A Royal Christmas Quandary

by Samantha Hastings

Drina nodded. “I feel the same way. We don’t even turn eighteen for another month and my mother is already pressuring me to make a good match. I don’t want my entire life decided before it’s even begun.”

  “Bertie sympathizes,” Friedrich said. “His parents are pressuring him into a marriage with Princess Alexandra of Denmark, whom he has met once but felt no particular affection for.”

  “But Princess Alice is one of my best friends,” Drina said. “Anyone would be lucky to marry her. She’s smart, extremely capable, and very pretty. There is nothing she couldn’t accomplish if she wished to.”

  “She could look like the goddess Aphrodite and have the nature of a Catholic saint, but I still wouldn’t want to marry her. Not now. Not yet.”

  Drina bit her lip. “You don’t have to.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a laugh, and bowed to her.

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “There is already a prince here who wants to marry her. We just have to help him win her affections.”

  “What prince?”

  “Prince Louis of Hesse.”

  “I know him,” Friedrich said. “I met Louis and his brother at their uncle’s home in Darmstadt.”

  “Perfect,” Drina said. “We just need to create opportunities where Alice and Prince Louis can get to know one another better. He is quite smitten with her already.”

  “I like this plan,” Friedrich said. “Am I also to make myself loathsome to the princess?”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Just be yourself and flirt with every female you see and she won’t want a thing to do with you.”

  “I don’t flirt with every female,” he protested.

  Drina looked over his shoulder at the group of maids watching and waiting for him to return to their circle. She raised both of her eyebrows and gestured her hand toward them.

  “You do make persuasive points in your argument,” Friedrich said.

  “I think this will work,” Drina said. She just hoped that she was being a good friend to both Friedrich and Alice.

  He smiled. “It appears that you are now the knight and I’m the squire. I’m here to do your bidding.”

  “First, we need to get you to your correct quarters,” she said.

  “I’ll gather my things,” he said. He walked back to the mismatched chairs and picked up his portmanteau … but not before kissing the hand of every single female servant who had stood waiting for his return.

  He came back to Drina and offered her his arm. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but didn’t take his arm.

  “I’m not sure if I should applaud you, or scold you,” she said.

  “I was only doing as you suggested,” he replied with a wolfish grin.

  “Follow me,” Drina said with a sigh. “Everyone will be assembling for dinner by now.”

  Friedrich followed her through the kitchen and down the long corridor. She led him to his room and stopped in front of the door.

  “I expect to see you dressed in your best military uniform for dinner,” Drina said in a stern voice.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, saluting her. “But I will be late to dinner.”

  “Better late than not at all,” she retorted, opening the door and gently shoving him through it.

  “Herr Bauer isn’t here.”

  “What?”

  “Come see for yourself.”

  Drina poked her head through the doorway and saw the large room was indeed empty and that one of the trunks had been opened.

  “Where is he?”

  Friedrich shrugged and took a set of keys from his coat pocket and shook them. “Someone has broken into my trunks and been through my things.”

  “We can worry about that tomorrow,” Drina said, and pointed to the cord by the window. “Pull the cord and a servant will come assist you to dress.”

  Friedrich grinned wickedly.

  “Not a female one,” she snapped.

  “Pity,” he said with another charming smile.

  “I expect to see you in the State Dining Room in less than half an hour.”

  “And you will, Alexandrina,” he said. “You will.”

  Chapter 15

  George surreptitiously dimmed the gaslight by them so that Herr Bauer’s face was in shadow at the dining table. He glanced down at the royal family on the opposite end of the table—none of them were looking his way. The Rothfields were equally engaged speaking to his parents and Viscountess Jocelyn, another one of Queen Victoria’s ladies of the bedchamber.

  But where is Drina?

  A butler opened the door to the State Dining Room and several footmen began bringing in trays of food. A footman placed a boar’s head on a silver platter in front of George. He gulped; he didn’t like it when his food still had a face. But thankfully he didn’t have to eat the boar’s head. There was also turkey, baron of beef, five different types of fish, game pies, vegetables, sauces in silver-gilt sauceboats shaped like sleighs, and his favorite: mock turtle soup made from calves’ heads. George loaded up his plate and ate until his stomach could hold no more.

  As he picked up the ladle to add more gravy to his beef, he saw Drina standing in the doorway to the room. She was dressed in emerald green and the light behind her made her look like a shapely Christmas tree. She scanned the room twice before noticing them in the darkest corner and walked toward them.

  She sat next to him, a curious expression on her face. “Why is it as dark as an attic and what is Herr Bauer doing here?” Drina whispered in his ear.

  “I invited him to dinner,” he said softly.

  “You did what?”

  “Invited him to dinner,” George said, grinning at his own cleverness. “Don’t worry, he has excellent manners.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I needed a foreign prince to come to dinner,” he said. “Or my father threatened to cut my allowance … And it has been such a lark. You would have been in stitches, if you’d seen how many times Lady Clara has tried to get his attention. She keeps asking him questions in English and he always answers her with ‘ja.’”

  George watched Drina look past him to where Lady Clara was seated next to Herr Bauer.

  “You are so amusing, Prince Friedrich,” Lady Clara said with another high laugh and a flirtatious wave of her fan.

  Drina shook her head; her face looked grave.

  “What’s the matter?” George asked.

  “I’ve found the real Prince Friedrich,” she said, glaring at him.

  George’s jaw dropped. “Where? How?”

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the floor.

  “Here?”

  “He was in the servant’s quarters,” Drina said. “Because of the mix-up with the rooms.”

  George exhaled. “So, he’s not here here.”

  “But he will be soon,” she said. “I left him in his rooms to dress for dinner. He’ll be arriving here here any moment.”

  George’s head felt ready to explode. He picked up his glass of red wine and drained it in one gulp. “What are we going to do? I think I may have caused an international incident!”

  He followed Drina’s eyes as she looked down the table to where Queen Victoria was sitting next to her husband, Prince Albert.

  “Has Herr Bauer been introduced to the Queen or Prince Albert yet?” Drina asked.

  “No,” George said. “We arrived after everyone had already assembled for dinner. I didn’t introduce him to anyone except Lady Clara.”

  “Good,” she said. “We can still think of something.”

  “We can think while we eat,” he said, trying to lighten her mood. “You haven’t had a bite since luncheon and you didn’t eat much then. Would you like me to cut you off an ear from the boar’s head?”

  They both looked at the boar’s head on the silver platter in front of them. Its eyes were open and there was a large red apple in its mouth. Why civilized people put decapitated pigs’ heads on the table, he’d never understand.

  “George, how did you kno
w that I shared Prince Albert’s fondness for boar’s head?” Drina said teasingly. “I’ll eat it, if you cut it off.”

  She was calling his bluff. This was the Drina he knew.

  “I’m not sure what would make me more ill,” he admitted. “Cutting off the ear or watching you eat it.”

  Drina shrugged her curvaceous shoulders and George’s eyes noticed that she was wearing an enormous emerald on a golden chain around her neck. The emerald brought attention to her chest, which he thought didn’t require any more attention. She smirked at him before reaching her hand out to the boar’s head and taking the apple from its mouth. She placed it on his plate. “There you go, George.”

  “I find myself already full,” he said. “I’ll let you have the apple as an early Christmas present.”

  She laughed. “That isn’t a proper Christmas present at all, in England or Hoburg.”

  “What is a proper Christmas present in Hoburg?”

  “My mother would say jewels,” Drina said, touching the enormous emerald at her breast. “My father would say a book. I suppose the proper present is what a person wants or needs most.”

  “So, a boar’s head is right out.”

  She laughed like he’d hoped she would and dished herself up some fish and vegetables. She ate her food, but her eyes kept darting toward the door. George was too afraid to look for the prince.

  What a mess I’ve gotten us into.

  The footmen began to remove the dinner plates from the table and the superfluous dishes—including the boar’s head. George’s stomach was so full that he didn’t think he could eat another bite. That was until the footmen brought out an enormous Christmas pudding (on fire and as big as his head), a tower of mince pies, bon-bon dishes, cream dishes, and ice pails displayed on porcelain dessert trays held up by four figures representing the different seasons. It would be a crying shame to let such delicacies go to waist—waste. He’d meant waste.

  He popped a whole mince pie in his mouth just as Drina grabbed his arm. He choked on the pie, beating his chest with a fist and coughing loudly.

  “Whatever you do, don’t introduce Herr Bauer to anyone else,” she whispered, and darted from her chair to the door.

  George saw a glimpse of a tall, blond young man in a red coat with a black sash covered in jewels standing in the doorway. Drina pushed him back through the door that led to the Octagon Dining Room and closed it behind them. George exhaled in relief. He looked from Herr Bauer smiling at Lady Clara to the enormous serving of Christmas pudding on his plate. Suddenly he found himself quite without an appetite.

  Chapter 16

  Friedrich bowed to her formally and opened his mouth to speak, but Drina didn’t give him the opportunity. She grabbed his arm and turned him around and out of the State Dining Room and into the Octagon Dining Room, which was blissfully unoccupied. She closed the door firmly behind them.

  “I’m here as you requested,” he said, a questioning look in his eyes.

  “There is one small snag,” she began, but she found herself at a loss for words.

  If only she hadn’t insisted on Friedrich coming to dinner tonight. If only George hadn’t come up with a harebrained scheme of using Herr Bauer as a doppelgänger for her cousin. If only Friedrich hadn’t fled for Frogmore Lodge when he had learned that he was supposed to be a suitor to Alice. There were plenty of “if onlys,” but none of them would change what had already happened.

  “What is a snag?” Friedrich asked.

  “Problem.”

  “Problem?” he repeated, tilting his head in confusion.

  “George couldn’t find you, so he brought another prince in your place,” she explained weakly.

  Friedrich shook his head and switched from speaking in English to German. “You speak in riddles tonight, Cousin. I feel as if we are playing a game and I don’t know the rules.”

  Drina answered him in German. “You see, Lord Worthington’s father demanded your presence at dinner tonight, and we had already spent all day yesterday searching the village for you. And today we even went to Frogmore Lodge and missed you by minutes.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  “Well … when George couldn’t find you, he decided to replace you with your valet,” Drina said.

  “How very revolutionary of you.”

  “Not truly,” she quickly explained. “Herr Bauer doesn’t even know that he’s pretending to be you. George’s German is abysmal.”

  She watched her cousin closely for signs of anger. His broad shoulders shook and his face was a mixture of emotions. He folded his arms across his chest. He cleared his throat imperatively.

  Oh. Dear.

  Then Friedrich laughed and laughed and laughed. His face went red and then he bent over from laughing so hard. Drina pursed her lips again. This was no time for frivolity. If Queen Victoria learned that she had dined with a valet instead of a prince, there would be no end to their troubles. George’s father would be furious and he would follow through on his threat to send him to Austria. She barely saw George now when he lived in London; she couldn’t bear to think of how many years it would be before she would see him again if he moved to the continent. And if Queen Victoria knew Drina’s part in it, she would never agree to breaking the entail on her father’s estate or letting Drina inherit the title.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked in desperation. “Now there are two of you!”

  “I’m sure my creative and clever cousin will come up with something,” Friedrich said with a wink.

  “But I can’t,” she protested in English, but stopped short when she heard footsteps approaching the door. “Quick! Underneath the table!”

  Drina gave her cousin a shove and he climbed underneath the table ahead of her. It was much more difficult than she’d supposed it would be with her enormous crinoline cage. Drina’s torso was bent over to make room for her flowing skirts. She pulled the rest of her skirt underneath the white tablecloth just as several pairs of men’s shoes walked into the room. Friedrich sat next to her with his long legs tucked against his chest.

  “This is like old times, Alix.”

  She harrumphed. “You always got me into trouble.”

  “Someone had to teach you how to be naughty,” he said, with his all-too-charming grin.

  “Alas, I failed horribly at teaching you how to be nice.”

  She could tell that he was trying very hard not to laugh again. She pressed her finger to her lips and shushed him for good measure. They watched the shadows of people through the tablecloth. She recognized the lean figure of George’s brother as he walked by.

  “How tall is that fellow?” Friedrich whispered.

  “Edward—Lord Dinsmore—is over six feet tall,” she whispered back and then hit herself on the head with her hand. “That’s it!”

  “What is it?”

  “Shadow Buff,” she said, clapping her hands soundlessly.

  “I’m afraid that I don’t follow, Drina,” Friedrich said.

  “It’s a parlor game,” she said in a low voice. “You hang a sheet across the room and put a single candle on a table behind it and then you take away all the other lights in the room. One person sits directly in front of the sheet while each person passes between the sheet and the candle creating their shadow.”

  “Shadow Buff.”

  “Correct,” Drina said. “The person who sits in front of the sheet must guess the names of every person that walks behind it. But you can disguise your shadow any way you want to.”

  “What happens if they guess your name correctly?”

  “You have to pay the forfeit.”

  “Which is?”

  “The forfeit can be many things,” Drina explained on her fingers. “You have to allow others to pose you in a silly Grecian statue position, pretend to be a pig, or sometimes kiss every lady in the room.”

  “I will endeavor to lose, then.”

  She nearly laughed out loud, but luckily the pressure from her corset at
its angled position underneath the table made it difficult to speak and impossible to laugh.

  “I have every faith in you,” he said, “but I don’t know how Shadow Buff is going to solve the problem of the two princes, ja?”

  “We switch you,” Drina said simply. “When the gas lights go out, I’ll send Herr Bauer into the hall where you can switch jackets with him and then you will return to the dark room and finish the game with us.”

  “I like this plan very much,” he said gravely. “But won’t people recognize that I am a different person?”

  Drina attempted to shake her head, but there wasn’t enough clearance underneath the table. “He’s only been introduced to one young lady so far, and she is silly enough that if she said something, no one would take her seriously.”

  “I am game, you say?”

  “Good,” she said. “Since you can bend over and I can’t, will you see if the coast is clear?”

  “But we are not by the sea?”

  “I mean see if anyone is still in this room,” she clarified.

  Friedrich leaned his head nearly to the floor and peeked underneath the tablecloth. He released the tablecloth and sat back up. “The coast, as you say, is clear.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He climbed out from underneath the table with ease and held out a hand for Drina. She accepted it and couldn’t help but think how much easier this adventure would have been in trousers. She managed to crawl a few feet forward with her skirt springing back up into place and then, with much assistance from her cousin, managed to get back to a standing position. Her cousin stood tall and saluted her.

  “Ready at your command, Cousin.”

  Drina snorted. She placed a hand on him to make him stay there. She went over to the door that led to the State Dining Room. She opened it slowly and found only servants clearing up the feast. She ushered him over with a wave of her hand.

  “Stay in the State Dining Room until I come for you.”

  “And what am I supposed to do while I wait?” he asked.

  “Have the servants bring you some dinner,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a bite yet.”