Her hands flew to her mouth in shock, the way a cartoon character’s would. She had just said it, had told Teddy she loved him without a second thought, which was so unlike her that she wondered if it had really happened. She never spoke without thinking.
Teddy opened his mouth—but before he could answer, earth-shattering thunder reverberated through the room, and the skies split open in a downpour. Beatrice realized with a start that her window was still open. The curtains whipped up in the sudden wind, rain slanting inside to splatter the carpet.
Together she and Teddy grabbed the massive windowpane and wrestled to bring it down. The wind roared into the room like an angry spirit, flinging raindrops into their faces.
Finally the window fell into place with a clatter.
After the violence of the storm, the silence felt suddenly terrifying. Beatrice turned slowly to face Teddy, her heart hammering as erratically as the patter of rain outside. And yet—she knew she had meant what she’d said.
“I love you,” she repeated. As she spoke, something seemed to move and settle deep within her; the very tectonic plates of her being shifting, to create space for this new revelation. She loved Teddy, and, of everything that had happened, that was perhaps the greatest gift of all.
“I didn’t see it coming,” she said helplessly. “I wasn’t expecting it and I wasn’t prepared for it, and I’ll understand if you don’t…if you can’t…”
Maybe all that Teddy could give her was the partnership they’d agreed to that night in Walthorpe. He had only ever promised her his hand, not his heart.
Yet Beatrice found that she wanted both.
“Bee—of course I love you.”
His hand reached for hers. Beatrice thought she was trembling, but then she saw that he was the one trembling. The storm seemed to be raging all around them, and here they were, suspended in the eye of it.
“I didn’t expect to fall for you, either,” Teddy said hoarsely. “When we first met, I didn’t even know how to date you. I thought you were…not a person, almost, but an institution. I figured that getting engaged to you was either very brave or very foolish,” he added, with a smile.
“Probably both,” Beatrice managed.
Some of the rain had misted in his hair, turning its strands a darker burnished gold. A few droplets ran down the edge of his jawline. Carefully, Beatrice reached out to brush them away. In the distance, the city lights still glowed in the rain, like sodden fairies.
“It’s my fault,” Teddy said softly. “At the beginning I didn’t try hard enough to get to know you. All I saw was the tiny fraction of you that you show the world—and, for some stupid reason, I assumed that was all there was.”
Teddy’s hand was still gripping hers. He traced his thumb lightly over her skin, drawing small, invisible circles on her palm. Beatrice’s blood turned to smoke in her veins.
“But now I know there’s so much more to you than you let on. You’re funny, Bee, and driven, and you’re smart as hell. Now…I like to think I know all of you. Even the parts that everyone else is too superficial or impatient to see.”
He lifted her left hand, studying the engagement ring that glittered there. Then, to Beatrice’s surprise, he pulled that hand to his mouth and kissed it—not gently, the way a courtier might have, but with an urgent roughness.
“For me, tomorrow will be all about the two of us,” he told her. “Not the thousands of people crowded into that throne room, or the millions of people watching on TV, but us. As if we were two ordinary people getting married at city hall, or at Disney World, or in a backyard.”
Beatrice’s heart raced faster and faster. She wished, desperately, that they were one of those couples, and their relationship could be just that—a relationship, without the fate of nations or dynastic futures hanging on its success.
She wasn’t afraid of marrying Teddy—she wanted to marry him—but she feared all the spectacle and ceremony of it, for reasons she didn’t understand.
Teddy gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look up into his face. Beatrice softened, breathing him in like summer air.
“I should get going,” he decided, and stepped away.
A new, resolute steadiness took hold of Beatrice. Knowing exactly what she was doing, and what it would mean, she caught Teddy’s arm and tugged him back toward her—tugged both of them through the door to her bedroom.
“Bee, I don’t…”
“We’re getting married tomorrow.” She felt the clasp of her dress trembling at her throat, where her pulse was racing.
“Exactly,” he reasoned. “I can wait one more night.”
“Well, I can’t.” When he opened his mouth to protest again, Beatrice brushed a finger against his lips. “Teddy,” she said, very slowly. “I’m sure.”
She thought back to that night at Walthorpe, when she’d thrown herself at Teddy, out of loneliness and confusion, and perhaps a drunken hope that it might make things simpler between them. It felt like a long time ago, now.
Some of her nervousness must have flickered over her expression, because she saw comprehension dawn in Teddy’s eyes. “You haven’t ever…”
“No, I haven’t.” She and Connor had never gotten that far—had never really gotten the chance.
“I love you,” Teddy said again, and it set Beatrice ablaze. She answered him in the same words, drinking in his love and his kisses and the way his hands slid over her.
Beatrice tore her mouth from his only to tug his blazer impatiently from his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Teddy fumbled a little with her dress, struggling with tiny hooks that ran down the back, until Beatrice gave a breathless laugh and just tugged it over her head half-fastened. His breath caught when he saw her in nothing but her ivory lace underwear.
“I love you,” she repeated, simply for the sheer joy of saying it. She wondered if either of them would ever tire of it.
They stumbled back together toward the bed, their kisses wilder and more feverish. Beatrice could taste the rain on his skin. The pearls from her hair were falling loose, gleaming on the pillows around them like tiny fragments of moonlight, but she didn’t care. Her breathing was wild and fast, and she felt a tingling sensation spreading all the way to the edges of her fingers. No matter how many parts of her body touched his, it didn’t feel like enough.
Distantly, with the part of her brain that was still capable of thinking, Beatrice knew that something monumental had changed—that she and Teddy were both changed—here, in this room that had seen two centuries’ worth of history. Where her ancestors had loved and reigned and grieved and found joy.
The steady drumming of the rain echoed their heartbeats, the new rhythm between them.
Outside, the storm might be raging—but here, in the pocket of warmth they had created, Beatrice felt safe. And loved.
It had stormed the entire night before the royal wedding, prompting a last-minute flurry of activity as harried staffers began to carry out the contingency plans. But by dawn the rain had fallen off, the only sound the occasional drip of water from the shingles of a roof. Now the sun was out in full force, leaving the world sparkling and new—and utterly transformed.
Nina hadn’t seen the city like this since King George’s coronation, when she’d been just a child. The streets were hung with miles of triangular pennants, printed in the red, blue, and gold of the American flag. Even the lampposts had been draped in ribbons and crepe-paper streamers.
“You know we need to leave soon,” Ethan warned, though his voice held an unmistakable note of amusement.
“Ten more minutes. Please?” Nina’s eyes darted to the artist who’d set up at the nearest street corner; he was painting children’s cheeks with miniature hearts and tiaras, free of charge. “I wish I could get my face painted,” she added, almost to herself.
“You’d get a few looks when we walk into the throne room,” Ethan joked, then seemed to fall silent as he realized what he’d said. The two of them would attract plenty of stares as it was, showing up to the wedding as a couple.
It was the reason Nina had begged Ethan to come out onto the streets with her—because she wanted one last moment of normalcy before the chaos descended.
Right now she wasn’t an object of fascination or revulsion. She was just another anonymous member of the buoyant crowds that lined the parade route through the center of town. The wedding would begin in a couple of hours, but the celebrations had been going since early this morning—or, in some cases, since last night.