Page 13 of So This Is Christmas

He winced. That remark at the bar had been too much. He had lashed out, his aim to belittle her, which wasn’t something he was proud of. “I apologize for saying that. I made things personal when they weren’t.”

His apology seemed to crack her facade. She huffed a little sigh and looked into the distance. “I’m trying to answer your question honestly. I don’t think there will be a way to avoid layoffs. If it’s any consolation, I don’t relish delivering that news. I never do.”

Shewasbeing honest, he thought. He decided to respond in kind. “To answeryourquestion honestly, no, I don’t think you can expect the king to be as resistant as I am to your...” He cleared his throat. “Charms.” She was still looking off into the distance, but she smiled at his euphemism, which was gratifying. He didn’t often make attempts at humor, so he hadn’t been sure it would be effective. “I interpret the mandate of my job broadly,” he added, because admitting he disagreed with the king about something to the consultant who had been hired by said king was perhaps unwise.

She returned her attention to him. “What does that mean?”

“I’m equerry to the king, yes, but as you said yourself, I’m not a mere secretary. I’m not a lackey who carries out his every command literally and promptly.”

“You’re an advisor. A courtier. A man of influence.”

“Yes.”

“And you hate that you were charged with babysitting me today.”

It was his turn to smile. He had to admit that her straightforwardness, though disarming, could be rather refreshing. “I do.” He rushed to add, “But only because you and I have different ideas about the future of Morneau. Because we have different degrees of understanding about how changes to Morneau will affect the people of Eldovia.”

“And because we don’t like each other,” she added, and he dipped his head. She’d said it, not him.

“Again, it’s not personal.”

“So you interpret your mission broadly. You never answered that. What does that mean?”

“Did you know that the royal family of Eldovia has a mission statement?”

“Yes. It’s something about heritage and values.”

“‘To steward the heritage of Eldovia, to advance its values in the world, to lift up its people.’ I interpretmymission as a bifurcated one. On the one hand, in a pragmatic sense, I am charged with advising the king, with seeing that his will is carried out. On the other, the royal mission is alsomymission. I strive in all I do to lift up the people of Eldovia.”

“What if your interpretation of ‘lifting’ differs from the king’s? Does that ever happen?”

“I don’t think it’s so much that we disagree, but sometimes we have different ideas about how to arrive at the same outcome.”

“The outcome being that the people of Eldovia are lifted up?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and despite the cold air, he felt his face heat. He broke the stalemate by making a gesture to indicate that they should keep walking. He half expected her to resist just for the sake of it, but she fell into step beside him.

Perhaps there was something to her plain speaking, to her American-style airing of grievances. It felt rather refreshing to have spoken so freely. He reminded himself, though, that putting to voice their mutual dislike hadn’t actually changed anything, practically speaking. Ms. Delaney was still here to bring bad tidings of great doom.

When they passed through the gatehouse at the bottom of the hill, they lost the illumination that had been provided by the streetlamps in the village. Ms. Delaney tilted her head back as they began their ascent. “You don’t see stars like this in New York.”

“No. I’ve noticed that.” He looked up, too, and beheld the star-studded blanket of blackness. He didn’t stop often enough to do this, to admire the Eldovian sky. Here, the slice of it they could see was bracketed by the tall pines that lined the road, silent, timeless sentries. He was so habitually focused on the preservation of the culture of Eldovia, on the well-being of its people, that he sometimes forgot to properly appreciate its natural beauty.

His mother used to talk about the accident of birth, and she was always quick to clarify that she didn’t mean their family’s noble bloodlines. Yet she also didn’t mean, he’d come to learn, anything about how impoverished their once-great family had become. She merely meant that they had “food to eat, family to love, and beautyall around them.” She always said it like that. They were lucky, was her point, despite the challenges they faced.

“Eldovia is home to several natural hot springs,” he said, in an attempt to make conversation. It was an olive branch, of sorts, he supposed.

“Hot springs!” she exclaimed.

He had noticed she did that occasionally, dropped her usual smooth facade and burst out with an expression of surprise or delight. She’d done so when she first saw the palace earlier today. “Yes. They’re on the other side of the mountain ridge, so they’re not nearby, but you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen the night sky while immersed in one of them—that’s what made me think of them. A dip in an Eldovian hot spring is particularly satisfying in the winter, when you get the juxtaposition between the hot water and the cold air.”

“It sounds divine.”

It really did. He and his siblings and mother used to go quite a lot—there was a spa in the next village over, an hour’s walk from their home. But now he took the waters only when accompanying members of the royal family and/or their guests. He never went by himself, just for the sake of it. Perhaps he would make some time to do so after all the work of Christmas was over.

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