“Mom?” Jefferson seemed alarmed.
“This is entirely out of order and improper, especially given your recent…troubles,” Queen Adelaide announced, with a vague wave at the newly common Deightons. “But it’s been so long since we had a baby at the palace. To think that soon enough we’ll hear little feet pattering up and down the hallways! That’s how Jeff learned to walk, you know,” she said, clutching Daphne’s hand. “He used to toddle up and down the hall, waving at the guards, watching them salute each time he passed. He was the most adorable baby.” Her voice shook a little as she added, “I only wish George were here.”
“I know,” Daphne said soothingly, willing herself not to smile. This was going even better than she’d expected.
“Daphne!” Her mother stepped forward to join the collective embrace. Her arms circled her daughter a bit awkwardly, as if she wasn’t quite sure how this hugging thing worked. “I can’t believe it! Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I was afraid you might be upset,” Daphne murmured.
Rebecca was doing a remarkable job of feigning surprise and motherly concern. She’d already known, of course. There was no one else Daphne could have shared her plan with, no one else she trusted to help; and she didn’t trust her mother, not really. Rebecca could be relied upon for now, as long as her fate was tied to her daughter’s interests. But Daphne knew her mother’s loyalty was only ever to herself.
“People are going to talk.” Queen Adelaide stepped back, wiping at her eyes. “We’ll have to rush your wedding as much as possible.”
The ensuing silence was deafening. Those two words seemed to reverberate through the room—words that had the power to make or break Daphne’s entire future. Your wedding.
Jefferson had gone pale. “Wedding?”
Daphne noticed that her parents were careful to say nothing; they were very still, like two people holding their breath at the blackjack table, waiting to see if their monumental gamble had paid off.
Well, she wasn’t the Poker Princess for nothing, was she?
“Of course you’re getting married,” Adelaide said briskly. “What else do you plan on doing? Living in sin?”
Jefferson reached for Daphne’s hand. “Mom, we’re a bit young to be discussing marriage.”
“If you’re old enough to have a child, you’re certainly old enough to take on the responsibility of marriage,” the queen countered.
Jefferson’s grip on Daphne’s hand tightened. “It’s not living in sin anymore. This is the twenty-first century; people don’t expect us to rush into anything.”
“What are you ‘rushing into,’ precisely? You’ve been dating for four years.”
Some of the conviction had drained from Jefferson’s voice. “Mom, that’s not the—”
“You are a Washington.” The queen stood taller now, her voice ringing through the space with authority. “You are not some rock star who knocked up his girlfriend—forgive my crude phrasing,” she said absently, with a brief glance at Daphne. “You are a prince and the steward of this family’s legacy, and this situation is problematic enough already. My first grandchild will not be illegitimate. Especially when that child might—”
She broke off, but Daphne could fill in the end of the sentence. Especially when that child might rule someday.
With Beatrice on life support and the whole complicated situation with Samantha, Jefferson might actually become king.
The prospect was so dizzying that, for a moment, Daphne didn’t even register the queen’s other words, about how the situation was problematic enough already. This was, presumably, her tactful way of saying that her future daughter-in-law was currently the butt of national jokes, her family a gross embarrassment.
Slowly, Jefferson turned to her. “Are you okay with this, Daph?”
She and the prince had been dating for four years, and Daphne had spent all four of those years imagining Jefferson’s proposal. Sometimes she’d pictured it at a black-tie function, Jefferson sinking to one knee as crowds watched with bated breath, and she would accept to tumultuous applause. Other times she’d imagined that it would be just the two of them on a romantic mountaintop somewhere, her hair artfully mussed by the wind as he slid a ring onto her finger.
Never in all her imaginings had Daphne dreamed that Jefferson would ask her to marry him because his mother had forced him to.
He hadn’t even sunk to one knee or said the proper words. All he’d asked was Are you okay with this?
Oh well.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” Daphne assured him. “I love you.”
Queen Adelaide broke into a relieved smile. “It’s settled, then. We’ll need to set a date—I think we can plan something in eight weeks’ time, perhaps even six if we hurry. Time is of the essence, of course.”
Right, because if Daphne were actually pregnant, she would begin to show soon.
“What about New Year’s?” she heard herself suggest.
To ordinary people, New Year’s Eve was about champagne flutes and sequined dresses and kissing someone at the countdown. But Daphne had always thought of it as a liminal state, a transition point where the old, stale, mistake-ridden past gave way to an unknown future. It was a moment of change, of excitement.
“A new year, new beginnings,” Daphne added, and the queen’s expression softened.
“That’s a lovely sentiment.”
Moments later a footman was sailing into the room, holding a tray of crystal flutes brimming with champagne. Daphne almost reached for one before remembering that she was supposed to be pregnant.
“To Daphne and Jeff,” the queen exclaimed, and everyone lifted their glasses in a toast, repeating her words.
Daphne didn’t have a glass to lift, but it didn’t matter. A heady sense of satisfaction coursed through her.
After all her years of hard work, she would be a princess at last.
“I don’t belong here,” Nina Gonzalez announced as she and her friend Jayne walked into the auditorium.
Ranged in the seats below were several dozen kids in skinny scarves and even skinnier jeans. They laughed easily, stretching their legs onto the seats in front of them, passing bags of gummy candy to one another.
Jayne snorted. “Same. No way am I actually doing this show. I just couldn’t handle the puppy-dog eyes Rachel would give me if I didn’t come.”
Rachel Greenbaum, their third roommate, was one of the student producers of this year’s winter play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She’d been hounding them about auditions for weeks, and would have considered it a personal betrayal if they didn’t at least show up.