ALSO BY RACHEL HAWKINS Prince Charming (previously Royals) Rebel Belle Miss Mayhem Lady Renegades G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Hawkins. Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ebook ISBN: 9781524738273 Names: Hawkins, Rachel, 1979– author. Title: Her royal highness / Rachel Hawkins. Description: New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2019] | Companion to: Prince Charming, previously titled Royals. Summary: An American girl goes to an exclusive Scottish boarding school where she becomes the roommate, best friend, and girlfriend of a royal princess. Identifiers: LCCN 2018035750 | ISBN 9781524738266 (hardback) Subjects: | CYAC: Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Foreign study—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Love— Fiction. | Princesses—Fiction. | Lesbians—Fiction. | Scotland—Fiction. Classification: PZ7.H313525 He 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035750 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Version_1 For Jules CONTENTS Also by Rachel Hawkins Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Acknowledgments About the Author When it comes to boarding schools in Scotland, none can beat #4 on our list, Gregorstoun. The forbidding fortress up in the Highlands of Scotland has been the chosen spot for matriculating Scottish royalty and nobility since the early 1900s, but it’s never had the same gloss as some of the other schools on our lists, possibly because of its remote location. It could also be the school’s reputation for strictness and austerity keeping some notable names away. In any case, the school sits on 200 acres and was once the showplace estate of the McGregor family, hence the name. Students at Gregorstoun may have to face early wake-up calls, bracing exercise in the frigid Highland winters, and a particularly grueling Outward Bound–esque competition known as “the Challenge,” but they can do so among some of the most stunning scenery in Scotland and among the country’s most famous residents—Prince Alexander graduated from the school in 2009, and his brother Sebastian currently attends. Next year, the school becomes co-ed, welcoming its first female class in the school’s hundred- year history. (“Best Boarding Schools for Landing a Royal,” from Prattle) CHAPTER 1 “There’s a unicorn on this.” Grinning, I take the letter out of Jude’s hands, leaning back on the nest of sleeping bags and pillows we’ve built inside the little orange tent I’ve set up in the backyard. The sun set about an hour ago, and the only light left comes from my Coleman lantern, which is affixed to a little hook on the ceiling of the tent. We haven’t done a backyard campout since we were in fifth grade, but it’s summer, and we were bored, and setting up the tent seemed like a fun thing to do. “Now you see why I wanted to go to school there,” I say, stuffing the letter back into its envelope. “Anyplace that uses unicorns in its official correspondence is a good place for me.” “Obviously,” Jude echoes, leaning back, too. Her long blond hair is dyed turquoise at the ends, and as she gets situated on the sleeping bags, those bright blue strands brush against my arm, setting my pulse racing and a whole fleet of butterflies loose in my stomach. Propping herself up on her elbow, Jude looks at me, the freckles over the bridge of her nose bold in the lantern light. “And you got in!” Nodding, I look back at the envelope from Gregorstoun, a fancy boarding school in the Highlands of Scotland, fighting the urge to pull the letter out and reread the heading. Dear Miss Amelia Quint: We are pleased to offer you a place at Gregorstoun . . . The letter has been sitting in my bag for over a month now. I haven’t even told my dad about it. And I hadn’t planned on talking to Jude about it, either, but she saw it while she was looking for lip balm. “So why aren’t you going?” she asks, and I shrug, taking the letter and tucking it back in the front pocket of the beat-up canvas satchel I bring everywhere with me. A light breeze rattles the nylon of the tent, carrying the smell of summer night in Texas—freshly cut grass and the smoky scent of someone grilling. “Millie, you’ve been talking about this school for, like, a year now,” Jude presses, reaching out to push me with her free hand. “And now you got in, and you’re not gonna go?” Another shrug as I sigh and fiddle with my bangs. “It’s super expensive,” I tell her, which is true. “So I’d need to apply for financial aid. And it’s pretty far away.” Also true, not that that stopped me from dreaming about it all last year. Gregorstoun is up in the Highlands of Scotland, surrounded by mountains and lakes—sorry, lochs—plus all the cool rock samples a geology freak like me could want. But last year, things were different with Jude. We’ve been friends since we were nine, and I’ve had a crush on her since I was thirteen and realized that I felt the same way about Jude as I did about Lance McHenry from Boys of Summer (look, everyone liked Boys of Summer back then, it wasn’t as embarrassing as it sounds now). And my crush on Jude had just as much a chance of being requited as the flame I’d carried for a floppy-haired boy bander. Or so I’d thought. Now she scoots closer to me on top of the sleeping bag printed with daisies she’s had since that first fifth-grade campout. Unlike me, Jude isn’t much for camping. She trails her fingers over my arm, nails lightly scratching my skin, and my breath comes out all shaky as I break out in goose bumps. Each fingernail is painted a different shade of purple, her thumb a pale lavender, her pinky a violet so deep it almost looks black. There in the tent with the summer night all around us, it feels like we could be the only two people in the world right now. “You’re not turning it down because of me, are you?” she asks, and my heart does a neat little flip in my chest. This . . . thing between me and Jude has been going on since the beginning of the summer, but I’m not used to it yet. Being with her still makes me feel like I’m on some amusement park ride, heart pounding, stomach dropping. “What?” I ask, trying to huff out a laugh, but I’m the worst liar in the world, and the word basically comes out a squawk. Jude is really close to me now, so close our knees bump on top of our sleeping bags. “It’s okay if you want to admit you can’t stand being away from me,” she teases, and I go to shove at her, but she catches my wrist, tugging me closer so she can kiss me. Her lips taste like my cherry-vanilla lip balm, and in that moment, there’s only Jude and her mouth and the way she tucks my hair behind my ears as she kisses me.