11. Grumpy Cinderella
11
Grumpy Cinderella
ALMA
Cocoa-dusted whipped cream kisses his lower lip. I brush my mouth to signal him but he furrows his brow in confusion. I touch my mouth again and his eyes shift to my lips, lingering on them. A flush, brought on by simple sugars and concentrated Italian caffeine, rises up my neck.
“You have a spot of—” I tap my mouth.
“Ah,” he says. A row of even white teeth pluck at the lip, rolling them until it’s gone. “Did I get it?”
I nod, wiping my hands. My whole soul gropes blindly for a copy of Timeless Manners for the Modern Royal .
The problem that has lurked and hovered in the shadows for the last weeks has returned. Mama taught me to shine a bright light on any difficulty, but I’ve hesitated, afraid of what I’ll see.
“Dragons shrink when you face them,” she used to say. “You just have to be brave enough to do it.” Such were the bedtime stories of Queen Helena.
I can’t wait any longer. I have to look at it while it’s small enough to be vanquished.
The truth is… stultes es . Think it, Alma.
The truth is that the problem is bigger than a kiss. Whenever I’m around Jacob, the peaceful horizon I could once count on begins to tilt. When he smiles or grumps or even breathes near me, I feel myself slip off my axis. I clench my hands under the table.
The way to solve this problem is to exhibit more control. That’s what Mama would say. I school my expression. I don’t let myself look at him. I breathe ordinary color back into my cheeks. I think about how out of place he would be at a royal banquet and how it’s my job to fix his manners.
The dragon withdraws to the shadows.
“When eating in public—” I begin.
The bell over the door jangles, and a lavender-haired girl with elaborate make-up and a massive pink hair bow bursts through the door, her cell phone mounted on the end of a selfie stick. “No line,” she crows, spinning with her back to the display case.
Vede.
I flinch and Jacob covers my hand. What?
My eyes widen. Danger.
It’s a Pixy influencer. We see these people at royal engagements—have learned to lean in for selfies or smile politely as a phone is thrust into our faces. Panic brushes my spine. I promised the head of palace security that I wouldn’t get out of the car—promised him with the earnest heart of a princess who knows the stakes—but here I am with no security detail in the company of the secret crown prince of Vorburg.
So? Jacob gives a half shrug.
Do you know how big the international incident is that I’m about to cause?
Stultes es. Stultes ES. This is what comes of improvising. I imagine Mama laying into me at a family meeting. “Great are the misfortunes of the House of Wolffe to have such princesses,” she’ll say.
Though the influencer is prattling on in Sondish, her purpose must be clear, even to Jacob. “The Warm Kiss,” she enunciates in English, providing a translation of the name of the establishment. If it’s bad to be caught, it’s worse to be caught trying not to be caught. I have to get out of here, but I’m frozen.
Jacob squeezes my hand. “Stay on my left,” he whispers. He gives me a pointed look, collects the box of pastries, holding it near his head, and hauls me to my feet, enveloping me in the smell of earthy aftershave and aged leather.
The dragon is back.
Jacob shields me with his bulk as we cross the checkerboard floor, passing the influencer spinning in whimsical abandon. At the door, he gathers me into the crook of his shoulder and bundles me through in one swift motion. He thrusts the box into my hands, raises the umbrella, and we run through the rain. Misty air seems to sizzle against my feverish skin, but I fly over the cobblestones. We made it. Dominanstid , we made it.
He bundles me into the car, arm flung over my head as he guides me in. Laughing, he slides into the passenger seat, shaking his fingers through his hair. Flecks of cold rain hit the backs of my hands. I grip the wheel and breathe deeply, eyes trained on the gold-lettered sign. The Warm Kiss .
I promised Nils Helmut—looked him straight in the eye as I delivered a predictable, bland itinerary and assured him I could be trusted. Instead of letting me loose in the city, the head of palace security should have tackled me as a threat to the peace of the nation and tasered me in the neck.
“That was almost a disaster,” I say.
“Almost a disaster means it wasn’t a disaster.” Jacob’s smile tips up on one side, inviting me to see the joke.
I can’t. “You’re the crown prince of a semi-hostile government. If you’d been found roving all over Handsel with me, the novelty of it would have been every headline tomorrow, impacting trade negotiations, your first impression on the global stage, and my reputation.”
“Your reputation,” he murmurs. “We wouldn’t want to ruin that.” Jacob clicks the seatbelt in place and glances over. His mouth softens. “There was no way to plan for that.”
I put the car in gear and ease into the road. “That’s no excuse. I’m supposed to plan for the unexpected.” I peer through the rain-lashed windscreen to the blurry lights of the palace on the hill.
“You’re supposed to be superhuman?”
“I’m supposed to know my job. I froze in there.” Vede. He didn’t.
Once we arrive at the Summer Palace, I hand him over to Karl.
“Accents and idioms, today,” Karl informs us. “We’ll spend the next few hours talking.”
Jacob glances over his shoulder as he follows his aide, hands tented in supplication. I can’t help it when my lips twitch. I nod him onward, having no doubt he’ll understand the textures and nuances of the message. Don’t be a baby.
My smile disappears with him, and I retreat to my room, sinking onto the bed to stare hard at the wall. My mother was wrong, and this is a bad time to find that out.
When I was a child, I believed my mother saw everything and everyone, her unblinking stare uncovering injustice, comforting the downtrodden, and encircling her kingdom in a warm maternal gaze. I could rely on her to take care of me and be careful of me, to know my best interests even better than I do. My trust in her judgment has become the foundation of every choice I make.
But she’s wrong about dragons. It would have been better if I hadn’t looked at this one. I remember the weight of Jacob’s hand in the narrow point of my waist. How he recognized the threat posed by the girl with lavender hair and acted. How I forgot everything when he held my hand and pulled me into the rain. He wasn’t dangerous when I didn’t know—when I was determined not to know—that I like him.
Like him. I snort. The old Sondish saying is more accurate. Our roots tangle .
It’s not love but it’s not nothing. I’m a princess at the mouth of a cave, holding a quivering lantern, unwilling to delve deeper. The part I see is too much already.
I sigh and scrub my face in my hands, but when my thoughts refuse to shift, I reach for my knitting, finding a rhythm in the task, and try to work out a paradox.
Mama sees everything, but she didn’t see Jacob coming.
It’s a long night, but when I step through the doors of the Chevres drawing room the next morning, I carry a renewed resolve to do my best for my student, my motherland, and my mother. The silver lining is that, thanks to yesterday’s field trip, I seem to have convinced Jacob of the importance of the clothes he wears—an excellent redoubt from which to bomb the rest of his resistance.
Hearing his step at the door, I try to steel myself and fail. Even in an ill-fitting suit, Jacob catches me off guard.
He performs the greeting smoothly but his eyes narrow as he straightens. “Something wrong?”
Yes. Something is wrong. I was up half the night thinking about how sorry I am that Jacob Gardner is the crown prince of Vorburg. How that means there’s no way he’ll ever kiss me again.
Karl taps on the door, escorting a stocky man with impeccable tailoring. Getting his name required issuing a diplomatic license plate on specious grounds for one man, rubber-stamping a passport for another, and dangling before a third the promise of a favor to be redeemed at a later date.
I turn to Jacob. “Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Tumwater,” I say. “He’s the best-kept secret in London.”
“Secret?” Jacob echoes.
Karl looks serious. “Never give out the name of your tailor, sir.”
I smile. “Together with your aide, he will guide you through the process of expressing your personal style.”
“He’ll be my fairy godmother.” Jacob bites his lip. Worried fingers play with the lapel of his suit, and I want to thread my hand though the crook of his elbow.
As the morning passes, our anxious Cinderella becomes grumpy. “I told you, just put me in whatever everyone else is wearing,” Jacob says, glaring at the swatches of seemingly indistinguishable gray fabric the tailor flings over his shoulder. “It’s just a suit, Karl.”
I rub my temples. “How can you say that when you’ve been wearing the clothing equivalent of a single-use plastic bag?” At this moment, I would kill to be laying the cornerstone of a community recreation center with a little bronze trowel instead of fighting a Vorburgian bear.
Jacob flings the swatches back and crouches in front of my chair. “I’m never going to be—” His gaze sharpens, and he pauses, pouring a glass of water and pressing it into my hands.
I take a long swallow, instantly refreshed, as he continues his protest. “Your brother is a crown prince. He looks fine. Ergo, get me a couple of what he’s wearing, and we call it a day.”
Karl pinches the bridge of his nose, and Caroline enters, bearing a tray of light refreshments.
I look over Jacob’s shoulder, conscious of his nearness—how his arms are braced against my chair and what it must look like. I take another sip of water, maintaining my posture, ignoring him but fitting neatly within the half-circle of his arms. “Caroline, how soon can you bring me a collection of pictures of Prince Noah? I need him in a variety of suits.”
“I have them ready now, ma’am.”
That’s Caroline. A total professional.
Jacob thrusts himself away, and a television emerges from a sleek modern console. Tapping the screen of her tablet, Caroline’s personal ThumTac account pops up on the larger screen with boards titled Family Gifts, Coastal Granny, and Noah.
Noah? I never imagined Caroline using his name. She knows the proper codes of conduct—the titles and the courtesies, the two paces she must follow behind Mama. That’s one of the things the queen appreciates most. Caroline knows her place. The heir to the throne would be the last person on earth to make her forget it.
Intense stillness comes over Caroline until her chosen page loads. “This is at the Ragnar Prize banquet,” she says, speaking matter-of-factly.
The photo was taken the same year I met Pietor. I can see my pale pink gown in the background—the tiara and sashes, the aged astrophysicist who escorted me into the room. Pietor, with his white shirt front and ramrod posture, was a perfect match. I swallow back a knot of humiliation.
“That’s a tuxedo,” Jacob says, raising his arms like a ref dispensing double yellow cards. “I’ll take one of those.”
Caught in a whirlwind of exasperation, I shoot from my chair and flick his forehead. He catches my hand, and we stand stock still—his brow arched, my eyes blinking. I don’t know which of us is more surprised.
I should be thinking of how assaulting Vorburg’s next head of state will impact bilateral investment or the Strategic Coastal Partnership proposal, but I keep forgetting that he isn’t just Jacob.
I keep forgetting that I’m Her Royal Highness Princess Alma. That we haven’t known each other forever. That he’s not someone I should touch without the permission of an ambassador.
I lift my chin. “I’m—”
He rubs his forehead and drops my hand. “Don’t you dare apologize.”
My cheeks burn, but I nod, gesturing to the screen. “Noah favors Italian-made suits with lighter material and a sleek silhouette. He’s got the build for it.”
The words are clinical, but halfway through this explanation I realize I’m staring at Jacob, running my eyes along the breadth of his shoulders. I jerk my gaze away, giving Caroline a blind nod. Carry on.
Caroline pulls up a few more photos of Noah in suits, and Karl points out the unstructured shoulder, high buttons, and tapered waist. These are paparazzi shots, and in all of them, a tall, slim model, dressed in startling high-end fashion, completes the picture.
“Are these recent?” Jacob asks Caroline
“Most of them within the last few months, sir.”
Jacob cocks his head. “Does your brother have commitment issues?”
“We are not going to discuss His Royal Highness’s private life,” I warn.
The clock on the mantel chimes the hour, Caroline bundles the others off to find refreshment, and Jacob braces his arms against the table.
British tailoring. That’s what he should wear. The image of him—properly suited with his expressive face and silky hair—walks into my mind. No pinstripes or flashiness, just substantial materials with a few well-considered touches. Supple pocket squares, rich gold cufflinks. Double breasted? I associate double breasted suits with old aristocrats and Slavic crime lords, but I can picture him in them easily.
“You have to participate,” I scowl, dropping my guard now that there are no witnesses. “Do you want to look like Horst wading out of the harbor?”
“Do you want me to look like Horst wading out of the harbor?”
He’s too close. My hand forms into a fist and I uncurl it, turning to a stack of magazines and leafing through pages like my life depends on it.
Jacob perches against the table, his shoulder brushing mine, as calm as I am agitated. He’s too close.
“Does he trade them out every week?”
“Mm?” I manage.
He points at a collage of Noah and his dinner companions, and I incline my cheek to him, sensing the precise border beyond which are consequences I can’t control.
“A week isn’t even long enough to find out what kind of books they like,” he says.
Did Pietor ever know about my cozy mysteries? About how some of them come with recipes in the back and how I’ve tried a few? No. Once we decided we would suit, our conversations covered timing and logistics. When he told me he liked tropical locations, I went immediately into itinerary mode, asking Uncle Georg for the use of his private island for our honeymoon.
“Maybe he likes variety,” I counter, stacking stacks into new stacks.
“One awkward first date after another. That’s not variety.” He shoves his hands into his pockets.
“No? What is?”
His voice is easy, but I hear how careful he’s being with his words. He can’t hide the effort. Not from me. “Being with someone through every season, the good and the bad, the young and the old, in sickness and in health.”
He isn’t looking at the screen anymore, and the words sink into the narrow space between us, only the ragged remnant making landfall against my ears. Running the boat up the shore. Palms against the sand. Kissing the ground.
I can’t like him. I can’t. But even as I think it, I see the two paths opened up before me. One is well-paved and marked with reflective signposts to pleasant, predictable destinations. The other leads to a dark forest where apple-cheeked little children meet witches and get baked into pies.
I hold a stack of papers like a breastplate, and the dark unknown of the forest path dances on the edge of my vision. “Who would have tagged King Otto’s son as matrimony’s bravest soldier?”
Vede. I regret the careless words as soon as I say them.
He lifts a shoulder like it doesn’t matter. The shrug is a lie. “You always want what you never had.”