Page 93 of Reign

They paused at the threshold to the Grand Gallery, both alittle awestruck. The room had been transformed into a fairyland, the round tables covered in cascading centerpieces of white roses and soaring white tapers. A display in the corner held their table assignments, which were stamped on pink macarons nestled in crystal boxes. But the real pièce de résistance was the flower ceiling. Standing in the room, you looked up at a rich carpet of ombré roses, which started at deep red and cascaded through all the shades of pink and blush until they finally became ivory.

“This feels so totally Jeff, doesn’t it?” Jamie deadpanned, which made Nina choke back another laugh. It was clear to everyone in this room that the décor was Daphne’s princess fantasy come to life.

Nina and Jamie headed to the bar, a vast antique mirror behind it reflecting the room back to itself. She made eye contact with one of the servers. “Hey, Rick, got any beers?”

He smiled in recognition. “Hi, Nina. Sorry, but no beer tonight. You know how it is.”

Nina had hoped there might be a secret stash of beer bottles back there. Sam used to request that the bar stock a few for her; but, Nina had to keep reminding herself, Sam wasn’t a princess anymore. “Sorry,” she told Jamie. “We’ll have to stick with champagne—”

“You know, I could use a beer too,” came an achingly familiar voice.

Nina turned around, startled, to see Jeff.

He glanced dismissively at Jamie, then jerked his head toward one of the exits. “Want to come grab one from the stash in the Weapons Room?”

“Um…I can bring you one,” Nina offered, because surely the groom shouldn’t leave his own cocktail hour, but Jeff started forward. Bewildered, she followed, Jamie close behind her.

The only sound as they walked down the hallway was theirfootsteps on the ornate scrolling carpets. When they reached one of the sitting rooms, Jeff pushed open the door.

It looked the same as always, its walls hung with the ceremonial épées that gave the room its name. Not long ago, Nina and Jeff had come in here and started fencing, slashing at each other with the swords like children.

Maybe that was the problem with her and Jeff: they had never been able to outgrow their childish patterns of behavior. Maybe things felt different with Jamie because they had met as adults.

Jeff headed to a chest of drawers along one wall, its surface painted in French figurines of shepherdesses and sheep, and pulled on the handle. The drawer opened, revealing that the inside was actually refrigerated.

That was the type of thing the Washingtons did: took a seventeenth-century chest out of storage and hired an engineer to line the interior with appliance-grade insulation and electric wiring, so that there was an entire refrigerated drawer nested within the old French wood. They couldn’t just buy a mini-fridge like ordinary people.

The refrigerated drawer was mostly full of beers, though a few bottles of wine clinked around in there, too. Jeff grabbed three beer bottles and handed one to each of them.

“Okay, I need to get one of these refrigerators for my office,” Jamie said. “Thank you.”

Jeff still seemed unwilling to make eye contact with Jamie. He kept looking at Nina, or over Jamie’s shoulder as if he wasn’t really there. “No big deal,” he mumbled.

The awkward, stifling silence descended again, and suddenly Nina couldn’t take it anymore.

“Can you two please stop being weird? You don’t need to be best friends; I’m just asking that you be civil!”

“Thiswascivil,” Jeff protested at the same moment Jamie said, “I don’t think Jeff has any interest in being friends.”

Jeff rounded on him. “You’re the one who disappeared one year and never came back!”

“You never called me! You went completely silent!”

“Because I thought you were coming again the next summer!”

The intractable expression on Jamie’s face softened just a little. “Jeff, that was a really tough year, and I never heard from you. Not once.”

Jeff was struck momentarily silent, then swallowed. “I didn’t really know what to say. I mean, what happened in the pool house…that was serious stuff, and we were just kids.” He stared down at his beer bottle as if it might hold all the answers. “I guess I just assumed you would come back the next year and we could pick up like nothing had happened. I figured I could tell you then how sorry I was.”

“Sorry that you shared a secret Ispecificallyasked you not to tell anyone, and broke up my parents’ marriage?”

Jeff blinked. “What?”

“You were the only person who knew about—about Henri,” Jamie stammered. “You really expect me to believe you didn’t tell your parents?”

“I didn’t! The only person I told was Sam. I know I promised not to,” Jeff said quickly. “But she figured out something was wrong and got it out of me.”

“Sam told, then,” Jamie said, exasperated.