Chapter 10 Smile Like The Entire Press Corps Isn’t Watching You
Smile Like The Entire Press Corps Isn’t Watching You
Of all the absurd things Emilia Carter thought she’d be doing with her Saturday, performing emotional sincerity for an audience of hydrangeas and high-powered lenses wasn’t high on the list. Yet here she was, standing in the royal palace gardens, pretending that the camera crews lurking behind the hedges weren’t making her skin crawl.
The sun spilled like honey over the lawns, the roses were in a full, show-off bloom, and somewhere, the palace’s most terrifying PR woman was barking into a headset like a general about to lose a battle.
“Chin up. Shoulders relaxed. Smile like you’re thinking of something private but adorable,” chirped the photographer, who, despite looking like a lost surfer, had a gaze sharp enough to slice through steel.
Emilia arched her brow. “What if I’m thinking about tax fraud?”
The surfer-photographer blinked, then chuckled softly. The tension around the crew eased just a hair.
She gave them a smile, anyway. Breezy. Camera-friendly. Just not too polished—god forbid she come off rehearsed. But when a boom mic nearly nose-dived into the hydrangeas, the effort cracked.
Alexander noticed. Of course he did—he always did. He wasn’t just her fiancé—he was her co-conspirator in this royal pantomime. Slipping his hand into hers, he gave two quick squeezes, I see you.
She glanced at him and nearly snorted. He looked like he was posing for a portrait titled Burdened But Noble: A Study in Brooding. Perfect, except for the slight twitch in his jaw that suggested he was one deep breath away from telling everyone to go home.
“This is weird, right?” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
“Weird doesn’t begin to cover it,” Alexander murmured back, his smile tight. “We’re one soft-focus filter away from a financial services ad. Just need a voiceover about ‘partnerships that last a lifetime,’ and we’re done.”
She bit back a laugh, which the photographer interpreted as a devastatingly flirty grin.
“Hold that! Hold that!” he shrieked, snapping away like a paparazzo on espresso.
The shutters clicked furiously.
“Do you ever get used to it?” Emilia asked, shifting her weight—not nervously, just deliberately breaking the pose.
Alexander exhaled. “No. You just get better at faking serenity while contemplating death.”
She looked at him sideways. “That’s bleak.”
“That’s monarchy,” he replied.
Emilia tried not to laugh again. Alexander, King of Caledonia, purveyor of sardonic doom, didn’t flinch. He just adjusted his cufflinks like a man reconciling with fate.
Overhead, a news helicopter buzzed like a particularly nosy wasp.
Emilia let out a slow breath, not allowing herself to shrink under the weight of it all. She’d signed up for this—or at least, she’d signed up for him. It just hadn’t fully occurred to her that loving Alexander meant loving the endless public gaze, too.
“Hey, don’t worry, you’re doing great,” Alexander murmured. To the watching press, it probably looked like a whispered declaration of love.
“Easy for you to say,” she whispered back. “You have your royal ‘serene face’ loaded and ready.”
He chuckled, low enough only she could hear it. “I’ll teach you. It’s like an Instagram filter but for your entire soul.”
She choked on a laugh. This time, the smile was real. And the camera caught it—the way she glowed when she looked at him, the quiet way his hand hovered at the small of her back, the impossible intimacy of people trapped together under a microscope.
The way he gently tugged her closer looked incredibly romantic, but in reality, he was mainly just trying to shield her from a crew member tripping over a light reflector.
A voice murmured from somewhere behind a hedge, “…an enchanting fairytale moment…”
Emilia resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
But Alexander’s hand was steady on hers, and when the photographer barked for them to walk along the path “like you’re having the best conversation of your lives,” he leaned down and murmured in her ear, “Let’s talk about something important.”
“Like what?”
He grinned. “Which wedding cake flavor would scandalize the palace most?”
After thinking for a minute, she said, “Probably, Chocolate Guinness.”
“Yes. Revolutionary choice,” Alexander declared, eyes shining with mock solemnity. “They’d have to exile us. We’d move to a small picturesque village and raise goats.”
“Goats seem reasonable,” Alexander said solemnly. “Better than Eleanor’s corgis. Those things are trained assassins.”
He laughed—a proper, unguarded one—and Emilia allowed herself to enjoy it. Let them capture that.
The rest of the shoot blurred—posed laughter, artfully timed petals, and a vague sense of being a human prop in the palace public relations campaign. Every time her nerves spiked, Alexander had her back: a muttered joke, a smirk, a perfectly timed eye-roll.
By the time they were dismissed, Emilia was high on exhaustion and defiance. She and Alexander collapsed onto a hidden stone bench just out of frame, while a grim-faced palace spokesperson droned on about love and tradition.
Emilia kicked off her heels with a groan. “Remind me again why we didn’t just elope?”
Alexander shrugged, tugging his tie loose. “Because the nation would never forgive us for depriving them of a royal wedding.”
“True and because your mother would’ve sent the corgis after us.”
She leaned back. The press was still snapping her expressions. Some poor intern was probably live-tweeting her hydration level.
Alexander nudged her knee. “Hey. You survived.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I nearly crashed into a boom mic.”
“That puts you ahead of me. I once walked straight into a decorative arch and nearly decapitated the foreign minister.”
She laughed and looked at him—really looked at him—and realized that for all his calm, polished exterior, there was a thread of tension around his eyes, too. He hated this part just as much. Maybe even more, because he knew there was no getting away from it.
“Well, today you were perfect,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “It’s easier when you’re there. You make it feel… less fake.”
That stopped her. Not because it was sweet—though it was—but because she recognized it for what it was: truth, unscripted.
She took his hand again. Steady this time. Intentional.
And just as another photographer appeared like a ghost from the shrubbery, Alexander leaned in and whispered, “Next time, I’m weaponizing the corgis.”
Emilia laughed. “Video, or it didn’t happen.”
He grinned. “You’ll get a full edit. With dramatic music.”
The shutter clicked.
This time, Emilia didn’t flinch.
She just smiled—because against all odds, they were making this circus their own. Together.