Twenty-Five
FRIEDRICH
The post-holiday seasonis always busy with a heavy parliament schedule, meetings with foreign ministers, and the start of the year planning meetings for the various charities my family and I support.
Father’s respite over the holiday has had the desired effect, and while he’s not back to full duty, he’s been resuming some of his normal meetings and events.
I still haven’t finished selecting my top twenty courtship prospects by the time we leave for London, a week after the New Year.
Father sits across from me on the plane, shuffling through a stack of papers. The front end is empty except for us and Marvin, who is typing away furiously at a table behind me. The rhythmictick tick tickgrates on the nerves that always emerge on the way to any foreign affairs event. I have tagged alongto many such affairs throughout my life, and even more so over the past year, but my anxiety still runs high every time.
Setting aside my leatherbound folder with a page dedicated to each of the remaining women, I glance up at my father. My whole life, he has been grooming me for my eventual rise to the throne, giving me the opportunities denied him. He was never supposed to be the one to take the kingship, but the abdication of his older brother so soon after the death of their father thrust him into the role with no warning. He would often recount his struggle to adjust to such a position when he would spend time with both Claus and me, not wanting to make the same mistakes his father did. In more recent years, though, Claus was included less and less as his own interest waned, and my intentions were solidified.
Now, as I note the sagging skin around his eyes and cheekbones, the untouched lunch beside him, and the distinct rattle of pills with each shudder of the plane, I can’t help but feel woefully unprepared for my future.
“Surely you have better things to do with your time than stare at me,” Father quips without looking up from the document he’s scanning.
I cough. “Sorry, Father.” Returning my attention to the folder of ladies, the words aren’t quite registering, and I find myself reading the same line three times before I notice. I sigh and shift around in my chair, running my hand through my hair.
Now my father does glance up from his reading. “Son, go make yourself a drink or something. We haveonly been on this flight for fifteen minutes and already your nerves are getting on mine.”
Again, I set my folio aside and walk to the well-stocked bar cart at the back of the cabin. Not wanting to overdo it before our looming meeting with our neighbors to the west, I settle on a beer and sit at the window, enjoying the crisp carbonation as the North Sea sparkles below us.
The deeper I plunge into this courtship scheme, the harder my heart tries to pull me in the direction I know I can’t go. It’s my own fucking fault, and yet I can’t bring myself to regret this thing with Aurelia.
I haven’t had so much easy fun with a woman in years, not since Stella. The memory is like a bucket of ice water thrown over my head. Stella was my last truly serious relationship. We dated for a few years while at university, and I’d even started thinking about proposing. And then she went and blew it up in the most spectacular fashion by selling me out to the press.
My phone pings, rousing me from the shit trip down memory lane. And one look at the selfie from Aurelia reminds me how very different she is from anyone else I’ve ever dated. The kitchen is a mess behind her, and Darcy and Liam are grinning up at the camera, all of them covered in a fine layer of flour.
Aurelia:
Well I wasn’t planning on washing my hair today.But here we are
Haha! Should have saved the baking tutorial for hair washing day. Rookie mistake Nanny Sumner
You’re right of course. What was I thinking? Guess we won’t be making cookies for you when you get home then
Now wait just a minute
I can’t keep the smile from my face, so I stay turned to the window, knowing Father will have questions that I’d rather not answer. He wouldn’t approve of this thing I have going with Aurelia and would surely see through me if I tried to lie to him and say it means nothing. But I love getting little snippets of Aurelia’s daily life. It’s obvious the Maier children love her, and it’s not a far stretch for me to begin imagining her as a mother. I don’t have those same images of these other women.
I’m stirred from my thoughts by the crack of a bottle opening. I hastily slide my phone back in my pocket before Father comes to sit by my side, placing a thinning hand on my shoulder. Once I have my face back under control, I turn to him, raising an eyebrow at the glass bottle in his hand.
“Nonalcoholic, not that it is any of your concern.” He flashes the label toward me.
“I didn’t say anything.” My gaze returns to the view outside the window.
“You did not have to. I can hear you thinking it.”We watch the world pass by for a while. At last, he says, “This is perhaps the most important summit to which I have taken you.”
My eyes fall to my feet. “I know, Father.”
It’s impossible to forget the often times fragile state of affairs between my country and the British. It’s been centuries since we were under their rule, but perhaps it’s because my country slipped out from under their thumb while they were still busy in the Americas, or maybe the proximity we share that makes them despise us so. There’s no real reason for any sort of animosity after all these years. To the outside world, we appear as friends and allies. Behind closed doors, though, relations are tenuous at best.
“Arriving with the duke’s granddaughter by your side would certainly have made our yearly visit much simpler.”
I stifle the grumble looming in the back of my throat. “Say what you really mean, Father. This whole meeting wouldn’t even be taking place had I just chosen Juliette.”
“Oh, not necessarily, Juliette. But Friedrich, you have indeed brought this upon yourself, and upon all of us.”
