Page 2 of A Princess for Christmas

“Okay,kiddo”—he stressed the endearment—“today you and Max are in for a treat. We are going to...” He rolled his tongue and drummed on the steering wheel. He wastryingto irritate her now. He was still her brother, after all. Normalcy was important. Routines created stability. And Gabby needed to believe thatthere was a purpose to their little drive-arounds other than trying to, like, ensure her long-term emotional well-being.

He turned on the singsong, lecture-y tone she purported to hate. “And here we are! The United Nations Headquarters, designed in 1952 by Oscar Niemeyer, one of the pioneers of modern architecture. So like I said, you are in for an exciting time. And you, too, Max. Get ready, my friends.”

At hearing his name, Max started barking. Or yapping, because what Max did could not properly be called a bark.

“See? Max appreciates my genius even if no one else does.”

Gabby snorted. But she was openly smiling now.

He had beat back the forces of chaos for a little longer.

When the applause broke out, Marie almost started crying.

Which was not rational. There would have been many more logical instances in which to cry today. Perhapsbeforeshe gave a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations? When she’d been standing up there looking at all the dignitaries and translators—a literal subset of theentire world—she’d felt like she was floating outside her actual body and therefore would have to call in absent to the speech she’d been practicing for so long. Would have to call her father and tell him he had been right. That she had been foolish to try to tack this speech on to the New York visit.

But, no, somehow, as she’d made her way up to the podium and looked out at that sea of faces and been sure that she was about to float away—sail up past the murals on the side walls and up and over the press gallery—she’d managed to get a hold of herself. Reach up and anchor some small shred of her being,like capturing the string of a runaway helium balloon just before it floated away forever, open her mouth, and talk.

Once she’d gotten going, it had actually been fine. She knew this material. Shecaredabout this material. She was giving a speech about the ongoing European refugee crisis. She owed those people her best. And she was fairly certain she had delivered.

But, oh, afterward, therelief. It was all-encompassing. Like when you woke from a nightmare and it was still playing in your head, but then there was that glorious tipping point when enough of reality—your bed, the outline of your armoire—kicked in and triggered that wonderful notion:it was just a dream.

Or, less dramatically, like the feeling she used to get as a girl after she was done with her weekly dancing lesson. Six days of freedom until she had to do it again! Or like that one time Monsieur Lavoie went away for the summer and they decided to give herthree months offinstead of replacing him.

The startling liberation of a heavy responsibility suddenly lifted.

It made her giddy even as she wanted to weep with relief.

She had done it, her father’s naysaying be damned.

But, as she navigated a crowd of well-wishers after the session was over, both the giddiness and the relief faded. Because she wasn’t done yet with this epic day. It was the reason she was leaving so soon after her speech, instead of staying to take questions and talk policy.

In some ways, her father was right. Her next taskwasmore important than the speech had been, if less public.

It was certainly as nerve-racking. She didn’t fear that she was going to float away like an escaped balloon this time. More thatshe might, suddenly and with no warning, be violently popped. Be left with nothing to show for herself but a sad handful of broken latex.

She had tried to tell her father the party was not the place to do this. That an ambush would not go over well. But, as he had pointed out—reasonably, she had to admit—they really had no choice. Philip Gregory was attending the party, and what they needed to do—their last resort—was to charm Philip Gregory.

Charm.

Not something Marie possessed a lot of, despite her ongoing efforts.

Charm. Grace. Classical beauty. All the things that someone in her position was expected to have, Marie lacked. Her mother had had those things.

Instead, Marie was cursed with a surfeit of other qualities, things like anxiety and an overabundance of caution.

Which probably explained why she was in the bathroom at the United Nations changing into her party dress.

Mr.Benz had tried to insist that they had time to return to the hotel for her to change, and that plan might have worked if it had merely been a regular party. A party on land. But the boat was leaving at seven o’clock sharp, and even though anyone else would probably wait for her if “her people” asked, tonight’s hostess most decidedly would not. She had only invited Marie because it would look odd if she didn’t.

Marie, ever conscientious, had done her homework. A session with Google Maps had informed her that it was a twenty-minute drive down and around FDR Drive from the UN buildings to themarina. And while Mr. Benz, whoso very muchdid not want to stand by while she changed in a restroom at the United Nations, might be technically correct—theymightbe able to get up to the Plaza and back down to catch the boat—that was cutting it too close for her liking.

Marie didn’t have room in her life formight. She hated being late at the best of times—being late only confirmed the worst stereotypes about people like her—and this wasn’t the best of times. This was important. This was work. This was duty.

“You should have had Verene make the trip with you.” Mr.Benz’s tone, as Marie emerged from the bathroom as polished and pulled together as she was going to get on her own steam, would have sounded neutral to outsiders. Marie, however, heard the nuance. She heard the slightly clipped consonants that signaled his disapproval.

She might be somewhat sheltered—she would admit to that—but even she knew that traveling with someone whose sole job was to pin her hair and steam the wrinkles out of her clothes was not a good look when one was trying to be casually charming. High-profile American people did not have these sorts of visible assistants. The Kardashians, for example, probably had armies of people spraying and fluffing them behind the scenes, but the key was that they made it look effortless. Americans enjoyed pretending they lived in a classless society, one where social mobility was as easy as a walk to the corner store. But she couldn’t explain that to Mr.Benz, who refused on principle to even attempt to understand the ways of Americans, much less bend to them.

“There was no need to pay for another person to make the trip,” she said with artificial cheer, falling back on the economic argument she’d made at home. And it was true. She was here to try to shore up the economy at home, not leech off it.

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