Page 17 of The Winter Princess
“Why don’t you want to involve your mother?” he asks, leaning against the table, hands in his pockets. This is not the same man who called me ma’am.
I ignore the question. “You were supposed to be my ally.”
His answer is mild. “I said you had the only exhibit we could run.”
“And abandoned the field when Lynda arrived with her math facts.”
“You handled it,” he answers, not begging my pardon. “We have to pull every string we can, and no one else in the room could have suggested an audience with the prime minister.”
I look at him head-on, taking in the somber silk tie and the precise fit of his suit, how his eyes challenge mine, how they see everything. He doesn’t like the royal family—I know it without being told—but he was quick to exploit my royal position when it came to fighting for the museum. He might hate me. We are birds caught in midair, fighting, clinging, falling. We have not defeated nor been defeated nor gone our own way.
“Tell me how it goes withNeerTorbald,” he says, writing down a number on the corner of his budget packet and ripping it off. “Call me tomorrow.”
I glance at the numbers written in a strong hand.
“You’ll answer my call?”
“Always.” Then comes the sting. “I can’t afford to ignore a royal.”
7
Messy Compromises
FREJA
I could hear a pin drop.
My family used to be noisy. When I was a girl, we’d make so much noise that I’d sometimes have to escape to an unused linen closet with a copy of an Adelheid Nede mystery to hear myself think. The girl spy’s cross-country bicycling jaunts and Nazi sabotage were a soothing counterpoint to raucous after-dinner games of charades andMali.
I thought I’d be happy when they all finally shut up, but the quietness pervading the room as we wait for our weekly family meeting to begin makes me uneasy, as though I’m standing in an icy stream as swift, unidentifiable currents drag at my ankles. My father and each of my siblings is absorbed in the agenda, but I touch Clara’s arm.
“Have you seen Max this week?” I ask, surprised to find myself needing to be soothed by small talk.
Clara smiles and taps the table with the flat of her fingers. “I’m properly meeting his family on Sunday.” She wrinkles her nose. “We’re having pot roast at his parents’ house. I hope they like me.”
“What’s not to like?”
She gives a mirthless laugh. “There’s been a photographer camped out in front of their place for a week. They won’t like that.”
So that’s what it’s like being a princess of Sondmark in a public relationship with an ordinary man. Alma’s betrothal to the often-absent Hereditary Grand Duke of Himmelstein hasn’t prepared me for what it might be like to run the gauntlet of royal courtship without money and titles to cushion each blow. My interest sharpens, and I lean forward.
“His parents won’t blame you for that. I’m sure they’ll like you,” I assure her.
“They’d better. I’ve memorized the entire ABBA canon.” She snaps her fingers and gives me the opening lines ofFernando.
I chuckle. “Why?”
“Max says it’s best to be prepared for impromptu karaoke.”
We laugh, heads bent together, but swallow it back when the door swings open and Mama enters. Clara straightens in her chair. Père’s focus narrows to the painting opposite him—on each tiny leaf in the middling landscape. Ella begins playing with her pen, flippant in a way she hadn’t bothered to be before Mama was there to see. Alma’s dignity billows in response to a queen who bristles with authority. Noah is watchful.
I’m supposed to feel some version of these things, I suppose, but because I have a thirty-five-centimeter scar running down my spine, I don’t. I watch them tighten and tense in her presence with a sense of bemusement, wishing they could see the same woman I do.
Mama opens the meeting with no grace notes, reeling off a list of engagements and concerns with a speed and command of the details that keep us all on our toes. Finally, she turns her attention to Clara.
My little sister calmly answers questions about her patronage, showing none of the warmth and laughter of moments before. Their relationship, like so many of Mama’s, carries the baggage of high expectations and the weight of royal duty, but my curiosity turns into respect as I watch their interplay. Clara rises to meet Mama’s professionalism, not giving our mother any excuse to call her commitment into question. She’s carving her own path, figuring out how to accomplish things that matter, loving someone Mama doesn’t approve of and determined to protect him.
I glance at Mama. She used to set aside most of her royal manner around our family, but she’s keeping a tight rein on her emotions, even here—like she’s burned her hand and thinks every surface is likely to mete out a similar punishment. On one level, I hear her asking about expenses and logistics. On another level, I suspect she has the coordinates of Max’s cottage prepared if a nuclear strike becomes feasible.
