Fifteen
FRIEDRICH
SeeingAurelia with those children does something to me. Watching her with them during the tour a few weeks back was pure joy. She loves her job, and she adores the Maier kids. And the other little ones on tour gravitated to her as well. She was the most gorgeous pied piper, running and playing and laughing with her little charges, who followed along with every game, song, and story.
I lean back in my chair as the meeting about signage continues to drag on. But I feel a sense of contentment as I lace my fingers behind my head. My brain is conjuring all kinds of images, and not the usual ones that involve Nanny Sumner. My mind replaces the blonde kiddos with brown eyes in the selfie with a little auburn-haired girl and dark-haired boy, both sporting her stunning green eyes. I canalmost imagine them playing at the park, chased by their mother as they laugh and squeal in unadulterated happiness. I’m on the outside of this little daydream, content to watch as their cheeks grow rosy in the cool day and my heart swells with imagined joy.
“Your Highness?” The phone on speaker snaps me from my fantasy.
“Oh, sorry, men, just had an important email come through,” I lie. “What was the question?”
“Are you satisfied with those changes?” The voice of the transportation secretary is a bit pinched.
Shit, when did they even come to any kind of agreement?“Absolutely, good work, everyone. Please get a copy of the minutes to me as soon as possible for final review.”
I click off my phone and push away from my desk, standing and stretching before shutting off my computer. Tristan is sitting at a smaller desk in the corner of my office, typing away on something and doesn’t notice me moving to the door until I’m almost level with him.
“Oh, Your Highness.” He jumps up from his desk, but I wave him down.
“No worries, Tristan. I’m just going downstairs to find a bite to eat.” I leave my suit jacket hanging on the coat rack by the door. I’m only slipping down to the family dining room. No need for ceremony, it’s basically my house, right?
I type out a quick note to Aurelia while I walk, stilla little heady from my earlier non-sexual fantasy of her. It shouldn’t have this much of a hold on me.
Mother is sitting alone in the dining room when I walk in, flipping through a stack of papers while she picks at a salad. Her head snaps up when she hears the tap of my shoes on the wood floor.
“Mon soleil.What are you up to today?”
I peruse the sideboard set out by the kitchen staff. Breakfast and lunch are typically a come-and-go affair at the palace and are served buffet style with a rotation of favorites for each member of my family. And there’s always some sort of soup and lightly dressed salad. I ladle a thick bisque into a bowl for myself and take a piece of fresh baked bread. I do miss the food around here on the days I stay at Rankten Cottage.
“Just a few meetings that make me want to lobotomize myself, and working on some things for the charity football match coming up.”
Mother sighs as she turns over another page. “I am trying to keep busy, too.” She gestures to the stack of papers beside her.
A picture of the princess from Spain smiles up from the page. The type underneath is too small to make out from across the table, but I’m guessing it’s information on the princess. The stack looks much larger than the seventy women remaining. Each one must have quite a dossier in there, surely enough to keep Mother busy as she prepares for her tea this Sunday.
We’ve both been trying to keep busy this week.Father had returned from Rome on Wednesday, two days early. The king never cuts these things short. The doctor had chastised him for attempting such a long journey and a strenuous schedule of meetings, conferences, and photo calls. It seems to have gotten through to him this time, and Father has kept to his chambers since returning. Meals are brought to him upstairs, and most of his mundane daily duties have passed to me, hence the mind-numbing meeting with the sign committee.
He sent Mother away after the first few hours of her constant attention and worry. So now she and I are doing what we both do in any time of crisis, burying ourselves in work. Someone is going to have to find us more to do next week when Father goes in for his biopsy before he begins the gene therapy. He’s made it clear he wants neither of us at the hospital since the doctors assure us it’s all very routine.
“Read anything interesting over there?” I ask after too much silence that leaves too much room for thinking.
Mother makes a very Frenchpfftsound. “These foreign governments try to make their women sound like they’re the second coming of the Blessed Mother. I want the dirt, the real women beneath the skin.” She taps her chin. “Perhaps I can put Sibylle and Claudette on the task.”
I chuckle. If anyone can dig up long hidden skeletons, it’s Mother’s ladies in waiting. Those women are like goddamn hounds when on the hunt for gossip.
My phone chimes, and I can’t help but smile at the second selfie Aurelia has sent today. She’s carrying a sleeping Liam as they walk through the city.
Aurelia:
On the way to the park he wouldn’t even hold my hand
Ah to be two again. I wish someone would carry me around when I get tired
You don’t have servants that do that for you? Like a litter or something?
Haha. Very funny Nanny Sumner
“Who are you talking to,mon soleil?”
