Page 46 of The Midnight Princess
I smile when he grimaces. “You can’t make that face when people present you with their treasured national dishes, Jacob.”
“Be real, boss,” he says, handing me a fork. “You’ve never been grossed out?” He carves a large bite out of his omelet and pops it into his mouth.
“I’ve been grossed out. No one unaccustomed to them looks at a dish of boiled silkworms and thinks about how edible and delicious they’ll be. But I managed to swallow down a few pods, and no one guessed my feelings.”
“So you lied,” he says, gray eyes twinkling.
The word stings. “I showed manners. Consideration. Poise. I thought you were trying to get better at diplomacy,” I answer, taking a golden bite oozing with rich cheese, tender ham, and bright peppers. My eyes drift closed for a second as I savor the taste. This is heaven. I don’t have to pretend.
He clears his throat. “Do you always have to hide what you feel?”
“Welcome to royal life.” I blow gently on my fork. “You have to choke down lots of things you hate.”
13
Gelatinous Ooze
JACOB
In the morning, she starts in, almost before I’ve finished my bow.
“You have to learn to eat foods you don’t like.”
“Is this about the Finnish paving tar?” My nose wrinkles, and she points at my face.
“See? That. We can’t have that. We have to address it,” she declares, “or the press is going to eat you alive.” Her voice drops. “I can’t let that happen.”
“You think that’s going to tip the scale? My expression? We can clean up my beard and these clothes and maybe even make me smile like azekleall the time, but I’ve got problems before I even walk through the door.”
“What problems?” she snaps. “We can solve the problems. I’m not going to give anyone a reason to talk down to you.”
I shake my head, shoving my hands into my pockets. “They’ll eat me alive no matter what I do. I’m an American bastard—”
“Stop it,” Alma shouts, pounding the table with the flat of her hand. When the last echoes of it die away, she closes her eyes. “That is the last time I hear you speak of yourself that way.”
I shrug. “I don’t care what anyone says about me.”
She takes a long drag of air. “Of course you do. This thing”—her hand waves to my tired suit and my loose posture—“is part of who you are. It’s casual, it’s American, but it’s also an act.”
I could say a few things about her smooth hair and perfect makeup. “I’ve never tried to hide who I am.”
Her jaw sets. “You’re smart, Jacob. You figured out that when people were being dismissive about your abilities or your speech or your mother”—I tense—“you wouldn’t play their game. You’d rather flip over the game board than give them the satisfaction of beating you.”
“Did you get that from the dossier?” I grit out. “What else do you think you know about me?”
“I know you’re loyal. I know your family and your home mean everything. You don’t want the people you love to think you’ve outgrown them.”
“Are you a fortune teller, Alma?” I ask, shifting under her close examination. “Am I having my stars read? Is failure supposed to bring shame on the House of Gardner? It won’t fly. I have a great uncle who died in a shootout after robbing a bank. My cousin owns a junkyard.”
She shakes my arm. “Stop it. Just admit you’re getting good at this—the forms of address, making a proper bow, the correct way to eat peas—when you’re hardly even trying. Think of how good you could be if youtried.”
As refined and royal as Alma is, she’s a dog with a bone. There’s no wrestling her out of an idea once she’s fixed on it, and soon she adds another element to our routine each evening—the preparing and consuming of culinary abominations from around the world.
She’s still engaged. I tell myself that I’m not enjoying it too much. It’s a lie.
Over the course of several nights, we eat cheese with live insect larvae, pickled seal flippers, and a kind of fish that, if prepared improperly, will lead to a sudden, violent death.
“You can’t be serious,” I told her one night over a dish of gelatinous ooze. “I thought we were going to try things like haggis and cheese in a can.”
