American Royals(3)
Each tab was labeled with a name. Lord José Ramirez, future Duke of Texas. Lord Marshall Davis, future Duke of Orange. Lord Theodore Eaton, future Duke of Boston.
“You’re trying to set me up?”
“We’re just giving you some options. Introducing you to young men who might be a good fit.”
Beatrice flipped numbly through the pages. They were filled with information: family trees, photos, high school transcripts, even the guys’ heights and weights.
“Did you use your security clearance to get all this?”
“What? No.” The king looked shocked at the suggestion that he would abuse his privileges with the NSA. “The young men and their families all volunteered this information. They know what they’re signing on for.”
“So you’ve already talked to them,” Beatrice said woodenly. “And tomorrow night at the Queen’s Ball you want me to interview these … potential husbands?”
Her mother’s brows shot up in protest. “Interview makes it sound so impersonal! All we’re asking is that you have a conversation with them, get to know them a little. Who knows? One of them might surprise you.”
“Maybe it is like an interview,” the king admitted. “Beatrice, when you do choose someone, he won’t just be your husband. He will also be America’s first king consort. And being married to the reigning monarch is a full-time job.”
“A job that never stops,” the queen chimed in.
Through the window, down in the Marble Courtyard, Beatrice heard a burst of laughter and gossip, and a single voice struggling valiantly to rise above the din. Probably a high school tour going past, on the last day before holiday break. These teenagers weren’t that much younger than she was, yet Beatrice felt irrevocably distant from them.
She used her thumb to pull back the pages of the folder and let them fan back down. Only a dozen young men were included.
“This folder is pretty thin,” she said softly.
Of course, Beatrice had always known that she would be fishing from a tiny pond, that her romantic options were incredibly narrow. It wasn’t as bad as it had been a hundred years ago, when the marriage of the king was a matter of public policy rather than a matter of the heart. At least she wouldn’t have to get married to seal a political treaty.
But it still seemed a lot to hope, that she might fall in love with someone on this very short list.
“Your father and I were very thorough. We combed through all the sons and grandsons of the nobility before we compiled these names,” her mother said gently.
The king nodded. “There are some good options here, Beatrice. Everyone in this folder is smart, and thoughtful, and from a good family—the type of men who will support you, without letting their egos get in the way.”
From a good family. Beatrice knew precisely what that meant. They were the sons and grandsons of high-ranking American noblemen, if only because the foreign princes around her age—Nikolaos, or Charles of Schleswig-Holstein, or the Grand Duke Pieter—had all already struck out.
Beatrice glanced back and forth between her parents. “What if my future husband isn’t on this list? What if I don’t want to marry any of them?”
“You haven’t even met them yet,” her father cut in. “Besides, your mother and I were set up by our parents, and look how that turned out.” He met the queen’s eyes with a fond smile.
Beatrice nodded, a bit reassured. She knew that her dad had picked her mom just like this, from a short list of preapproved options. They had met only a dozen times before their wedding day. And their arranged marriage had ended up blossoming into a genuine love match.
She tried to consider the possibility that her parents were right: that she could fall in love with one of the young men listed in this terrifyingly slim folder.
It didn’t seem likely.
She hadn’t yet met these noblemen, but she could already guess what they were like: the same type of spoiled, self-absorbed young men who’d been circling her for years. The type of guys she’d been carefully turning down at Harvard, each time they asked her to a final club party or fraternity date night. The type of guys who looked at her and saw not a person, but a crown.
Sometimes, Beatrice thought traitorously, that was how her parents saw her too.
The king braced his palms on the conference table. Against the tanned skin of his hands glinted a pair of rings: the simple gold of his wedding band and, next to it, the heavy signet ring marked with the Great Seal of America. His two marriages, to the queen and to his country.
“Our hope for you has always been that you might find someone you love, who can also handle the requirements that come with this life,” he told her. “Someone who is the right fit for you and America.”
Beatrice heard the unspoken subtext: that if she couldn’t find someone who checked both boxes, then America needed to come first. It was more important that she marry someone who could do this job, and do it well, than that she follow her heart.
And truthfully, Beatrice had given up on her heart a long time ago. Her life didn’t belong to her, her choices were never fully her own—she had known this since she was a child.
Her grandfather King Edward III had said as much to her on his deathbed. The memory would be forever etched in her mind: the sterile smell of the hospital, the yellow fluorescent lighting, the peremptory way her grandfather had dismissed everyone else from the room. “I need to say a few things to Beatrice,” he’d declared, in that frightening growl he used just for her.