§ § § -- June 26, 2001
The date had caught up with them by morning, and Leslie was long awake, roused by the unusually long summer days of this northern latitude. Nestled against a still-sleeping Christian, she listened for movement in the flat but heard nothing, and wondered what time it was and when they were expected at the castle. That led to her wondering what she was supposed to do when she finally met the king and queen, and before she knew it her mind was off and running with all sorts of petty little worries. By the time Christian stirred and blinked awake, she was in a silent frenzy.
He saw her expression and stared at her. "Herregud, my Rose, what a way to start a morning! What's wrong?"
"I don't know any of the protocol," she said, staring frantically back. "I don't know what to wear, what to do when I meet your sister-in-law, whether I should bow or curtsy or kowtow or something…and what about when we go to see Arnulf? What's he going to expect from me? Oh God, Christian, I'm not cut out for all this pomp and circumstance!"
Christian hoisted himself up on one elbow, already shaking his head in the attempt to quiet her, but it went to no avail and he finally had to cover her mouth with his hand. "All right, my Rose, that's enough," he said gently. "You're wasting far too much time and energy over silly little things. We really aren't that formal, for the most part. Arnulf may be another story, but even he doesn't require that you bow and scrape in front of him. Don't you remember what I told you yesterday? Just follow my lead and you'll be fine."
"But he's your brother," Leslie persisted. "You probably don't have to do any more than maybe nod your head at him or something. He's never met me and as far as he's concerned, I'm just this little commoner. I don't even think he's going to like me."
Christian laughed softly. "My Leslie Rose, you're priceless. Listen, I tell you what: if there's anything that may require a little extra deference, I'll let you know in advance and tell you what you should do. If worse comes to worst, when we meet the others at the castle later, I'll explain the situation and we'll give you a quick coaching session. We'll get those rough edges polished off you yet, my darling." He winked and added with mock ferocity, "In any case, you're no mere commoner, not anymore. You're my wife, and if Arnulf doesn't respect that, he doesn't get the privilege of my time. It's just that simple. Now, let's get up and find you something to wear. A dress might be a good idea in your case, and I'll just wear what I might normally wear to work, including the tie. We have a session with the media, like it or not, and we tend to turn out slightly more formally for that."
She sighed softly. "Okay, that I can handle. But I admit to being more than a little scared of meeting Arnulf."
"I'm not exactly thrilled about it myself," Christian remarked, "but it seems to have turned into a necessary evil. Whatever happens, we stick together—right? We're going to see each other through this. This is the sort of situation that brings to mind the vows we made to each other back in January. We both promised to stand by each other, and that's precisely what we're going to do, aren't we?"
"You got it," Leslie said, mustering up a game smile.
"That's my girl," Christian said softly, smiled, then kissed her. As usual, it got beyond their control, and they were losing themselves in each other all too quickly when someone loudly cleared a throat just outside. They came apart and turned to see Gerhard grinning at them from the doorway.
"I just thought you'd like to know that we're going to be eating at the castle," he told them. "If it were up to me, I'd let you do whatever you like…but the world is demanding otherwise. Sorry to bother you."
Christian sighed good-naturedly. "It seems to me that you and Anna-Kristina understand us better than anyone else, other than Mr. Roarke. Give us an hour, Gerhard, and we'll be ready to leave." Gerhard nodded and retreated.
Christian and Leslie shared their shower in order to save time, even though it wasn't easy for them to keep from being distracted, and swiftly dressed; then Leslie hastily applied Liselotta's blow dryer to her hair to get it ready faster, while Christian watched, rubbing his own glossy dark hair with a hand towel. Then, as Leslie was putting the dryer away, she suddenly turned to Christian with a panicky look. "What about makeup?"
"I don't need any," Christian said immediately, and received a supremely dirty look for his effort. Grinning, he relented. "All right, my Rose, turn off that killing look. Don't worry about that. Anna-Laura and my nieces are good friends with a makeup artist in the city who works for our one and only television station, and they use her services whenever we're due for a press conference. They'll take care of you as well. We'd better get going."
Leslie removed the damp towel from his hand and experimentally ran her fingers through his hair. "Hmm. I hope it'll dry fast, unless you always appear on local TV with wet hair. Is that supposed to be some sort of grooming technique?"
Christian hiked an eyebrow at her. "Is that remark payback for what I said about the makeup?" She just grinned, and he rolled his eyes. "My hair will be fine, don't worry. Come on, we've really got to leave."
The four of them took the elevator back down to the garage, where this time their transportation was Gerhard's manual-transmission Peugeot coupe. The nearly-thirty-year-old prince was a competent driver and the trip went smoothly and quickly, so that before she knew it Leslie found herself staring at the Enstad family residence, known officially only as Kungliga Slottet, or The Royal Castle. She remembered seeing it during Gerhard and Liselotta's televised wedding the previous fall, but TV gave little hint as to sheer size. It must have been at least an acre of building, sitting on the very coast itself and with no other building in sight from any of its many windows. The curving coastal road on which the building was located turned well away from the sea view for a good mile or more in order to make room for the castle grounds and the long circular drive that served as its entranceway. She gaped speechlessly while Gerhard pulled around the drive and stopped his car under the portico, which looked slightly less forbidding than the edifice it fronted, covered as it was with a softening carpet of moss. Christian caught Gerhard's eye in the rearview mirror and gave his head a quick jerk in Leslie's direction, grinning broadly; Gerhard grinned back and, along with Liselotta and Christian, eyed Leslie with great interest as they stepped out of the car and started for the large, ornate door.
Inside the massive, three-story entry hall, Leslie's mouth dropped open and her eyes doubled in size at the sheer volume of space it took up. In slow motion she let her head fall back as far as it would go, gawking at the ceiling far overhead. By now Christian was barely able to hold back his laughter, and Gerhard and Liselotta were looking on with sympathetic amusement. Finally Christian asked, with contrived casualness, "Well, what do you think, my Leslie Rose?"
She stared dubiously at him. "Do you really want me teaching Liselotta words like that?" she shot back, at which Christian utterly lost control and shouted with delighted laughter. Gerhard joined in; the noise they made brought several figures out of a doorway at the opposite end of the entry. One detached itself from the group and ran headlong for the newcomers.
"Uncle Christian! Aunt Leslie!" yelled Anna-Kristina happily, nearly colliding with them and trying to hug them both at once. "I'm so glad you're here!"
"Down, girl, down," Gerhard teased his cousin. "I hope we aren't late for breakfast."
"It's good to see you too, you little tornado," Christian said, staggering back a couple of steps when his niece threw herself at him and almost knocked him off his feet. "You'd think I hadn't set foot in this country in at least ten years, with that sort of reception. Be careful of Leslie, now!"
Anna-Kristina barely restrained herself; she hugged Leslie with as much enthusiasm as she had greeted Christian. "Welcome, Aunt Leslie, what do you think of our giant pile of stones, then? Breakfast was just brought into the dining room, actually…you have perfect timing. Hurry, come with me and tell me all about your new house. Now that you've moved in, I think I'm going to book a few flights and come to visit you when Pappa gets well."
"You travel too much as it is," Gerhard put in, "running back and forth between here and Arcolos all the time." He caught the look Christian and Leslie exchanged and added, "It's looking quite serious with Carlono. He really dotes on Anna-Kristina."
"It's all over the press," Anna-Kristina said and shrugged. "I expect they'll be asking questions about a lot more than Pappa's condition, and Mamma thinks we might as well make it a formal session and satisfy everyone's curiosity about all the romantic matches."
"That means us," Christian grumbled at Leslie. "It never ends. What's for breakfast, then, Anna-Kristina? We haven't eaten since that last so-called meal between New York and London, and I'm famished."
"Everything," Anna-Kristina said cheerfully. "Things Aunt Leslie would like as well. Eggs, toast, plenty of hot cereal, and enough bread, butter and ham to feed half the country. We have a little lingon sylt left over from last summer, and more than enough hjortronssylt as well—just got a new shipment in from Sweden."
Christian fell into step beside his wife. "She means lingonberry jam and cloudberry jam," he explained to her. "The latter especially is an Enstad favorite."
"What's a cloudberry?" Leslie asked.
"You don't really find them outside Scandinavia. I'm surprised you have to ask, since you had a Swedish grandmother. The jam is unique. You'll have to tell me what you think when you taste it. We were all raised on it." Christian followed his nephew, niece and niece-in-law through the last doorway on the right, and Leslie ventured in directly behind him, finding herself in a vast dining hall dominated by a table big enough to seat more than two dozen people. Each end of the room boasted an enormous, ornate chandelier. Quite a few of the chairs were already filled; she recognized most of the occupants, who all smiled and nodded at her in welcome. At the head of the table was the only unfamiliar face—a regal, serene-faced woman with worry in her blue eyes and her moonlight-hued hair drawn back into a bun—and Christian noticed Leslie's hesitation. "I nearly forgot. My darling, I'm going to introduce you to Kristina; she doesn't speak English, so I'll play translator if necessary. You should curtsy to her, since this is the first time you've met her. After that you need only nod your head once at each successive visit. All right?"
Nervous again, Leslie nodded wordlessly, and Christian smiled reassuringly at her before taking her hand and leading her over to his sister-in-law. Kristina saw him coming and smiled in greeting; Christian returned the smile, gave her a deferential nod in respect of her station, and in quiet jordiska introduced Leslie. She curtsied as Christian had instructed her, making a note to herself to ask him to teach her some of his native tongue.
The queen spoke, and Christian grinned. "She says you're very welcome here, my Rose, and that she's happy to finally meet the woman I almost murdered Arnulf over."
Startled, Leslie did a double-take at Kristina's impish look and suddenly burst out laughing, evoking a like response in the queen and an added chuckle from Christian. The rest of the family looked around and watched curiously as Kristina grasped Leslie's hands and greeted her. Leslie smiled at her, much more at ease, and shot Christian a quick glance. "Go ahead," he said, "she does understand simple English."
"I am very happy to meet you, Your Majesty," Leslie said clearly.
"Kalla mej for Kristina bara," came the response, just similar enough to English that Leslie realized the queen was asking her to just call her Kristina. She was glad to be able to thank the queen in jordiska, especially when Kristina's smile widened in appreciation. The queen said something else, and Christian nodded and replied before taking Leslie's hand and leading her around the table to a couple of empty chairs on the side opposite the door.
"We may as well eat," he said, pulling a chair out for her and then seating himself beside her. "You did very well, my Rose. Kristina seems to like you very much. I knew she would, actually." He grinned smugly.
"What made you so sure of that?" Leslie wanted to know.
"She wouldn't have made that little joke if she didn't," Christian said with another chuckle. "Besides, Anna-Kristina informed me shortly after your cousin Rogan presented Arnulf with his contract that the entire family had been on my side in the matter of that arranged marriage, and that included Kristina. They simply couldn't do anything because Arnulf was the ultimate authority, and they were powerless to help."
"And Anna-Kristina said everyone was pretty much unreachable, except you," Leslie mused, remembering a conversation she'd once had with the young princess. She grew aware of Christian's perplexed look and focused on him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She told me once that this family was compared in the local press to the British royals—how Arnulf, Carl Johan and Anna-Laura were like Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Prince Charles in their remote coolness, and you were analogous to Princess Diana in the gift you both had for connecting to the common people. I don't see that around here; they're all very warm and welcoming."
"Oh, well, that's because you're my wife," Christian said. "They know, always have known, how much I love you, and I think they understood that once I was finally able to marry you, I wouldn't tolerate any rejection of you on their part. If you were a mere subject, just another face on the street, then you'd find Anna-Kristina's assessment to be very much on the mark. It's just the way we were raised, even me. It was that streak of rebelliousness and incorrigibility in me that probably allowed me to approach people more readily." He sat back as a servant paused beside his chair to fill his plate. "Keep in mind, though, my Rose, I can't make a true connection with everyone I meet. It's nothing to do with there being too many people for me to be that personable with: it goes back to what I told you at home just before we left. I was taught to be reserved around the general public."
Leslie regarded him with a faintly uneasy air about her. "Am I going to see that again at the press conference?" she asked.
Christian looked curiously at her and asked, "What, my normal public face? Not on that large a scale, no. This isn't going to be a public conference, where anyone who happens to be in the vicinity can attend. It will be media only, videotaped for televising around the world, and broadcast live here in Lilla Jordsö."
"Live TV," Leslie said, quailing at the thought. "Oh my God."
Christian half-smiled with wry amusement, but he waited till the servant had filled Leslie's plate and moved on before he leaned over and planted a soft kiss on her lips. "You'll be just fine, my darling. And I saw that odd look in your eyes when I was explaining myself and the family a moment ago. Prince or not, I'm still your husband—both in public and in private. You broke down a wall that no one else ever breached, and when you did, I discovered the amazing joy of having one special woman in my ivory tower with me. It makes things far less lonely." He winked, and she had to laugh at the image he painted.
Breakfast was a cheerful, chatty affair, and Leslie gradually came to the conclusion that the Enstad family was far different in private from how they appeared to their subjects and the world at large. From time to time she regarded Christian as they were eating, thinking to herself that in spite of the pending revocation of his royal title, in many ways he would still and always be a prince. He was too accustomed to the trappings of royalty, and he could never really overcome his upbringing; he could only overlay it with a veneer that allowed him to seem closer to the man in the street than he truly was. Yet, at the same time, he was more accepting than royalty traditionally was, more willing to keep an open mind and a generous outlook. Christian had a foot in both worlds, and seemed equally at ease in both. Once he caught her watching him and winked at her, then grinned, and she smiled back, suddenly even more in love with him.
Eventually Kristina cleared her throat, catching everyone's attention, and spoke at some length in jordiska. Though he listened intently to her speech, Christian simultaneously grasped Leslie's hand in his, as if he sensed she felt set apart as the only one in the room who didn't understand the language. She squeezed his hand in gratitude and waited patiently for him to find an opportunity to translate for her.
After about a minute, Kristina concluded her speech and everyone arose. Christian turned to Leslie and slipped an arm around her, guiding her along behind the others. "We're going up one level to what we call the receiving room," he explained, "where we gather when we're facing the press on our own grounds. The local television and print media will arrive in just less than an hour, and you women will be undergoing makeup sessions in an adjacent room. As a matter of fact, my nephews will too, at least a little. They're of a generation that can more readily accept that sort of thing, especially after they were told that foundation would help them look better in harsh television lighting."
"So they're media-savvy," Leslie remarked with a little giggle.
Christian nodded, amused. "Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Not so the older men, I'm afraid. Arnulf flatly and unequivocally refused, and Carl Johan balked as well. They didn't care much how they looked on TV, apparently."
Leslie noticed his omission, deliberate or not, and asked, "What about you?"
"Usch," Christian muttered, exaggeratedly disgusted, "you had to ask." He grinned at her. "Actually, yes, I undergo the stupid foundation process too. I was of the same mind as my brothers, but because I'm the alleged 'heartthrob' in the family—in the words of some gossip columnist or other—I wasn't allowed to get away with refusing. As it turned out, it apparently helped my public image for some reason. There are days when I wonder whether I'm a prince, an actor or a rock star." They both laughed.
For the next half hour the makeup artist Christian had mentioned, along with two assistants, plied her trade on the women while the younger Enstad men waited their turn. Still not fully at ease in a crowd of in-laws with whom she wasn't familiar, Leslie kept searching for Christian, just to anchor herself. It was always a relief when she spotted him standing and chatting with various family members.
Finally released, she promptly gravitated to him, as if they were magnetized. Christian smiled and drew her into a one-armed embrace when he saw her, and switched easily from jordiska to English. "You look beautiful, my Rose."
"I feel as if my face gained five pounds," she said, making him laugh.
"I can imagine. So then…Carl Johan, are you quite sure you don't want to look pretty for the camera? You realize you're going to be the only one," Christian said wickedly.
Carl Johan snorted. "I don't care," he said. "I'm fifty-one, Christian, and I've survived all these years without wearing makeup. There's no reason for me to begin now."
"The Enstads' ugly duckling," offered Gerhard, evoking laughter. Standing beside him were his younger brother Rudolf; his cousin Roald, Anna-Laura's son; and two in-laws: Axel, husband of Roald's sister Cecilia, and Elias, married to Gabriella, Arnulf's middle daughter. "Really, far, it doesn't bother you to be the odd one out?"
"There are other things to worry about than whether I should wear makeup just to look good on television," Carl Johan said. "You surprise me, Christian, agreeing to it merely on the say-so of some hack writer all those years back."
Christian shrugged. "I think of it as stage makeup," he said, glancing across at the line of chairs where Anna-Laura still sat undergoing the process. One of the makeup artists was signaling at him, and he grinned. "I guess it's my turn. Come with me, my Rose, all right?" Leslie agreed readily.
At around ten minutes to eleven everyone was ready, and the media had begun to arrive, with television crews setting up lighting and cameras, stringing cable all over the place, and print journalists and photographers milling around with the TV personalities. The family, staying out of sight in the next room, could hear the chaos going on in the room where the conference was to take place, and again Leslie found herself suffering from a case of nerves. She fell silent, stubbornly sticking by Christian's side, listening to various quiet conversations in jordiska around them, zeroing in on her husband's voice discoursing with his brother and sister in his own tongue. Again she wished they were back in their own home on Fantasy Island, and drifted off in thoughts of all the unpacking and decorating that waited to be done when they finally did return.
Suddenly Christian leaned down to her and said, "It's time. You need not fear a lack of knowledge of jordiska, because this is going to be done in English so that it can be broadcast in any country. All right?"
She nodded hesitantly. "How will I know whether to say something?"
"You'll be asked a direct question, most likely," Christian said. "Since Kristina speaks no English, Carl Johan and Anna-Laura and I will be handling questions about Arnulf. After that, I'm afraid anyone, particularly you and I, becomes fair game." He took in her dubious look. "I don't quite understand, my Rose. You were completely relaxed when we gave that interview the day after we were married. Why is this different?"
"Because it was only one person doing the interviewing, and what's more, I knew the interviewer," Leslie explained. "This time it's a whole gang of strangers."
"Ah, I see," Christian said in realization. "All right, that's fine. Just stay by my side. It will look perfectly reasonable, since Amalia will be at Carl Johan's side as well, even if she says very little or nothing." He glanced up just as the group began to file into the conference room. "Come on, my darling."