Chapter 26
"I've been thinking."
"About what, Blondie?"
"If we got married, we could have sex."
Eugene pauses in his act of tightening up Maximus' saddle, draws his eyebrows together, and watches her as she clasps her hands behind her back and rocks back on her heels with a smug look on her face.
He quickly scans the area to see if there's anyone within earshot, but all the servants and accountants and guards are distracted, hurrying around shouting at each other while they try to get all the gold on the cart and squared away, still clinging to the chance that they might leave on time. Eugene was ready to go a half hour ago, and he offered to help out, but they gave him a definitive no and told him to back off. It wasn't a surprising response.
With everyone distracted, he figures that the coast is clear for them to have a hushed conversation, until he remembers that the horse is there. Maximus cranes his neck around to unleash a glare.
"Don't give me that. She's the one that brought it up."
The horse turns to Rapunzel and narrows his eyes to inspect her, but she makes a kissy face and scratches his ears, so Max turns his glare back on Eugene.
That doesn't seem very fair, but then again he's never won an argument with the horse anyway, so her feminine wiles aren't really affecting anything.
He takes a deep breath and leans back as casually as he can, folding his arms over his chest. "Where'd this new idea come from?"
"My etiquette teacher told me that's how it works."
"Did she?"
"Uh huh."
"She couldn't have explained this to you a few months ago?"
"Well… she didn't want to talk about anything useful. I asked and she just turned red and told me that 'men of ill repute would try to steal my virtue.'"
"Ah." He turns back to Max's saddle.
"I think she was talking about you."
"How 'bout that."
"But she did say that once I was married I could give my virtue to my husband. And at first I thought that meant that if we got married, everyone would know you were a good person, because you'd have virtue. But then I figured out she was talking about sex. It's an odd euphemism, isn't it?"
"Yep."
"So what do you think," she asks.
"I think they're almost ready to go."
"No, about getting married."
"I've told you what I think about that."
"But don't you want to have sex?"
He stops again and blinks at her. She looks genuinely confused, and he shakes his head and turns away again. "You're a tease."
"And you need to get over yourself."
He snorts.
"Come on," she says. "That way we'll both win."
"Both win? You act like you won't enjoy the sex part of this deal."
Max shoves him, and he elbows the monster in the side in response.
Goldie blushes, but makes a valiant effort towards covering it. "And maybe you'll like the marriage part. Remember how you thought you wouldn't like the floating lanterns, but you had a good time anyway?"
"Yeah, good times… getting knocked unconscious… thrown in prison… thinking you were kidnapped by dimwitted criminals with a hair fetish."
"I meant before that."
He sighs. "I know."
He meets her eyes again to offer her a soft, little smile, which makes her blush more.
Then his eyes narrow. "Just a second… You're trying to bribe me again. If I marry you, you'll give me something I want. This is the satchel fiasco all over again!"
"You just agreed that turned out for the best."
"You're not going to be able to get everything you want that way, Blondie."
She shrugs. "It's worked well so far."
He has to give her that one.
"Give me your foot," he says, bending so she can set her foot in his cupped hands. He easily hoists her up onto Max's back, where she settles herself while he climbs up behind her.
It was expected that if the princess was going to go on this trip, then she would ride in a royal carriage that would parade along in front of the cart full of money. So when it was announced that Rapunzel would be going with them there were a few hours of hysteria while they tried to organize everything that would be involved in such an endeavor. But then Eugene put a stop to it, saying that it would be best for everyone if he just took her on Maximus.
Not only would there be a distinct lack of motion sickness and claustrophobia, but Rapunzel would also have the chance to ogle the city and wave at everyone and talk to people and probably stop for souvenirs and pastries. She would have a great time, and the people in town always liked seeing her. It would also provide prime baby kissing opportunities for Eugene, but that was secondary to Goldie's happiness.
But regardless of how great an idea this was, the suggestion was greeted with outrage that escalated into a shouting match between Eugene, the steward, and the stable master, and only ended when the queen showed up and explained Rapunzel's dislike of carriages. She said almost the exact same thing Eugene had said, just in a softer voice. Now the steward was feeling personally insulted for some reason, and he was directing all his anger towards Eugene. Not that he cared.
He sets an arm around her waist and pulls Maximus around to wait for the rest of the caravan to get their act together.
"I'd be a good wife," she says.
"I'm sure you would."
"I'd be good at sex too."
He freezes. Then he looks down at her and her perfectly innocent smile – innocent and eager to please, one that makes him want to abandon this whole field trip into town and carry her off somewhere to find out just how good she could be. It's also a smile that sets off several alarm bells that scream, "She doesn't know what she's saying!" "You're a terrible, horrible person!" "She's trying to get you to agree to something. Watch out!" "Stop staring at her like that. Get a hold of yourself!"
He gulps and looks away, only to lock eyes with Max, who has never looked so horrified.
"See what I have to deal with?"
Maximus nods his head very slowly, staring at Rapunzel like he's never seen her before.
"What?" she asks.
"Quit trying to seduce me."
Yeah. That's a sentence he never thought he'd say. And now he feels stupid for saying it.
"Look," he says, lowering his voice and trying again, "where would we be if I agreed to a deal like that? If we get married, I want you to know that it's because we've really got something. Not because I want to get laid or because I want people to stop giving me dirty looks. Does that make sense?"
She bites her lip. "A little bit."
He plants a quick kiss against her temple and straightens his posture as one of the guards rides up to announce that they are ready to depart.
Eugene doesn't delude himself into thinking that her excitement over a day in the city has ended the conversation. It's just on an extended hiatus while she's distracted, and the debate will most likely pick right back up that evening or the next day or the day after, and she will have had time to come up with new arguments and he'll have had time to think about how soft her skin is and how good it tastes when it's sweaty.
He has a feeling he's not going to win this war, but by God he's going to put up a fight.
They barely make it three blocks before she tries to get Eugene to stop so she can watch a group of boys playing a game. He has to remind her that they're on a schedule and it wouldn't really do to have such a large chunk of the treasury sitting in the middle of the street while she plays a game of sardines. They can do all the exploring she wants on the way back. She agrees, on the condition that he explain to her what sardines is.
She asks a lot of questions about the rules of sardines, some so obscure that he honestly doesn't know the answer. Eventually one of the guards – a new one, who doesn't seem that upset at Eugene's presence and isn't weirded out by the princess' oddness - over hears and steps in to talk at length about his vast experience playing sardines, and she starts quizzing him about the finer points and unlikely contingencies. Eugene never even considered that there would be finer points. You look for someone who's hiding then hide somewhere else until you're the next to last person out and about so you don't have other kids invading your personal space, or you hide until everyone finds you or until you get tired of hiding and come out to discover that you had hidden so well that the other kids had given up looking for you and moved on to tag. He suspects that the new guard is making up most of the rules that he's telling the princess, but that's fine as Eugene will never be involved in a game of sardines with her.
Hopefully.
Their first stop is the fire brigade, where they give the princess a tour while the accountants settle everything and sign way too many papers. The fire brigade excitedly give Rapunzel one of their uniform hats, then show her where they keep all the buckets. They show her the map of the city where all the wells and streams are marked, and she stares at it in fascination, her eyes sparkling but shadowed under her oversized hat. She plays with the dogs, who lick her face and leave her sticky, and there's some talk about letting her slide down the pole from the second floor to the first floor, but then the accountants finish up their work, ruin everyone's fun, and shuffle the party off to the next stop.
She decides that the hat looks better on Eugene, and the new guard laughs and agrees with her.
Their next stop is the school on the west end of the island where a thousand children (seriously, a thousand, Eugene counted) swarm out of the building to crowd around Rapunzel and hug her. If she wasn't already sticky from the dogs, she'll surely be sticky from the all children after this stop. Walking into the building is like wading through a bog, and he has to shift two kids aside every time he takes a step, and when he finally makes it to the classroom they're supposed to hang out in he finds that he has one kid in his arms, balanced against a hip, and another in a piggy back ride on his back.
Goldie thinks this is hilarious, because being assaulted by eight-year-olds is funny.
He raises an eyebrow at her over the head of the boy in his arms, who promptly sneezes on him. Great. Way to mess up his flirting while he's looking compassionate, kid.
Instead of a tour, the school has the younger kids sing a song, which Rapunzel then wants to learn (Eugene can tell) but they move on to having the older students recite before she can ask.
Blondie has never been to school and she finds the entire institution fascinating - everything from the little desks and slates to the picture books and the way the students stand to answer questions. He can see her fingers twitch as she gazes at the chalk boards, her eyes darting back and forth as she plans the mural she could create there. Eugene makes a note to find a way to get her a chalk board. She'd like that. Her mom would like that too as it might protect the three hundred year old crown molding in the princess' bedroom from being painted to look like daisy chains.
He can see the greedy way she watches the clumps of girls, who whisper and giggle with each other. She never had anyone to giggle with aside from Pascal and the thugs from the Snuggly Duckling. At the moment those feel like pitiful imitations, like a shadow of the real thing. He knows how nasty girls can be when they're in groups, but it still doesn't seem right that she should be denied something so basic. Maybe one of her handmaidens, one close to her age, could take up the role of bestie gal pal. But then again, asking someone to be her friend would be all kinds of wrong.
It's going to be way easier to get her a black board.
She's quiet as they leave the school, seeming to sink into herself, to hide by pressing as deeply into his chest as she can. He holds her tighter and murmurs into her ear.
"How ya doin'?"
"Ok," she says.
"You seem less chipper. You need a break?"
"No."
"We can stop and have an early lunch if you're getting overwhelmed."
"I'm fine."
"I could just take you back to the castle if you wanted."
She starts to tell him that she's really alright, but then she pauses to think about his offer. After a moment she shakes her head. "You couldn't get away with it."
"Sure I could. I can do anything. I'll just say, 'Crap! I've lost my frog! Have you seen him? He's about this big, with big, freaky eyes and a taste for ear wax. Is he in your ear? No? Well, we need to go back and look for him then. See ya.' And we'd just turn around and go home."
She snickers quietly and he feels her shoulders relax. Sometimes just knowing there's an exit available makes it easier to keep going.
"I'm ok," she repeats, this time sounding like she means it. "It's just… a lot."
"Yeah."
"But I think it's going well so far, don't you?"
"You know, I think it is."
She beams up at him, the sunlight making her hair shine and her eyes dance, and he grins back, thinking that the day isn't going to be nearly as bad as he expected.
He's wrong.