A Princess for Christmas - Jenny Holiday Page 0,113
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 she 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.