Page 26 of The Midnight Princess
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, talking to the front door. “I should have knocked or something.”
With a grin, I fasten the buttons. “I shouldn’t be changing out here,” I say. “Okay, done. You can turn around.”
She does, but a flush climbs up her neck, and she averts her eyes as I shove the dress shirt into the waistband, forward and back. I breathe out a silent expletive. I’m not allowed to find an engaged girl—scheduled to walk down the nave of Roslav Cathedral to wed an ecological saint while the entire world looks on—cute.
Eyes fixed on the ceiling beams, her repentance plays on a loop. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
I lean forward, hands gripping the back of the couch. The stiff neck of my shirt gapes open. “I haven’t seen you come through here. I was beginning to think you had a secret passageway.”
“Not in this room,” she says, leaving open the possibility of secret passageways in other rooms. She chances a glance at me and inhales sharply, biting her lip. “I was…I was getting my notebook. I forgot it.” She points to her suite. “I’ll get it now.”
She shoots through the opening almost as soon as she cracks the door. I take the tie from the hanger, gather my clothes into my bedroom, and begin the process of retying thezeklenthing until the front finally hangs where it’s supposed to.
I hear her door open, and I shout from the other room, “I’ll be down in a second.”
“No hurry,” she calls.
My tie is properly mangled.
At seven minutes past the hour, I present myself in the Chevres drawing room to a princess who looks like she spent themorning leafing through the pages of a book on etiquette instead of checking me out. But I know what I saw.
“Good morning,” Alma says, her hands folded in her lap. Surrounded by so much properness, I savor the memory of the blush on her neck and the telltale intake of breath. “Have you been moisturizing?”
Not even once. “Didn’t get to it.”
“You may do so now.”
She hands over a bottle. I’m used to knowing where my pennies go. Mom taught me early how to calculate the cost per unit, which is why I buy my lotion in large, medicinal containers. I squeeze enough out to adequately cover a dried lentil, glancing up to gauge her approval.
Alma watches my hands and frowns. “We need to be methodical as we tackle your lessons.” She reaches blindly for the table but frowns more deeply as I rub in the lotion. “I prepared a syllabus—” Something snaps and she abandons her prepared remarks. “Here.” She waves for the bottle.
I hand it over and she squirts a circle of lotion the size of a copperpolskainto her palm. “Hands, please.”
“It’s going to be wasted on me,” I say, obeying her.
“Every morning and night,” she explains, working the solution into my skin, rubbing each of the calluses, spreading her thumbs over my palm, holding my rough hand between her small ones. “You can’t skip even once.”
She switches hands, giving the same thorough treatment to the other, and I silently watch her bent head. This is nothing. No more than when she caught me changing. I was laughing then. I look away now, picking up the faint scent of sandalwood and flowers. This lotion isn’t an olfactory throat-punch. It’s too expensive.
“Morning and night?” I repeat.
Her fingers still, and I fight the impulse to hold on. She pulls away, wiping her hands on a cloth. Maybe she thinks of me as a bear wandering through the halls of the palace, sniffing the suits of armor. Dangerous.
Alma clicks the bottle closed and hands it over, along with the syllabus, in command of herself again.
I scan the headings. Food, Dressing, Public Manners... “We’re not going to spend any time on Naps, Taking Turns, and Going Potty?”
Her brow lifts.
“This is basic stuff. Do we really have to spend a whole week on food?” I fiddle with a button, and she glances away. “I know how to eat.”
Her smile allows that I might have a passing acquaintance with a small-town buffet and sneeze guard. “The most complex protocol has to do with food. We will only scratch the surface in a week, but it’s a solid beginning.”
The daily schedule sketches out a similar routine: wake up, have breakfast, meet with Karl to discuss my father’s expectations or the events surrounding the state visit. Next comes five or six hours with Alma as she drills me in the most basic elements of royal life. In the late afternoon, I’ll study the Vorburgian language and the richness of its history.
I grunt. Karl’s going to have to work hard, hand-waving the fact that most of my ancestors were raiders, warlords, and murderers.
“Is there any time for me?” I ask, suffocated by the inflexibility of these lessons—the way they feel like hard yellow plastic, the kind from the game I played in my grandmother’s front room when we raced to place odd shapes into specific slots before the heart-slapping buzz of the timer and the sudden, jack-in-the-box pop of the board.
