Page 75 of American Royals

Steel flashed in his eyes. “I’m sorry, but you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Why not?” she pressed. “You’ve already lectured me about deciding what to do with my life! So now I’m asking you the same question. Is this really what you want—to marry Beatrice?”

“Don’t make me answer that,” Teddy said stiffly.

“If you don’t actually want to marry her, then why did you say yes to her proposal?”

“I said yes because you can’t say no to the future queen, not when she asks a question like that!”

“Yes, you can. It’s easy!” Sam argued. “You open your mouth and tell her no!”

“I’m sorry.” Teddy’s voice was so hoarse, so defeated, that it seemed unrecognizable. Those piercing blue eyes were filled with remorse.

Rage shot through her like a flash of summer lightning. “Fine. If this is really how you want it to be.”

“It isn’t how I want it to be, but I told you, I don’t have a choice.”

“Everyone has a choice, Teddy. And you, apparently, choose this.”

His features contorted in pain, but he didn’t answer. She didn’t really expect him to.

“Let me tell you something. If you think this marriage is going to give you a position of power, you’re wrong.” Sam spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable—even the punctuation, even the spaces between the words—with terrifying care. “You’ll be forced to set aside your own desires to support Beatrice. She will be in the limelight and in the driver’s seat, not you. Your children will have the last name of Washington.” She took a dark pleasure in Teddy’s anguish at her words.

“Beatrice will prioritize herself, and what she thinks is right for the country.” She glanced away, her tone falling to a whisper. “I would have always put us first.”

“Sam …,” he said brokenly.

She shook her head. “Like I told you when we met, only my friends call me Sam.”

Teddy hesitated another moment, then seemed to think better of it. He swept her a low, formal bow before heading down the hallway.

Sam leaned her palm against the wall and took a few ragged breaths. The portraits along the gallery seemed to be staring at her, their jaws tightened in judgment, their eyes cold and disappointed. As if they were silently telegraphing their displeasure at her—the worthless spare daughter, the flighty and ridiculous Sparrow.

As if they, too, would choose Beatrice over her.

Before she’d thought it through, Sam was storming upstairs to Beatrice’s suite, barging past her bewildered Revere Guard without even bothering to knock. She slammed the door behind her with a resounding thud.

Beatrice was seated at her desk, her hands poised over the keys of her laptop. She glanced up at Samantha’s arrival and gave a watery smile. “Hey, Samantha.”

“You proposed to Teddy.” Sam was gratified to see her sister flinch.

“I guess news travels fast in this place.”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself? I can’t believe you would do this to me!”

“Do this to you?” Beatrice gave a puzzled frown.

“I like Teddy! I’ve liked him since the Queen’s Ball. And I met him first,” Sam cried out, unable to stop the sudden flow of words. “Or didn’t he tell you that he spent the entire ceremony making out with me?”

Beatrice inhaled sharply, but her expression remained unchanged. “I’m sorry that you have a crush on my fiancé—”

“It isn’t a crush!” Sam cut in. “I really like him, okay?”

“You like everybody, Samantha.”

She was speaking in a calm, level voice, which somehow made Sam even angrier, as if the more rational Beatrice got, the more out of control Sam wanted to spin. She was seized by an irrational desire to grab hold of something—a whorled glass paperweight, maybe—and hurl it against a wall, just to watch it shatter.

“I know that Mom and Dad asked you to date him, but why did you have to jump all the way to a proposal? Don’t you feel like you’re rushing things? Or are you that desperate to remain the center of attention?”