A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,106

but I can’t. My mother, though . . . Here’s the other memory. In the spring, there are wildflowers everywhere around here. She loved them. When I was young, I used to go out every day and pick some for her. I even did it as an adult. Not as often, but from time to time. And I remember on my first trip home from Oxford in the spring, after the Hilary term in my first year, I was being driven up to the castle and they were in bloom. So I asked the driver to stop, and I picked an armful. It was such a simple thing, but it made her so happy.”

He could see what was missing in her life. Well, there were a lot of things missing in her life. Dancing like no one was watching. Pastrami on rye. But the larger point was that she was, elementally, alone.

“My whole life is arranged so that I’m surrounded by other people whose entire jobs are to make me happy,” she said.

“And do they?”

“They make me comfortable.”

That was a nonanswer. But really, the nonanswer was a sort of answer, wasn’t it?

“I never get a chance to make anyone else happy,” she went on. “That’s what I’m trying to say. Happiness—whether you’re experiencing it or creating it for others—is important. And happiness and comfort, it turns out, are not the same things.”

“You know what would make me really happy right now?” If you agreed to come to New York and see me. If this didn’t have to be it.

“What?”

“If you would say ‘fucking.’”

Marie cracked up, which had been Leo’s aim. He knew it didn’t address anything she’d said, but all that stuff about wildflowers and happiness? He got what she was saying, but he was not the person who could fix any of that for her, not in any sort of permanent way. So he stuck with what he could do. “Come on. It’s not that hard. ‘Leo, I enjoyed fucking you very much.’”

She swatted his chest. “Oh, stop it.”

She didn’t really want him to stop it, though. He could tell from the way her eyes danced. He performed an exaggerated sigh. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll just lie here all unhappy-like.”

She heaved herself onto him so she was lying directly on top of him. Scooched herself up so they were nose to nose and announced, “Leo, I enjoyed fucking you very much.” But she did it in that semiprissy princess tone he loved to hate and hated to love.

Ah, shit. He was so screwed.

Chapter Nineteen

“We thought, if anyone can think of a way out of this, it’s you,” Max said.

Marie’s heart was hammering. She’d called Max last night after her confrontation with her father, and Max had suggested that when he arrived this morning, they jointly speak to Mr. Benz. Maybe, he’d reasoned, the equerry would see a way out of the engagement where they could not. She hadn’t had a lot of hope but had reasoned it couldn’t hurt. The man was a master courtier. He knew the politics of the country, the country’s nobility. He knew Morneau. He knew the family. He knew everything. What was the worst that could happen?

She just hadn’t expected to be so nervous. Before, when she and Max had talked about the impending engagement, she’d been . . . bummed, as the Americans would say. Bummed but resigned. Now, though, she felt like she was back at the United Nations, about to step onstage. Panic was unspooling inside her, edging into despair, even.

“Have you told your father you don’t wish to marry?” Mr. Benz asked after they’d laid out their concerns.

“Yes.” Marie had to fight to keep her voice even. She had told him, and he’d mocked her.

“We’ve been trying to postpone the inevitable for years,” Max said, idly sipping a cup of tea, clearly not feeling the same dread she was.

“Indeed,” Mr. Benz remarked.

“I’ve already done my master’s thesis,” Max said. “I’m just pretending I need more time.”

“I’m aware.”

“You are?” Max aimed an astonished face at Marie. That had shocked him out of his languor.

“I told you he knows everything.”

“I was going to suggest that you at least try making your case directly to His Majesty,” Mr. Benz said, “but His Majesty doesn’t . . .”

She could tell he’d been going to say something he’d thought twice about, probably something he’d decided would come across as disloyal. So she filled in the blanks for him. “Listen to reason? Care about what