So This is Love (Disney Twisted Tales) - Elizabeth Lim Page 0,43
than you’ve been alive. Forty years of ruling Aurelais will exhaust any man, and the Grand Duke has taken advantage of that.” Genevieve’s expression turned grim. “The point is, you must surround yourself with people you trust.”
“I trust you, Aunt Genevieve.”
“I’m even older than your father,” she said gravely. “Neither of us will be here forever.”
Charles perched his arm on the carriage door and looked to the horizon, punishing himself with a glance at the sun. He blinked away the sting in his eyes. “You’re right. But I worry that I’m . . . I’m not ready. I worry I’ll never be ready.”
“What does your heart tell you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” She paused, and when she next spoke, her tone was gentler: “I heard you promised to marry the girl who fit this so-called glass slipper. A rather rash declaration, was it not, Charles?”
The prince sighed. “Father and Ferdinand wrote the proclamation. I didn’t have a choice. . . . Besides, what was I supposed to do, Aunt Genevieve? Let her go?”
“I’m not trying to lecture you, but any girl could have fit that shoe. Any girl.”
“I wouldn’t care whether she were a princess or a scullery maid,” Charles said fiercely. He already knew the Grand Duke’s opinion, and he didn’t need a second person haranguing him that the girl he’d fallen in love with could be “a mere commoner.”
“That is not what I meant.” Genevieve clicked her tongue, deliberating over how to explain. “Fitting a glass slipper is not a sign of character or of compatibility. Surely you must know every eligible maiden in the kingdom dreams of marrying you. A girl might cut off her toes simply to fit the glass slipper. Making a promise like that could have doomed you to a union with someone you didn’t love, someone just pretending to be the girl you met.”
“I see what you mean, Aunt Genevieve.” Charles bowed his head. “That was Father’s idea, but I agreed to it. It was foolish of me. I understand that now.”
“Love has a way of addling our wits.” Genevieve tilted her head. “You take after George in that regard. He was very much in love with your mother, you know. She wasn’t a commoner, yet she was certainly on the diminutive end of minor nobility. My parents didn’t approve of the match, but George raised all hell to be with her.”
“I didn’t know.”
“To this day, your father is a romantic.” Genevieve gave a tight smile. “Funny, until then, my parents always considered me the rebellious one.”
Charles had heard stories about his aunt when she was young. How she once stole his father’s trousers and traipsed across the royal lawn in them, an act that had distressed his grandmother so much that she nearly had a stroke. How she’d once made a slingshot out of a gold necklace and shot pearls at her tutor for suggesting she wasn’t as bright as the future king.
Since her last visit, his father rarely spoke of her, but when he did, it was always with a sort of bittersweet sadness. The prince didn’t know what had passed between the king and his sister, and he didn’t dare ask.
“Were you unhappy, Aunt Genevieve?”
“No, no. On the contrary, I liked my husband very much. But I married him for a chance to get away from the palace and all this.” She gestured at the tiara she’d tossed to her side. “I married him for freedom, for a chance not to have my life laid out for me. Few kings and queens have had the luxury of marrying for love. You’re lucky your father is giving you that chance.”
“I know.”
“Then?”
The young prince’s brow knotted, and he clutched the side of the carriage door. “It’s like she vanished completely, as if she never existed. No one knows who she is, and no one’s ever seen her before.”
“It is strange that she will not come forward,” Genevieve allowed. “You said she didn’t know you were the prince?”
Charles thought back to that night, remembering how—moments before she took off—she’d exclaimed that she hadn’t met the prince. “Yes, and she vanished soon after I tried to tell her.”
“I’m sure she knows by now.” Genevieve reopened her fan and batted it at herself. “Perhaps we should have another ball.”
“Please, Aunt Genevieve, be serious.”
“I do not usually enjoy such spectacles myself. Heaven knows they’re a tremendous waste of money and time.” She paused. “But sometimes your father does have a spark of wisdom in him. The last