must have given her away.
Marshall’s eyes lit on hers in a long, searching look. “Which of your exes are you trying to make jealous?”
“He’s not my ex,” Sam replied, then immediately longed to bite back the words. “I mean, not technically.”
“I see.” Marshall nodded with maddening calm, which somehow made Sam even more defensive.
“Look, it’s none of your business, okay?”
“Of course not.”
Silence fell between them, more charged than before. Sam wondered if she’d revealed too much.
But Marshall just held out an arm. “Well then, Your Royal Highness, allow me the pleasure of being your distraction.”
As they headed back into the party, he let his hand slide with casual possessiveness to the small of her back. Sam tossed her head, her smile blazing, relishing the low hum of gossip that arose when people saw them together. She forced herself to look up at Marshall, to keep herself from searching the crowds for Teddy. She didn’t want him thinking that she’d spared him a moment’s consideration.
If she spent the rest of tonight with another future duke, Teddy would see just how little his rejection had hurt her—that he’d never really mattered to her at all.
Nina shifted on her stomach, turning the page of the book that lay open before her.
She and Rachel were out in the Henry Courtyard, the vast lawn around which most of the freshman dorms were clustered. Everyone seemed determined to take advantage of the sunshine: sprawling on picnic blankets, blasting music from portable speakers. A few yards away, Nina saw a group of students eating brownies straight out of the pan. She had a feeling that they contained a little more than sugar.
“Are you seriously trying to read right now?” Rachel demanded from her neighboring beach towel. “Jane Austen can wait.”
Nina shook her head in amusement, but marked her page and sat up. “Actually, it’s Jane Eyre.”
“Austen, Eyre, they’re all full of tortured romance and you love it.” Rachel bit her lip as if unsure whether to continue. “Speaking of which, I noticed you didn’t go to the museum event last night.”
The whole premise of the gala, the opening of a new exhibit on royal weddings, felt strange to Nina. As ridiculous as it was to pity the Washingtons, she did feel a little sorry for them, that their lives were so shamelessly commercialized. That their personal milestones—their birthdays, weddings, funerals—were never private, but instead became a media frenzy. And then all their clothes and invitations were displayed in museums for public consumption, so that everyone in America could feel like those moments belonged to them, too.
“I didn’t really want to go.” And run into Jeff again, she didn’t need to add.
Nina hadn’t known what to expect when she saw the prince at the races last weekend. Half of her still wanted to slap him across the face for defending Daphne that night at the engagement party, and the other half wanted to pull him into a hug and murmur how sorry she was about his dad.
Of course she hadn’t done either. The only way to survive that kind of encounter was to keep it as civil and short as possible.
She’d seen the confusion on Jeff’s face when she’d greeted him like a near stranger. But Nina needed that emotional distance for her own protection. She wasn’t a good enough actress to pretend that she and Jeff were “just friends” again.
Instead Nina had followed the court formula for surface-level conversations; she certainly knew it well enough, after all these years of being Sam’s best friend. When Jeff said hello, she’d bobbed a curtsy, murmured her condolences, and made polite conversation about the weather and the races before excusing herself and walking away in relief. The whole exchange had taken two, maybe three minutes.
Yet she’d spent hours replaying it in her mind. No matter how determinedly she told herself that she was over Jeff, her heart hadn’t quite gotten the message yet.
A series of gongs echoed through campus: the Randolph clock tower, which famously marked noon and midnight with thirteen chimes instead of twelve, the result of a senior prank that had never been corrected.
“That’s my cue.” Nina stood, brushing stray bits of grass from her cropped jeans.
“You’re leaving?” Rachel protested.
“I have Intro to Journalism in twenty minutes.”
Rachel reached across the blanket to grab her friend’s copy of Jane Eyre. “You can’t go, I’m holding your homework hostage!”
“No worries, keep the book. You could even try reading it,” Nina teased.
Rachel flopped dramatically back onto her towel and placed the novel over her face. Her curls formed an unruly pillow behind her. “I’ll just nap instead. This makes a nice sunshade.”
“Good thinking,” Nina agreed. “Now the story will sink into your brain through sheer osmosis.”
She heard Rachel’s answering laugh, muffled beneath the heavy book.
Nina headed down the paved walkway toward the center of campus, passing dozens of people as she walked: sorority girls in printed T-shirts, prospective students on a campus tour. To her relief, none of them spared her a second glance. The afternoon sun filtered through the filigree of leaves overhead, dappling campus in a green-gold light.