Royals

“Don’t call me love,” she shoots back, and then she fishes in her bag for her phone.

To say that it’s awkward in the car is a bit of an understatement, and I clear my throat. “Sorry your first night wasn’t the best,” I offer to Isa, but she smiles at me and shrugs.

“It was actually kind of fun. I mean, before this guy.” She jerks her thumb at Seb, who gapes at her.

“This guy?” he repeats, but she’s still looking at me.

“Tomorrow is bookstores and museums, right?”

“Absolutely,” I say, relieved. Okay, so we’re back on track. One brief aberration, a quick toe dip into potential scandalousness, but we are okay, and we can all just forget this night ever happened.

We’re quiet for the rest of the ride, and when we pull up to the Balmoral, it’s fairly empty. No photographers, no one gawking. I start to get out to walk Isabel to her room, but before I can, she lays a hand on my knee and says, “I’m good, promise. Tomorrow, bookstores, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I reply, “total nerdery, here we come.”

Isa flashes a grin at that, then adds, “Bye, Miles, nice to meet you.”

Pointedly ignoring Seb, she climbs out of the back seat and heads for the hotel without a backward glance.

Seb rolls his eyes, but then goes to get out of the car, too, and I grab his arm.

“Okay, you’re not following her,” I say, but he shakes me off with a sniff.

“Bloody right I’m not. But I need a drink before heading home, and the Balmoral makes the best martinis. You two go on back.”

With that, he slams the door, leaving me and Miles in silence. The car pulls out onto the street just as a misty rain starts falling again, and I sigh, sinking deeper into the leather seat. “So that was a thing that happened.”

Miles doesn’t say anything, and I glance over at him. He’s sitting stiffly there in the back seat, head turned to look out the window.

“I hate having to say this, but thank you,” I tell him. “We saved the day, and I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

He doesn’t say anything, and I reach across the back seat to poke him in his arm, which is surprisingly hard under my fingertip. “Hi, I’m trying to be nice? Even though it causes me physical pain?”

Finally, he looks over at me. “You know those pictures are going to be in every paper tomorrow morning.”

There’s that muscle tic in his jaw again, and I twist in my seat to face him better. “A thing that is very much not my fault,” I remind him, and he waves one elegant hand, swatting that thought like it’s a bug.

“I’m aware of that, but the point is, before you got here, there were never any photographers at Seb’s club. Someone let them know that you were here.”

Now I think my own jaw muscle might be acting up because I am clenching my teeth pretty hard as I stare him down. “Again with this?” I say. “Because I could almost forgive it at Sherbourne, what with me being a total stranger and all, but if you could honestly spend all of that stupid race with me and still think I’m interested in Seb or getting my picture in the paper, or whatever it is you think I want—”

“I know you’re not out to get Seb,” Miles interrupts, “but for someone who claims not to want to be in the tabloids, you’ve certainly been there enough over the past week.” He pauses, his eyes on my face, and I remember earlier when I thought he was kind of cute and want to go back in time and punch myself in the head.

“Again, maybe you should have this talk with Seb,” I tell him. “Because Seb was the problem tonight, not me.”

Miles looks away then, and I feel like there’s something he’s not saying. Something he wants to say.

But then he turns back and asks, “Could it be your parents?”

I honestly feel like I’ve been slapped. My head rears back and everything. “Excuse me?”

Chafing his palms on his thighs, Miles shrugs. “Calling the photographers. You may not want to be in the papers, but they might. I know your father used to be—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I say, holding up one hand. I think I might actually be shaking, I’m so pissed.

“You don’t know anything about me or my parents if you think for one second they’d try to shove my ass up the ladder with Ellie. I know it makes all of you people feel better to think we’re a bunch of gross social climbers because then you don’t have to deal with the fact that maybe Alex just likes Ellie better than the Flisses and Poppys of the world.”

“That is not at all what I—” Miles starts, but I cut him off again.

“I actually thought you might not be as big of a douche as you seemed, but you, my friend, are clearly the Earl of Summer’s Eve.”

Miles’s brow crumples in confusion, but luckily the car has pulled into Holyroodhouse now.

I don’t even wait for the driver to open the door for me; I step out into the rainy night and don’t look back.

* * *

• • •

I wake up to a thump right by my head. Cracking my eyes open, I see an iPad lying on the pillow next to me, and I scrub at my face, trying to pull myself out of a dream I can barely remember, except that I think Miles might have been in it, and that is just—

“What the hell happened last night?”

That’s Ellie, and a supremely pissed-off Ellie if that tone is anything to go by. I’ve gotten kind of used to that weird museum-guide voice she does around here, so a return-to-form Ellie is both alarming and kind of welcome.

And then her question sinks in.

I sit up in bed. It’s bright outside, the light streaming in through the gaps in the heavy velvet drapes, and I wince when Ellie marches over to the window and yanks the curtains open. The clock by my bed says it’s just seven, but Ellie is fully dressed in a conservative black sheath covered with a red cardigan, her blond hair in a chignon at the nape of her neck. She even has jewelry on, a pretty little brooch in the shape of a thistle, and a thin silver bangle. Do bluebirds help her get ready in the morning?

Oh, right, last night.

I pick up the iPad and see the headline on the Sun’s webpage.

“CRAZY FOR DAISY!” it screams, and there’s a blurry shot of me outside Seb’s club, his hand on my shoulder. Miles and Isabel are nowhere to be seen, and this really looks like . . .

“Okay, this is stupid,” I say, looking up at Ellie. She’s standing at the foot of my bed, jaw clenched, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Isabel was with Seb last night, and I went out to get her!”

Walking over to the bed, Ellie takes the iPad from me. “That’s not what the internet is saying,” she says, and she opens another page, then another, scrolling through a series of links.

“SEB AND DAISY!”

“PRINCE SEBASTIAN: CAUGHT AT LAST?”

“OOH-ER! A ROYAL NIGHT OUT!”

“PRINCESS DAISY?”

I almost want to laugh. It’s just . . . dumb. Seb and I had hardly even spoken last night. How can this one picture make people think we’re a thing?

I’m still shaking my head in amused disbelief when I look up at El.

That’s when I notice she’s downright pale, and genuinely upset.

Confused, I push my hair out of my eyes. “El, you know—” I start, but she just waves me off.