Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love' Chapter 14 - Be Our Guest, a frozen fanfic

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"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"

Act V

Chapter 14

"Be Our Guest"

After Princess Gloria Lujza had ended her polished piano playing of classical music with a loud crescendo that would wake any slumbering maiden, Rapunzel jumps to her feet. The morning sick (even past sunset hours) young mother-to-be had, as her new Portuguese princess friend had intended, drifted off in a peaceful slumber to the soft lullaby music of Chopin that Lujza had given a stirring recital thereof for the last half hour.

"Oh! Pardon me for dozing off on you like that! You must be so offended! Where are my manners?!" With a start, Rapunzel sits straight up from the surprisingly comfortable settee that the exhausted girl had collapsed upon amid the soft music.

"Not at all, my dear girl! It was my hope that you, as an expectant pregnant lady, as I well remember – three times, mind you! – would enjoy a short snooze before we are called for supper with the family." Princess Gloria Lujza responds to Rapunzel in her warm, generous manner. She quickly crosses the room to brush back several strands of Rapunzel's stray brown hairs from her brow as Rapunzel stifles a yawn and rubs at her sleepy eyes.

"Peiter just left our audience to dress for dinner. Sometimes the men primp more than we women! But you probably understand that, with your allegedly good-looking thief. But wait until you see my man in his naval uniform! So dashing!" Gloria—or Lujza, as her friends called her—begins to explain as she tidies her own hair up, looking in the Chippendale style mirror hanging on the wall of this music room that matched all the rest of the designer furniture. "He's a Lieutenant-Kommander in the Navy, you know." Lujza proudly states, tying her crimson red dress belt tighter to at least try to be half as skinny as the diminutive Prussian girl in her presence.

At ease in Lujza's presence, the Coronian princess felt so strong a bond already with the friendly Portuguese royal that she smiles a sweetly sleepy, grateful smile up at her. That is, until Pascal scurries up to her shoulder to point out the time on the pocket watch Eugene had given Rapunzel two birthdays ago.

Don't ask for the receipt, Blondie.

"Oh, the time!" Rapunzel suddenly comes up from a smirky reverie of her funny lover giving her a questionable present to recall that she was supposed to have already left Egeskov to meet back up with Anna and Kristoff. "Anna is gonna freak out!" Rapunzel cries out in a tizzy, pulling at her short-cropped brown hair as she stumbles her palpitating feet back into her plum colored shoes that the free-spirited girl had slipped out of while listening to Lujza play the pianoforte.

"What goes on, meu querido (my dear)? Who is this 'Anna' you are so fearful of?" Gloria steps back in her vibrant red gown, to inquire of Rapunzel with a furrowed brow.

"I promised to report to—I mean, um, send them a signal, I mean, meet with—some old friends in town! But I'm so late they'll be worried something happened to me! They didn't know I'd be staying this long, but I was so hoping to meet the king…" Rapunzel herself was freaking out. Her upset tummy from before was exacerbated in her panic as she attempts to pull herself together.

"Could you get Peiter to take this carpetbag with Olaf in it, to my room? He's napping, and I'll be right back!"

Gloria nods with a laugh as she peeks in the carpetbag to see Olaf's frosty snores as Rapunzel bolts out from the open door with her pesky shoes finally on straight.

Why do I still mix up and left and right?!

But the artistic girl is halted in her race when she crashes into a brightly dressed young woman in a vivid orange and floral blue print, looking merely eighteen years of age, who was also on her way out the door.

"Boshe moi! My precious Blysk! How dare you crash into us?! Is this old haunted house also unsafe to take my well-mannered, high class, purebreed Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka puppy out for a walk?" The jostled, dramatically haughty and heavily-accented teenager was adorned in more jewels than Rapunzel had ever seen on a single woman before in her life.

From the flawless pure glimmer of each jewel, the Coronian princess had the distinct feeling that every one of the multi-colored gemstones set in that ostentatious silver necklace, matching bracelets and earrings, were priceless.

"Oh, pardon me! I'm such a klutz! I guess I wasn't watching where I was going. I'm sorry for bumping into you and your cute little puppy. Hello, doggy. Oh!" With a self-deprecating smile, Rapunzel begins to apologize, though the real fault of the run-in was the taller, Russian woman's oblivious gait, as she now looks disdainfully down her nose at her Prussian counterpart. Her dog, similarly snobbish, then tries to nip Rapunzel's petting hand.

"Yes, well you should be! Nyuclujya Jyubuschka! (clumsy girl)! You are quite fortunate my Blysk did not suffer from your clumsiness or we may have had to speak with our Oteu (Father) about sanctioning the already strained trade relations with this country, and wherever you hail from as well! Won't we, my sweet little Blysk? My poor little konfitka (sweetie)! Did the silly girl with the nasty hair try to hurt you?!" Snobbish Princess Eugenia coddles her pumpkin orange dog to her cheek. The Russian Tsvetnaya lapdog's wild mane of overgrown shaggy curled hair somewhat resembled the twin brother, Rune, that she may or may not be engaged to anymore as of this visit, when the double Russian-Danish union was to be officially announced.

"Oookay. I'm really sorry but I have to dash for now. We'll talk again later, excuse me. Oops, sorry, sorry, oops, gotta go!" Rapunzel blinks at the young woman several times and bites her lip as she trots backwards and away down the hall. The cocoa-brown haired princess backtracks while she apologizes profusely to the proud-eyed, uppity Russian princess. Rapunzel then proceeds to bump into many of the other royal women who were just emerging from their rooms and making their way down the stairs as well after changing into evening dress, to join their husbands who were already entertaining the gathering dinner guests.

Once Rapunzel launches herself down the steps without killing herself and reaches the first floor, she winds and weaves through the parade of prince and princess royals, intermingling with the visiting dignitaries and ambassadors as they all promenade, arm in arm, into the large Banquet Hall.

All of the royal Princes of Denmark had changed into their dashing pale grey and black velvet collared jackets with gold rope aiguillette to conduct this decorous dinner celebration with all the pomp and circumstance that the Danes had to offer their delegation of visitors from far and wide to their kingdom.

First came imperious Vise Admiral Crown Prince Kaleb in his full Royal attire, with golden epaulette decorated naval jacket, his regal purple silk shirt, vest and charcoal black cravat tie, and his British wife on his arm. His pleasantly plump Princess Emma was in a lavender and white lace modest gown, with strings of pearls done up in her high brown bun of curls.

Next there was second in line Rear Admiral Prince Anders and his penetrating shadowy blue eyes that gave him a foreboding glare beneath grayish-brown thick sculpted eyebrows. His sinister demeanor seemed to match his dark indigo inner vest and deep maroon tie. But Anders' thin, little, waif—the sweet-faced and trusting Polish Princess Frederika had fresh flowers placed in her tight russet ringlets along with white organza decorating her bodice's puffed indigo sleeves that was entirely contradictory.

Wearing the black corduroy vest of his obligatory Søværnet uniform, third son in this princely line, Flotilla Admiral Prince Lars, had been in his element holding court in his library empire down the hall with the male guests earlier. But here, he was discontent. At this moment a messily thrown together Lars was being worked upon by his wife to neaten up his askew light brown limp mop of hair that fell down flat over his intelligent, yet submissive, forehead brow. Lars' wife, Princess Isabella of Italy, with her golden mane of deep yellow blonde sausage curls carefully arranged upon her lovely head, was wearing an Italian styled, off-the-shoulder Venetian lace trimmed gray chiffon bodice overlay as she rather wifely rearranges her studious mate's never-long-parted-from spectacles to his scraggly bearded face.

Next, Rapunzel had to delicately sift her way through the enforced cold distance between the compulsory coupling of fourth in line Lieutenant Admiral Prince Ivers and Princess Marguerite of Orleans. The French woman had dutifully appeared from the cubby hole she was obscured in earlier for her auburn haired, moustached, and soul patch stubble bearded husband who was quite dashing in his naval uniform, wine-colored vest and rusty cravat tie. Marguerite, replete in her stunning ivory venise lace trimmed wine color gown with the fluted sleeves and huge sweeping skirt, had left her solitude to join him. Although, she kept a requisite mutual distance to still be appurtenant in a proper show of face as a content husband and wife couple. But if Marguerite had ever deemed to meet Prince Ivers' startling blue eyes drinking in her golden blonde beauty, she may have been surprised.

In contrast, slightly rotund, fifth in line Commodore Prince Mattias, who was never fond of physical outdoor activities, was out of shape from sitting too long behind a desk counting miserly money under his thick walrus mustache. He may have been making an attempt to look older than he was at thirty-nine years of age. But his baby brown eyes, showy green corduroy vest and dusky pink cravat tie made it a bit difficult to equate him with a respectable long beard who generally ran stock markets in financial quarters. His bright eyed, plaited tan hair wife, Princess Elizabeth of Belgium, almost ten years his junior, was too lively and modern and buoyant a girl, in stark contrast with his stuffy attitude. Mattias was always trying to be traditionally orthodox, continually so uptight for the approval of his banking community that he was making himself old before his time.

"Are you going outside, dear? I'll be sure to save you seat at the table near us!" Friendly, attentive Elizabeth calls out, embarrassing her husband who was, as usual, making deals with several diplomats whom he was walking into the dining room with.

A scurrying away Rapunzel waves back with a thumbs-up gratefully to the sociable Princess who was the only one to notice her so far.

That is, until the Prussian royal spots in the corner of her eye, dashing and debonair sixth in line Kommander Senior Grade Prince Didrik, who too was sporting his gray naval uniform with a dapper pink vest and golden yellow cravat, looking directly at her. The Casanova of Egeskov also had his roving hunter's eye on her delectably dancing trail out the front door. Stroking his handlebar mustache as he begins to stealthily trail Rapunzel, the suave Danish royal Prince takes a raffish quick step towards the door in louche pursuit.

But fortunately for innocent Rapunzel, Didrik's exotic eyed Spanish Princess wife, Princess Antoinia of Spain, also had noted the lithe Prussian Princess' escape, and how her husband had noticed it, too.

Princess Antoinetta, as she preferred to be called, steps her long peacock feather-in-hair plummage self purposely in her rakish mate's direct path. She halts him with a single threatening glare and gives her six foot three inch, tall, dark and gorgeous husband an irate accusatory glance as she puts her hands on the hips of her pretty pink, trailing to the ground floral dress.

Without even missing a step, Prince Didrik spins midstride on his well turned heel as he dismisses her demands with a heedless smirk and he walks away into the banquet hall with no more than a devil-may-care cursory shrug back at her.

Outfitted in his briny teal and blues, Naval Kommander Prince Jurgen's piercing dark brown eyes and horseshoe mustache, along with a sepia ponytail that completed his look as a rugged Navy man of the sea. 37-year-old Jurgen was probably the Westergaard brother who enjoyed his mandatory commission as officer of his father's Navy most. His pride in the sea had secured seventh son of the realm Jurgen on board ships for years, until he had finally attained his highest possible rank of ship's Kommander that he so desired. But his love for the ocean kept this teal vested, blue tie sailor longing for a life that a landcrabbe could never achieve. And that career left his young wife of just three years, Princess Adelaide of Austria, now accompanying her husband in her lovely pale teal and blue frock, alone most nights with two pairs of twins in their thrilling threes and their terrible twos on her hands. But that suited his authoritarian, half Italian, half Austrian wife Adelaide just fine. In fact, that's the way the compartmentalizing, strict and firm, compulsively neat woman preferred it.

Kaptain Lieutenant Franz was a big man by any standard. His newly applied chin curtain and wild mane of thick curled carob brown hair style he had picked up in Africa, as well as a tall muscular stature that had a hard time being contained within the Søværnet naval uniform. But the tenth in line prince's teal tie and brown vest complemented this tanned skin big-game hunter's rugged, earthy look. That robust appeal of this Danish prince drew young, quiet Princess Amalia of the Netherlands in to marry Prince Franz just last year. What the 21-year-old, self-conscious, sweet tempered modestly dressed in beige taupe young Princess didn't bargain for was that violent Franz, when frustrated, often took it out on her. But the shy, introverted royal young woman with the side winged mousy brown hair and plain, not showy features, would never complain of her brutish husband. Franz only had some anger management issues that she believed her love and faithful patience in him would someday bring out the goodness of his heart.He just didn't know his own strength some times.Kind Amalia was, even now hanging on her abusive husband's arm, trying to cover up her reddened blemishes and bruises from the rest of the family.

Now, Lieutenant Kommander Prince Berte was a different case entirely. His coldness came from his calculating mind, his beating heart the furthest thing from it most of the time. Prince Berte may have been a distant ninth in line in this Danish kingdom, but from an early age, the bored, deep green eyed, cool as a cucumber 36-year-old in his aqua corduroy vest and chocolate brown tie was pompous enough to think that his smarts and cunning deserved to own the world. Perhaps that inner confidence drove him to grow out his walnut Vandyke beard to impress. But his cold, flatline voice was anything but awe-inspiring, even though his young blonde bride Hermine, with her tall curly bun and frizzed fringe yellow blonde hair, hung on her husband's every word.

German Princess Hermine of Waldeck in a pale aqua frilly gown, pauses while her Berte was engaged in conversation with some Czech diplomat, to peek out the window to watch Rapunzel outside kneel down to the ground after holding an interesting, fairly lengthy one-sided conversation with what appeared to be her empty hand.

"Eek! It's a frog!" Dumb blonde Hermine can't help but squeal aloud as she witnesses her new friend of a Prussian Princess lean down and kiss the forehead of the color changing, bug-eyed reptile and then send it on its way to scamper like quicksilver across the sunsetting front entrance path of Egeskov to hop over the lowered drawbridge railing just-in-time as it rises for the final batch of late guests to be heralded in.

"Is her frog going to turn into a handsome prince? Like in the storybooks? Sigh. So romantic to kiss an ugly frog and he turns out to be the gorgeous man of your dreams. Sigh." Naive Princess Hermine daydreams that fairytales like that can come true in her youthful mindset still.

"Kiss a frog to turn into a Royal Prince? Don't we have enough of those boring boys around here? I think I'd much prefer for the little froggie to turn into an exciting matador, or maybe that thrilling roving eyed jewel thief of Rapunzel's I've heard so many rumors about. The mysterious Flynn Rider…" After seeing that Olaf was tucked safely in the carpetbag in Rapunzel's room, lively Princess Gloria Lujza comments with a wink, wholly unperturbed as she and her bright red Portuguese gown wades through the crowd of dignitaries and visitors on her big-boned husband Peiter's strong arm. Eighth in line, Kommander Kaptain Prince Peiter was indeed as dashing as his wife described in his pale gray Søværnet naval jacket, red inner vest and violet cravat tie.

"I would enjoy shoving my own reptile in the back of my pocket most of the time as well. Maybe that would restrain his wanderlust tendencies." Overhearing the conversation outside the Banquet Hall, Antoinetta says in answer to Gloria's tease when the Portuguese Princess sits down beside her at the dining room table.

"A frog?! Boishe moi (Oh, my God!)! What are those doing jumping about in the Castle?! Where? In here?! Don't you get warts if they touch you!? I hate those creepy crawly slimy things!" Eighteen-year-old Princess Maria of Russia had chosen just this moment, before most of the other guests gathered could register Hermine's high-pitched wail at the distasteful slimy vermin that were all too prevalent in this nearby fjorden and moat surrounded castle of the Southern Isles, to come downstairs in inquisitive search of her hapless fiancé.

This young Russian Princess, in her fancy, bright yellow rose and fireworks designed youthful dress, unlike her snobbish, easily offended elder sister who was laden down in jewelry and silver and gold and pearls, had an undeniable curiosity. Maria had a curiousness that drew her from the suite of rooms that she, her sister and their Russian father, the Czar, had been solemnly sulking – ahem – occupying in protest of the resentful argument. After all, the King of Russia had come personally for the important presentation of Eugenia's engagement to the Danish Prince Rune that had now been broken off. So the Czar would speak to no one but with Prince Rune's father, King Herbert, in urgent conference.

The Czar did not simply declare war when this problem all exploded last week, due only to the fact that his precious first daughter Eugenia still had some small attachment to Prince Rune yet. And that was mainly because her little nasty, unfriendly dog Blysk liked the burnt orange haired Prince so much that it slightly outweighed her outraged indignant fury and the resulting strained diplomatic relations between their two countries.

But the disgruntled ignominy suffered by the Russian Princess at being presented with a flawed gemstone engagement ring still could not be ignored. And Prince Rune must give a properly accountable excuse for the error, where someone must take the blame's liability, if their relationship was ever to continue.

"Oh! It is so lovely to meet you at last, Princess Maria! Please do invite your dear father and your sister to come to dinner." In her lilting, classy English tone, Princess Emma, upon spotting the foreign Russian dressed girl in the midst of the milling around dignitaries and guests just finding their seats at the huge twenty-five foot long dining table of the Banquet Hall, stands to personably welcome the young Russian girl, as the proper head of the household should.

Princess Emma had been playing the role of Egeskov's Lady of the House for many years now. In fact, it was for as long as she and Prince Kaleb had been married, for Queen Louise had died several years before the marriage of her oldest son.

"Oh. nyet, nyet. Not now. I am not supposed to even be down here. But father is napping and Eugenia is walking that little devil dog! So I thought, wouldn't it be nice to see what's going on downstairs. Since they weren't looking… I could peek in on the festivities and no one would ever know, no?" Mischievous Princess Maria with her rich brown pigtails of sausage curls bounces her head up and down in youthful exuberance. Her loose tongue murmurs the inner workings of her energetic inquisitive mind out to the small group of interested princesses encircling around her in the vast Banquet Hall.

"And maybe, I thought, I could say hello to mon manbynk (my boy) if I just happened to meet my Konfitka(sweetie)in the hall." With a waving wink, Princess Maria aims her girlish attentions to a suddenly glimpsed Prince Ruddi. The hapless young man was standing looking lost – as always – beside the serving table that Folmer the Butler had been trying to fill a punch bowl and service food trays behind the 34-year-old awkward blonde Prince with the startling sticky upbeat hair who was making himself a nuisance again.

Moping about in a distracted daze, Ruddi's mouth hangs open in a drooled grin when he too suddenly catches sight of his doe eyed Russian beauty giving him her attention. He waves back, blindly moving forward towards his bright and vivid Maria like a moth to a flame. But this action causes the twelfth in line Prince's body to flail out his too long arms and knock over the punch bowl.

—which causes the pair of serving maids who were rushing about helping get the dinner together while making provisions for the sneaky eyed, dark-haired second butler to carry up the extra dinner trays for the Russian monarch's suite of rooms, to drop their platters. The slipping, skittering maids crash and spill hot gravy and the cook's special pheasant with hollandaise sauce all over the entrance of the Banquet Hall and on one another.

"Whoops." Was all the retreating dummy, currently last in line Prince of the realm is able to offer, rather than an appropriate apology or gentlemanly responsibility that the spoiled young man knew nothing of.

"Oww! My ankle!" The tight bunned auburn-red haired younger of the serving maids named Gwen had the unfortunate accident of slipping on the dropped bowl of sloshing borscht stew from her tray. Gwen had slid across the polished floor until she had turned her ankle in an attempt to catch the midair descent of the Queen's precious gold gilt porcelain salad plate.

"Can you walk?" The older, kind eyed serving maid named Ivy asks with concern etched on her worried features for the other girl, as the two of them balance their lopsided serving trays between them.

"Ohh! It hurts too bad! I don't think so." The young Scottish housemaid whines, the remainder of her tray tumbling to the floor of the palace steps they were nearing.

CLANGGG!

"Oh no!" She had dropped her tray of pheasant when she stumbled, and was now looking down at its wasted form in a forlorn plop on the ground. The young woman named Gwen felt about to cry at her painful lower leg when she limps out further into the unoccupied hall. Ivy puts her tray down to the first step and embraces the disheveled, distraught maid.

"Now you've done it, Gwen! Look at you two! With your twisted bum ankle and your awful hair and apron in a mess, Ivy, neither of you can assist Mr. Folmer serving the formal dinner at the banquet that's just about to begin! We're already short staffed for such a large party! I told everyone we needed to hire more servers! But, no! No one ever listens to me!" Thomas the under-butler begins to grouse in a panic, muttering the injustices of his treatment under his sour breath.

"You just get her downstairs and out of the way, then get yourself changed as quick as you can. I'll take care of this mess. Those Russkies up there won't know their pheasant from their Bolsheviks anyway." Concealing what he was doing behind his dark jacket of his turned back, insalubrious Thomas carelessly scoops up the dropped to the floor disarrayed leg of pheasant with a napkin and dusts off the dust and doggie hair off the prized dish's gravy covered surface.

The sneaky, slicked back, dark-haired man sticks his uppity nose up in the air, carrying the readjusted food plates under the metal top tray as if nothing had occurred.

It may have been a bit messier than originally started out under their picky cook's Mrs. Patmore's exacting hand, but the former footman was too lazy to return back down to the insanely busy kitchen he had just been ordered around in like one of the mere skivvies more than the proper station where he deserved respect as second butler.

"There, none the wiser." The dark and cunning servant declares with a sniveling smile as he clicks his heels together and marches up the staircase with the triple trays balanced precisely in his hands, with not a trace of conscience.

As Thomas passes through the third floor hall and gives a quick rapped knock to the Russian entourage's door, Prince Rune curiously peeks his depressed head out from his exiled bedroom egress, just a ways down the vacant hall. The disgruntled Russian servant of the disgruntled Russian Czar spies the persona non gratis Prince's curious stare down the hall into their suite of rooms. The large manservant silently closes the door with a snobbish glare that reflected his own ruler's disdain of the young man and his kingdom.

The action, coupled with Eugenia's rejection of his longing stares and plaintive apologies for the bejeweled international incident blunder, in which he himself was blameless and took no responsibility for, Rune's withering hopes to speak with Eugenia sink along with his broken heart. The Prince turns back into his exiled room to return to his sulk, far too melancholy to attend dinner with the others downstairs either.

"I have some unfinished business to attend to anyway…" Throwing on his Naval cloak over his shoulders, the disdained pariah culprit, who was at the heart of all this intercontinental strained relations intrigue, Premier Lieutenant Rune Westergaard skulks down the halls of Egeskov. The perturbed young man with the wild mane of spiked rusty orange hair furtively exits the manor down a back secret staircase of the sixteenth century Renaissance Water castle with a dark shadow cast over his features creased in deep consternation.

And just missing one another in the hall, a lithe young figure sneaks back into the Russian visitor's suite, as inquisitive and lively Princess Maria glances around the corridor guiltily…

Outside the Castle, on the well groomed front grounds, minutes ago…

"… I hope Pascal can find them…I hope she isn't too angry with me …" Rapunzel mumbles as was her habit still, especially when nervous or upset as she turns back from the castle's front door entrance to be greeted by a little furry caramel-orangey colored doggie jumping up on her knelt down to the ground lap and licking her on the lips.

And then there was that same haughty face again.

"It is not Princess-like to be angry with others. I was merely speaking out in worry that my dear little Blysk may have been injured for your clumsiness. But since he appears to have forgiven you, as a good Russian Orthodox Christian, so must I." The young woman in the bright orange dress says with an affected air. "Let us begin again. My name is Princess Eugenia of Russia. How do you do?" The thick Russian accented Princess Royal in her vivid orange dress, replete with so much jewelry it was…well… gaudy… extends down to Rapunzel a conciliatory handshake of offered pleasantries.

Rapunzel blinks up against a similarly burnt orange setting sun at this young woman who had taken the Coronian Princess' words spoken aloud to have meant her and their none too pleasant encounter minutes ago inside Egeskov Castle's front ingress.

The snobbish nineteen-year-old girl's easily bruised feelings and keen eyes seemed to be assessing every line of Rapunzel's bewildered smiling face that had been watching Pascal dash away with a bit lowered lip.

"Oh! Yes. That sounds lovely. She's such a nice little doggie, isn't she? Now that we get to know each other, you little furry cutie pie! Um… I'm Rapunzel! Princess Rapunzel of Corona." Our cocoa brown haired princess answers genuinely with a smile as she ruffles the Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka's panting head. Then Rapunzel stands up straight to shake Eugenia's proffered hand as she lifts up and passes the small pooch over to the other Princess.

"Blysk is a he, not a she, for your information. I am aware that the long, luxurious fur coat makes certain vital, gender-obvious evidence difficult to see." The direct and to the point Crown Princess of Russia responds in her blunt manner as she corrects her equal rank, yet several years her senior, foreign counterpart with as much respect as she could muster.

"Guess I missed that little detail. My Eugene certainly would tease me about it, if he were here." Rapunzel chuckles. She justified her mistake to the effeminately tied bow in the front hair of the male dog as she looks down at it with a twisted lip smile at the thought of her mate's response.

"Argh. This baby of mine sure is a kicker." The young mother-to-be cradles her churning stomach where a lot of nonstop action seemed to be taking place, despite her best attempts to remain calm.

"Your husband's name is Prince Eugene? Perhaps he and I would 'hit it off' – as you Westerners say – since we both have the same proud Royal root name that means 'richness'. I would wager that your Eugene must have a high regard for fine gold and precious jewels as I do." Eugenia admires her multiple genuine gemstone rings and bracelets a-glimmer in the brilliant last rays of the sunsetting sky she hold them up to.

The pair of young women find themselves immersed in the sunset as they walk back to the castle side-by-side, now in peace with one another.

As Eugenia gives admiration to her sparkling ornaments aglow in the burnt-orange sunset, her perceptive eyes catch a glimpse of another flaming orangey-red view. Through the parted curtain of a certain royal bedroom's window above, a spiky head's silhouette could just be made out, a hopeful look of wistful yearning on Prince Rune's ruddy features as he gazed down at his miffed fiancée longingly, his green eyes reaching out to be forgiven.

Fuzzy ginger dog Blysk excitedly begins to bark upwards, eager to play with his favorite new friend again, his swishing furry tail a-wagging.

"Hmph." But the prideful Russian Crown Princess merely turns her high and mighty nose up with a miffed huff at her ex-fiancé. Eugenia then grabs hold of Rapunzel's surprised arm to quicken their pace back into the castle and away from any unwanted prying eyes.

Unaware of the silent melodrama, Rapunzel smiles a crooked incredulous smirk as she kicks around in her head Princess Eugenia's quite interesting ironic analogy of the same hobby of jewel hunting that the Royal Princess and Rapunzel's own discarded prince shared in their irresistible lure for things bright and shiny and brilliant that gleamed in the sunset's parting golden rays.

"Hee hee hee. That's a funny thing." Rapunzel giggles at the comical comparison of Eugene's affinity for stealing jewels and all objects of gold or silver intrinsic value. The unborn babe in her womb appeared to find that amusing as well, with a hard shove.

"Whoo! This girl of mine in here certainly has a pair of powerful legs and strong arms." Rapunzel twitters, sucking in air as she must stumble into the whisked open doors of Egeskov on Princess Eugenia's supportive shoulder.

Rapunzel quickly removes her sheepish arm at the cool stare the snobbish teenage Princess gives her too familiar proximity touch.

"Why are my words so amusing?" The easily slighted, spoiled rotten, tall and elegant Russian Crown Princess testily demands of Rapunzel with a sudden angered pair of flared green eyes down at the diminutive cocoa haired girl.

"No reason." Rapunzel answers, embarrassed, with a deep pinkish color rising to her heated chastened cheek.

"Yes, first mothers in your predicament have a certain frivolous humor about them, in my vast experience. I have an Aunt who had borne eight children and two cousins who have already delivered four and seven babies, respectively. Each of those mothers had acted in the times of their pregnancies with excessive inscrutable silliness. Indeed, they were ludicrous at times." Princess Eugenia explains to a wide-eyed Rapunzel of the maternal tendency to behave foolishly that she, at the very experienced age of nineteen, was expert at.

But Eugenia truthfully had witnessed in her observant young life many births of her kin, almost innumerable to count, and the intelligent Crown Princess knew she would have to become well-versed in the subject, with her own need to produce a suitable heir for her kingdom.

"And you will be even more whimsical, considering." She said enigmatically as she walks Rapunzel towards the Banquet Room door.

"Considering?" Rapunzel queries in wonder of where detached and cold Princess Eugenia was going with this giving her some insightful conversation.

"Considering, that it is apt for new mothers to have the tendency for especially irrational foolishness when they are about to bear twins. Have a pleasant dinner, dear Princess Rapunzel. Good night." With her prophetic words, a nose up in the air Eugenia and her just as smug looking doggie turns on her heel to return upstairs, leaving Rapunzel with her bewildered mouth open in jaw dropped wonder.

"Twins?" A quirky smirk crosses the Prussian Princess's face with the new and exciting thought of the long dreamt of big family that she always wanted for herself, now could be doubled all due to her wonderful and amazing Eugene and the love he has showered upon her once empty life.

Meanwhile, in populated Egeskov…

After sitting a few minutes with friendly little boy Lukas as he described life in the Fattigskole orphanage and the kindly holy Sisters there, Elsa soon was aware of how much the lonely boy missed his mother, her new friend Daphne.

Though Lukas never dropped a single complaint of the Lutheran convent nuns and the friends he had made there at the charity mission school, the quiet self-imposed Queen of Arendelle could distinctly connect with the solitude in his young heart that yearned to belong to someone and share a real home with them.

"You must be hungry by now, Lukas. It's dinner time and you've only eaten half a cookie." Elsa states as she finishes readjusting her white lacy maid's cap after fixing her askew hair.

"I'm okay, Miss Elsie. I can wait here for Mama forever. I know she's close by." Lukas says, dreamily content as he wakes up from the catnap he had taken after keeping cool while chatting with Elsa or being quietly satisfied playing with the ice sculpture figures that the young blonde Queen had created for her new charge to keep him occupied as he was having fun exploring this unused part of the loft, climbing about in the secret attic room Elsa had discovered earlier, the one that led up to Hans' boyhood lair.

Elsa thought this attic loft storage room a good place to keep the child amused while she poked about in the discarded furniture for clues on Hans' current whereabouts before she began primping at her mussed hair glimpsed in the crooked, cracked mirror.

"Well, your Mama asked me to watch you while she was busy. You're a growing boy and you need to eat dinner properly, since I have to go down to check outside on my other friend that I was telling you about anyway. Marshmallow may be frightened out there without me checking on him for so long." Elsa reverts to her Snow Beast's original moniker to make her thirty foot tall, at times vicious ice monster more kid friendly. "So, we might as well go down together and get a bite to eat in the kitchen on the way. The cook there, Mrs. Patmore, is very sweet. I think she's rather fond of me for putting out a stove fire for her earlier when I first arrived. I don't think she would mind too much if we joined the other servants for dinner after we visit with Marshmallow." Elsa stands to her full five foot six height from the broken mirror that she had been knelt down to in rearranging her hair.

"Okay, Miss Elsie. Golly, you sure are pretty." Lukas looked up from his playing with his ice cube action figures to glimpse Elsa with her long platinum blonde braid done up quite fetchingly, wound around her head in a loose chignon bun.

"Why, thank you, kind Sir." Elsa curtsies with a blushing smile under the charming boy's admiring gaze as she finishes combing back her silky blonde locks in the reflection of the broken mirror, then carefully arranges her frilly maid cap atop it.

"Let's go." Taking Lukas' hand, she leads him down the hall that she'd become quite familiar with, to collect the bag full of fresh made snow lefse 'pancakes' she'd made for her faithful bodyguard, Marshmallow, in the attic servant's quarter bedroom she shared with Daphne.

"You have nice cool hands, Lukas. But you must wash your hands properly before you eat." Elsa smiles, glancing down to find that one of the icy statuettes that she had crafted for the boy to play with before was still clutched in one of his pudgy digits.

"Oh. I must've brought this guy with me. He's my favorite." The bright cerulean blue eyes of the boy light up guiltily as he hands over the last figure that he had not left behind in their 'fortress' he built with drawers and empty boxes in the other room. Lukas splashes on his face the deliciously cool water in the attic wash basin at the bedside.

Elsa looks down with another type of smile to see that Lukas' favorite ice cube sculpture was the little boy version of Hans that she had created as playmate of little girl Elsa and Anna ice figures. The lonesome figure was looking back up at Elsa with his sad crying eyes as he begins to melt in her hand. "Oh no you don't. You're not getting away from me that easily." Elsa whispers symbolically, with a mere flick of her wrist conjuring up a new suit of ice armor for a now magically matured into adult Hans Westergaard figure.

And the lone icy figure, as Elsa and Lukas leave the attic loft bedroom, was now wearing a formal attire of a Norwegian Admiral, all arrayed in his silvery naval clothes, standing in the midst of cool smoke billowing all around him on an Icy Palace mountain.

Anna loved to play with dolls for as far back as she could remember. It wasn't just about dressing and undressing or putting on their shoes and little purses and scarves and hats in mix-and-match new styles. It wasn't even about brushing their silky hair, braiding and re-braiding, moving their dolly arms and dolly legs to swing around and hang off dolly walls and stand on dolly furniture or ride dolly horses that was important.

No, it was the thrill of her pure childlike heart to receive on her eighth birthday, from Mama and Papa, her most favorite pair of dolls to replace her trashed beloved plush versions.

One doll that looked just like her and one that looked just like Elsa.

Anna remembered now how she would dream up new scenarios for her inseparable pair of dolls. She would pretend that they were really alive and it really was Elsa and they could talk to one another, play with one another, swap clothes with one another or sit and chat for hours lying on the dolly couch and bed having a fun sleepover. Little lonely Princess Anna generally made the inanimate objects be forever friends with each other as she always wished for, but never had in her own real-life growing up.

All her fantasy doll world that young Princess Anna thrived on through her childhood came rushing back to the ginger haired married woman of twenty-one in a flash of past memory.

Anna played so hard with that inseparable doll duo that they had gotten so beat up, their hair was brushed out until frizzy, their arms cracked off, their legs missing, even their little porcelain necks shattered under little carrot top hoyden's enthusiastic playfulness.

Yes, wild Anna was rough when she let her poor dolls swing from trees, do Olympics style pole bolting and diving into the fjord until she tearfully nearly lost them both, had Papa not been such an accomplished swimmer in rescue of the drowning dollies.

And though that pair of sister dolls may not have been able to be counted as mint-in-box ever again, at least, in her mind's reverie, sprightly Anna made them live.

But the day finally came when she had to put her irreplaceable dolls away, for they had become so fragile and cracked and dilapidated. And, all at once, young Anna realized that a doll version of Elsa, with all of her pretty platinum blonde hair, sparkling exotic blue eyes and smiling lovely face, even if she was all brand-new again, wearing that Scandinavian pattern little blue nightie that Mama had sewed for her by hand to the letter detail and that had been long lost in the trees out the window she would climb — that treasured doll could never replace the actual companionship of her best friend and playmate of a sister.

But those lonely days were behind them now, and Anna had found her big sister Elsa as real and loving as her dreams longed for her to be, for they did everything together now, truly.

"Isn't it nice when sisters are the best of friends?" Coming out of her nostalgia with a smile, Anna announces aloud proudly to the group of little children all around her.

Anna and Kristoff had been brought inside the equestrian building that was a unique blend of a refined Renaissance water castle and a Medieval fortress castle. The grumpy old gardener named Carl had kept them under surveillance for the past few hours since that pointy bearded Prince instructed him to bring the pair of alleged 'party entertainers' to the Ladegården stable complex to 'practice' under the groundsman's watchful eye.

But Anna was the kind to make the most out of every situation. After all, how bad could it be to babysit a few of the Royal Princesses while she and Kristoff were waiting for Rapunzel? Maybe Anna could even wrangle some info about their Uncle Hans out of them, if she played her kiddy cards right.

"My sister is not my best friend." One sourpuss rebellious seven-year-old announces with a dour expression on her face when the orange braided Princess, her face washed and cleaned, had attempted to patch up a row that had ensued between the toffee haired child and her six-year-old younger sibling. Anna's doll reverie stemmed from this fight over who got to play with the prettiest doll at the singular dollhouse in the stable nursery that she and Kristoff had been plopped in the middle of.

"How can you say that, Matilda? Sisters were designed by the angels in Heaven to be eternal best friends since the moment they were born! My sister is my best buddy, my confidante, my conscience, my constant companion to laugh with, sing with, play with – the one who will in the end always be there to hold my hand when I'm down, read to me when I'm sick in bed, share secrets with when we want to talk about boys. If I ever feel sad, she's there to hug me and when I'm happy, she's there with a smile. You girls should cherish that special bond God blessed you with in the precious gift of a sister." Anna smiles with the wisdom of her loving heart with Elsa in the forefront of her mind. "I know I thank Jesus for her, every day!"

"Look at how well our back up singer trio, Lucina, Selena and Carina, are getting along! You and Margaret should try to play together nicely. Sisterhood is strongest magic after all! Right, Kristly?" Anna says, turning from her soliloquy to her husband nearby, after meeting with all twenty-two young girls of all ages, personalities and sizes, ranging from Petunia, the youngest of Prince Franz and Princess Amalia at two years old, to Elinor, the eldest daughter of Prince Kaleb and Princess Emma. The perky Arendellian Princess, keeping up her undercover farce, had introduced herself and her new husband as the court entertainers for the girls' grandfather's birthday party tomorrow.

Anna couldn't help but put in her two cents to sort out the tiff roiled up between the girls after making new friends with several of the more congenial children who liked to sing. Anna was a natural people person and a kid at heart so it was easy for the outgoing girl to connect with the female children.

"Don't get me involved here. I have enough problems of my own." Kristoff states under his breath with a standoffish scoff at this quite unsavory, slightly dishonest task that his little woman had brainstormed the newlyweds into.

Kristoff grew up as an outcast to regular human society all his young life. That involved pretty much him only cohabitating with troll kids, who weren't exactly a-typical. So that made it hard for him to relate to normal, sensitive human children like those in Arendelle.

And now, facing this gaggle of giggling, gurgling, goo-goo eyed girly gals certainly was not his cup of akvavit.

The big muscled blond Ice Harvester was having a rough time staving off all of the pubescent female cousins that had gathered around him, staring up at him as if he were a circus spectacle.

Especially that second eldest, sixteen-year-old teenager Princess Marianne, with her batting eyelids and obvious flirtations. The minute she saw Kristoff - after a dramatic faint- Marianne decided to sit at the edge of the stage right beneath where the 'performer' had set up a 'practice' corner in the nearby bleachers of the Ladegården stables stadium section, mostly for the prying eyed gardener's sake .

There, under Carl the groundskeeper's watchful gaze, Kristoff had feigned, with Anna's assistant direction, his lute practicing jam session that was of 'vital import' for the birthday party to go off well tomorrow.

The swooning teenyboppers soon surrounded the gorgeous young heartthrob with a mellow voice, golden throated singer with matching buttery hair. Kristoff's raw masculinity and stunning physique had the impressionable, sheltered young girls greedily drinking in their first glimpse of what a real specimen of a Norske man looked like.

But for modest Kristoff, it was all too much.

"Hey!" Thrown into this unwillingly, teen idol Kristoff Bjorgman has to interrupt his lute playing after being girl-handled by his admiring fans who were very curious to touch his bare arm to check the firmness of his rippling muscles to see if they were as rock hard as they looked on the rugged mountainman while he was strumming his guitar in practice.

"Okay. Sing-along time!" Anna abruptly announces when one of the bolder young princesses takes her cousin's dare to reach up and fluff Kristoff's golden mane of hair, soon followed by their explosive twitter of giggles.

With a possessive twisted lip expression, Anna, holding baby two-year-old Petunia under her arm, leaps onto the stage in the row of bleachers, until she was literally hanging on her guy's much desired, musclebound arm.

"Hark the Herald Angels sing! Glory to the newborn King! Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconcile!" Anna spontaneously begins to bellow out her boisterous favorite Christmas hymn that classical great Felix Mendelssohn had composed for the great religious leader Charles Wesley's soaring lyrics of joy and praise to the newborn Christ-child.

Anna sings the happy, triumphant Christmas carol, that she kept in her pure heart all year long in such perfect note, so audibly loud in the perfect key and tune that all those fluttering eyed girls' attention is suddenly wrenched away from mauling poor Kristoff.

"Sing-along now, girls! I know you all know it! We're going to sing my favorite Christmas song for your Gramps tomorrow as an extra special birthday present, like a heavenly choir! I bet he'll like that! Right, Petunia?" Effervescent Anna throws herself into the role of lead singer/ace babysitter getting all of the previously bored or disinterested children involved in this good vibes, family sing-along venture as animated, she swings her arms and legs about enthusiastically in dancing rhythm.

Her musician Kristoff's good-natured eyes laugh out of his discomfited state in her undeniable sparkle that the mountainman can't help but smile up at his boisterous wife as he begins to supply the harmony of the holiday favorite 'Hark the Herald' for Anna's soprano melody.

Anna's engaging song, put across with her inviting lovely voice and infectious smile, causes the daughters of this dysfunctional Royal family, from the smallest in Anna's arms, who knew only a few of the timeless lyrics, but liked the way Anna danced and tickled her tiny giggling tummy in rhythm with her joyful song; to the oldest who remembered church choir on Christmas mornings many years ago with her sister holding hands, as they were again now, once all the formerly argumentative children begin to sing the well known holiday tune in harmony together.

"Joyful now ye nations rise! Join the triumph of the skies! With angelic host proclaim: 'Christ is born inBethlehem!"

Kristoff looks on proudly upon his new wife and best friend who could always turn a frown into a smile.

{You're going to be a great mom when it's your turn, aren't you, Feistypants?}

Whether, in her energetic rendition of the belted out hymn Anna was sharing with these children, she could pick up Kristoff's train of thought or not, the once lonely boy emotes unashamedly to his sweet girl, who answers only in a bright smiling, ruddy-cheeked blush back at him, with a heart full of love.

"Hark the Herald Angels sing! Glory to the newborn King!"

Even tough as nails, jaded old gardener Carl can't help but murmur a mumbled line or two of the Christmas carol, remembered from his own Sunday school era, way back when. The youthful all-girl plus Kristoff choir sings the moving hymn under Anna's inspirational lead and winning smile.

Then the vivacious young woman, caught up in the songful excitement, starts to next belt out the birthday song and lead the girls of all ages in a merry dance around the stable arena bleachers. And on this hot August day the children, all with the surname Westergaard, were blossoming their Christmas joy in any season under the light of the radiant star named Anna of Arendelle.

"Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear King Herbert. Happy birthday to you!"

When Elsa and Lukas arrived in Mrs. Patmore's kitchen, the world within was an upside down cake of pure chaos.

With a full banquet dinner just minutes away from being served, the usual mad dash to keep food fresh and hot and steaming, while it's all carried out on dumbwaiters or by quick servants streaming in line after line into the massive Banquet Hall, was at its normal breakneck speed.

But this planned, smooth dinner was turned on its ear by one of the serving maids suffering from a sprained ankle after the nasty spill earlier when helping the second Butler bring the dinner trays upstairs to the self-deposed Russian visitors who were refusing to leave their suites in protest.

Mrs. Patmore, the downstairs cook of Egeskov, was beyond flustered on how to get her all-day-slaved over culinary creations up to the elaborate dinner table for the Egeskov banquet feast, now that properly dressed and ready for service Ivy had her ankle twisted and Gwen was going to be late, changing from that sticky mess she made of her maid frock and apron.

The cook was pulling her increasingly gray hair out at the foul luck of being understaffed already for such a large dinner party, until a white angel of pure beauty enters her kitchen on a cool breeze.

"Elsie! Darling! You are a godsend! With those annoying Russians up there taking Thomas' attentions, serving them special delivered dishes of special made foods, and Ivy with a twisted ankle unable to serve and all, Gwen not fully changed yet, can I ask you to be a dear and take up the slack for Thomas a little bit—at least pouring out the white wine upstairs? That lazy boy still hasn't returned from waiting hand and foot on those sulking Russkies! Everyone fit to serve is already otherwise engaged on presenting the other courses. Since you're dressed just right in your pretty maid outfit neatly pressed to a tee, after all! And I'm sure, with all of your impressive resume credential and royal service to the Queen of Norway for so many years as Daphne tells me, you can fill in for Ivy later, as well, with the salad and pastries, can't you, love? I tell you, I'm at my wit's end if you can't help us out here!" Mrs. Patmore's plaintive gaze up at Elsa was so full of hopeful desperation that the kindhearted Arendelle girl couldn't flat out refuse the older woman.

"But – I'm not really qualified enough to–" Elsa begins to lightly protest, gazing down at her domestic get-up with skeptical eyes.

"Your perfectly suitable, Elsie, dear! Here's your tray! Be sure that the salads are offered before the soups, but after the wine. And don't forget to serve Princess Emma first, as per etiquette around here, at the foot of the table first. But then move on fluidly to each of the guests, starting from left to right. Just keep your eyes down, don't engage in conversation with anyone, and don't bump into their shoulders! Our raucous princely boys do tend to swing their arms about in the air when telling a tale of their hunting exploits in Africa or the Far East or Timbuktu or Lord knows where they go traipsing around the world. And don't forget not to make eye contact. Thank God, King Herbert won't be eating in the Hall to see this chaos!" The plump older woman plops down to a rocking chair at the side of the stove reserved for the head cook when she was overwhelmed by the amount of work that came with putting the service to the test of those downstairs.

"Listen. There's just enough salad for one serving each. But you're so pretty that I am sure some of the men will probably ask for seconds just to catch your eye on them. Especially Master Didrik…" Mrs. Patmore had been with the family for a very long time, and knew her 'boys' inside and out by now. The savvy old cook had been at the house of Egeskov for far too many years not to pick up the salacious rumors of that particular Prince's amorous behavior towards many other servant maids. Too many had told tales about that certain sixth in line roving eyed Prince and his philandering roguish tendencies with the opposite sex of any class, low or high collar or any gal in between who wore a skirt well, possessed a shapely figure, or had a pleasing countenance.

And this tall, slender, platinum blonde who, despite her servile working girl status, had all three tenets rolled into one lovely, delicate package. Plus, a certain air of sophisticated deportment and breeding about her posture and bearing that befitted more of a Royal Queen…

"Just keep those exquisite eyes down, and your pretty mouth closed with a deadpan expression on your face as you serve." The elderly lady makes a puckered lipped, drawn nose face to give Elsa an example of what she called 'deadpan'.

"If you do that, no one will ever notice you in there, as a servant should be. All right, my girl, off you go." Mrs. Patmore says with a soft smile as she stacked more and more food options on the tray that she personally loads a tongue-tied Elsie the maid down with. The tray was holding a huge salad bowl full of chopped up greens of every summer variety and tomatoes and onions and carrots and three rows high of fresh baked dinner rolls, French breads and croissants in baskets alongside.

"But –" Elsa gazes down in speechless mortified shock of her arms weighed down, holding onto a big wide tray full of salads and fresh baked goods that she had just been commandeered to carry up in service to the banquet dinner table.

"Wow. Those rolls are sure good, Mrs. Patmore! I bet those folks up there will like them lots! Especially being delivered by someone so nice and pretty as Miss Elsie, who even helped bring in the fresh cream for the butter, Mama said." Lukas, from where he was seated at the servant's cutting table workstation, chomps down on a roll lathered with fresh butter that Daisy, the scullery maid, had snuck in for him from the larder.

"Lukas. It looks like I may be a while serving this upstairs, and my friend must be hungry out there by now. Can I trust you to go behind the chapel and give him what's in this basket I've made for him? Marshmallow can be a bit frightening at first, but he's a softy deep down when it comes to good little children. So I'm sure he'll warm up to you in no time." Elsa smiles, returning the compliment, as the flustered, inundated Queen could already sense her snow pancakes melting in the basket in this hot kitchen.

"Tell him that 'Elsa is safe and wants you to keep lying low.' Can I impose on you to do that for me?" Elsa, balancing a large service tray, whispers low in Lukas' ear for only him to overhear.

"Sure, I will! Wow! I get to meet the real Mr. Marshmallow?" Lucas was exciting at the thrilling idea of going face-to-face with the huge thirty foot tall snow beast hiding somewhere on Egeskov's grounds, whom Elsa had described as her protective friend. Lukas already knew what Marshmallow looked like because Elsa had ice magically sculpted a small in-scale figurine of the friendly snow monster for the boy to play with earlier, with the others.

The trustworthy, plump boy eagerly jumps off his wooden chair and grabs a carrot from the table to chew on as he takes the basket Elsa had placed by the door before dashing out the rear exit with pure enthusiastic joy in his bright blue eyed features.

"Be nice, Marshmallow. He's a good boy." Elsa sends a frozen mental plea out to her large snow creation before focusing back at her current task at hand. "Okay. Here we go." Elsa takes a deep breath before setting out with her heavy tray, as she follows many of the other servants in their procession, each with their own tray full of food for fine dining and bottled wines to be poured.

Not that versed in doing the hard work herself, Queen Elsa of Arendelle steps in line with her heavy tray into the castle's Banquet Hall that was already replete with royal guests and dignitaries.

As the banquet starts to get underway, Elsa steps in, her eyes dazzled by the opulent array of Egeskov's Royal Banquet Hall's vast twenty-six leaf table that had seen, over the centuries of royal celebrations, weddings and coronations, many visitors more than this set of over fifty guests invited to the King's birthday gala.

The upper crust of Danish society certainly knew how to set a table for a fine dining experience. This Grand Dinner service, consisting of golden platters, matching centerpieces and candelabras, which even had special gold serving utensils and over 8000 gold gilt salad plates, had been Queen Louise's pride and joy. There were placed at the table six glasses each from the set of coronation crystal - glasses for red wine, glasses for white wine, champagne toasting glasses, water goblets, and two small glasses for dessert champagne and port positioned beside each placemat. Linen napkins had been painstakingly put at each place setting, neatly folded as to reveal the embroidered royal crest of this Danish kingdom – a golden ship's anchor intertwined in a snakelike rope, symbolizing dominion over the sea – that was the proud crest of the Navy-centric estate.

As backdrop to the stunningly set table and gold edged tablecloth was the glorious, stirring scene of brave Danish ancestor and hero, Christian IV riding astride his noble steed into righteous battle. The full length, entire wall portrait at the front of the hall, must have been meant to stir one's appetite in this conquering nation.

When she catches her breath, from looking around at all of Hans' posh, ornate Castle's majestic splendor, Elsa did not dare to even scan the chattering guests in the audience, because the Queen of Norway had a feeling that she knew one or two of the ambassadors assembled there. Elsa shakes herself, quickly putting her head down and keeping her eyes averted with her best interpretation of Mrs. Patmore's 'deadpan' expression.

So, with her pretty mouth in a pucker and her cute little nose drawn Elsa aims her luminous eyes diverted downward, as much as she could, and still see where she was going. Elsie the service maid, arrived just in time to fall into step with Folmer the Butler beginning to pour the red wine just now. Quickly she places the solid silver tray of salad straight down on the serving table. Elsa easily distinguishes the white wine bottle from the rest there and she begins to trace the slow and unsteady Butler's lead in filling first, Princess Emma's glass, as she was the Hostess. Then the old butler shakily pours the rest of the guests' red wine glasses with the fruit of the vine, unless otherwise stated.

Like a sleek mink, never meeting Lady of the House Princess Emma's inquisitive eyes, realizing she'd be well-informed of the daily workings of the household, Elsa silently sneaks in and out to pour her white vintage behind seated royals, dignitaries and visitors who were all too busy in their own pleasant passing chatter or intense political discussions with one another to notice the servants wordlessly pouring out their drinks before the meal started.

After wide-eyed Elsa had taken in how dashing and debonair many of the Westergaard Princes, that she identified as Hans' older brothers, Elsa tries to listen in on each conversation as she continues to pour down the long line of the banquet table. That is, until she is startled to recognize more than a few friendly—and unfriendly—faces, that she fears would notice her, even in her maid's disguise.

Especially those who attended her own Coronation: Ambassadors Carreras, DuPont, Polaski, Spumoni… and the Duke of Weselton…

"It's rather warm in here, isn't it?" The Duke wipes his sweaty brow under this crowd of almost fifty human bodies all talking and chatting and generating heat.

"No wine for me, my dear. Hypertension, you know? Oh dear. Actually, can I bother you to fetch me some cool water to take my pill with?" The Duke of Weselton opens in his uppity aristocratic accent, and lightly touches Elsa's forearm as he courteously requests a refill of the water that the thirsty little man had already imbibed in place of the alcohol beverage his wife seated beside him would not allow one drop of.

"Right away… Sir…" Though her once strained relationship with the Duke of Weselton for a time, had now improved upon a conciliatory second encounter where forgiveness was given and gratefully received, Elsa did not wish for the Duke to, unaware, blow her cover. So she once again modulates her high-pitched voice to a lower tone, keeping her head down.

Elsa quickly moves back to the service table sidebar and reaches for the pitcher of water that had been sitting there all afternoon in preparation for this banquet. Placing her hand against the crystal decanter's base, Elsa senses that the water was warmer than room temperature on this early August day rather than the cool glass of water the poor overheated man ordered.

So, why not chill it along with the entire room full of uncomfortably rigged out in heavy formal clothing, hot and unhappy, secretly sweaty people?

It's the least I can do for my royal neighbors...

And without a second thought, Elsa's innate power transfers from her fingertips into the glass pitcher with just enough of ice magic not to shatter the priceless crystal.

Next, her blue eyes covertly turn a shade pallid to an icy hue as the Ice Queen subtly infuses the particles of air in the hot stagnant room with a low barometer frosting to gradually draw down the stifling still temperatures for the Banquet Hall's ignorant guests.

"Here you are, sir. Cool water." Elsa, pleased with her cold control that was so carefully eased into that none of the fifty guests, nor Butler Folmer, nor the other maid servants, noticed the temperature shift.

The dangerous adventure she went on in the north of her country had benefited Elsa's abilities in ways that she didn't even know possible. And Prince Hans had always been the one to encourage her, challenge her, make her trust in herself, all along the way. Elsa missed his secure support more than she could say or had even realized, up until now.

Where are you now, my Vise Admiral? I miss you…in so many ways…

Elsa's mind wanders a little as she leans over the Duke of Weselton's shoulder to pour out the chilled water from her ice infused pitcher into his empty glass.

"My! That water is indeed cool! I must congratulate your ice house's longevity, even in this incredibly warm season of summer this year, Prince Lars. You must share with us all of your great country's highly developed cool engineering secrets." Weselton, his spectacles clouding up to make his grateful gaze upon Elsa blurred, compliments to the Royal Prince of Denmark sitting nearest to himself, directly across the table.

"Our 'ice house longevity'…? It is quite inexplicable to produce such cool water in this relentless summer heat sufficient enough to call the pitcher to humidify and therefore produce condensation of that quick order. This requires further investigation…" The brainiac resident genius of the Westergaard brothers puts his egghead cap on at the most interesting topic amid all the mundane boring diversions of this promising to be rather humdrum evening.

"Please hand over that remarkable crystal pitcher to me…? Forgive me, I don't believe I ever caught your name, Miss…?" Prince Lars, his trusty magnifying piece already withdrawn from his overstuffed pocket full of useful eclectic gadgets in his scatterbrained collection.

"I… may still need it for the other guests…" Elsa freezes (figuratively speaking) as her averted eyes dart around at this unwanted attention that her little polar stunt had just caused. Many eyes begin to turn to the scene of the maid peculiarly hugging the ice cold pitcher to her heaving chest, unwilling to pass it over to the standing Prince, demandingly reaching for it.

"Nonsense! Everyone's water goblet is still full. I wish to take this to my lab and examine it immediately." Lars, as a consummate researcher, indeed was a stubborn wannabe scientist, as his wife, Princess Isabelle overhears his ardor over her pleasant conversation with sister-in-law Elizabeth and the Duke of Weselton's wife.

"Lars! This is a formal dinner, not one of your science experiments. Please leave that poor girl to her duty." The embarrassed Princess of Italy shakes her blonde sausage curls at the unkempt curiosity of her too intelligent mate that often left him much too inquiring for his own good.

Lars, deflated as the messy flat hair on his head he was running his hands through, sighs and his intrigued shoulders slump as he relents.

Elsa gratefully nods, and she hurriedly refills the Duke's glass one more time before skedaddling over to the next guest in need of white wine. The Butler, Folmer, gives her his evil dagger stare for both disrupting the banquet by speaking – dare I say argue with an honored guest and for being tardy in not keeping up with the elderly gentleman's fast-paced snail's crawl.

"I'll have some of that highly sought after cool water from your beautiful flowing spring, Elsie."

Oh no.Thatvoice.

Elsa, after serving several more guests with the white wine down the line of the long table, is startled to hear a deep syrupy male voice, come out of nowhere to be directed up at her, nom de plume and all.

Prince Didrik cranes his neck upwards and back at an awkward angle to be able to look Elsa right in the eye where she was near his side, directly behind the devilishly handsome man.

"Yes, Sir." Elsa bashfully nods, swallowing back hard. Unsettled by his flirtatious tone, she reaches her hand out over his shoulder to fill his only partly empty goblet.

Abruptly, Didrik's long fingers lace around Elsa's extended arm at her inner elbow in such a grip that she could not pull away without spilling the water in the pitcher.

"Wait." His breathy voice almost hisses in her ear with the tension rising between their two rather intimately close bodies. With his left hand, Didrik claims the goblet and luxuriously downs, gulp by expressive gulp, right in her hearing, the entire contents of his cup, his moistened lips smacking close to Elsa's blushing ear.

"Yes, now I'm ready for your chilled oasis overflow." The silver tongued ladies man of a Prince words his sultry phrases in such a seductive fashion, that the frozen in place, unable to breathe innocent maiden in Elsa can't help but feel… overwhelmed… and somehow repulsed…and violated at the same moment. She, in a panic, felt the ice start to flow in her veins from his unwanted touch, and she knew she wouldn't be able to stop the sensation about to burst forth.

"Maid! What is taking you so long?! I require some white wine, pronto." Snapping her fingers for effect, the angry Spanish accented voice of Princess Antoinetta, Didrik's wife, interrupts his publicly blatant tempting seduction of this lowly servant from where she was sitting across from her unreliable, insatiable man.

Elsa, gratefully interrupted by the angry voice, immediately pulls herself together and jumps out of the lothario's grasp, catching herself before it was too late, and manages to only spill several drops of the ice water's liquid on the table, instead of what could've been far worse. She haughtily pulls her arm from Prince Didrik's unwilling release of her stiff unbent elbow and swiftly extricates herself, moving purposefully far to the other side to his wife. A still shaken Elsa, closes her eyes tightly, takes a deep breath to steady her nerves, in an attempt to calm herself down.

Conceal it, don't feel it. Don't let it show.

In that moment, she finally remembers her Papa's words clearly, truly, as he had said exactly, and not what she had falsely transformed the phrase into for most of her life. He had told her to conceal IT—the ice; to not feel IT—the ice.

Only the ice!

He had never meant for her to conceal and hide her feelings nor herself away! Papa had said for her only to try to conceal her power, to not feel the ice, so she could learn to control it through discipline and training! She widened her eyes at the sudden realization of her long misunderstanding of his words all these years. How could she have been so foolish? How could she not have remembered his every word?

But no longer. She now understood everything precisely and meant to put into practice her Papa's advice and…she had to admit to herself, live up to Hans' belief in her abilities.

She moves determinedly to pour the contents of her white wine flagon into Princess Antoinetta's wine glass, without making a mess all over the table—with either wine or ice—and succeeds with a small inward smile of thanks to the two beloved men in her life.

"Thank you. You may go." Spoken in a clipped voice full of seething anger, the fiery tempered Spanish woman shoots dagger eyes at her mate as she waves a relieved Elsa off dismissively without a glance.

"Now keep your appetite in check the rest of the evening, my Didrik. Or I may have to see that that innocent young woman is relieved from her position here in Egeskov." Antoinetta knew far too well that her mate's reckless wandering eyes were too aroused to just give up so easily on that attractive platinum bombshell for the rest of their visit.

"On what grounds would you do such a cruel thing, my dearest? She seems to be accomplishing her job rather well." Tall, dark and handsome Prince Didrik says offhandedly as he twirls his dark handlebar moustache with his right hand fingers that still felt a suspicious tinge of an icy sensation impressed on him from that beautiful pure maiden's lovely arm, felt even through her black dress sleeve.

"Disturbing the peace." She states distinctly in an angry fashion, finishing her entire glass of red wine and pushing away the white wine Elsie the maid had poured symbolically away from her place setting with disdain.

"I wonder…" But Prince Didrik was more than just normally interested now in this new quarry of a pretty young girl waltzing on a mist of ice before his wolfish eyes. The Prince was so intrigued that his sights cannot help but follow Elsa's every move around the Banquet Hall, in spite of his wife's indignant glares.

Elsa makes as much distance between herself and Hans' lecherous older brother, without looking back, her eyes remaining trained down. In her flustered state, the young Queen finishes by rote pouring the wine glasses out without even pausing to ask if the rest of the guests wished for some or not.

Wanting to get in and out of the Banquet Hall as quickly as possible, Elsa turns on her heel and carries the salad tray she brought up for Mrs. Patmore back to the table, purposely starting after where the sixth in line Prince was seated near the middle of the elongated banquet.

"Salad?" Already halfway around the room, Elsa must ask now in her deepened voice again, as she finds that too many visitors, Princes and Princesses and royal dignitaries alike all preferred to pass on the healthy greenery part of the meal as most of their hands were put up in refusal of her salad offering.

That is, until she arrives back at the foot of the table near where Princess Emma was holding court conversation with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth of Belgium, next to her fifth brother in law Mattias and eighth brother in law Prince Peiter and his wife Gloria Lujza of Portugal.

Seated between them was their royal guest of honor, the young woman with the short cropped cocoa brown hair that, from the back, reminded Elsa of the disturbingly chopped hairstyle of Cousin –

"Yes. I think I could manage a salad. Thank you." The sickly in her stomach with all the new sights and sounds, Prussian Princess placidly turns her head around to politely at least make eye contact with the hard-working server of her meal.

Rapunzel?!

Elsa?!

Both young women nearly cry out the other's name. But, fortunately, in this public setting, they each catch themselves, as green and blue eyes merely bulge out to look at one another with the silently mouthed question: 'What are you doing here?!'

"You know this maid, Princess Rapunzel? Has she worked for you before? Elsie his new here in Egeskov, just come to us for the King's birthday celebration as extra help, as Mrs. Folmer, our housekeeper, tells me. But I do hope she can stay longer. I think Elsie suits us here in Egeskov very well, already pitching in like a good trouper when the other maid twisted her ankle." Pleasant Princess Elizabeth offers, seeing the instant recognition passing between the visiting Corona Princess and the pretty new maid.

"Y-y-yes. She was a faithful, much loved companion of my cousin, Princess Anna, in Arendelle for years." Rapunzel, stretched the facts around a bit, without telling the truth of how Elsa was Anna's dearest partner, closest friend and tireless companion, AKA 'big sister' who would pick up and clean up, braid up and take care of her little sister almost like a dutiful servant would.

"We've missed you… Elsie." With a chuckle at her voice, Rapunzel had been around her hubby Eugene Fitzherbert for too long not to pick up some of his artful dodging. And also let a sly tease slide in, accompanied by a knowing smile that soon is turned into a double sisterly giggle that no one but they two were privy to the absurdity thereof.

Søværnet – Royal Navy of Denmark

Landcrabbe –landlubber in Danish

Lefse – pancake in Danish

meu querido – 'my dear' in Portuagese

Боже мой! (boishe moi) – My God!

Tsvetnaya Bolonka - Russian fluffy small breed dog

неуклюжая девушка! (Nyuclujya Jyubuschka) –clumsy girl!

Блеск (Blysk)– Sparkle in Russian

отец (Ahtsets) –Father in Russian

конфетка (Konfitka) – Sweetie in Russian

Мой мальчик (moi manchik) – my boy in Russian

Нет (nyet)– No in Russian

Мой мальчик (moi manchik) – my boy in Russian

"Be our Guest Be our Guest! Put our service to the test..."

You can't help but sing along your infectious song with this fun, engaging chapter title, Lumiere! ^0^ And Anna was bringing a little Christmas in August to all of those young Westergaard daughters! Our Feistypants sure lets her light shine bright no matter where she is! ^_^

Did you enjoy this week's romp into Egeskov castle's domestic/ servant side with Elsie the Maid serving up dinner in the Banquet Hall of Hans' castle home? ^_^ We've met all the princes and princesses now (Isn't Russian fun?). And even the Duke of Weselton and the ambassadors that attended Elsa's coronation are all here! Good thing no one ever notices the help…

And finally Rapunzel discovered that Elsa is here in the Southern Isles too! Hmm…It looks like some of our Danish Princes have spotted her as well...

My best friend of a big sister, BSBFF ( Big Sister Best Friend Forever! ^o^) Setsuna's amazing remastered CG portraits of the SI brothers and their princess wives, as well as King Herbert and Queen Louise are now up on Tmblr under: queenelsawestergaard dot tumblr dot com (without the spaces; and of course, change to the correct symbol period '.' instead of 'dot')

She made these special portraits just for me! I am the luckiest little sister in the world to have such a nice and talented older sibling who encourages my writing with her brilliance! (Sisterly love is flowing around these parts here! Like Elsa & Anna are good sisters!) :)

Please go and check out how we envisioned these 12 handsome Princes in their Naval uniforms, along with their multinational princess partners! Now you can see what my cast of characters in my sequel book, "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" look like too! Hope you like them!

We've once again met up with the entire princely cast of the Southern Isles! I wanted to flesh out some more of their character personalities, especially in respect for Hans' big brothers' relations with their wives (the good, the bad and the ugly). And we've finally been introduced to those elusive Russian princesses of twins Rune and Ruddi's. Maria's curious and wide-eyed, but that Eugenia has quite a temper, doesn't she?! But she did predict Rapunzel will be having twins! WHEE! (Doing some further research on the original Rapunzel tale, twins were mentioned as the children of the girl in the tower and her prince' forbidden romance. So I said 'Why not?! I always wanted Eupunzel to have a boy myself, even if Anxelin the girl has been predicted for Disney Descendants. She could have an unmentioned twin brother. And why wouldn't lucky pants Flynn Rider gets 2 for the price of 1?!)

Please review the story for me and tell Setsuna which new Westergaard Prince of Denmark and which married Princess you liked best! (There's two familiar pairs there that don't quite count as new! But we had to include in our Westergaard bloodline Helsa & Eupunzel, too! They make quite gorgeous couples...drool drool... Kristanna is jealous not to get a portrait done here! But they're no relation to those dashing and debonair Westergaards - Anna is happy to say! She'll take her Snow Prince/ Wind Whisperer Kristoff anyday to those tall dark and handsome Danish royals. Though a few of the gorgeous ones are tempting...^#^)

I look forward to your tasty reviews on this first August episode as the story drama continues! As you just saw, some of our main cast is being reunited! Rapunzel and Elsa have discovered one another at the dinner, but each princess has kept her cool. (Ice Queen Elsa's ace at that! :)

God bless!

HarukaKou

(P.S. My birthday month of August has just begun! So get ready for a lot of storytime in my late-month days off! The exciting climax to this story arc is coming…I've got a lot of shocker surprises planned when the stars of this Frozen Again sequel all meet up again! ^0^ So much inter-personal relationship drama is planned! So stay tuned, Frozen friends!)