“Huh? I mean, yeah, it’s great. Your dad was really nice to let me come over and stay.”
“He’s a sucker for hard-luck cases.”
“Is that what I am?” she asked, amused.
“But I’m getting off track. Christina…I was wondering…would you consider becoming my wife?”
She laughed. “I thought you just asked me to marry you. The acoustics in here!”
“I did.”
“I—what? Oh.” She considered for a long moment. “You mean it? You’re not teasing?”
“No.” He took her hand, rubbed the knuckles gently with his thumb. “I’m not teasing.”
“Get married, live here forever, be the queen someday?”
“…yes.”
“No, thank you.” She added, at his look of surprise, “But you were super nice to ask.”
Chapter 6
“No? What the hell do you mean, she said no?”
“No. Non. Nyet. She said no. Well, that’s that. A pity, to be sure, but plenty of fish in the sea and all—”
“Freeze, Edmund! And you, too, David.” The king noticed his son had started sidling toward the doorway. “Get back over here. Now. Did you do it right, with diamonds and roses and violins and shit, or did you blurt it out the first time the thought popped into your head?”
“Blurting might have been involved,” the crown prince admitted.
“Jeez, Davey, that’s no way to woo!”
“To what?”
“This is a classy broad. You know, under all the swearing and yelling. She’s American, they’re born romantics, you’ve gotta woo her. Because they don’t have princes, they fantasize about ’em all the time.”
“How disturbing,” Edmund commented.
“She’s not like one of the girls up here, super practical and likely to say yes because she sees the big picture.”
“I’ll admit,” David admitted, “it wasn’t the answer I was expecting.”
“See? See? Can I pick ’em, or what? Now on top of all her good qualities—”
“Which are?” Edmund asked.
“—we know she’s not a gold digger. You offered her a crown and more money than God and she says thanks, but no thanks.” King Alexander drove his fist into his palm. “We gotta change her mind! This is the woman I want running the country when I’m gone. You know, along with you, Davey.”
“Thanks for that.”
“This is the mother of my grandchildren!”
“This,” Edmund muttered, “is a royal pain in the ass.”
“Proof! Proof! Edmund doesn’t like her.”
“Didn’t you like my mother, Edmund?” David asked.
Edmund blushed, a rare and wonderful thing, and became unusually quiet.
“Well, I suppose I could try again.” In fact, he was impatient to try again. Christina was…unexpected. And his father was a pretty bright guy. There were worse things than listening to the king’s advice. Also, she had really cute freckles. “She isn’t leaving anytime soon, is she?”
“She’s got nowhere to go, poor kid.” The king pointed a finger at him. “You. Go woo. Now.”
“Majesty,” David said, grinning, and dropped into a classroom-perfect bow.
“Cut the shit.”
“As my lord and king commands,” he said, and backed out of the room, still bent over in a bow.
“Nicky, you little brat, if you don’t give that back right now…”
“That’s no way to talk to a prince,” His Highness Prince Nicholas, fifth in line to the throne, complained.
“I’m going to smack the crap out of a prince if you don’t take my bra off your head this second. It doesn’t fit you and besides,” she added coaxingly, “it’s my last clean one.”
Nicholas, who had been fascinated by the new guest, not to mention the new guest’s undergarments, crawled out from under Christina’s bed. He had the bra fastened over his head, the snaps tied under his chin, and looked not unlike a mouse with large white ears. He had inherited his grandmother’s hair (probably), and looked up at her from a mass of blond curls. “I was only fooling,” he said by way of apology.
She snatched the bra away, almost strangling him. “Try it again, and they won’t find the body, get it?”
He laughed at her. “Nuh-uh. You wouldn’t. ’Sides, it’s against the law in this country to hurt a member of the royal family.”
“So? If it means I keep my underwear to myself, prison is a small price to pay,” she admitted. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have—I dunno—prince lessons or something?”
“Not on Sunday, dummy.”
“Nice way to talk to a guest!”
“Are you going to stay for a long time?”
“I don’t know. I mean, there’s only so long I can live on your dad’s charity.”
“It’s not charity,” the prince said, shocked. “It’s totally not. Dad likes you. He has guests over all the time.”
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, I have to get a job. Maybe I could get one here!” Why hadn’t she thought of that? And why was she confiding in a seventh grader? Oh, well. “I should go find the kitchens, talk to the chef…” They might be able to use an extra cook. At the least, she could make sure they never ran out of cocktail sauce.
“Um…Christina…I don’t think Daddy wants you to work here…exactly…”
“Well, tough shit. Sorry. Don’t repeat that.”
“I’m twelve, not two. I’ve heard that word before. ’Sides, the king uses it all the time.”
“I’ll bet,” she snickered.
“All the time,” David announced from a doorway, “is a minor exaggeration.”
Christina jumped. “Don’t you guys ever knock?”
“The door is wide open,” he pointed out. “Get lost, little prince.”
“Awwww, David! It’s so boring here. An’ don’t call me that. I’m almost as big as Alex, and he’s six years older.”
“You are not. And as the king might say, tough shit.”
Grumbling, the boy prince took his leave.
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you,” David said, closing the door as he entered the room.
“He’s a cutie, with a disturbing yet healthy interest in women’s underwear. Uh…what do you want?”
“Have dinner with me.”
“I think I’m supposed to have dinner with all of you again tonight.” She started peeking under pillows and checking drawers. “Damned schedule’s around here somewhere…”
“Never mind the schedule. Have dinner with me. Whatever you want.”
“Scrambled eggs and bacon?” she asked brightly.
He frowned at her. “I’m offering you anything