Page 26 of A Wise Prince

As the meal comes to an end, Anna stands and comes over to me, holding out her hand. “Follow me,” she says. “Ten minutes,” she adds to the others.

She brings me to a library, which is much smaller and cozier than the one at the main palace. “OK, here’s how hide-and-go-drink works. Have you played hide-and-go-seek?”

I laugh. “Uh, yeah. I think every kid has played it.”

“Good. This is nothing like that.”

I frown, confused, and she continues. “First, there are teams. We’ll play with three. It’s sort of like if capture the flag and hide-and-go-seek and a pub crawl had a baby. One team is it. There’s a place we have to get back to. We go hide with a bottle of wine. We hide the bottle of wine in our assigned room. That’s a rule we had to add otherwise we’d never finish the game. Then we have to find the other team’s wine bottle, pour ourselves a drink, drink it, and make it back home before the other team. If you do that, you win. The team that’s it tries to find both the wine bottles. If they find the wine bottle before your team, you lose. If they make it back home with both wine bottles, they win. Make sense?”

My brain tries to process the game. “I…maybe?”

Anna laughs as Auggie, Mia, Chris, and Logan all enter the library.

“I can’t believe we are playing this game,” Chris says, shaking his head.

“Oh, come on, don’t be such an old man. It’s fun, and plus, it’s a tradition,” Anna says. She turns to me. “We used to play it with cookies when we were kids—hide-and-go-eat.”

I laugh at that thought and wonder how many cookies Tessa had to bake for the game.

“OK, Logan, you’re with me. Chris and Mia; and, Auggie, you can be with Kate,” Anna declares. I can already tell that Anna wears the pants in this family. Her brothers dote on her, and it’s actually sort of cute.

Chris, Anna, and Auggie do rock, paper, scissors for which team is it. Auggie and I lose.

“OK, you guys stay here with the desk. That’s home. Chris and Mia have the conservatory and Logan and I will take the guest quarters in the west wing.” Everyone heads off, leaving Auggie and me standing in the middle of the library.

“How’s your hip?” he asks.

“It’s OK. I promise,” I say, giving him a small smile. “So, this is what royals do when they are at home, huh?”

Auggie grins. “I can’t speak for other royals, but when it’s just the three of us, we tend to revert to our childish ways. You should see us when we break out the Monopoly board.”

“Clue and Candyland are my sister’s and my go-to games,” I say as I remember holidays playing them with her. It’s been a while since we’ve done that.

Auggie looks at his watch. “We give them five minutes, and then it’s go time.”

I walk around the library, running my fingers over the spines of the books. I love the smell of a library. It’s the best smell in the world.

“Do you like to read?” Auggie asks.

“I do. You?”

“Yes. But I think you already might know that after our discussion at the palace stables,” he points out. I nod. I was surprised that Auggie was a reader. Marrying the playboy Auggie with the deep-thinker Auggie still has my head spinning.

I’m so deep in thought about it, I jump when I hear his voice in my ear. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the tabloids,” he says quietly. The heat of his body is so close to mine that I know he can’t be more than an inch behind me.

I turn to him. “I agree. Sometimes…what the world sees of us, isn’t actually us at all,” I muse.

The left corner of his mouth quirks up at my words. “What’s the real Kate Bradford like?”

I pause, considering his question. What am I like?

“I…guess I’m still trying to figure that out,” I admit quietly. He reaches out and tucks a stray hair behind my ear.

“Well, contrary to popular belief, I’m a good listener, if you ever need one,” he says to me.

We’re both silent for a moment staring at each other.

“What’s the real August Alexander like?” I ask him.

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