14. Usual Style
14
Usual Style
ALMA
Jacob’s arm tightens around my waist, and my breathing becomes erratic. Hauled up against his chest, I want to forget that Pietor exists.
“Alma,” Pietor snaps.
I toss the gloves on the counter, jam his engagement ring onto my finger, and drag myself out of Jacob’s arms.
I dredge up a smile. “This is a surprise.”
“I see that, darling,” Pietor answers, not sparing me a glance as he stares down Jacob.
The testosterone standoff ignites something within me. My cheating ex-fiancé is supposed to be in another country, making love to his causes and any adjacent models. Instead, he’s here, littering hollow endearments like trash along a shoreline.
I lean up to kiss him, exhaling the brine of the North Sea into his face, and he lurches back, throwing an arm across his mouth. A fun geographical fact is that Himmelstein is completely landlocked. They have lots of root vegetables, but not a lot of pickled herring.
He thrusts me away, nostrils flaring. “Darling,” he grinds out, “I’ll wait in the sitting room while you tidy yourself.”
I look over to see Jacob lounging easily against our kitchen counter. He’s been like a sponge this month, absorbing the astonishing amount of information I’ve thrown at him, filing it away for later use. I know that intent, sharp-eyed look. He’s absorbing now.
“Don’t mind me,” he says, flipping a hand towel over his shoulder. “I’ll just be in my room.”
Not happening. The old Ostphalian door is nowhere near thick enough for my peace of mind.
“We’ll go downstairs,” I say, gripping Pietor by the arm. The arm is muscled, no doubt hardened by weeks at sea in a high-tech rowboat, plying his oar to the other side of the world. I wish he’d kept rowing.
Halfway out the door, Jacob halts me with a question, a mischievous light dancing in his eyes. “You want me to wash up after us?”
“ Zekle ,” I hiss.
His low laugh follows me from the door and when I catch up to Pietor, my color is high.
My official fiancé tucks my hand through the crook of his elbow. “He’s washing up after the both of you? You wasted no time finding companionship,” he says. “He’s rougher than your usual style.”
A Sondish princess is supposed to be precise and modest, representing the monarchy as the queen wishes and making room for her to participate in the vital work of governance. I imagine the headlines if I were to push him down the stairs. “Usual style?” I murmur. “I can’t hope to achieve the numbers you have.”
“You’re not still upset?”
We enter an anteroom used to house cloaks and hats when Mama throws a ball. How fitting. The engagement between Pietor and I has been a similarly serviceable article, tailored to fit the monarchy.
Mama placed him next to me at the Ragnar Prize banquet, and our conversation found its way to his recent trip to the Arctic to bring awareness to organic pollutants building up in the fatty tissue of Arctic animals.
Between the mushroom-wrapped veal and the apple sorbet, we discreetly bent over his phone, scrolling through his Pixy feed: Pietor crouching next to a harp seal. Pietor standing on a glacier. Pietor’s beard covered in ice, his blue eyes gazing brilliantly at the camera.
He ticked all the boxes. He was titled, serious about global issues, philanthropic, and aristocrat-handsome—the kind of handsome which balances out the risks of the Hapsburg chin and potential for genetic blood-diseases with the likelihood of obscene wealth and access to heirloom jewels.
Given the long history of Sondish monarchs, I never expected a happily-ever-after, but as long as our union never included being bricked up in an abandoned monastery by a husband-king in the grip of syphilitic madness, I thought I could handle it.
While some of my old classmates dreamed of finding love and others of being a first wife with an ironclad prenup, I aimed for a good working partnership with a man who would never make me ashamed to hold my head up in public. Mama and Père, as fractured as they are now, have that.
I look at the man who once held my future in his careless hands.
“Your family has been in the news,” he says, leaning against the mantel. “Clara is fighting in the courts. Freja ran off with an immigrant.” He lifts a lazy brow.
“My sisters are no longer your concern,” I cut him off.
He plucks at the folds of his pocket square. “As long as you wear my ring, they are. Your mother is going to find herself with a referendum on the monarchy if she doesn’t take care.”
“Leave my mother out of this,” I warn. “I ask only that you keep our break-up discreet until after the state visit. Consider it your debt for the mess you caused.”
“I caused? I was doing conservation work for an impoverished nation while my fiancée has been running around with a man who looks like he has a promising future in waste management.” Pietor pulls an exaggerated yikes face, the tendons of his neck pulling. “What a headline that would be.”
My veins run with the blood of warrior queens, and when I hear Pietor threatening exposure, my reaction is violent, gut-deep, and nothing to do with protecting my family from scandal.
Don’t touch Jacob.
I am close to ripping a medieval weapon off the wall, dragging the tip across these marble floors, and pressing it to his neck. Pietor is playing on dangerous ground.
I close my eyes and hear the voice of my old nanny, Poppy Fforde-Hughes. What does a princess do? She uses her words.
I breathe, guiding Pietor away from the topic of Jacob. “Those pictures were innocent?”
Pietor shuffles away from the mantel. “Gabriella, who is a noted humanitarian, by the way, was covered in sand. I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“Yes. I could tell by the way your tongue was down her throat.”
Pietor’s eyes sparkle. “One might begin to think you were jealous.”
I enunciate clearly. “Only if one was an idiot.”
Pietor turns to the mirror above the fireplace, brushing aside the hair with the back of a pinkie. “My…extracurricular activities are no reason to break it off.” He tips his head and looks at me through the mirror. “You once called this a suitable arrangement. That’s one thing I’ve always admired about you—that you don’t tell yourself fairy tales. I trust that once your ego has recovered, our sensible Alma will return. You’ll agree with me that it’s best to keep things as they are.”
“No.” It’s a complete sentence.
Pietor lifts a hand. “It’s not so simple. Our engagement has been a godsend to my country.”
The Grand Duchy of Himmelstein isn’t merely land. It’s a corporation, of sorts, funneling vast amounts of wealth via high-end holiday homes, farming, residential and commercial rents, and even a prison, into the pockets of its CEO, Rolf, the Grand Duke of Himmelstein. Pietor, as his heir, is being groomed to take over these holdings.
“Himmelstein is doing well,” I say. Mama and a fleet of accountants made sure of that.
He shrugs. “You never know when you’ll get a bad harvest or a pandemic. Since our engagement, banks have been lining up to offer low-interest loans—perfect seed money to fuel long-term investments and diversify our portfolio. It’s not good business to break things off at this critical stage, Alma.”
“It’s good business for me.”
“Is it, though?” He chuckles. “These trade talks between Sondmark and Vorburg are at a vulnerable point. Didn’t you almost go to war over mackerel?”
“Scallops,” I snap.
He gives a mocking half-bow. “You don’t need the distraction of a broken engagement.”
“This is why we asked for your silence until the talks are concluded.”
Pietor tips his head. “You need more than my silence. I came through Queen Magda International Airport, and by tomorrow morning, the whole country will know I’m back. If I’m not seen at your side, playing the doting fiancé, I don’t give us more than a couple of weeks before we start showing up as blind items. Three before people start conjuring conspiracy theories. Neither of us can afford for news to leak.”
I hate that Pietor is right. If our break-up gets ugly—if he goes public about my mysterious ‘companion’ and I lob a volley about Our Sainted Lady of the Lip Fillers—my mother will be sidelined during the negotiations, and they will be left in the care of her bumbling, offensive prime minister. Everything I care about will be damaged. My queen. Sondmark. Jacob.
I shake my head and make a correction. Sondmark’s indispensable ties to Vorburg. Those will be damaged.
My mother would negotiate her way out of this mess, and I’m not her daughter for nothing. “What do you want?”
A light leaps in Pietor’s eyes. “If I can’t have you back”—a brow lifts but his delusion receives no encouragement—“I need us to appear as a happy couple. We’ll do press interviews, gala appearances…the usual. In order to reassure investors and bankers, I can’t have any tapering off.”
What will it cost me, being at Pietor’s side, behaving as though I’m in love with him? Pretending. I release a slow breath. If I can make this deal, it would be one less thing Mama has to handle.
“You can carry on with the trash collector in private,” Pietor offers.
My head snaps up. “You drag him into this and the deal is off,” I say, surprising myself. Every negotiation has deal-breakers, but they should be few and confined only to the most vital things. How did Jacob become mine?
“Excellent,” Pietor answers, passing me on his way to the door. “I’ll be in contact soon.”
I’m restless when I return to the suite. The kitchen is pristine, and I flick off the lights. The worst thing about Pietor is that I’m a conservationist at heart, striving to leave no trace when I visit forests and nature preserves. It’s one of the facets that drew me to him. But seeing him again makes me want to dump industrial waste into the watersheds and burn a mountain of tires.
I flick the light on and off several needless times.
I climb into bed and work on knitting, churning out the tightest, stabbiest stitches while the winter wind roars outside. An hour later, I throw the homeliest knitted cap anyone has ever produced into a basket and punch my pillows, no closer to rest. It’ll have to be the gym.
On my way, I pass Ella returning from an evening engagement. Her dress is a cocktail gown in floaty forest green with tiny scattered flecks of gold, so carefully appropriate that I’m immediately suspicious.
I look closer and see that the specks are Seongan characters. “Sneaky,” I conclude.
Ella gives me a too-innocent expression. “What could you possibly mean?”
I’m not in the mood for games. “Getting the fashion press to do your dirty work.”
They’ll mention Seong in their coverage, and Pixy will add an auto link to every social media post, steering donations to relief agencies working to alleviate the Seongan Crisis. My little sister’s hands will be clean from the charge of interfering in international affairs.
“What did Mama say?”
Ella dimples. “We were on public roads before she gave me a proper inspection. I offered to wiggle out of the dress in the back seat of the Rolls. I can’t think why she said no.”
She reaches for her phone. “You okay? It’s late for the gym,” she murmurs, typing something out.
I’m not giving an answer to the top of her head.
She looks up and tips the phone. “Sorry, it’s Marc. He’s in Seong, just updating me on conditions.”
Ella drops the phone to her side, eyes lingering on my face. “Hey, come obliterate a few demons with me, sometime, if you’re feeling stressed,” she says. “It won’t make you as sweaty as a run.”
I dredge up a smile. “Will do.”
Will never do.
I jog down another level to the gym and push through the door, halting abruptly on a squeak of sound. Jacob has come before me and, damp with sweat, he is in the process of pulling off his shirt. I gape at a figure that looks like Michelangelo’s half-carved Atlas, arms raised and bound in rock, tearing out of the stone prison.
We have a copy of it in the palace sculpture garden, and I’ve gotten used to sliding my eyes over it, hardly registering the details. In the split second before Jacob emerges from the fabric and I am expected to slide my eyes over him without registering his details, I trace the muscled arms crossed over his head. I follow the trail of dark chest hair, tapering down to his stomach.
The current fashion is for men to look like hairless Egyptian cats, innocent of experience, lost, in need of mothering and a home cooked meal. I, however, have an appreciation for the classics.
“Alma.”
The door bangs against my backside, scooting me into the room.
“Hello,” I say, crossing to the treadmill. “I thought you were studying.”
“I thought you were with your fiancé.”
I appreciate the reminder. Pietor will keep me from throwing myself at Jacob.
Jacob tosses his shirt aside, unselfconscious, and wanders closer, hooking his hands over a pull-up bar, watching me power up the machine. I keep my face averted, but the whole flamen gym is made of mirrors, and his chest is like one of those paintings where the eyes follow you around the room.
“You lift weights?” I ask. My eyes flick to his face but catch on the muscle outlining his shoulder.
“Among other things.”
I tap the buttons of the treadmill, increasing the speed to something that demands my attention.
“You’re a runner,” he says.
“Guilty.”
This is good. It reminds me that Jacob and I are nothing alike. It won’t be hard to forget him when he’s gone. I’ll run all the time.
“Does he run with you? Your fiancé?”
“Sometimes,” I say. Pietor tried to run with me once. He threw up and claimed it was food poisoning.
Jacob swings lightly on the bar, wrists close together. I want to push my fingers through his unruly hair, so I train my eyes on a bright orange yoga ball.
“Did you miss him?” he asks.
I never missed him a day. I take a squirt of water and swallow.
“He was doing charity work.”