Page 19 of The Impossible Princess
I accept one, trying not to let myself be affected by the simple contact of his fingertips brushing mine. There is a gold foil wrapper around the neck. “Royal label, huh?”
“Worse,” he says, his eyes crinkling into a smile. “They’re from Vorburg.”
He takes a pull and I watch his neck, the swallow, feeling it in my toes. I am reconsidering the wisdom of handling a knife, but I remember Alma’s imaginary exhortation and thump my drink on the counter, turning to address myself to the carrots and striving not to sever my fingers off by a lack of attention. A few minutes in, I’ve found a rhythm only by pretending that I’m in front of an audience talking about the importance of early childhood nutrition. The crowd is riveted and vows forevermore to limit certain simple carbohydrates. National healthcare costs plummet.
“So you went to Stanford,” he says, and my hand slips, the blade landing hard on the cutting board. Heat rises in my face, but I try to answer briskly.
“Yeah. My brother Noah went to Yale and then into the military. Alma went to Harvard and spent another two years at the Sorbonne. Freja went to Arnhuis University and finished at Cambridge. When Ella went to Stanford, I followed her.”
“But Ella and Freja are the twins, yes?”
I hate this. Hate it. My voice is as clipped as this knife. “Yes.”
“Look,” he says, putting his spoon down and turning to watch me butcher a cucumber. “I don’t mean to pry, but it’s weird to pretend I don’t know things about you. If there’s something I ask that’s out of line or—”
“You weren’t out of line.” This cucumber is going to be juiced in another minute. A cord seems to run down my neck, tightly tied to another one binding my shoulders. I’ve spent the last year within the royal bubble, and I’ve forgotten how instinctive it is to curl up around my secrets like a hedgehog.
“I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m fishing for information.”
“I don’t think you are,” I murmur, lying. I set the knife down and turn only to find that the kitchen is even smaller than I thought. I could reach forward and hook a finger around his belt loop and tug him closer if I wanted to. A well of resentment floods through me. Why can’t this be a normal date? Why did I have to arrive with all this baggage—Mama, the press, all those people back in California willing to sell their piece of my story. Why can’t this be the start of something instead of the end?
“Don’t you?” he asks, and he gives me a soft, undemanding, unhurried smile.
It’s second nature to a Sondmark princess to be private—only trusting each other to bear our secrets. How do I explain that I have been betrayed by friends at school, teaching assistants, and roommates when the press comes looking for a story? It would be so much easier for me to handle this like I’m working a rope line—cheerfully royal, carefully remote. I can imagine pasting my smile on and skating through the rest of the night like it’s an interview. But I can’t imagine doing it while I am standing a foot away from him.
“I’m bad at this.” My hand sketches the air in the little room.
“Making dinner?” He laughs, maybe offering me a way out of this awkward moment.
“Going on a date with someone I haven’t known from the time I was toddling off to primary school. It’s strange.”
His stance is relaxed but I can feel the tension in his muscles. “I’m strange? Wait. Is this slumming?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I exhale impatiently. “I just—you know things about me that I don’t know about you yet. And you found out those things from reading the tabloids or watching the news. Those aren’t me.”
This officially feels like the most pretentious thing I’ve ever said, and I once instructed a footman on the proper use of an epergne. It feels like the right time to pray for a sudden earthquake to open up the ground under my feet and end my misery. Is mortification a strong enough force to shift the tectonic plates? Probably.
He turns around to take the roast out of the oven, popping in a meat thermometer and grunting before setting the dish aside under a foil tent. It can’t possibly taste as good as it smells. It’ll be dry and overdone, despite looking so delicious.
He gives the contents of the saucepan a stir and turns around again, the plaid shirt stretching over his muscles. Those have been such nice muscles to be adjacent to for a time. I will miss them.
Max clears his throat. “I met someone and thought she was cute, so I googled her to make sure she wasn’t an ax murderer. The good news is that she doesn’t have a criminal record. I also know that she’s twenty-four, looks exceptionally good in cardinal red, and has a few siblings. When I got the chance to ask her out, I took it. It’s not a big deal, Clara. Only dinner.”
He’s putting me at ease, but I can’t help feeling like a punctured weather balloon, slowly losing altitude. I feel stupid.
“You aren’t stupid.”
I blink. “Did I say that out loud?”
He laughs, the sound of it filling up the room. Mama’s voice tries to crowd the sound out of my head. I can hear her telling me to march my Gucci handbag right out of there. I can hear her telling me that the press will make him look like a fool. But the laughter pushes her out instead. It’s loud and real and not what I was expecting from someone who looks capable of launching a one-man amphibious assault. Though I thought his digital trail could tell me who he was, it didn’t tell me everything.
“You finish the salad and I’ll set the table,” he says, bumping my arm. The gesture, offhand and friendly, seems to unstick the last of my reserve, and as we sit down and dish up the meal, my constraint slips away.
“This,” I say, talking as I chew—groaning. My fork taps the plate several times and my eyes close briefly. “This. How—? Where—?”
He smiles. “My grandmother on my mother’s side. You have her to thank. No matter how clumsy in the kitchen, every Henstrom learns this dish.”
“The Henstroms,” I repeat, diving in for more, “were culinary gods?”
