Page 34 of The Impossible Princess
“I don’t know this ship like I need to, sir,” I answer. I’ve only been aboard a year. There’s a lot to learn. “The crew don’t have anything to fear in my oversight. I trust my lieutenants to see that my orders are carried out.”
“Trust,” Captain Dusstock laughs. “We don’t ‘trust’ in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. We stand over our sailors until they make a deck so clean you could serve your Sunday pot roast on it. If they so much as sneeze, your job is to put the fear of God in them.”
He scrawls a note across a paper and looks up, regarding me from a brown, weather-beaten face. His gray eyes are the color of the ship he captains. “There are dozens of lieutenant commanders looking to make commander in the next few years, and I don’t like your chances. The ocean doesn’t say please, Andersen. It doesn’t have manners. Carrying lieutenants around in woolen mittens won’t prepare them for it, and holding everyone’s hand on an inspection tour is a waste of time.” He tosses the pen down, and it bounces before it settles. He flicks his nose with his thumb and crosses his arms.
“The promotion board is going to rake over your record with such a fine-toothed comb that they’ll find the socks you left on the bathroom floor last week. You give them anything—you givemeanything—scandals, your name all over the tabloids, soft crew management, the smallest whiff that you don’t have ‘Navy’ tattooed down the length of your lower intestine, and you’ll find yourself steering a river patrol for the rest of your career. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Still, I spend the week poking my head into every supply closet, wardroom, berth, and canteen the ship has, poring over engineering drawings after hours. I wake Wednesday morning in my cottage, half expecting to see a late-night text from Clara bailing on me. It’s 4:30 AM and I kick the blankets off, throwing on a t-shirt to go downstairs and start the coffee the way my mother insists is the only right way. She might actually die if she sees what passes for coffee aboard the ship.
Slicing several pieces of dark rye bread and taking a couple of eggs from the fridge, I lay them near a pan before jogging through the back door and into the pre-dawn stillness. I trace my footsteps down the familiar path, hearing the soft thumps of the sailboat bumping against the dock. In moments, I bait a hook and cast a line out over the smooth water. Now I only have to catch a fish before the sun comes up.
The flashlight is my friend, and I feel a tug not much later, just as I hear the crunch of gravel on the drive. Clara finds me on the dock as the sky is lighting, though the rim of the sun is still sunk below the horizon.
“Mmmm. I love fish,” she says, leaning over my shoulder, her hand wrapping my bicep. The way her breath stirs against my ear threatens to overcome me. I inhale a lungful of air. She’s only wearing a pair of jeans and t-shirt, I remind myself. Nothing to cause this reaction.
“Do you love to catch them?” I ask, offering her the pole.
I don’t expect her to take it, but her grip is confident and she bounces the rod lightly. “Two kilos,” she guesses.
This woman. We are lucky she knows how to do this. I wouldn’t be able to maintain a posture of disinterest if my arms were wrapped around her, guiding her movements. “I’ll start the eggs and toast,” I say, hands in my pockets.
Clara’s green eyes dance. “We’re havingsmorebrod? Ah, Max, that’s my favorite.”
I nod, jogging back to the cottage, each step loosening the band around my lungs.
After reeling in the catch, Clara follows me into the kitchen and asks for a knife.
“There’s a flat rock out there I use for cleaning,” I say, handing it off by the blade, a little surprised a princess knows how to gut a fish.
“I saw it.” Even when I’m not looking at her, it feels as though my body has developed the senses of a bat, locating her position in the room and the curve of her face when she answers.
I toast the bread, and she brings in two slim, white filets to lay into the hot skillet. They only take a few seconds to brown and serve up.
She eats in contented silence, adding dollops of sour cream to each bite. “Do you do this a lot?” she sighs, popping the last bit of egg into her mouth. “Fish for your breakfast.”
“To tell the truth, it’s usually toast andSupernuss.”
She sighs contentedly and carries our plates to the sink where she turns on the tap and leans back, craning her neck.
“Under the sink.” I brush crumbs off the table with my hand and she finds the scrubber.
She says over her shoulder, “I didn’t expect—Max, I could get used to this,” like I’ve given her a kingdom. I want to step behind her and hold her around the waist, fitting my chin in the crook of her neck.Friends.The word is like a cul-de-sac. There’s no going through it to some other destination. So I dry the plates and put them away.
When we move to the garden, I hand her a battered shovel and an old pair of gloves. “I haven’t prepared the ground at all. Work has been—” My hands spread.
“Wisely, you waited for an expert,” she says and when I raise a brow she transforms before my eyes. Gone are the work jeans and t-shirt. It’s like she’s standing in heels and a dress as she poses, hands resting lightly on the shaft of the shovel, camera-ready smile, the firm plunge of the spade into the soil and a quick flip.
She dusts her hands. “There we are. I’ve just inaugurated the Historic Andersen Cottage Wildflower Gardens. I hope you put up an enormous plaque to commemorate my visit.”
“Historic Andersen Cottage, huh?”
“Won’t you be making history out here?”
I like that, the way she has of expanding the borders of national tradition to include something so small. I nod at the overturned dirt. “That was impressive.”
“Maybe you could tell my mother that?” she murmurs, turning the soil over in earnest as I work on my section. “You could offer a testimonial. Review me on the internet or something?” Her words are amused, but I detect a trace of frustration underneath them.
