“I’m not interested in games, Dmitri,” I told him.
He looked down at me and shook his head. “So I am learning. But it is the royal way to at least be civil, even if we exhibit that passive-aggressive streak you so despise.”
“This doesn’t seem to stop you from telling everyone just how unimpressed you are with me.”
“I…” He sighed, his eye brows drawing together.
“You what?”
“I seem unable to maintain my propriety since your arrival.”
“I don’t try to suck at everything,” I told him. “I’m not trying to ruin the face of the palace or the nobility. I am really trying my hardest.”
His fingers gently traced along my cheek. “Perhaps not all change is bad,” he said so softly I was sure he hadn’t meant to say anything out loud.
My heart thudded. We were far too close together and I felt warm and tingly and wired. His hand was cupping my face, my hand was resting on his chest – when the hell had that happened? – and there was definite movement towards each other. But this time, our eyes were watching each other carefully. We both knew what was happening and it seemed neither of us were pulling away.
There was a noise and Rex’s distinct voice saying, “Arnell has just sent those…”
I dropped my face hurriedly and we both seemed to take a moment before we stepped away from each other. But it was only one step. And my heart pounded harder than it had before with concern that Rex had totally seen that for what it was about to be.
But Rex only smiled warmly. “Ah, Anya. Sorry, I didn’t realise you were here. Samson gone for the night, son?”
“Sorry, your highness,” Samson said as he hurried in behind Rex. “Uh, your majesty.” He bowed quickly, then turned back to Dmitri. “I was in the lavatory.”
Dmitri waved a hand to Samson. “It’s fine. Lady Tatiana and I were…finished with our discussion, anyway.” Dmitri spared me a look that I wanted to mean we had other unfinished business between us. “I owed her an apology for my behaviour.”
Rex gave me a conspiratorial look. “I wish I could say I was surprised, Anya.”
I bit my lip against a full-blown smile. “We’re all good.”
“Excellent,” Rex said and I thought he was looking a bit tense underneath his smile, something about the way it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Perhaps Samson could walk Lady Tatiana back to her room, then head for his bed?”
Samson bowed. “Of course, sir.”
I nodded, then realised that all meant I needed to get gone for whatever Rex was there to talk about. “Right! Of course. Uh, good night, Dmitri. Thank you…”
He inclined his head in a short bow. “Good night, Tatiana.”
Before I had the urge to say good night to him again, I smiled at Rex, hoping he wasn’t reading any undercurrents of…whatever was playing out here. “Night, your majesty. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Rex gave me a smile back. “You will. Sleep well.”
I nodded hurriedly, then hurriedly followed Samson out. As he closed the door behind us, I heard Dmitri say, “How much whiskey will we need tonight, then?”
Chapter Fourteen
We were hanging out in the Great Drawing Room, which I’d discovered was the proper name for what I’d been calling the welcoming room, and Lia and I were just kind of off to the side while Dad, Dmitri and Rex were talking in one corner, and Nico, Kostin and Hilde were in another.
It was after dinner and we were waiting for the arrival of their royal highnesses, the princesses Carolina and Faith. They were coming back to be at my presentation ball the next night
“Who do you think Kostin will ask to the Christmas ball?” Lia asked me and I looked at her in surprise to find her watching him avidly.
“I’m sure I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”
“I don’t think he’s obligated to tell me who he’s taking.”
“No. I mean ask him to the ball.”
She huffed self-consciously as she smiled shyly. “I can’t do that.”
“Where’s the girl who was fearlessly going to ask Bobby Feldman to his Year Twelve formal?”
“She asked him and he treated her like a small child.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who’s anyone taking?”
Lia shrugged. “Mitya is supposedly going to take Amanda Schuller. Or was that the New Year’s ball…?” she muttered to herself.
Meanwhile, I was trying to remember why I knew the name Amanda Schuller. It clicked just as Dmitri and I caught each other’s eye across the room. And stupidly, my breath caught. I watched him pause in whatever he was saying, lick his lip, blink, and turn back to his father.
“No. I think that was the New Year’s party maybe?” Lia was still going. “I heard Dad saying something to Hilde about it.”
I snorted. “So, does Dmitri know he’s taking Amanda Schuller to any ball?”
“Possibly not.”
“Poor him.”
Lia gave a demure little ‘tut’. “The crown prince is expected to announce his engagement early next year–”
So, I kept hearing. “Good for him.”
“The only problem is, he’s not even seeing anyone as far as anyone can tell.”
I’d hope so or the frequency with which our lips kept trying to meet would be even more disastrous. “And this Amanda Schuller is supposed to be her?”
“I assume so.”
“Well, nothing like a whirlwind romance to get the media excited, I’m sure.”
“Tati!” she chided teasingly, then I felt her tense.
I stopped myself from still staring at Dmitri and followed her gaze. Two young women who could only be Hilde’s daughters had walked into the room and were being met with enthusiastic gusto by Nico. Noise erupted as Carolina and Faith talked over and around each other and Nico talked just as excitedly to them, three pairs of arms waving around.
Kostin and Hilde walked over with a touch more decorum, but I watched both of them hug the girls tightly. The princesses were no less cheerful with Kostin or their mother and, even though they did indeed look as boisterous and Kostin had warned me, they somehow still looked unnecessarily…princess-like.
Carolina was seventeen, but she didn’t look like any seventeen year old I knew from home. She was wearing trousers, a collared shirt, sweater and tweed jacket with very stylish ankle boots. Her dark blonde hair was in a perfect bun at the nape of her neck and there wasn’t a single wisp out of place.
Faith was two years younger and looked even less like a typical teenager than her older sister in tights, knee high boots, and a woollen long-sleeve dress that looked more like a coat. She wore her dark blonde hair down and it sat in ringlets down her back.
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost or something?” I asked when I saw Lia’s face.
“What?” She was nodding and I turned to see Carolina coming over to us.
“Lia! This must be Anya?” she asked.
Lia dropped into a shot curtsey. “It is. Anya, meet Her Royal Highness, Princess Carolina.”
“Oh, call me Lina, please!” she said as she threw her arms around me, pulling my arm from Lia’s.
“Uh, hi,” I huffed a laugh. “It’s nice to meet you finally.”
Lina pushed me to arm’s length and we studied each other. She looked like the sort of princess who called woodland animals to her with the slightest vocalisation, and had the patience of a sainted nun. But that didn’t make her look any less nice. I was just beginning to realise I’d actually walked into some kind of fairy tale.
“Anya! So nice to meet you finally! Uncle Max talks about you all the time.” She leant towards me conspiratorially. “Only in private, of course.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Lia and I hadn’t exactly been hidden from the people of Gallyr, but we hadn’t been broadcast either. It was one of the reasons I was so surprised that the media had seemed to
find a way to get hold of my school pictures and stuff. But what did I expect? The whole country knew I was home, in their eyes for good, and that we’d been preparing for my presentation ball.
“Faith!” Lina yelled and her sister turned, said something to her mother and came over. “Faith, this is Anya!”
Faith also wrapped me up in a huge hug before we scrutinised each other.
And while she was the spitting image of Lina, who was the spitting image of a young Hilde, I could see in her eyes she was just that little bit younger. It was like Dad had talked about earlier in the week; less time to perfect the mask. Faith’s mask was all but perfect. It was just her eyes that hinted she had a little spontaneity in her.
“God, I feel like we’ve been waiting to meet you forever!” Faith said with a smile. “I asked Father so many times if we could go and visit you, but he said no all the time. But you’re both here now and that is super awesome.”
I grinned at Lia, but she just gave me a small nod, so I turned back to the princesses. “It’s really wonderful to be here finally.”
“Have you applied for GNU, yet?” Lina asked.
“Uncle Max talks about you all the time, Anya,” Faith said.
“I already told her that.” Lina rolled her eyes companionably at me. “How was it growing up so free? Was it wonderful?”
I chuckled. “Um, I haven’t applied yet, no. And I’m not sure. I enjoyed my childhood, I guess. I don’t really have anything to compare it to. I guess we were sort of free, in comparison?” I looked to Lia for confirmation, but she was standing there all robotic and useless.
“God, if only we could have had that,” Faith sighed.
Lina nudged her. “He’ll never go for it.”
“Who won’t what?” I asked.
“Faith thinks it would be quite nice to swap lives with you. You study here, she studies in Australia” Lina shook her head like it was insane and I actually had to agree with her.
“It would be a culture shock, that’s for sure,” I laughed.
“Girls!” Hilde called and Lina and Faith looked at their mother. “Do we not think maybe we should be heading to bed? It will be a long night tomorrow.”
The girl shared a conspiratorial smirk with me before conceding to their mother.
“It was great to meet you, Anya,” Faith said, giving me another hug before she turned to Lia and hugged her as well.
“We’ll see you in the morning,” Lina said and they moved off to say their goodnights to the others.
“There are other ways to gets Kostin’s attention, you know,” I said to Lia as we watched everyone else.
“What?” she asked, frowning at me.
“You don’t have to go all ‘you robot-Tarzan, me robot-Jane’ on him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That trick back there with Lina and Faith.”
“The trick?”
“Yeah, the one where you go all star-struck or something.”
She huffed. “I’m not star-struck.”
“Oh really? So what kind of performance do you call that?”
“You don’t understand, Tati…” she said, looking around. “When I’m with them, I feel like I’m… No offense, but I feel like you.”
I laughed. “Me?”
“Yes. Like I don’t fit in. Like I’ll never be good enough, no matter how hard I try. Those two are about as energetic and loud as you, and yet they still look a hundred times more the princess than I’ll ever be. They’re stately and graceful and elegant, and they don’t even have to try.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right. You look every bit the princess as them.”
“Thanks, Tati. But I know that’s bull.”
“Lia…” I teased. “Princesses don’t say such things.”
She giggled and elbowed me playfully. “Shut up. It’s all very well for you who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of you! But some of us want to fit in here.”
“It’s not true, you know,” I said softly, my eye catching Dmitri’s again across the room.
“What’s not?”
“I do care.” And not because of the man whose eyes still hadn’t left mine, or either of his brothers. “I just find it really hard not to mess things up, or let my temper get the better of me when I do. I’ve tried so hard to be perfect since I got here, Lia. And unlike you, nothing I do has made me good enough. I’m going to walk down those stairs tomorrow night with Nico to a room full of people I only know by name and make a Viking raid look tame.”
Lia snorted.
“What?”
“That was in very poor taste, Tati,” she giggled.
“You know what I mean, though,” I sighed. I watched as something flickered across Dmitri’s face as we looked at each other.
She took hold of my elbow and hugged it close. “You’ll be brilliant, Tati. The young woman who walked out of the military dinner? Just be her – fierce, independent, right.”
“The one who talked about Dmitri’s balls, you mean?” I asked and felt a smile breaking out.
Dmitri was saying something, but he paused again and I swore he was almost about to smile back at me before Lina chided him for not giving his little sister a hug.
“Yes,” Lia said. “That one. But not the one who shouted shagging at him at breakfast.”
We broke into a fit of giggles just at Dmitri looked back at me and I saw the slight lift of the corner of his mouth before I lost the plot and turned around.
“What are you two giggling about?” Dad asked.
Almost as one, Lia and I threw our arms around him.
“Nothing,” Lia said.
“Shagging,” I replied, setting us off again.
Dad just chuckled and hugged us back. “Do you think you two should be heading off to bed as well?”
We both looked up at him.
“Seriously?” Lia asked, sounding like the Lia of old. “I’m almost twenty, Dad.”
He nodded. “And you know just how draining your first ball can be.”
Lia looked and me and sighed resignedly. “Yeah, I guess.”
“What am I supposed to be doing that’s so tiring?”
“The dress for one. You won’t notice how heavy it is until you get it off, but you’ll lose weight wearing it,” Lia answered. “Plus not a moment’s peace, Tati!”
I smiled at her dramatics. “Okay. I’ll go to bed.”
Dad kissed Lia’s hair. “Nikolai will be outside, have him take you both up.”
“Where’s Neil?” Lia asked.
“He was needed for…something.”
“I’m going to leave the shiftiness where it is,” I said slowly.
“Night, my loves. I’ll see you both in the morning,” Dad said, kissing my head.
“Night, Dad,” we replied.
We said our own goodnights to the others and then headed up to our rooms, arm in arm as Nikolai trailed behind us. I don’t know what we talked about, just that we laughed and sighed and hugged. It wasn’t until I’d said goodnight to her and dismissed Nikolai that I realised what was wrong.
“Everything all right, my lady?” Shelly asked.
I didn’t know what they always found to do around my room, but there were forever doing something.
I nodded absent-mindedly. “I feel a bit like this is how the night before your wedding will go.”
“How’s that, my lady?” Gerta asked.
“Well, it’s like you’re on the cusp of something that’s going to totally change your life, aren’t you? I’m excited and nervous and terrified and I feel like nothing’s going to be the same after tomorrow.”
“You’ll be out in society, my lady. Nothing will be the same.”
I started getting undressed and pulled my dressing gown over my underwear before sitting on the bed and watching them putter around.
Finally I said, “Gerta? Shelly?”
“My lady?” they both
replied.
“What do I have planned for the morning?”
“Nothing, my lady,” Shelly answered.
I looked at them both in surprise. “Really?”
Gerta was doing a final check over of my gown.
Madame Jacqueline had outdone herself, I was sure. The skirt was about a thousand layers, finished off with a dusky pink satin and overlaid with a sheer silver fabric I would have called tulle and been wrong about. At the hem were designs of beaded lacework that complimented the corset-style top section, which had a sweetheart neckline. The beaded lace continued over my shoulders and went around my collar, connected with the sheer silver fabric.
“Really. Duke Genovich insisted that you have tomorrow to yourself,” Shelly answered.
I stood up, knowing Gerta wanted me to try the dress on one more time in case Madame Jacqueline was needed for last minute checks. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
“He knows you’ve been a little stressed, my lady.”
“Mr Mironov informed us that we were to let you sleep tomorrow and Nikolai would tell us when we were needed,” Gerta added.
“Who’s Mironov?” I asked them as they each took hold of one side of the gown.
“Duke Genovich’s man,” Shelly said.
I looked them over. “If he’s Dad’s man, why am I only just hearing about him now?”
Gerta shrugged. “I could not tell you, my lady. Now, are you ready?”
I nodded and let them help me into the dress.
“Madame Jacqueline was cutting it fine with this neckline, my lady,” Gerta said and I saw her frowning at my back in the mirror’s reflection.
“Will it show?” I asked. “Dad will kill me if it shows.”
I was suddenly rethinking the swathe of ink down my left shoulder blade. When I’d got it, neither Mum nor I had considered the whole neckline of ball gowns conundrum and it sat just a little too high for the off the shoulder variety.
“We can cover the top bit with some makeup, my lady,” Gerta answered as she looked at it. “The organza will cover up any discolouration, so you should be fine.”
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