Royal Crown

by Meg Cabot

  “Hey, what about me?” Rocky asked. “Can I be a royal babysitter, too?”

  “Of course you can,” Nishi said. She was letting Purple Iris brush her long dark hair, which, unlike mine, was not curly. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Rocky cheered. “Yay!”

  “But don’t expect a percentage of our earnings,” Nishi informed him. “You’ll have to work out your own fee.”

  “Now, hold on a minute,” Dad said. He’d taken the flyer from Michael. “Just how many of you am I going to be paying to look after these twins? They’re only babies, after all. They don’t even walk. It can’t take that many people to look after a couple of babies who don’t even do anything but sleep, cry, and eat.”

  “Really?” Helen asked him. “Would you care to take your day off to look after them?”

  “Well,” Dad said. “No. But—”

  “They’re my babies,” Mia said, taking a screaming Prince Frank from Michael. “I’ll be the one paying, Dad.”

  “I don’t think the kids are being unreasonable,” Helen said, raising her voice to be heard above the little prince’s crying. “After all, Frank does require considerable extra care, since he has colic.”

  Luisa looked pale. “What’s colic? I can’t be coming down with anything before the coronation—I promised my social media followers I’d post photos. They’re all counting on me.”

  “Colic isn’t catching,” Tina Hakim Baba assured her. She was sitting at the dining table beside Mrs. Rockefeller, enjoying morning coffee and croissants. “Frank’s tummy hurts a little, is all.”

  “And he farts a lot,” Rocky added. Rocky was delighted as always that an opportunity had arisen to use a reference to a biological function in conversation.

  “It helps if you hold him and sing,” Mia said.

  Luisa looked panicky. “Sing what?”

  “Oh, anything,” Michael said. “But he seems to like classic rock the best. ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ by the Rolling Stones is his favorite.”

  “I don’t know that song,” Luisa said.

  “Don’t worry,” Grandmère said. “I do. Mr. Jagger wrote it about me. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, under my guidance, Genovia’s new royal babysitting service is going to do wonderfully.”

  I really hope Grandmère is right. But somehow I think this whole thing might turn out to be a disaster …

  Especially after Mia added, “Oh, and one last thing. Cousin René and his wife, Bella, have just arrived from Italy. They’re going to need someone to look after Prince Morgan while they’re meeting with us. You don’t mind babysitting him, do you, Olivia?”

  Tuesday, December 29

  12:30 P.M.

  Royal Pool

  Do you want to know the truth? YES. YES, I DO MIND BABYSITTING PRINCE MORGAN. VERY, VERY MUCH.

  I understand that he’s my cousin (several times removed) and that this morning I volunteered to start a royal babysitting service here in the palace (even though it was all my best friend’s idea).

  But that doesn’t mean I want to babysit the kid of the man who is trying to steal the crown away from my family.

  I wasn’t the only one, either. Rocky had a lot to say about it, too, when Mia first asked us.

  “You’re letting Cousin René stay here, even though he’s suing us?!” he yelled.

  Mia hung up her cell phone.

  “Please lower your voice, Rocky,” she said very calmly. “You’ll wake the babies. And in answer to your question, yes, of course we’re allowing Cousin René and his family to stay here. We may be having a disagreement, but we’re still family. When you and I have an argument, I don’t lock you out of the house, do I?”

  I tried to remember when Mia and I had ever had an argument. This may actually have been the first one.

  “Of course you wouldn’t lock us out of the house,” I said. “But we live here. Cousin René has his own house. He’s only visiting. I really think it might be okay, under the circumstances, not to let him come.”

  “Well it’s too late, since he’s already here,” Grandmère said in her loftiest tone. “Cousin René and his wife and son are our invited guests, so as such, we’re to treat them with the honor and respect with which we’d treat any guests to the palace, despite their boorish behavior.”

  “So we have to babysit their son?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” said Grandmère.

  “So they just get rewarded for trying to take away your home?” Nishi cried.

  “Not at all,” Mia said. “By showing them the way they ought to behave, I hope they’ll imitate it. It’s called modeling.”

  “Oh, modeling,” Luisa said, finger combing some of her long blond hair. “I know all about that. I’ve been asked to model in numerous local fashion shows to raise money for charity.”

  “It’s not that kind of modeling,” I said to Luisa. “She means that if we show Prince Morgan kindness, he’ll be so impressed he’ll want to be like us, and show us kindness in return. Like maybe he’ll even ask his father to drop the lawsuit?”

  “Something like that,” Mia said. “Yes.”

  I didn’t want to tell Mia that I highly doubted her plan was going to work, since you can’t change people. I’ve been trying for months to make my cousin Luisa a kinder and more thoughtful person, and it’s had hardly any effect at all.

  But this was something my sister was going to have to learn on her own.

  Which is how, a little while later, Rocky, Nishi, Luisa, Baby Purple Iris, and I found ourselves standing outside the door to the guest room Cousin René and his family had been assigned by the majordomo.

  “We don’t have to babysit this little brat for free, do we?” Nishi whispered to me before we knocked.

  “We don’t know that he’s a little brat,” I whispered back. “He could be a perfectly nice kid.”

  “I sincerely doubt it,” Nishi said. “Look what his parents are trying to do to your sister. I think we should tell his dad that our standard rate is twenty euros an hour.”

  “Yeah,” Lady Luisa agreed. “It’s not like there are any other royal babysitters around that he can hire instead. We’ve cornered the market.”

  I lifted my gaze to the ceiling, trying to recall one of the royal lessons I’d learned from Grandmère:

  • A smile is your friend—and also your best weapon. Show a friendly face, and your enemy will be so charmed, he’ll never know what hit him … until later.

  “Let’s just not mention how much we charge,” I said to Nishi as I knocked on the prince’s door. “We can simply present him with a bill at the end of the day. If he argues with it, it’s Grandmère’s problem. She’s our business manager.”

  “Ooooh, you’re right,” Nishi said with a smile.

  The door flew open.

  I was interested to see what Cousin René would look like, considering that he and his wife had given birth to such a genetically perfect child as Prince Morgan. In light of what he was doing to us, I thought he should look like a monster.

  But when he answered the door, I was surprised to see that he actually looked pretty normal—just like a dad, only, unlike my own dad, not completely bald.

  “Babysit Morgan for the day?” he said, when we told him about our offer (leaving out the part about how much we were charging). “How kind of you! I’m sure Morgan would be delighted to spend the day with his little cousins.” He glanced at a sullen-looking blond boy slouched in a chair in the corner, playing video games on his smartphone. “Wouldn’t you, Morgan?”

  “No,” Prince Morgan said, after giving us a dismissive stare and returning to his phone.

  I was surprised he even had a smartphone. He was only eight. Most kids I knew didn’t get them until they were in middle school.

  Then again, this kid was a prince.

  And he wasn’t even that good-looking of a prince, for someone who was supposed to be so perfect. Oh, he had Princess Rosagunde’s blue eyes and blon
d hair, all right.

  But other than that, he just looked normal, like his dad, except that he was wearing a suit, slightly formal attire for an eight-year-old. Then again, he was a royal.

  “Morgan,” Cousin René said in a warning voice. “Remember what we talked about last night before we came here?”

  “No,” the prince said, even more rudely, still not looking up from his phone.

  Instead of screaming I believe you mean “No, Your Highness,” the way Grandmère would have done, Cousin René only sighed. He said, “Of course you remember. About how as the new prince of Genovia, you’re going to have to be polite to everyone?”

  Him? Prince of Genovia? Ha! If that kid is the prince of Genovia, then I’m a kangaroo.

  But I guess Prince Morgan remembered the talk, since he heaved an enormous sigh, then slid out of the chair.

  “Fine,” he said, coming to the door. “What is there to do around here, anyway?”

  “Well,” I said. Prince Morgan’s fingers were still flying over the keys of his phone. I wondered if he ever put it down. “I have a pony. Would you like to go meet her? I’ll let you ride her, if you want.”

  “Ugh.” Prince Morgan actually looked up from his phone and made a face. “I hate animals, especially horses. They’re so smelly and dirty. When I become prince, the first thing I’m going to do is rid this palace of all animals.”

  I almost kicked him in the shins for this—almost. I restrained myself at the last minute, remembering another one of Grandmère’s princess lessons:

  • A royal does not kick a guest in the shins, or anywhere else, for that matter, unless she is defending herself from bodily harm.

  But rid the palace of all animals? Was he nuts? What about Carlos, my pet iguana, who lived in the orange tree in the royal gardens beneath my bedroom window? Maybe I should introduce Prince Morgan to him, so he wouldn’t be so prejudiced against animals. I could understand not liking ponies and dogs—some people are allergic to pet dander—but iguanas? They don’t even have fur!

  What had Carlos ever done to Prince Morgan?

  Fortunately, Lady Luisa must have seen the rage in my face, since she stepped in front of me and asked Prince Morgan, in a voice dripping with sugary sweetness, “What about the pool, Your Highness? You like to swim, don’t you? Everyone loves a heated pool, especially one with a slide, in wintertime.”

  “A pool?” Prince Morgan actually looked interested. I wasn’t sure if this was because Luisa’s so pretty—even an eight-year-old who was addicted to his cell phone was bound to notice—or because he truly enjoyed water sports. “This dump has a pool?”

  “Oh yes,” Lady Luisa said. “With views of the beach and the royal garden. One of the perks of being a guest of the Genovian royal family is free twenty-four-hour use of the palace pool.”

  “Well,” Prince Morgan said with a worldly sigh. “I’m not really a guest, since I’ll soon own this place, but I might as well see the pool.”

  Which is why we’re here now, with the babies (the twins are both in shaded bassinets, and we’re keeping a close eye on Purple Iris to make sure she doesn’t drown. She’s wearing two sets of arm floaties and a swim vest, and is inside an inflatable inner tube).

  Prince Morgan was only interested in the pool for about five minutes, though. After he went down the slide twice, he said it was “boring” and “had too many steps in the ladder.”

  Now he’s sitting on a lounge chair playing with his phone again, not speaking to anyone except Serena, my Genovian bodyguard, whom he ordered to bring him a butterscotch sundae … not realizing until Serena told him that Genovian guards are not waiters, and that bringing little princes butterscotch sundaes is not part of their job description.

  Ouch!

  I guess Prince Morgan is finding out—like me—that being the heir to the throne isn’t the easiest thing in the world after all … especially a throne you’re trying to steal.

  Tuesday, December 29

  1:30 P.M.

  Still at the Royal Pool

  Prince Khalil just texted. He wants to know if now would be a good time to come over. NOW, when I’ve got a lunatic toddler trying to brush my hair, one royal baby who won’t stop crying, who then makes his twin sister start crying, and a little prince who won’t stop complaining about everything.

  Nothing here is as good as it is back at Prince Morgan’s villa in Italy, where, it turns out, he has his own private tutors, a miniature Mercedes golf cart that he’s allowed to drive into town whenever he wants (can this be true? I don’t believe it), and where he’s also allowed to eat all the butterscotch sundaes he wants, whenever he wants (I’m definitely sure this isn’t true. If it was, he’d be too heavy for his golf cart to move).

  I don’t think I’m cut out to be a babysitter. Maybe a pet sitter. But definitely not a babysitter.

  I don’t even know what to say to Prince Khalil. I can’t let him come over and witness the madness that is our royal babysitting service. I don’t even have any idea when it’s going to end. According to Mia, they’re still trapped at the Genovian courts. She just sent over more bottles for the babies (not that it does any good. Baby Prince Frank won’t take his. All he does is cry).

  I am never having children. NEVER EVER EVER EVER.

  “I think maybe Baby Prince Frank is sick,” Lady Luisa keeps saying.

  “Of course he’s sick,” I said. “We told you. He’s got colic.”

  “Well, maybe we should call Princess Mia and tell her that she needs to come back.”

  “No!” Nishi really wants her ten euros per hour. “Colic’s not a real sickness. I mean, it is, but it isn’t something we can’t handle on our own.”

  “What I believe Miss Desai is trying to say is that a lot of babies get it,” Grandmère explained. She’s helping to supervise in her capacity as manager of our business. “With proper care, it passes in a few weeks, usually. You simply have to be patient. Rock him with more vigor, Olivia.”

  I was already rocking Baby Prince Frank pretty hard, but I tried rocking him harder. This only made him hiccup as he cried.

  “Hmmm,” Grandmère said, taking a sip of her drink. “Curious. That used to work with your father.”

  “Let me try,” Prince Morgan said, miraculously setting down his cell phone for a change. “I’ll rock him real hard!”

  “That will not be necessary, Your Highness,” Grandmère said briskly. “It is not the force of the rocking, but the sentiment behind it. Let me try singing that song that Prince Michael suggested.”

  Grandmère tried singing “Honky Tonk Woman,” but either she didn’t know the right words, or Michael was wrong about that being Baby Prince Frank’s favorite song, because all Grandmère’s singing did was make him cry harder. It made me want to cry a little, too.

  Purple Iris tried to help, though: “I bwush?” she asked, waddling toward a screaming Baby Prince Frank’s cradle with her hairbrush.

  “No!” we all shouted, so loudly that Purple Iris jumped, looking as if she might start crying next.

  “No, thank you,” I said to her quickly, remembering that we were supposed to be teaching manners and communication skills to our young charges. “I know you’re only trying to be helpful, Purple Iris, but Baby Prince Frank doesn’t have very much hair. See?” I pointed to the baby’s bald head. “You can’t brush what isn’t there. It might hurt him.”

  “No hurt,” Purple Iris said, with a trembling lower lip, holding up her brush. “I bwush. I pay wif big kids!”

  Oh good grief.

  “Why don’t you go brush the doggie some more?” I said, pointing at Snowball. “She likes it.”

  I felt a little bad for lying—Snowball definitely didn’t like it—but what else could I do?

  Purple Iris beamed. “Okay. Okay, I bwush it.” She toddled toward Snowball, who looked panicky and ran away. But that was okay, because Purple Iris waddled so slowly, I knew she’d never catch up. Maybe she’d get tired and need a nap.

/>   “Try a different song,” Rocky said. He began to sing “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen.

  “No, not that song,” Grandmère said emphatically, though the song seemed to work. Baby Prince Frank’s eyelids were drooping. Grandmère had grown to dislike that song when Rocky and I played it one too many times after Lilly gave us a karaoke machine for Hanukkah. “I believe many babies like sentimental love ballads. Do you know any?”

  Luisa held up her phone. “I have an idea. I’ll call my cousin Victorine and get her to come over. She’s been posting a ton of lip-synchs of herself doing love ballads by Boris P, in preparation for him coming here to perform after the coronation.”

  “Boris P is coming here?” Prince Morgan suddenly looked less bored.

  “Yes,” Nishi said. “The international pop sensation Boris P is engaged to Princess Mia’s friend Tina Hakim Baba, so she can get him to come to Genovia and perform for free anytime she wants. Of course,” Nishi added, looking sly, “he probably won’t come anymore if you become prince, because he’s not personal friends with you.”

  Prince Morgan stuck out his chin. “He’ll come if I pay him to. My father is extremely wealthy. Much wealthier than yours!”

  “Well, that wouldn’t take much,” Nishi said. “I’m only the royal babysitter, not royal myself.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s vulgar to brag about your wealth, young man?” Grandmère asked, eyeing the prince distastefully.

  “No,” Prince Morgan said. “What is wrong with your eyebrows?”

  Before Grandmère could explode with rage—I could tell she was going to, because she prides herself on how well she draws on her eyebrows—I asked loudly, “What did Victorine say, Lady Luisa?”

  “She’s coming right over.” Luisa looked up from her cell phone. “Of course, she’s bringing Marguerite … you know the two of them are inseparable.”

  I did know that. Victorine and Marguerite are cousins, but also best friends.

  But they’re also MY cousins, so it wouldn’t be inappropriate to have them over to the palace while I was babysitting the royal twins, who are basically their cousins, too.