Page 66 of The Midnight Princess
“Careful? How can you be careful when you love someone?” His brow tents.
“If you want to protect her—”Her. She’ll be some basic tiara-chaser with a set of pearls and a megawatt smile. She’ll have picked the right schools and adopted the right attitudes, training for this like some women train for gold medals. I hate her already. “If you want to protect her from being torn apart in the press and from feeling that she can never possibly measure up to her position, you’ll have to be careful. This life isn’t for everyone. You have to make a thoughtful choice.”
He wolfs down a spinach quiche and talks around his bites. “That’s dumb. Love just happens. It doesn’t have anything to do with how suitable someone is.”
My ‘have you ever cracked open a history book’ expression flashes. “My father was one of very few royal men of his generation. It wasn’t an accident he was introduced at preciselythe time my mother came of age or that their parents hammered out a mutually beneficial agreement with ironclad legal protections. When they married, there was a shared sense of commitment and duty. Love came later.”
I thank Jacob for his silence—for pretending that’s the end of the story when he must have picked up enough palace gossip to know all is not well between my parents.
He rakes a hand through his hair. “You’d gamble on a thing like that?”
The question is like water pooling at my foundations, slowly wearing down the limestone, eroding the soil.
“Marriage is always a gamble,” I explain, shoring myself up.
He stretches his legs out and tips his head back, closing his eyes for a catnap before I march him through a long afternoon of European titles in the wake of the Cold War. I’m tired too, but when he’s not looking at me, it’s as though my hands go slack and the dozens of balls I’m juggling drop silently to the carpet.
Light plays against Jacob’s face, and his eyes shift under the lids.
“Wouldn’t being in love increase the odds of a successful marriage?” he asks, voice drowsy. He swallows. “Wasn’t it a relief when you fell in love with Pietor?”
Stretching my arm out, I lean my head against the back of the sofa, and the voices in my head quiet. I am perfectly content to watch him drift on the edge of sleep. Words press against my lips.
I never loved Pietor.
19
Misfit Toys
JACOB
Alma likes the suits. All it takes is a dozen palace mirrors and the application of simple geometry to work it out. But when I look up, she frowns at her notes or glances over a map of Vorburg. Still, it’s there. The way her eyes return to me makes it easy to adjust to these tailored jackets and close-fitting shirts.
If I cared less, I could make it a joke between us, peacocking around the drawing room.
If I thought this attraction could become something more, I’d be looking for my next move.
There are no next moves.
As my frustration grows, she wears the ring that isn’t meant to be worn every day, twisting it on her finger.
Mom calls. She reminds me to send something to my grandpa for his birthday and tells me about the latest book her club is reading. “Basia made the choice, and you know what she likes. Trauma, trauma, trauma.”
I laugh but want to ask her why she did this to me. I was happy with my life. Busy, anyway. Now everything I want feels just out of reach.
I work out in the gym, hoping Alma will find me. She never does, though I run into Clara and Ella. The exercise leaves me restless.Omawould say that there are only so many weights a man can lift before his brain starts turning into oatmeal. “There are fences to mend and holes to dig,” she would say. “Go do something useful.”
How useful can I be in a palace? I discover an answer one drizzly afternoon. My lessons finish early so that Alma can attend an official function, and I prowl through the halls, coming across a man working in a pair of coveralls, painstakingly replacing a length of crown molding.
Following him through an exterior door, he bends to remove protective booties, revealing shoes covered with paint and streaks of glue, a sure sign that he is one of my people. His English is bad, and my Sondish is worse, but we manage to work out that I want him to take me to his shop, and he leads me to a wide barn-like structure, bright and snug against the foul weather.
Crossing the threshold, I hear the harsh whirr of a bandsaw, and my blood pressure settles as gently as a sigh. That’s it. I tip my head and close my eyes. That’s the stuff. The air is fragrant with the smell of sawdust, metallic shavings, and the sharp tang of epoxy. Wood is sorted in slots along one wall according to type and size. Is this heaven?
Benn—we have exchanged names by now—gives me a look I take to mean, “Is this what you wanted to see?”
I place a palm against my chest. You’re the best, Benn.
“Workshop?” I say, slowing it down.
