Page 9 of The Impossible Princess
I fight back a yawn, shaking my head at her incorrigibility. Tonight, I vow to think less of footwear and get some sleep.
“I am upset,” I say, pointing at the newspapers, dragging over one with the pad of my finger. “This isn’t great for me.”
Every other member of the Wolffe household has a full slate of established patronages and charities, offering us a real chance to do good and highlight causes that will mean so much for Sondmark’s future. I’m supposed to have these duties too, but I’m often relegated to being a placeholder or seat filler, dedicating the mass transit car parks no one else has any time for.
For months I’ve ascribed this lack of designated responsibilities to the fact that I’ve only been out of college for a year and my position isn’t nearly so well established as everyone else’s. But I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s more that my mother doesn’t trust me, and this latest debacle doesn’t help my case.
I thought I was supposed to actually enjoy college. For four years (and the gap year in South America), I operated under the assumption that the rigid rules of royal protocol might relax from a distance of nearly 9 thousand miles—allowing me to go to clubs, host sorority parties, and tailgate. It was all pretty harmless, but the pictures bubbling up every day since graduation make it look like I was in a sustained, years-long bacchanal. It doesn’t help that the press discovered that my name makes a fun rhyme in Sondish.
“Alma could have sailed through yesterday and it would hardly have been a footnote. But I’m Princess Party.”
Ella groans. “Not that again. It’ll go away if you ignore it.”
I can’t ignore it. I know the consequence of slipping into a life of insignificant duties, my workload limited to showing up to galas and wearing expensive clothes. I would still live in a palace and be a princess, but over time, my life would be leached of meaning. I’ve seen it happen to cousins, aunts, and uncles as they become frothier and frothier versions of themselves, appearing on the cocktail circuit, honored guests of some corrupt official looking for legitimacy and finding it with ancient titles.
I don’t want my life to look like that.
“Princess Party won’t go away if I’m never allowed to do anything of substance,” I insist, lifting the corner of a newspaper and letting it fall. “Until I do, I can’t afford to mess up my future by presenting anything less than perfection.”
Ella shakes her head and I see some of her banked frustration. Unlike my other sisters, Ella isn’t trying to walk Mama’s road in a roundabout way or do it while juggling flaming chainsaws or anything. It’s like she was handed a map and proceeded to rip it up, preferring to hack her way through the wilderness with a machete. She cannot stand anything that smacks of cheerleading for Team Royal.
“And here I was hoping you were going to ask me to disable the palace security system so you could sneak out for a night of semi-illicit man-snogging.”
“You could do that?” I try to look skeptical and disapproving, but there my imagination goes, pulling me after it, and I’m distracted by the idea all day.
It’s not a good day to lose my focus. Tonight’s event is a tiara occasion—one of only a few we’ll have all year—and there is much to be done before I arrive at the Ambassador’s residence looking like I spend every waking moment in full court dress.
There’s the manicure, pedicure, final dress fittings, a session with a hairdresser knowledgeable about the kind of invisible anchors which will need to be braided into my hair to support the tiara, and a tense visit with Mama’s dresser, who will make me promise on the lives of my children and my children’s children that I will not lose or remove the sapphire necklace and chandelier earrings I am being lent from the royal vault.
During it all, I bone up on obscure Vorburgian history. Ella has developed a computer program that creates randomized digital flashcard decks of anyone remotely noteworthy or powerful, and I sit in the hairdresser’s chair, the filter picking out only those from Vorburg, quizzing myself.
That night, I’m keyed up, aware that every stumble I make puts more pressure on the events which come after. We arrive in vintage Rolls Royce limousines maintained in pristine condition by the royal mews, the fleet of automobiles fitted with large windows and seats wide enough to accommodate our gowns without the risk of them being crushed.
When I see the number of press gathered outside the embassy, I grip my hands together. Mama glances at me, her expression implacable. “Give it no fuel and even the most raging fire will die down.”
Her brow lifts. Give it no fuel. It is a directive.
When the door opens, I press my knees together, unconsciously swinging my heels onto the pavement in a maneuver I was probably taught at the same time I learned to walk. My man from the security detail shuts the door behind me and I follow behind my parents, brother, and three sisters. I pause at the entrance to allow my picture to be taken and make no response but to pin my smile in place when photographers shout, “Where’s the lieutenant commander? Are you seeing him?”
Mama’s face is as frozen as a Nordic pond in the depths of winter. Since she gives away nothing, I give away nothing, merely nodding when I turn to the arched doors.
In the vaulted entrance hall, our family is greeted in Vorburgian fashion (a heel click and an inexplicable scowl) and I am offered a cocktail as we merge into the party—ceremonial swords and orders bristling from our menfolk, tiaras, and heirloom jewels dripping from our womenfolk. We are an attractive family, and Mama enjoys making the most of such an asset. I’m wearing a sparkling midnight blue dress with an insane amount of tulle, and the color matches the rather difficult sapphire tiara habitually relegated to me. It consists of two simple bands widening at the brow with a massive gem plonked in the middle. Among the sisters, we call it The Cyclops.
The party looks like the kind of place where an international spy would meet his contact, but the truth is that I’m not a fairytale princess, and I’m not going to encounter a spy. I’m a mid-level public servant in a fancy dress.
A footman glides by holding a silver platter full of the pickled herring canapes these barbarians love serving and I swallow back a gag when the scent assaults my nose. I make my way into the crowd, pleased to find that Ella’s program has taught me the faces of the Vorburg Minister of Climate and Utilities and the Undersecretary of Defense. Still, ten minutes before we are to be seated for dinner, I have to excuse myself into the garden for some fresh air or risk more headlines by tossing my crackers on the hand-woven carpets of Vorburg House.
I step through the narrow doors and into the inner courtyard, pulling a draught of air through my lungs. The night is warm, the air is soft, and distant thrumming echoes from an open-air concert on the waterfront being thrown in my mother’s honor. I tip my head back, unworried that The Cyclops will tumble off my head. The tiara has been sewn into a ring of tiny braids and is more secure than the locks on the national mint.
A small movement signals that I am not alone. Damn. I close my eyes, briefly recomposing my official mask, and turn to see a figure in white giving me a brief bow from the end of the terrace. White. This is a man in uniform. As he straightens, I draw in a sharp, silent breath. I would know the set of those shoulders anywhere. Hadn’t my hands been gripping them only yesterday?
My pulse leaps into my throat and my palms go clammy. It’s Max and this is the first time I’m meeting him without a royal pavilion at my back or an entire phalanx of sailors at his. There are no violets. There is no script. But the image of our GIF flashes in my brain, and I am freaking out.
I take a drag of fresh air and pace forward.
“Your Royal Highness,” he says, his voice matching the atmosphere of the garden, dark and soft. My fingers tighten around my drink. I stop a few steps from him and set my glass on the stone balustrade before it tumbles from my unsteady fingers.
“Lieutenant Commander.” I nod my head. “Are you enjoying your Queen’s Week festivities?”
