Page 21 of The Midnight Princess
“Of course,” I say, closing the binder with a snap. “You must want to rest.”
He gets to his feet and stretches, rolling his neck. “I don’t like school rooms. Maybe you caught that from the binder.”
I did, where it was buried in records from Little Duckies room aides and the Early Intervention specialist assigned by the school district. “Student has little interest in completing non-preferred tasks…” “Alternate accommodations must be devised for the pre-cooperative child…”
“Are you up for a walk?” he asks.
I glance out the window, where downy flakes drift from the sky. “It’s snowing.”
His mouth pulls into a lopsided smile—endearing for a man his size. “You’re a Sondish princess. I thought the frozen tundra was your natural habitat.”
Conveying facts is safe. “Sondmark is in a temperate deciduous biome.”
“Temperate? Sounds perfect for a walk.” Jacob’s smile sharpens. I realize the trap only after it’s sprung. No matter what the academic record indicates, I can’t afford to underestimate him.
We meet on the top steps of the back garden after I’ve donned a fur-lined winter parka and thick-soled boots. “IsPaneNowak coming?” I ask, ignoring the miracle of Jacob’s appearance—the perfect fit of the lambswool coat, and the dark knitted cap covering his head. I note that his bare neck is a strong contrast to the white wool.
My examination of him, I tell myself, has everything to do with my mission. The crown prince doesn’t look inconvenient, difficult, or pre-cooperative. Instead, as the snowflakes drift between us, I get a stupid, fluttery feeling that he looks confident and commanding. He looks like a king.
Jacob adjusts his gloves, sending me a sidelong glance. “Karl refuses to be seen in anything that doesn’t go with Oxford dress shoes.”
Maybe Jacob only looks royal because he’s abandoned the ill-fitting blue suit and Vorburg-themed tie. Maybe that’s all it is, because his shoulders are too broad and his hands are too big. His nose, I allow, is aristocratic, but it’s got an endearing jog in the bridge where it’s been broken. I wonder if it’s a souvenir from that kid in the fourth form.
I swallow hard and look away, vexed that I keep wandering from the kind of cool, clinical observations I can pass along to my mother.
“Shall we?” I say.
We set off, skirting a stand of spreading oaks planted during the bloody reign of Frederick IV. A wide swing hangs from a thick branch of one of the knotty giants, and I brush the snow from the seat as I pass. We have just twelve weeks to accomplish an impossible task.
“What?” he prods, breaking through my thoughts. Our breath, exhaled in the sharp cold, condenses into fog.
“If I have any hope of helping you, I have to know every detail from that binder.”
He sniffs in the cold and tips his chin up. “I know what people say about my mother’s hair and her name and the fact that she never went to college. You think I’m supposed to be fine with the name-calling now that the source is my father?”
I take a few steps, my boots breaking through the crust of snow. Sooner or later, he has to trust me with this. “I don’t knowyour mother, but I do know that she stood in the same arena as a monarch for over a decade. That takes perseverance.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. She has that.”
“What else?”
For a long while, the only sounds are a soft wind and the steady crunch of footfalls. This is his sore spot. The press will find it. They always do.
“She was the youngest,” he says.
I don’t ask questions. I wait.
“She didn’t want to live on a farm, which is funny,” he adds, “because now half her flat is potted plants.”
“I’m terrible at keeping plants alive,” I offer. This is more information than I’ve released to the public in five years. He drags a branch and lets it spring away, dropping a fall of snow. A smile touches his mouth. He knows what I’m doing. Making a trade.
He plucks his lip with a row of teeth. “What do you already know?”
Because I don’t walk into new situations without as much preparation as possible, I know that Tiffani Fawn Gardner dropped out of school and ran off to L.A. when she was seventeen, eventually landing a few USO tours as a little of everything—singer, dancer, comedian.
“Just an outline.” I don’t fool myself into thinking that’s the full picture.
He shrugs and picks up an acorn, flinging it back into the woods. “Then you’ll know that she met my father in West Germany, right before the tanks rolled out of Vorburg.”
