Page 6 of The Impossible Princess
Impossible to do that when he called me ma′am. Yes. He did.
“Executive officers are trained to take initiative, ma’am.” His exact words.
Ma′am.Even now the memory makes me want to sink through the floor. It′s perfectly correct to switch from the ponderousYour Royal Highnessafter the first greeting. And in all fairness, the correct form of address is ma′am, but it never before conjured orthopedic shoes and polyester stretch pants as it did then.Would you like your prune juice, ma′am? Can I help you cross the street, ma′am?
“May I escort you back to your family?” he asked, offering his elbow.
I let out a silent sigh, recalling myself to the gilded walls of the Summer Palace. I expect an addendum to the House of Wolffe Dress Code any minute now. I expect to have my history of ill-advised crop tops and late-night clubbing dredged up for minute reexamination, but I cannot regret the part where I got to meet my crush. The man had smelled like ripe tangerines, warm puppies, dusky sandalwood, and world peace.
My wayward thoughts call forth the memory of Lieutenant Commander Andersen bowing to my mother and then to myself. When he turned and began the long walk back to his company, I got to check out his backside.
Honestly, the man is a national treasure.
Before I can spend more than a moment considering the fact, my phone pings—Mama′s secretary with a link to Prada′s latest season, which features a positive deluge of sensible block heels. She titles the email ”Queen′s Day Footwear”.
4
Body Language
MAX
I start the morning with ten miles on the treadmill tucked into a corner of the helicopter hanger, the massive bay doors open to the rising sun. I finish with a cool down and pull up the hem of my Navy t-shirt, wiping the sweat from my face. Turning, I reach for my duffel bag, and my hand freezes.
There’s a flutter of newsprint taped to the wall like a paper explosion. The crew was suspiciously tactful yesterday. Though I expected someprobishfrom them about the princess, they were, to a man, silent, and now I know why. Probably busy sourcing every print outlet in Handsel. I lift a corner of one article and feel the telltale softness of newsprint. These are real.
FromThe Daily Missive, a Sondmark tabloid, the tone is gushing. The headline reads “The Siren and the Sailor” followed by no less than fifteen full-color pictures—me in my dress blues, me accepting the posy, Clara holding her head up as she returns to her family on my arm, me walking away. I grunt away a laugh. The photographer used a clever angle, and they’ve made it look like she’s eyeing my backside approvingly.
I flatten a dingy grey page from the left-wingSondish Workerwith my palm.“Coup! Navy Topples Monarchy.” The picture they’ve chosen to highlight is one showing both of my hands wrapped around her silk-clad leg. She’s gripping my jacket, with a shocked smile on her face, and looks like a stone goddess I’m about to knock off her plinth and toss over my shoulder.
Even the stodgyHoly Pelicanhas gotten into the act with bold type shouting “The Little Princess Goes Fishing,” dryly captioning their picture, “Princess Clara makes a close inspection of the Handsel Company on Queen’s Day”.
I lift my brows when I see that several overseas publications from New York, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, Berlin, and Vorburg have picked up the story, each selecting the damning image of me kneeling at Clara’s feet, holding her hand. It looks like they’ve caught me mid-proposal and that she can’t wait for me to finish before jumping into my arms. I look like I’m about to pull her into them.
From the hanger behind me, I hear the whistled strains of a wedding march and the sound of laughter. It cuts off when I spin around and fold my arms over my chest, bracing my feet in a deliberately imposing stance.
“Moller,” I snap, and the lieutenant presents himself before me, his expression almost innocent.
“Want me to clean it up, sir?” he asks, a laugh ghosting his voice.
Command is a delicate line to walk. These men and women, shuffling awkwardly in the cavernous space, are my closest compatriots. I live with them and work with them, but there are times when I can’t be one of them.
I could let that go to my head, mustering a line of sailors to shout at, making a subordinate sweep away the mess, demanding a detail to clean the hanger top to bottom and perform a meticulous foreign object walk. Heaven knows that’s what the captain would do in my shoes.
In my hesitation, I see Moller swallowing thickly. He knows I could make his life hell, knows I could keep him from his family and fiancée tonight, forcing him to use a toothbrush to scrub the deck. And he’s coming to see what a stupid move this was. I let him balance on the sharp edge of that painful realization for a long, silent moment.
A flush mottles his neck, and his ears turn scarlet. Only a monster would force an extra shift on men and women who have been aboard a ship for the better part of three months.
“We’re done with this.” My tone is crisp, but there is no heat in it. I can’t afford to let the sailors think I’ll lose my cool over a simple prank, but I can’t let them think I’ll allow it to happen again either.
Moller exhales and salutes, and I turn back to the newspapers. When I’m certain that no one can see me, I grin.
I make a great show of stripping the articles from the wall, careful to hide the fact that I fold the tape over so the pictures don’t stick together before shoving them into a bag. I’m not going to make a scrapbook or anything, but it seems a shame to see them swept into the trash.
I spend the rest of the morning filling out reports, and that’s what I’m doing when my captain strolls into my small workspace and drops into a chair, indicating a less formal interview. “Twenty-five years I’ve been in the Navy. Enlisted ten, another fifteen as an officer busting my hump past you Academy boys,” he growls, a litany I have heard again and again. He’s not like me, the story goes. He came up the hard way. “That flower ceremony was never a disaster until you got involved. I wouldn’t have chosen to knock over one of the royal family, Andersen, but what do I know?”
I do not move. I do not blink. This is the detour my life has taken, landing me under the command of a captain who could turn my once-promising Navy career into a dead end.
“Not once has the blasted thing ever excited any comment from my wife.”
