Page 54 of The Midnight Princess
But Alma stretches, rolling her neck and shoulders, and my mind becomes like the smooth surface of an egg.
She halts her machine. “If you haven’t learned to think in metric, you’re doing it on purpose.”
I rack my weights. “I can’t help it that the metric side of a measuring tape looks like a government oversight committee.”
“And the other side is—?”
“A mysterious rollercoaster of mythic potency and manly valor.”
Alma laughs and throws me a towel. I trap it against my chest, hand to my heart.
I scrub it over my skin and tug on my shirt, reaching the door before she does. She walks through, careful not to brush against me. “Sorry for throwing things,” she murmurs.
When she walks up the dim hallway, I watch her, dragging a hand around the back of my neck. “Anytime.”
Sleep doesn’t come. In the morning, I talk with my father, a stilted conversation with too many dead ends. I text my mother.
When I jog to the drawing room, I throw myself into Alma’s routine, glad to get back to the lessons—to churn through the days until I’m gone and she’s behind me.
At midday, we’re facing off on opposite sides of the circular table while Caroline and Karl confer over lesson plans and Mr. Tumwater works some fabric pieces with long white stitches. All of them are pointedly out of the line of fire.
“You have to do it,” Alma insists.
“I don’thaveto do anything,” I counter, arms braced against the table.
“You’re going to look silly if you don’t.”
“Do I look silly now?”
Her lips clamp tightly, and she gives me a look that would have a lesser man calling for the scissors. “Caroline,” she says, shaking with how much she wants to scream, “show us the kings and prince consorts of Europe.”
Caroline leaps into action and fills the screen with more than a dozen men in ordered rows. They resemble high school shop teachers, lined up like this, posing for the school yearbook. Some are tall. Some are taller. Many have clean-shaven faces and close-cropped hair. Some attempted to camouflage the way their chins drift into their necks by growing a sharp line of facial hair, giving their faces depth and topographical interest.
Some of the monarchs are in military uniforms. Some of them are in the kind of casual clothes you can afford to buy when nothing casual is expected of you. No one is headed out to dig up the septic tank. None of them look like an overgrown bear.
“What do you see in the physical appearance of these men, Jacob?”
“Inbreeding,” I snap.
“Jacob.” She grinds my name through gritted teeth. “Why are you being so obstinate?”
“Let me have my hair, Alma.”
“Sir,” Karl picks his way forward, glancing between us, fingertips tented. “Her Royal Highness knows the enormous effort it will take to turn you into the kind of crown prince Vorburg can be proud of.” The glance he gives me is one of misgiving. My suit is still the same one he’s been coaxing back to life each night. He must doubt we’ve made any progress. “If your hair distracts from your ability to inhabit your role, it must be sacrificed.”
“Shedding every aspect of what makes you interesting is no way to go through life, Karl.”
The little clock on the mantel chimes the hour, and Caroline takes my aide by the elbow, gesturing for the tailor to follow. “Time for lunch. We’ll leave you to your candid discussion.”
Alma nods but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“Look,” I say, rapping the screen with the back of a knuckle. “Bald, bald, bald, bald. Do you know what they would give to have this hair?” I tug one of the locks forward, holding it between my fingertips.
In a moment of weakness, I allowed Alma to work my hair loose. She got me into a chair and raked her fingers from my temples to the nape of my neck before my self-protective instincts were roused and I started fighting back.
Her eyes flick to the ends of my hair, and her teeth tug gently at her lower lip.
“A fortune.” I clear my throat. “They’d give a fortune.” I give her a coaxing, diplomatic smile. “I’m my own man, Alma. You wouldn’t want to erase my shadows and textures.”
