Seated at the kitchen table by her own family for being “single and practical,” Whitney watches her sister Bridget marry into old money while her father toasts everyone but her. Just as she prepares to slip away unnoticed, her diplomatic phone alerts her that Princess Amara, a foreign royal she once helped during a critical Brussels negotiation, is minutes away from arriving at the wedding as her personal guest.

As the ballroom falls into stunned silence and Princess Amara crosses the entire room, bypassing the head table and the Ashworth family entirely, she stops directly in front of Whitney’s chair at Table 18 and says her name aloud, forcing every guest in the room to reconsider everything they assumed about the quiet sister they’d hidden by the kitchen.