Page 35 of The Impossible Princess
“Doesn’t she think you’re impressive?” I grunt, working at hacking at a ball of roots and earth with the sharp tip of the spade, giving her space to decide whether or not to answer me.
There is a long silence, broken by the bird calls churning the air near the woods and the steady slip and slice of our shovels. I let it be and continue down the line of the wall.
Clara works behind me, taking a finer, secondary slice at the clods, finally saying, “Sometimes she looks at me like she thinks I’m the one who’s going to single-handedly take down 800 years of rule.”
I lean an arm across the head of my shovel. “You never put a foot wrong.”
She shakes her head, unimpressed by my clever reference to her stuck shoe. “You are hilarious.”
I grin. “If anybody is likely to bring it down, I would think—” I halt.
She shoves her tool into the earth with a thunk, leaning her elbow on the top, hand dangling, just as mine is. Her slim wrist is a feminine contrast to the old leather gloves, and I spend a second imagining it set against the back of my neck.
The look crossing her face is a playful threat. “Don’t you dare, Max Andersen. Tell.”
I can’t resist her glowing skin and the martial glint in her eyes. It is good that the morning is cool because I am already too warm for comfort. “My money is on Princess Ella.”
“Ella?” Her brows wrinkle. “Ella wouldn’t hurt a puppy.”
“She looks like she’s plotting.”
“No more than seventy percent of that expression is plotting. A solid thirty percent is because Mama won’t let her wear glasses out on official engagements. The contacts bug her.”
I turn to my work with an amused grunt. “Myopic royals. They’re just like us.”
Clara tosses a bit of earth across my boots and her laughter drowns out the birds as we set to, spading around the base of the rock wall I built with my own hands.
“How’s work?” she asks, returning to the point where I spread my hands and didn’t answer. Now it’s the easiest thing in the world to tell her about the captain who wants to drum me out of the Navy and the long hours spent going over engineering plans. It solves nothing, but it feels good.
“Enough?” she asks when we come to a bend. The sun slants over us, running her shadow into mine.
I draw the seeds from my back pocket and toss a packet to her. In a few moments, we’ve shaken them over the ground and walk, pressing them into the earth. I fill a plastic watering can and hand it off to her.
She stares at the abomination. “The watering can is in the shape of a pig, Max.”
“I know it’s a pig, Clara.” It’s so bright and pink that national defense satellites have probably picked up on the fact.
She tips it forward and bites her trembling lip when two thick streams of water come pouring through the snout.
“My niece uses it when she visits.”
She only grins and hands it back, boosting herself onto the rock wall, making real my daydreams. I can feel her eyes on me as I finish my patch and stow the garden tools. I return, leaning at her side, arms resting across the top of the wall. The exhaustion of the week is seeping from my bones, the air fizzing like carbonated water.
“Do you know how mad my security team was when I asked to be covered for this time slot?”
It’s not even six yet. I lift my brows, and she makes a volcano noise, her hands an explosion of fire and ash. I choke on a laugh.
“How many people know about—about this?”
She gives a throat-clearing cough. “Three security personnel and Ella. Five if you count Freja. She caught me sneaking back the other night, and I had a streak of eyeliner smeared all the way to my temple. I think she suspects something.”
“You know it’s ridiculous keeping an activity as wholesome as sowing wildflower seeds a secret.”
“Hey,” she bumps my shoulder with her own, “aren’tyoukeeping…this,” she pauses at the word, “secret?”
“This?” I ask, stepping closer, treading on the delicate seeds that haven’t even had time to take root. The laughing smile slides away from her mouth as awareness threatens to surface. Even though we don’t say it, we know that there’s a silent conversation between us that runs in tandem to everything we say and do, making the air hum and crackle with electricity every time we’re near each other.
I open my mouth, not even knowing what I’m going to say, but she hops from the wall. Our eyes lock. Somehow over the last few weeks we’ve lost the uneven balance of a scale. I sometimes forget she’s royal. Maybe she forgets that I don’t have a trust fund and a title. We’re people who have a ‘this’ and the right to know what it is.
