A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  And Marie knew who that someone was, didn’t she?

  Her mother had bequeathed that money to Marie. It wasn’t a lot. Maybe a hundred thousand euros. But that was more than the average person had. It was enough to rent somewhere to live and tide her over until she figured out a way to make more.

  “Max. Could I . . . get a job?”

  He sniffed. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but, yes, of course you can. You can do anything you want to, Marie.” He still had her hand, and he give it a quick, hard squeeze. “I’ll help you. You can stay with me in Cambridge until you get on your feet if you need to.” Her skin started tingling. The idea felt simultaneously so ludicrous and so obvious. She’d never had a job. But she’d given a speech to the UN that had been heard and applauded by some of the world’s most powerful people. She was a mechanical engineer by training, too!

  What had Imogen said that first night in the pub? Change or die. But . . . “What about your father, though?” In some ways, Max’s father was worse than hers. Father hadn’t always been the remote, uncaring man he was now. The duke, by contrast, didn’t seem to care at all about Max and Sebastian except in terms of what they could do for the dukedom.

  “You worry about your father, and I’ll worry about mine.”

  “Max. You can’t just—”

  “Listen. I’m prepared to get stubborn here. We both know I’d make a miserable husband, but I flatter myself that I’m a decent enough friend, so hear this.” He lifted Marie’s hand and kissed it before letting go of it. “This is just a courtesy call, really. I’m not marrying you. After all, despite all appearances to the contrary, this isn’t actually the nineteenth century.”

  She studied his face, her kind, loyal friend.

  “I’ll go out there and make a scene all by myself if need be. The part I can’t help you with is the next part.”

  “And what part is that?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

  “The part where you don’t let go of love without a fight.” He smiled at her. “The part where you talk to him. The part where you try to keep him. The part where you let him decide he doesn’t want you instead of making that decision for him.”

  “Even if it costs me everything?” Again, though, she already knew the answer. She just wanted to hear Max, her oldest and truest friend, say it out loud. Help her really hear it. Bake some courage into her for the enormous detour this evening was now going to take.

  “It won’t cost everything, though, will it? Because all this”—he gestured around the room—“isn’t even remotely everything, is it?”

  “No, it’s not,” she whispered. “He’s everything.”

  “All right.” He stood up and gave her his arm. “Let’s do this then.”

  Leo cracked a beer in his room while he waited for Gabby. Actually, it was his second beer. He had pulled the velvet rope in the corner and asked the dude who appeared at his door a few minutes later for “some beer” and had received in return a six-pack in a silver ice bucket. It was—of course—cocoa porter. This fucking place. But it was from Imogen’s pub, so he couldn’t be too annoyed. Imogen was all right. He was going to miss her. Kai, too.

  This was the first time he had used that stupid bell. He’d thought the whole concept was kind of gross. He was on vacation and in possession of nothing but time to spare, so he could use his legs to go out in search of whatever he wanted.

  Of course, mostly what he wanted while he’d been here had been Marie.

  It was sort of morbidly amusing, though, that he was finally availing himself of the bell on the eve of his departure. Going out with a bang—or, rather, a polite, understated ring.

  He looked at his watch. His cheap watch from Target with the beat-up leather strap. He felt a little bad that he and Marie had never talked through what had happened on the whole Morneau front. She’d been holed up working those first few days, so she’d probably broken the bad news about Philip Gregory to the cabinet she wasn’t a member of. But how had they reacted? He’d never asked.

  But no. He checked himself. It was not his job to solve the princess’s problems anymore. And more to the point, it never had been.

  He’d only been looking at his watch to check the time. Where the hell was Gabby? She was supposed to come to his room after watching Marie get ready for the ball, but she should be here by now.

  He eyed the remaining four beers.

  Well, fuck it. He didn’t have to drive anywhere. He didn’t have to do anything except roll himself and Gabby out tomorrow morning and into the car he’d ordered to take them to Zurich.

  Two more beers and forty more minutes later, Leo had to revise that thought. Maybe he had to get off his ass and go looking for Gabby. And somehow not see any evidence of the ball-in-progress.

  Could he pull the bell again? Order up his sister? The thought amused him. Hello, yes, could you kindly bring me another six-pack, and while you’re at it, I’m in the market for an extremely talkative eleven-year-old girl. She’s—

  There was a rap on the door. Finally.

  He only lurched a little as he made his way over to answer it. He wasn’t drunk, just tipsy. “I was about to come looking for you. Are you all packed, because I—”

  It was not Gabby.

  “Good evening, Mr. Ricci.”

  It was Mr. Benz.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing at all.” Mr. Benz had a clothing rack on wheels with him, which he proceeded to roll into the room.

  “Where’s my sister?”

  “She is safely ensconced in the library.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. I can’t have my sister hanging out by herself.”

  “It’s merely a temporary measure, and I assure you she is quite happy. I sourced a few rare volumes of folklore for her.” When Leo tried to protest some more, Mr. Benz held up a hand. “I can only solve one problem at a time, Mr. Ricci, and right now I’m here about yours.”

  “I don’t have a problem.” Well, actually, he had a lot of problems, but none that this guy could solve.

  “On the contrary.” He swept into the room. “You’re about to let Marie make the biggest mistake of her life.”

  “Hang on now. There’s no letting or not letting Marie do anything.” Leo thought back to Marie bossing Mr. Benz in his cab, that first day in New York. “You of all people should know that.”

  He sighed like Leo was a dim-witted child. “Mr. Ricci, Marie is on her way to the ball, where she is about to do one of two things: let Maximillian von Hansburg be named as her fiancé or abdicate the throne.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Mr. Benz shot him a look Leo couldn’t decode, but it was probably disapproval.

  “Sorry,” Leo said with a sneer. “I beg your pardon. Is that better?”

  “No,” Mr. Benz said mildly. “I believe the problem with this family is that it needs to confront some questions of the ‘What the fuck?’ nature.”

  Leo couldn’t have been more shocked if he tried. But he was also annoyed. And more than a little confused. “Will you stop speaking in code?”

  “Yes. Marie loves you, and I believe you love her. Is that correct?”

  Yes. Leo couldn’t say it, though. He could only sigh and close his eyes in defeat.

  “What’s more, I believe you’re good for her. I believe you—and your sister—are good for this family.”

  Leo’s brain was moving slowly. “Hang on, rewind. Marie loves me? Did she tell you that?” What was happening in his chest? It felt like one of those giant cocoa cauldrons had been upended inside him. There was a hot, churning sensation in his chest, and it hurt like hell.

  “I know Her Royal Highness better than anyone else does. She might not like to think so, but since her mother has been gone, it’s true.” He paused. “Well, present company excepted.”

  “She loves me enough to abdicate?” And was that even a real thing that happened in the world? And what did it actually mean? Where would she go? Would sh
e be literally out on the street? What would happen to the UN thing? And what about her father? She loved him so much, even if he was terrible. She shouldn’t lose both parents if she didn’t have to. Leo of all people knew that.

  Panic. That was what the hot churning sensation was. Pure, unadulterated panic. Marie couldn’t throw over her whole life for him. He wasn’t worth it.

  Was he?

  Something Marie had said to him popped into his head. Girls need love, not braids.

  “I believe she does, yes,” Mr. Benz said calmly. “But for that to happen, it would probably be helpful for her to know that you loved her in return, would it not?”

  “Are you trying to get her to abdicate?” What was happening here? This was Mr. Benz. Stuffy, proper, by-the-book Mr. Benz.

  “No. In fact, her cousin who’s next in line for the throne would make a perfectly horrible monarch. I am simply trying to say that it has been a long time since anyone has seen past the role Marie occupied and appreciated her for who she is.”

  The cauldron boiled over. And Leo hadn’t been wrong before; he was panicking. But there was also something else in the middle of that roiling mass. It was small and quiet and unfamiliar, but if he concentrated very hard he could tell what it was. Hope.

  Also maybe a little bit of pride. Real pride, not the kind that was always getting wounded here in the palace. Leo had spent a long time thinking he wasn’t enough. For college. For Gabby. He was forever feeling like he and Gabby were barely getting by. They were barely getting by financially, and for the rest of it—the emotional shit—he had to lean so hard on Dani.

  But was it possible that he hadn’t seen that he had other things to offer? All those things people called him: Honorable, chivalrous. A good brother.

  He was also, to hear it told by both Mr. Benz and by Marie herself, the only person in the world who looked at Marie and saw past the princess.

  That was not nothing.

  It was possible that was everything.

  “She can’t abdicate,” Leo said, working out his thoughts as he spoke. “She’ll lose any chance at repairing her relationship with her father. And even though I personally could give a flying fuck that she’s a princess, doesn’t all the stuff she cares about, like the UN ambassador thing, kind of require her to be in a prominent position? Like, to use her princessness for good?”

  “Well, perhaps there is another solution,” Mr. Benz said with that same maddening mildness. “But I suspect that for it to be located, someone may have to make a rather dramatic gesture. May have to shock it into being. A metaphorical shout of ‘What the fuck?’ if you will.”

  Leo was starting to understand. He pointed to the clothing rack. “What is that?”

  “Formalwear.”

  Holy shit. He got it now. “I have to go to the ball. I have to go now.”

  Mr. Benz didn’t smile per se, but one corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  He whipped a phone out of his pocket and started barking orders into it. No old-school bell pulls for Mr. Benz. Or any fairy godfather magic wands, for that matter.

  After he’d made several calls, he looked at Leo. They held each other’s gazes for a moment, sudden, unlikely allies. Leo felt like he was in the eye of the storm. The cauldron had overflowed. It was temporarily calm right now. But he had heard Mr. Benz summoning Verene, asking that several pairs of shoes be brought up, commandeering a shaving kit.

  Shit was about to get real.

  “How come everyone calls you Mr. Benz?” Leo asked suddenly.

  “Because that is my name. Well, actually my name is Trauttmansdorff-Benz, but that’s rather a mouthful.”

  “But everyone calls you Mr. Benz, whereas Torkel is Torkel and Verene is Verene. I feel like if you’re going to fairy-godfather me into a prince, I should know your first name.”

  “It’s Matteo.”

  “All right then, Matteo. I need to tell you one thing.”

  Mr. Benz—Leo couldn’t actually think of him as Matteo, it turned out—raised an eyebrow.

  “I am a little bit drunk.”

  Mr. Benz rolled his eyes.

  “So maybe you should add coffee to that list of stuff you ordered.”

  Mr. Benz sighed. Poor Mr. Benz.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As Marie paused on the threshold to the ballroom, she tried to appreciate it objectively. The palace staff had worked hard to transform the cavernous space into a gorgeous, glittering winter wonderland. A forty-foot tree decorated to the hilt anchored one end of the dance floor. Holly and pine garlands hung on the walls and from the crystal chandeliers that studded the space.

  The guests were gorgeous, too, decked out in frothy formal dresses and tuxedos and military whites. Max, at her side, patted her arm and Marie turned to smile at him, her best friend, her coconspirator. He was dressed exactly as the occasion called for, with his baronial adornments and a sash over his suit. But there was always something about Max that winked at the formality of any proceeding. His hair was a little too tussled, his posture a little too relaxed. Rakish truly was the word.

  It was really too bad she couldn’t dredge up any romantic feelings for him.

  But on the other hand, pity the poor woman who ever did, because Max wasn’t just rakish. He was a rake.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just do it now?” Marie whispered, scanning the room for her father as they slipped in through a side door—they’d opted not to make a grand entrance via the stairs at the front. As resolute as she was, she was literally shaking from nerves and just wanted this all to be over so she could go in search of Leo.

  “Quite sure,” Max said, nodding at people as they walked to their table, which was about halfway back. Her mother had always insisted that they—the royals—mix with other guests rather than sit at a more traditional head table, and they’d continued the practice after she was gone.

  Marie and Max had decided that instead of talking to their parents immediately, they would corner them after dinner—before the dreaded announcement was to be made—so there was less time for a protracted discussion. They were counting on the desire to avoid a public scene to work in their favor. Marie fully expected a private scene to follow later, but they would deal with that when the time came.

  Dinner was excruciating, not least because Lucrecia was at their table. But it wasn’t the usual kind of excruciating. There were the typical Lucrecia barbs, but Marie found they didn’t stick like they used to. She tried a new strategy: cheerfully concurring. Yes, her mother had been so graceful and lovely. Yes, it was remarkable that Marie had chosen to study engineering instead of a more traditional field like history or literature. She was happy to agree with her former tormenter because she realized suddenly that none of what this woman said mattered. None of it was true, and more to the point, Marie had people in her life who knew that. Who saw the real her.

  No, the excruciating part was the interminable wait until it was time to put their plan into motion.

  “Now?” she whispered to Max as they watched her father get up from his table—he was at one closer to the front with Max’s parents and some other senior nobles and parliamentarians. He was headed for the dais where he would traditionally make a toast to open the dancing. She and Max had hypothesized that this was where the big announcement would come.

  “Yes. Now.” Max rose and pulled her up with him. He was going to talk to his parents while Marie intercepted her father—a simultaneous, two-pronged attack at a moment where appearances were important—to their parents, at least. “Break a leg, M,” Max whispered, and he was gone.

  Her legs quivered but she forced herself forward, suddenly worried that they hadn’t timed it right, that her father would beat her to the dais.

  She had to get there first. Her father was wending his way through the tables, stopping every now and then to return a greeting someone made as he passed. She decided to take a shortcut through the empty dance floor.

>   The click of her heels on the parquet floor thundered in her ears. Marie had no idea what she was going to say. She had decided that rather than rehearse a speech, she would speak from the heart. She hadn’t taken into account that the organ in question was going to feel like it might pound out of her chest. She hitched her floor-length skirts up so she could pick up the pace without stepping on them. Adrenaline made her clumsy, though. Adrenaline and high heels. As she reached the center of the dance floor, she stumbled. Pitched forward awkwardly but managed to right herself after a few lurching steps.

  She heard gasps. She was drawing attention. “Oh my god!” she heard someone exclaim. All right, yes, she was embarrassing herself, but really, who cared? She took a fortifying breath and continued toward the front.

  The expressions of shock from the crowd continued. “Can you believe it?” she heard someone murmur as she passed. She was starting to get annoyed. So she’d stumbled. It wasn’t a crime.

  “Look at him!” came another voice.

  Look at him? Was Max drawing attention, too?

  Marie turned, looking for the source of everyone’s marveling and—

  All the air whooshed out of her lungs. She was getting that floaty feeling again, like at the UN. Like she was full of helium and if she wasn’t very careful and very deliberate, she might take flight, just float up to the chandelier above her head that was functioning like a spotlight. Because there was Leo, perched halfway down the majestic, red-carpeted staircase at the front of the ballroom.

  How surprising. But also how not surprising. Wasn’t Leo always there when she needed him? He looked extremely annoyed—which made her smile, because he looked so much like himself, despite the very un-Leo-esque tuxedo he was wearing. He scanned the crowd, either not realizing or not caring that everyone was all aflutter about his sudden appearance, until his gaze landed on her.