My robe is discarded to the floor, leaving me in just plain black underwear, my pale skin illuminated under the sharp light. This room is my dressing area, the place where clothes that have been selected for me, or gifted, are kept and my public face is applied.
It’s both me and not. Blair is a ghost in this room and the princess takes over. Has to. I’m her as well as the person I want to be where my body’s my own and I don’t have a set of rules and expectations to follow.
Alina helps me slip the dress on. It fits perfectly, exposing just the right amount of skin, completely acceptable for a delegates’ dinner, where we’re polite and converse about matters of interest in the hope that a stronger friendship will mean we can agree how we trade between our countries or how people can move between them.
The material of the dress is soft and weighted, the lining helps it flow. I catch sight in the mirror and as usual don’t recognise myself. The woman who reads and writes and laughs and cries isn’t what I see. Instead there is a princess.
“You look beautiful.”
And that is my role.
* * *
The castle has been entertaining both friends and enemies for a thousand years. Within its stone walls are a million stories and a million more lies, all cemented within a thousand promises and a hundred truths. There is a bar, laden with gins and whiskeys, all Scottish in origin or European. Nothing English, even though the majority of people here tonight are English.
Traitors or heroes? Who knows.
The banqueting hall has been laid out by the staff I’ve known since I first walked through these castle corridors. My father’s kept a loyal team, treating them like a family from the kitchen porters to the gardeners, to the housekeepers and cleaners. Marian is in the banqueting hall, adjusting the place settings, adding detail. She looks up as I enter and glares, the same glare she’s given me since the first time I stole cakes from her kitchen.
“Shouldn’t you be in the Kinney room?”
I should. She’s right. I’m meant to be there to welcome the guests once our butlers have shown them to their rooms for the night and they’ve changed for the evening. But there’s time yet and I love this part of a formal evening: the secrets and the planning, making sure that none of the guests truly know what went on to provide a night that appeared so easy.
“I wanted to see the room.” Before it was spoiled with noise. There would be the usual whispered promises about policies and votes. My father would address the room with a speech that promoted peace between us and England and then one of the English politicians or advisors would respond with words that will be little more than a flirtatious tease. We haven’t agreed terms and all talks have been going on for a decade.
The night would be polluted with impossibilities and the dance would continue into a thousandth night, or so it felt. It was probably more.
“Well, while you’re seeing it, grab that tray, lady, and put out the soup spoons. You remember how they go?”
A memory of being ten and being allowed to walk around the banqueting hall, carrying a silver tray laden with polished cutlery strikes me and I am a girl again, the one with braided hair and freckles that my brother poked fun at.
I take the tray and begin to circle the table, laying out the spoons, ensuring the distance between them and the forks is correct. Marian doesn’t check what I’m doing; instead she talks to Warren, one of the security team and an extension of our immediate family because we can’t breathe without one of them being present.
Peace talks are anything but peaceful.
“You should mingle with the guests.” Marian takes the tray away without warning. “It’ll be over soon enough.” Her accent is thick and full of the Highlands, soothing, soft.
I should mingle with the guests. Tonight is another round of forming acquaintances with a new English government that is as calm as the Lochs in a storm, the dark waters filled with mythical beasts that smile with sharp teeth.
The corridor between the banqueting hall and the Kinney room is long and dark, the mahogany panels original features that were found beneath brick when the castle was resurrected from its banishment once my grandfather became king. The carpet is thick and tartan, greens and whites and creams. Portraits watch me with eyes that have seen too much already, but I stopped caring when I was twelve and I realised that they were oil and canvas and nothing more. There was no magic here, just the promise of storms and a quiet sun.
My hand trails along the panels as I walk, feeling the wood like braille, reading its stories. Before he died, my grandfather told me tales of kings and queens, of treachery and traitors and those heroes that had slain our enemies instead of dragons.
My father would have us believe that there were dragons here tonight, but Lennox, my brother, merely sees dogs hungry for scraps. He also sees the possibility of making his own mark on history as the heir to the throne and maybe the one to finally negotiate the much-needed deals.
I pause outside the Kinney room, peering in from my shadows. Despite women from another age calling for equality, the room’s dominated by men who are intoxicated with the stench of power. I see suits, jackets, shirts, ties, the odd dress and a pair of bare legs, stilettoes. A peel of laughter cuts through the bass and baritones.
Elise.
My best friend. Schoolmates, classmates. Whisperer of secrets and the keeper of dreams.
“Blair! We wondered where you were!” Elise sees me and releases Lennox’s arm where she’s probably been hanging, a benign spider.
“Helping Marian.” I smile, accepting her air kiss.
She’s dressed in green satin, the material clinging to curves that she’s owned since she was thirteen and she noticed how boys looked at her. Elise doesn’t need anything more than what nature gave her, the power to spellbind the eyes of most beholders.
“You’re the princess, not the staff.”
