Not far from where the girls and the two devastatingly beautiful mature women had been sitting, two others remained in hushed silence.
Their beauty alone should have commanded the room.
Between them there was enough presence to thin the oxygen in any lounge on any island — beauty that simply existed, the way gravity existed and expected the world to adjust accordingly.
And yet...
Maddie Whitmore and her court had swallowed the entire space so completely, so cheerfully, so without effort, that these two women had been rendered — for the first time in either of their lives — mere backdrop. Furniture with cheekbones if you might like some scenery that happened to breathe.
The Princesses' presence had settled across the lounge like a tide that did not know or care what it covered.
From the looks of it, Abigail and Eleanor did not particularly mind being unseen.
For Abigail, it was a strange sensation of being a backdrop — and it made her smile...
