Page 56 of The Midnight Princess
She makes it sound simple. My great-aunt shakes off the sentimental mood, taps me on the knee, and asks, her voice raspy, “When is your wedding? Don’t even think of giving me nonsense you couldn’t even peddle to the press.”
I flick a glance at Pietor, in deep conversation to Uncle Georg, and give her a serene smile. “I wouldn’t think of giving you nonsense.”
My silence stretches.
“Tsch.” The sound is scornful, and the meaning is clear. My generation is hopeless.
Ella leads a cohort of rowdy younger guests off to the billiard room, and I spend the evening circulating, seeing to the comfort of the older ones. In a lull, I approach my mother, wishing her a happy birthday. The paper crown on her head manages to look regal, and she gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“You’re doing well,” she says. Her praise fails to warm me.
At the stroke of eleven, I walk Pietor to the Great Hall. Music emanates from the family wing as we wait for his car to be brought around, and I gaze at our reflection in the tall mirrors. From a distance, we look like a pair of lovers saying a long goodbye.
“I have an interview withThe Sun Rises on Himmelsteinnext week, and I’d like you to be there,” he tells me. “We can pre-record the segment in my hotel suite. I’ll have my secretary be in touch.”
I nod. This is just business.
“Your uncle told me about that man I saw in your suite.” My nerves shiver to attention as Pietor brushes his lapel. “They’ll let anybody be a crown prince, these days.”
“They let you.” I pivot sharply, gathering my skirts, and make for my suite.
Before I even make it to the sitting room, I hear Jacob’s English carried through the door, unregulated by any sense that he might be overheard.
“I am,” he says, speaking over the phone. “It’s fine. No, it’s not like the Royal Academy. For one thing, no one is trying to stuff my head into the toilet. No, I’m kidding.”
I slip off my slingbacks and creep forward, taking a path to my door that would appear random to a cat burglar or anyone who hadn’t walked these creaking floorboards every day for eight years.
“I’m not lying. Mom. Mom. Honestly.” I open my door, my heart thrumming softly in my throat. Jacob oiled these hinges last week, and I don’t have to worry he’ll hear me.
“I’m not sure you’ll recognize me when I come back,” he goes on. “I’m not sureI’llrecognize me. I’ve learned that every natural instinct I have is wrong, but I’ve also learned three ways to tie a tie. Yeah. Mid-March. His RoyalZekle—What? I’m a grown—Omawouldn’t even know what it means,” he protests. But he murmurs an apology. “His Majesty the King wants me back for a couple of weeks before we do the state visit.”
“No, the food is fine. They don’t like herring.” I think I hear a grin in his voice. “Well, nothing tastes like your food.” He laughs. “No, no, no. Don’t send them. Mom. Honestly. I’m hanging up now. It’s late. Yeah. Love you. Mom. Mom. Mom. I have to go.”
When I thought about the kind of woman who could single-handedly turn her child into the next king of Vorburg, I pictured someone with a cell phone surgically attached to her hand and a team of aestheticians working on fine lines and wrinkles. The more I’ve come to know Jacob—his work ethic, his sturdy sense of right and wrong—the more I assumed he was embarrassed of her. I thought that’s what he was trying to hide when he ripped the pages from the dossier.
I was wrong. The affection between them is palpable, even through a heavy door and a phone line.
I hear his floorboards shift and I dart through my door, catching the corner of an occasional table with my dress. A lamp totters and my desperate attempt to right it sends us both banging to the floor in a loud crash.
“Alma.” I hear his muffled shout.
Vede.
“It was a ghost,” I call, Wolffe family shorthand for, “It’s nothing. Don’t come.”
But Jacob doesn’t know about Celine of Anjou, whose husband caught herin flagrante delictowith a Danish philosopher. She’s a restless spirit and we blame things on her all the time.
Jacob bursts through the door, breathing hard, and takes in the lamp and lack of blood. He sags against the doorframe, pushing a hand through his hair.
“Alma.”
An inevitable concert t-shirt skims his stomach like the wing of a bird over a peaceful lake, and I flop back, sinking in acres of tulle, clamping my eyes shut. Jacob, filling out American denim in the way he does, is too much for my delicate constitution.
He rights the table and the lamp, setting the squashed lampshade over the bulb like a hat. Then he reaches for my hands and hauls me to my feet. “Are you okay?” he asks, turning me around by the shoulders to perform an inspection. He leavesfire everywhere he touches and I shrug out of his grasp before my ball gown goes up in flames.
“It’s nothing.” I take a step back into a chair and sit down with a thump.
“I didn’t realize you were in here,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been so loud.”
