2. Hands Off
2
Hands Off
JACOB
For one frozen second, as fireworks explode over the Handsel valley, the girl and I watch each other, light touching the soft curves of her face. A midnight kiss was not on my bingo card.
All the way through the forest, Karl was relentless about royal protocol and keeping to the timetable, every setback and delay making him more anxious. As soon as we arrived and were escorted to our suite, he became absorbed by a complicated skincare routine, and I slipped away, desperate for fresh air and two minutes of silence.
I’m a grown man. I wasn’t going to get into trouble. I was going to keep my hands off the valuables.
I look down. One hand holds this girl around the waist. The other rests on her shoulder, our skin warmed by the contact as her scent fills the air.
What the hell just happened?
I open my mouth to ask, but her expression turns to one of surprise mixed with horror. She peels herself out of my arms and ducks around me, latching the window closed, extinguishing the wind with a flick of her wrist.
“Happy New Year,” she murmurs, running away before I can say a word.
There’s nothing to do but return to the suite, assure an anxious Karl that I haven’t done anything to cause an international incident, and lie awake for hours, wondering when I’m going to see her again.
When morning comes, I wake to the familiar sounds of my alarm—the clashing drums and resonant, Viking vocals of Thorock—and throw an arm over my face.
“Welcome to Sondmark, Your Royal Highness.”
I bite back the warning he’ll only ignore. Don’t call me that.
Karl shoves the drapes aside, his voice cutting me away from the illusion that I might be in the flat situated above my workshop on the outskirts of Djolny, nursing a cup of coffee and going over my accounts before the day’s work. It cuts me away from the pretense that I’m still plain Jacob Gardner, dual citizen, a man who might have lived in Europe since he was thirteen but whose roots belong in Oregon.
I silence the music and grin into the crook of my elbow. No matter who I am, I’ve already had an unforgettable welcome. My mind retraces the curve of her back as she leaned into me, remembering her laughing eyes and the way she asked to be kissed.
But Karl won’t quit fussing around the room, making pretentious adjustments suited to my new title. Finally, my feet hit the floor. “ Chol nia , Karl. Can you give it a rest?”
“Never, sir. I took the liberty of setting my alarm an hour before your own. Your robe?” he asks, turning a sour smile on my pair of flannel pajama bottoms. He holds the robe open, but I scowl and snatch it out of his hands.
“My name is Jacob,” I say, shrugging it over my shoulders.
Karl bows. I swear the zekle looks for reasons to do it. “Of course, sir.”
A gust of wind rattles the windowpane and I wander over, bracing my hands on the frame to inspect my view. Handsel is a mix of modern skyscrapers, orderly rows of townhouses, and public squares. Parish churches with narrow, elegant steeples dot the valley floor, but the stony gray heft and flying buttresses of Roslav Cathedral dominate the center of town.
We can’t talk about royal weddings.
I run a thumb along my lower lip and cover a smile.
“Sir?” Karl asks.
My hand drops, curling into a fist. “The nudists are going to freeze their toes off,” I say, pointing at the whitecaps in the harbor. “It’ll be a cold New Year’s Day plunge.”
My answer disguises my one, driving thought. Who is that girl, and how do I meet her again?
Karl clears his throat. “We don’t have much time, sir,” he says, opening a leather portfolio. “Your meeting with Her Majesty The Queen begins in little more than an hour. In that time, you’ll need to have breakfast, shower, shave, and dress before we present ourselves.”
“I’m not shaving.” I’m surprised he hasn’t brought in a barber to cut my hair, too. Karl thinks he’ll wear me down with repeated asking. Never.
Even though I’m the crown prince of Vorburg, that’s one decision I can still make.
My American mother, an otherwise sane woman, waged a battle in the Vorburgian courts, taking the better part of two decades, to have me acknowledged as King Otto’s biological son. Her depositions and legal filings seemed a strange hobby—one that took up half the dining room table but required nothing more of me than a careless prick of the finger—until the sudden decision legally declaring me King Otto’s child, a prince of the blood, and his only heir.
Who knows what Mom hoped for when she moved us to Vorburg and started all this? A house? Money? For my father to take an interest in his biological son? She couldn’t have imagined a victory of this magnitude.
Legal or not, no royal command or parliamentary edict could’ve persuaded me to become the heir to a kingdom I only half belong to. But Mom cried when the verdict was read.
She doesn’t cry for anything.
Karl takes a pen and strikes the item off his agenda. “If you’re not shaving, we have more time to acquaint you with the situation in Sondmark. You are woefully unprepared for your meeting with Her Majesty.”
“I had deadlines to meet,” I remind him. “Clients I had to satisfy.”
“A crown prince doesn’t have clients.” My aide pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s not yet 8 AM and I’ve destroyed his patience. A new record.
“I appreciate that the king let me fulfill the outstanding orders. It’s a shame I lost a finger.” I hold my hand up, bending a knuckle. Karl blanches. I grin, unfolding the digit.
“Sir,” he scolds. He can’t be more than a year or two older than me, but he sounds like an old man meeting God, prepared with notes on how to order the universe. He clears his throat. “Her Majesty Queen Helena has reigned for over thirty years. She has one son and four daughters.”
“Names?” I ask. I wonder if the girl from last night is someone like Karl—a royal aide, scurrying somewhere in the palace with a sheaf of papers and her own agenda. No. I can’t imagine someone like Karl getting tipsy, even on New Year’s Eve.
Karl holds up a tablet. “This is Crown Prince Noah. He’s unmarried and hasn’t had a serious relationship in several years. The queen will only approve of the right sort of consort.” He swipes his finger. “Princess Ella. She’s a bit of a rebel.”
The picture shows a smiling girl with a curvy figure and a bright shock of curly red hair. I like her already.
Swipe. “Her twin is Princess Freja.” This time, the girl is tall and slim, her hair straight, and her expression something out of a medieval triptych—the Virgin Mary slowly finishing her chapter while Gabriel the archangel waits impatiently in an adjoining room.
I look over my shoulder as I make the bed. “This is the one who eloped last week?”
Karl gives me an approving nod. The fact that Freja’s wedding took place in a Vorburgian chapel sparked off a crisis between our countries. It’s the reason I’m in Sondmark.
“She doesn’t look like someone who would get carried away by emotion. Was he rich?”
“Hardly. I urge you not to say anything about the wedding to Her Majesty.” Karl suggests. “Avoid the topic altogether unless she introduces it. The Sondish are easily irritated when it comes to Vorburg, and this needs a light touch.”
I don’t need a reminder about light touches from a man who has never attempted to inlay birch in a mahogany panel. Good craftsmanship requires precision. The palace, for instance— I glance to the ceiling, surprised to see that the round room is offset from the central spire by at least a foot. Careless. Well, my point still stands.
Karl swipes to yet another princess—young, very girl-next-door. “Princess Clara. She’s dating a Navy officer.”
“Her mother approved?” I ask, shaking the pillows in their cases.
“Unlikely. She’s also currently suing the press for breach of privacy. Queen Helena has her hands full.” Karl flips the cover closed.
“You said four daughters,” I say, stretching my arms over my head with a huge yawn.
“Mm?” Karl clicks his tongue, scolding himself. “I got them out of order.” Giving another swipe, he holds the tablet out.
I glance at the screen in a cursory way and feel the recognition in my body first—in the way my stomach tightens and my pulse pounds. That’s her. I snatch the tablet out of his hands, fingers dragging across the screen and magnifying the image until I’m certain. Yes. That’s her.
“Who is this?”
“Princess Alma.” His answer is prompt, and even though I’m expecting it, the word ‘princess’ is like a jab to the gut, knocking the air from my lungs. “She’s the eldest of the girls.”
“Was this taken at an official event?” I snap.
Karl leans in. “Yes, the Monument Day observances last year.”
The girl from last night is wearing a wide-brimmed hat and her face is covered in a veil, brown hair swept to the side in a knot. Her face is stiff and ceremonial. Her clothes are black and fit like a glove. Even her high-heeled shoes are perfectly aligned, each toe just kissing a line in the pavement.
I try to merge the images—the one on the screen and the one in my memory. The one who looks like she’s carved out of marble and the one who stole my breath. I shake my head and toss the tablet on the bed. “What’s her deal?”
“Deal?” he echoes, plucking it up.
“You said the queen has her hands full.” I am working very hard to sound like I don’t care. “What headaches does this one cause?” Does she wander the palace after a couple glasses of champagne, looking for strange men to cast under her spell?
Karl actually laughs. “Princess Alma is the perfect princess. The Foreign Office has intel on each member of the Sondish royal family, and this one has never stepped a toe out of line.” He looks me over, his gaze lingering pointedly on my bedhead. “If you want to take any royal figure as your model for correct behavior, you would do well to choose her. Now, sir,” Karl claps lightly, “we must respect the schedule.”
I head to the shower, where the fittings are spacious and the water pressure is good. I’m jealous. The royal residence in Vorburg, Djolny Castle, has four ghosts and a time-traveling witch. As a proper fortress, it comes complete with fire-stained walls, narrow gates, stumble stairs, and thick parapets atop which my ancestors displayed the severed heads of their enemies. On one of my brief visits, the castle tried to kill me three times.
I lather and rinse, cutting the hot stream of water, and brace myself against the tiles. The girl last night kissed me. When I held her, she fit. In an ordinary world, Jacob Gardner would get her number. What’s Crown Prince Jacob supposed to do?
I wonder what the chances are that the girl in that unreal photograph has a twin they hide in the attics and let out for parties. Maybe I should find an ax and start knocking down doors.
With a frown, I reach for a towel. No matter what organically-sourced, nitrogen-dense fertilizer Karl keeps shoveling about my titles and position, a princess is too rich for my blood.
“Seven minutes til eight,” Karl calls through the door.
I speed through the basics of hygiene, pulling most of my hair back into a confining loop, and throw on some clothes, returning to the suite.
“You said you had a suit.” Karl grips the back of a chair.
I look down at the blue suit, purchased from a secondhand shop for when I need something to wear at weddings and funerals. “This is a suit. It’s a classic,” I explain.
Karl inhales slowly. “From when? The Cold War?”
At least it’s my own. During these last few weeks, I’ve been slow to accept my father’s money. Slow to let his courtiers make me into someone I’m not.
Karl pulls a chair out, herding me to the breakfast table. “It’s better than what you arrived in. We’re incredibly lucky to get a second chance to make a first impression.”
“It would have been fine.”
Karl shudders. “You looked like an auto mechanic.”
I snap the napkin out of its folds and toss it next to my plate. “One of us crossed a snowy mountain pass in leather-soled dress shoes. But sure, I’m the crazy one.”
“You’re the heir to the throne of Vorburg. I should have seen to our safety.”
I glance at Karl’s starched collar, the suit that whispers about inherited generational wealth, and the shine on his fingernails. If I had waited for him to see to our safety, he would have died in the snow. I would have had to eat him.
Karl checks his wristwatch. “It’s time for me to meet with the queen’s secretary. You are to check your appearance before you leave that door. Your teeth. Your hair. Put on your suit coat and adjust your cuffs...such as they are.”
“I’ve dressed myself before, Karl. Every day for thirty years.” Nothing I say eases the tight, anxious look in his eyes.
“Teeth. Hair. You move in five minutes, sir,” he says, setting a checklist at my elbow, along with an electric timer.
He gets in another bow before he goes, and I wolf down the eggs and sausage. I finish up by spreading cream on a bun, spooning a fat dollop of strawberry jam over the top. The jam slips, landing on the silk tie Karl conjured. It features the colors of Vorburg’s national flag, white and green representing snow and forest.
“ Chol nia .” I swipe at it, spreading the mess. Now it looks like a deer has been shot and field dressed in the forest. I dip a napkin in a glass of water, blotting in what I imagine is the correct way. It is not.
The timer beeps insistently. I silence it, run a sucking tongue along the front of my teeth, scrape strands of hair away from my face, don my jacket, and rip the tie off my neck, wadding it into a pocket.
When I find Karl, he takes one glance at the state of my shirt and looks as though I wandered into his medieval village with open sores and a suspicious cough.
On the other hand, the queen’s secretary, Vrouw Tiele, gives me a greeting and a brief nod, leading us into the administration wing. I shoot Karl a bland smile. See? It’s fine. No one is bothered.
“I hope you rested well,” she murmurs. “Her Majesty is looking forward to making your acquaintance.”
A big, fat, diplomatic lie. After Princess Freja eloped in The Stranger’s Parish, a chapel located in Handsel but on the grounds of the Vorburg embassy, my father pounced. Sondmark, our closest neighbor and oldest enemy, owed him a favor for the lapse in protocol. On my first mission as crown prince, I’m here to collect.
“We’ve got those Sondish zekle right where we want them,” he said. “We have to press our advantage while they’re swimming in humiliation. An elopement. Ha!” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “The queen’s guts will be melting. She’s going to wish you had never been born.”
I gave him a cold smile. “It won’t be the first time my existence represented an inconvenience for a European monarch.”
My father, a stranger to shame, laughed at that.
When we halt in front of a pair of white and gold baroque doors, Vrouw Tiele flashes me a gentle smile before throwing them wide and announcing the title. His. Royal. Highness. Jacob. Crown. Prince. Of. Vorburg. Every word is a chisel, carving me into shape, each strike painful and gouging.
How can I live up to it? I can’t. I enter the room like the queen of Sondmark is just another client employing me to build fitted bookshelves. I will be respectful, secure in the knowledge that I’ve spent long years of apprenticeship learning my craft.
Her penetrating blue eyes regard me as I cross the room, and with every step I am judged.
That’s fine. It’s good to know how it is right from the start. I’m an illegitimate son transformed by opaque legal processes into someone she has to condescend to notice. I’m a novelty—and not a welcome one. No necktie was ever going to hide these facts.
Queen Helena rises, and I bow. That’s the one thing Karl managed to pound into my thick skull as we navigated into Handsel last night. “Royal heirs bow to reigning monarchs. It doesn’t matter that she’s not your queen or that you’re in her home territory and that she’s the host. She outranks you. You must bow.”
The bow is awkward. I’ve performed two or three of them before this week, and every time I feel like I’ve wandered into a children’s puppet show. Act One: The Whiskered Walrus pays his respects to the Queen of the Ocean.
“Would you care for tea?” she offers when we’re seated. “Coffee?”
I grin—the wide American smile Karl disapproves of. “No, thanks. I just ate.”
Her eyes flick to my shirtfront but she clasps her hands. “I understand you’re new to royal life. How are you finding things?”
It’s ridiculous to talk to the queen of Sondmark like we have anything in common. “I’m getting used to it.”
“As you assume your new duties, we cannot help but feel that Sondmark, being such a close ally, should aid you in some way.”
She uses soft generalities, but I’m a carpenter and know better than to let things rattle about, unsecured. “You know why my father sent me,” I reply. I nod at the secretary sitting primly on the periphery of the room and smile. “I bet Vrouw Tiele has been busy making the logistics happen.”
My blunt words bring a brief flash of irritation to the queen’s eyes. “She has, indeed. I understand you need to get up to speed on royal protocol before the state visit.” Her expression is polite, but I sense the control beneath it. “Twelve weeks between now and then. It’s interesting that His Majesty should choose such a sensitive time to introduce his only son to Vorburg and the international community.”
“That’s King Otto, for you.” I shrug away the implications of having a father who doesn’t hesitate to use his son as a pawn.
The queen nods. “You will be placed in Prince Noah’s former suite for the duration of your visit. Your aide will be lodged on the next floor up. This will enable you to come and go as you like, prepare your own meals, and have a degree of independence you will, no doubt, appreciate.”
Stay clear of me and my family. The words might as well have been shot out of a cannon. Vrouw Tiele passes a binder of materials to Karl.
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s generous. I’m supposed to choose a tutor.”
“Your choices are limited. Crown Prince Noah’s schedule will be full in advance of the state visit. Princess Freja is still on her honeymoon.”
I remember my father’s advice, doled out in Djolny Castle as he perched on the edge of a squat chair, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow and a tumbler of vodka resting on his knee. It was the first time I met him after the legal decision. The first time I met him as his acknowledged son. His personal physician listened to his lungs with a stethoscope located and relocated across his back, the pink and white skin as wholesome as a freshly scrubbed baby.
“Disgustingly healthy,” the doctor pronounced before rolling up his tools and leaving.
King Otto pushed his sleeves down, absent-mindedly slotting a cufflink through a hole. “I like the look of you,” he said, eyes on his wrist. “You have a chance if you play your cards the right way in Sondmark. The middle girl wants out, and you might be the vehicle she’s looking for. You could do far worse.”
“Sir?” He’s my king. I returned to Oregon during the summers and holidays, but Vorburg has been my home since I was 13. My father’s picture was on the wall of every classroom and post office in the country. I couldn’t forget. “Far worse for what?”
He looked up, his eyes suddenly sharp. “Marriage.”
The word was a joke. It had to be. “I’m not looking for a wife.”
“You damned well should be. You’re my son if I say you’re my son, but to my people,” my father didn’t pause as he delivered the rough verdict, “you’re a bastard—a lowborn bastard. Get yourself a wife with an old title and a big tiara. Show her off and give us a bit of glamour. It’ll go a long way to securing your place.”
I realize now that he must have been talking about Ella, the rebel.
Queen Helena is trying to herd me in another direction. “Princess Clara has the lightest schedule and would be—”
The trouble with woodworking is that you can measure and plan and cut on the right side of the line and still have to bash the pieces together with a rubber mallet. Everyone knows I don’t fit here, and in my mind’s eye, I see the queen reaching for the tool that will bash me into her own plans.
I think of the last time I fit—slotting into position as softly as a kiss. My jaw hardens. “I’ll take Alma.”