4. Runaway Wagon
4
Runaway Wagon
ALMA
“Are we good?” Mama spits. She sails through Caroline’s office and into her own. I follow like a tin can tied to a newlywed’s bumper, my nerves jangling and battered.
“Clara was supposed to be his tutor.” I venture.
The official reason was that my little sister has few official assignments, but I know my mother. Having Clara tutor the prince would mean that the crown prince would be looked after, Clara would discover less free time to spend with her Navy-hero boyfriend, and, in teaching best royal practices, my little sister might be moved to remember what constitutes proper behavior.
Mama stops abruptly. “Plans change.” She lifts her queenly chin. “Putting up with that man is the price of Freja’s hasty elopement, and he wants you. My options are limited.”
He wants me. I shake my head imperceptibly. Not like that. The Crown Prince of Vorburg is sparring with Mama and I’m only a piece to be moved around the board as the game demands.
“Still, it presents an opportunity,” Mama continues. “You can collect valuable information on the Vorburgian mind as we move forward with the trade negotiations.”
Okay. This is the assignment. Turn Jacob Gardner into His Royal Highness Crown Prince Jacob, report significant findings to Mama, and spend day after day with a man who holds a deadly attraction for a significant part of my subconscious.
To get through the next three months, I’ll just have to hit that part over the head with a shovel and bury it in a shallow grave. When King Otto’s royal entourage rolls into town and attempts to soft-power their way into favorable trade conditions, I only hope the wind turbine industry appreciates my sacrifice.
Mama takes her seat behind her desk, leafing through parliamentary papers as she speaks, segmenting her attention like slices of an orange. “He is totally unsuited for royal life, but we can’t afford to be in Vorburg’s debt at this critical stage.” She pauses, hands full. “Did you see his shirtfront?”
I am not expected to answer which is good because, grubby and water-stained as it was, it couldn’t hide his muscled frame.
“If anyone can teach that man how to be a prince, I know you can.” Mama signs a dispatch with her customary flourish. Helena R. Helena Regina. Helena the Queen. “Goodness knows you have your work cut out.”
As it is spoken, so let it be done.
“May I understand why you gave him the impression that I’m engaged?”
Mama’s pen stills but she doesn’t look up. “Are you questioning my judgment, too?”
Too.
Like Clara. Like Freja. Like Ella always has. Like Noah was born to do. Like our father, who has surely earned the right. I’m not like them. Mama has rigid expectations but holds herself to the same high standard she sets for others. It’s fair. It’s motivated by love of country and love of family. I’ve always understood that.
Question her judgment? “No. Of course not.”
On Christmas morning, I brought her the news that my fiancé had been photographed in a compromising situation with an Italian bikini model, the damning pictures texted to me by a friend of a friend. It had been a bad day to deliver bad news.
No one had slept a wink. Freja’s elopement had just hit the papers, and the palace was in chaos. New drafts of Mama’s Christmas speech to the nation were coming in every quarter hour, each taking a slightly different tone on my sister’s rushed wedding. The queen was commanding a war room.
Mama looked at the pictures and cast her eyes to the ceiling. Dominanstid.
“Will you break it off?” she asked. Any other mother would have grabbed the nearest tennis racket, flown to Lijuela, and beaten the wayward fiancé to death. Or offered to. Mama’s eyes were on the political implications for her country first and the personal feelings of her daughter second.
I nodded.
I blame Clara and Freja for my change of heart—for introducing possibilities I hadn’t anticipated. For making my engagement to Pietor look as cheap as a plastic Christmas wreath next to a bough brought in from the forest with its sharp, bright scent, as heavy in my hands as any living thing. For looking so damned happy.
I watched Mama add my burden to the others she carried that morning, and guilt twisted my stomach. She returned the nod, decisive. “I need a few weeks of quiet surrounding the state visit. Freja’s kicked a hornet’s nest, and we’ll be lucky to avoid a referendum about the monarchy, much less having her tossed out of the succession. Secure Pietor’s cooperation,” she directed, holding her hand over the phone receiver. Something in my face had her reaching for a box of tissues and plonking them down in front of me. She had been sympathetic but distracted. “Don’t worry, Alma. I’ll find someone more suitable.”
With her words to Jacob, the plans have changed. I won’t just have to be quiet about my relationship status. I’ll have to wear the engagement ring on my finger and pretend to miss my fiancé, even within the walls of the palace. I release a breath slowly. There wasn’t a speck of luck in that New Year’s kiss.
“The important thing is that His Royal Highness needs to understand that you are strictly out-of-bounds,” Mama continues. “Mark my words, King Otto is shopping for a royal bride.”
“Bride?” My chin jerks.
She stabs a finger in the air. “If they handed that man the crown, he would lose it inside a week, but if they could frame him as Crown Prince Jacob, son-in-law to Her Majesty Queen Helena of Sondmark, he would not be so easily discarded.”
Mama speaks of maneuvers, and I imagine Jacob and I facing one another across a chessboard. The black knight moving against the white rook. Vorburg and Sondmark. We cannot meet unless in battle—no hope of mutual victory.
Mama returns to her papers. “I will not be Otto’s puppet.”
“What is the king like?”
“Passionate and charismatic. But he’s also a shameless womanizer and drinks like a fish.”
“A bad king.”
She puts her pen down and considers the question seriously. “Nothing as simple as that. He suits the national mood of Vorburg, reflecting their ideals of manhood and leadership. He led them through one of the darkest chapters in the country’s history and embodied the heroism and resistance they needed to believe they themselves possessed.”
“A good king.”
Her hand seesaws, one of Père’s mannerisms adopted over thirty years of marriage, and offers me a smile. “An effective king.”
I accept her answer as one of the complicated moral calculations of leadership. “Will the crown prince stay in the Tower Suite?” I ask.
Mama raises a brow. “And host him for dinner every night? Heaven forbid. I put him in Noah’s old rooms.”
Noah’s rooms? Maybe Mama has spent so much time mired in international politics that she forgot the palace floor plan. “Our private quarters are quite small. The suite has a shared sitting room and a kitchen.”
Mama waves her hand. “You hardly use it.”
When she finally excuses me, I execute a tight curtsey, depart the room, and run down the length of the hall, my brain jostling to an aching rhythm. Vede, vede, vede . Everything hurts, but I arrive at my suite in seconds, banging through the door, past the kitchenette, down the short hall, and into the shared sitting room.
It’s not a mess, but my things are everywhere—a favorite paperback mystery, spine cracked, perches open on the arm of the sofa. My knitting, a craft I’m genuinely terrible at, spills out of a basket on the floor. A graphic hoodie, a Christmas gift from Ella reading “Beauty” on the front, “Beast” on the back, hangs over a chair. I cram these into a basket and get on my knees to reach under the coffee table for a fuzzy slipper. I’m so focused on my task that I don’t register another presence until a pair of slip-on dress shoes one might generously describe as ‘vegan leather’ crowds my vision.
I yelp and scramble away, landing on my backside as the basket spills at our feet.
Crown Prince Jacob crouches down to eye level. “Hey.”
Blood drains to my toes, but he picks up my things and scoops them into the basket—calmly, comfortably—and holds out his hand. What would a princess do? I scramble to my feet—gracefully, royally—and step away as far as I can, taking the basket from him. “Good morning, Your Royal Highness.”
This formality amuses him. Though the man is in a suit, he has an aged, canvas duffle bag slung over his shoulder which he drops onto the table. “I thought this was my room.”
Ignoring the fullness of his lips and the laughter in his eyes, I try to remember that the manufacturing sector of Sondmark needs me now. If my mission is to fix this man, I’m determined to see only his flaws.
Item One: He can’t ask questions disguised as statements. As crown prince, his communication will have to be both diplomatic and direct.
Item Two: There will be no crouching over unsuspecting princesses. It’s unsettling.
I place the basket on a side table, moving as though my knees and ankles are tied with invisible string.
“You are in the right place.” I put my hand out and give him my best Alma-of-the-people smile—the one I employ when someone wants a selfie and their phone takes forever to get to the point. It’s a smile that says, “I enjoy this. It is pleasant to us. In such a manner, I could sail into the eternal sunset forever.”
As soon as he touches me, a frisson of attraction brushes every nerve and thousands of impressions queue for my notice. I beckon a single safe thought forward to speak for them all. His skin is rough.
Item Three: Moisturize.
“It looks like your place,” he says, glancing around.
I gesture, palm up, at Noah’s door. “The rooms are adjoining. You will be there and I”—I sweep my hand around to gesture at my own door—“will be here. This area,” I say, employing both hands, “isn’t anything more than a common pass-through.”
I must look like a first-class flight attendant performing a pre-flight safety check, and he grins.
Item Four: Fix the smile.
As a royal figure, he’ll have to find one that is at once warm and faintly unapproachable. One that doesn’t ignite the cotton fluff in my brain, lodge under my rib cage, and make me want to lean into him. Imagine an entire country full of women subjected to a smile like that on a regular basis.
“Are you going to show me where everything is?” he asks.
I lead him to the narrow galley kitchen, and he looks around, hands searching for the back pockets of his jeans. Finding the smoothness of a pair of suit pants, they drop to his sides.
“Housekeeping will stock the refrigerator for you and order any supplies you need,” I cough, dragging my eyes away from the sight. “You’ll be free to cook for yourself as much as you like. Your aide will have those details.”
“We won’t have to work out a schedule?”
“Schedule?” I ask, straightening a calendar.
“You cook from five to six on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I take Wednesdays at midnight under a gibbous moon and a rising tide—that kind of thing. Most roommates—”
“We’re not roommates,” I correct. “Think of this as a hallway. I don’t use the kitchen. It’s all yours.”
“Really?” He touches an old birthday present from Clara with the tip of his finger, eyes dancing. It’s a novelty coffee mug with a picture of me doing exaggerated Mick Jagger duck lips and a speech bubble that reads, “Hey. You. Get off of my crown.”
“I get why you might want to avoid me,” he says.
I back away several paces. “Why would I want to avoid you?”
His gaze holds mine too long to be innocent. You know why. But he places a hand on his chest. “Vorburg. I’m the enemy.”
“Nonsense.” I clear my throat and pivot, trying to avoid the temptation to be fidgety or apologetic. “If you have any questions, you only have to dial Housekeeping.”
“Will they speak Vorburgian?”
I want to laugh. No one in Sondmark speaks Vorburgian on purpose. “Anyone in the palace who deals with foreign guests will have an excellent grasp of English.”
He pauses to examine the door frame into his suite. Original Ostphalian era workmanship, the door is slightly rounded at the upper corners and comes to a gentle point at the top. He opens and shuts it several times to the accompanying sound of wood rubbing against wood.
“Does your room match mine?” he asks.
A rookie question. “In a 500-year-old palace, nothing matches. The walls aren’t plumb, the corners aren’t square. The best strategy is to adapt to it rather than expect it to adapt to us.”
This is the reality of monarchy, Crown Prince Jacob. Let the lessons commence.
He leans up against the door jamb, legs crossed at the ankles.
“You didn’t know who I was, did you?” he says. “Last night.”
There it is. I look around the room—my own small kingdom. A deep sofa faces two wing chairs, and a fire crackles in the hearth. An old dollhouse sits on a raised platform next to a long bench stacked with mismatched feather pillows. In the tall casement windows, the aged glass hangs heavily in each diamond pane, distorting the light and images without.
The parkland beyond is snow-covered and peaceful, and I wish I were running the springy trails woven through the woods. You can run from almost anything.
Not this. The kiss can’t be ignored, so it must be dealt with.
I square my shoulders. “I didn’t know. I was not in my right mind, but even so, I was wrong to kiss you, no matter who you turned out to be. I’d like to apologize.” There.
He frowns, looking as fierce as his Vor ancestors—minus the face tattoos and battle nudity—but he probably doesn’t know how thorough my apologies can be. I’ve had training.
“I regret that you were caught up—” No, Alma. No passive voice. No euphemisms. “I regret kissing you. It was—”
Jacob bumps away from the door and plucks a bright pink sticky note off a wastepaper basket. “ Svet ,” he says, holding it up. It’s my own penmanship.
“Oh,” I say, derailed, “that’s ‘garbage’ in the Himmelstein dialect.”
“Your fiancé is from Himmelstein.”
I persevere. “I had no intention of kissing anyone—”
“Because you’re engaged.”
My mother does this, too—strips things down to their most essential essence, getting to the heart of the matter even when flunkies and courtiers want to wrap their monarch in a veil of fog.
I have to fall back on one of my mother’s favorite sayings, Never dwell, never tell, but I hate it. He’ll think Princess Alma is unfaithful. Disloyal. Reckless. My eyes close for a second but, when I open them, I am resolved.
“It was inexcusable,” I say. “I wasn’t careful of the amount of champagne I consumed—”
“Where’s your ring?” His gaze slips to my finger.
I clasp my right hand over my left, and my stomach feels soft and sick. “Opals aren’t meant to be worn everyday. They damage too easily.”
“Svet ,” he repeats, leaning over the wastebasket, and pushes his thumb across the sticky strip. When he turns to me, the note slips off again, falling to the floor. “Is there more to your little speech?”
“Only that I sincerely ask for your forgiveness and want to assure you it will never happen again.” I’m trying to sound sincere and self-contained, but I can’t seem to relax.
He swallows. “Nothing to forgive. What about…what’s his name? Pietor? Should I send him a text? Explain about the fireworks and the bad luck? He wouldn’t have wanted you to have bad luck.”
Thinking of Pietor makes me want to throw something. “He’s fine.” I strangle the impulse with well-modulated breathing. “You must be feeling tired from your journey, and I don’t want to keep you from getting settled.”
Jacob grins. “Are you going to teach me how to do that? Tell me to push off but make it seem like you’re doing me a favor.”
There’s something infectious about his smiles. They make me want to return them, smiling with my whole chest, like a child with bunched cheeks and squinty eyes. I would look silly.
Before I can answer, our front door slams open, and my sister Ella comes bounding through. I step back, banging against the hard wall of Jacob’s chest. He grips my elbows, keeping me on my feet and nearly enclosing me in his arms.
The contact is brief. Familiar.
“The prince is—” Ella skids to a stop and blinks up at Jacob.“—here,” she finishes. Her hand shields the lower half of her face and to me she mouths, “Hot.”
Jacob’s laugh is unrestrained. “Call me Jacob,” he says.
Ella’s fingers prance together. “You’re the crown prince of Vorburg.”
He cups a hand around the back of his neck. “That’s what they tell me.”
“I have so many questions—”
I turn Ella and propel her from the room.
“His Royal Highness has unpacking to do,” I say, slipping into my familiar role as big sister and law-giver. “There will be lots of time to get to know each other.”
Out.
She spins out of my grasp. “Can I get a picture?”
Jacob glances at me over her head and pushes his hair back, loosening the loop. A fall of hair kisses his lips and my fingers curl into my palms. Stultes es. We’ll have to fix that, too.
“Is that going to break a rule?” he asks.
His question relegates me to being a warden, and I register the soft pressure of disappointment. As with all emotions, it will pass if I ignore it. “She’s not going to post it in public. Go ahead.”
Jacob swipes Ella’s phone, holding it at arm’s length for a selfie as he angles her within the frame. She perches behind him on her tiptoes, hands resting on his shoulder. For the app, she’ll cut herself out of the profile picture.
“Good?” he asks.
She examines the picture and makes a sound at the back of her throat. “My hair’s doing its thing today.”
“It looks great, Your…” His brow lifts. “…Majesty?”
My sister laughs. “Not in this country. You can call me Ella. I’m across the landing and two doors down on the right. Come find me when you need a break. We can fire up Runaway Wagon to blow off steam. You play?”
Runaway Wagon is a racing video game. The medieval wagons are heaped with vegetables, the load tipping precariously as the player pilots the goods down the mountain course and into a market town, avoiding competition-adverse trade guilds and wealth-redistributing bandit gangs. Such are the morsels of information one can glean from Ella, simply by osmosis.
“Doesn’t everyone?” Jacob holds up a fist and Ella gives it a bump.
Watching them, I register a pang of jealousy. Two whole minutes and they already know how to be friends. With me, he is tense, watchful. I wish—but no. I bite the edge of my lip. Everyone in my family wishes they had Ella’s easy touch with strangers.
“All right. I won’t keep you,” Ella says, giving a tiny salute.
Jacob stares at the empty doorway, scratching his neck. “She did it, too—took off and made it sound like a personal favor.” He turns to me and drops his hand. “Do you want to come over and help me figure out the shower knobs?”
“Another time. I’m sure you have a lot to do,” I say.
He shakes his head, a smile tucking one cheek. “It’s like a superpower.” He grabs his duffel bag and heads to his suite. I watch the effortless play of his muscles across his back with the tingly sensation of standing on the edge of a cliff, gusts of wind rocking me on my feet.
“You look like you hit it off with Ella,” I call, almost desperate. “It’s not too late to request a different tutor.”
He tosses the bag into his room and gives me a long, penetrating look.
“Pass.”