VI
"Why, Mr. Fitzherbert," said the King when I ran into him on my way to breakfast. "Up with the chickens this morning, are you?"
I'll be honest, there were times when the King made me nervous-like when he called me Mr. Fitzherbert, totally respectfully, but it still managed to remind me I was an orphan-turned-thief living in his palace while I courted his daughter-or she courted me, I mentally amended, glancing down at my right hand, decked out in the five gold rings she'd given me yesterday. But then there were other times when I would notice the way his eyes crinkled at the corners beneath his heavy brows, and I'd think that even though Rapunzel was a dead ringer for her mother, she was still a chip off the old royal block, and I was starting to understand what it might feel like to have had a dad of my own. This was one of those times.
I mean, I didn't slap him on the shoulder or anything, but I did raise an eyebrow and cross my arms over my chest, and I said, "You're mocking me, aren't you, Your Majesty?" Then I gave an impressive yawn. Not that everything I do isn't impressive.
He clapped me on the shoulder, and he kept his hand there as he turned me to walk through the castle with him, his chuckle rumbling in that broad chest a bit like St. Nick. "Just be glad the expression isn't up with the geese."
"Huh?"
The King smiled cryptically. "Princess Rapunzel asked me to fetch you. She's just putting the finishing touches on today's present."
"Which I assume involves geese? Six geese, to be exact?"
"Now, Eugene," the King replied, taking his hand off my shoulder as we stepped through the huge oak doors that groaned on their hinges as the guards opened them wide for us to go out into the courtyard. "You know what they say when you assume."
It was such a guy thing to say, and caught me so completely off guard that I nearly spouted off to the king like I would have to anyone else, that ass and me usedin the same sentence together could only be talking about something really attractive, but either the King knew what direction my mind had headed and decided to spare me the embarrassment, or he was completely oblivious and thought that slightly off-color jokes were the perfect segue to heartfelt fatherly moments.
Whatever the case, he chose the latter, squeezing my shoulder again. "Son," he said, looking me with those full blue eyes that had damn near made me cry when I'd watched him see his daughter for the first time in eighteen years. "I know these Christmas gifts Rapunzel's giving you are a little-"
"Bird-themed?"
"-baffling, I was going to say. But this is all new to her, and as her father, I appreciate the grace with which you've accepted it. And I promise you, my boy, when you realize why she's doing all this, you're going to know as few men do that-"
Whatever wisdom he was about to impart was interrupted by a honk honk, followed by the flap of an alarmingly large pair of wings as a goose flew over a row of hedges toward us.
"Duck!" screamed some servant or other.
"No, goose!" I called out to him, and beside me, the King laughed. A deep belly laugh. I mean a really good guffaw. The kind of laugh every guy wanted to hear from his future father-in-law. I was so darn proud of myself that my chest nearly puffed out as big as his.
"A very silly goose," said Rapunzel, running out from behind the shrubberies, then pausing, hands on her hips, to glower at the bird as it circled around the towers of the castle. "It's supposed to be over there laying with the other five!"
"Laying?" I asked. "You mean…eggs?"
Rapunzel's green eyes flicked from the honking goose to me, bright with laughter. "Of course eggs! What did you think?"
That after the three French hens, I'd gotten more than my share of egg-laying birds for Christmas?
"Well, Blondie," I said, striding toward her through the snow, "show me the newest additions to my own personal aviary. What's that bring us up to? Sixteen?" Plus the seven mystery birds the queen said I'd be getting tomorrow…I guessed I should be grateful that at least Rapunzel didn't expect me to keep the geese in my bedroom, too. I didn't think.
As her fingers laced through mine and I noticed her grinning down at the rings I wore, I was struck with a sudden thought.
"Say-these geese-they don't lay golden eggs, do they?"
Rapunzel laughed. "A goose that lays golden eggs? Eugene, that's impossible!"
"This from the girl who once had magical hair that glowed when she sang." As we rounded the hedges, I glanced over my shoulder to see if we were still within sight of the King. We weren't, so I pulled Rapunzel in for a kiss, running my free hand through her cropped dark locks to make sure she didn't think I missed the blonde.
"Anyway," I said when I pulled away, distracted by the damned honking of the five birds nesting on the ground behind us, "a goose that lays golden eggs is the kind of bird I can get behind."
Or, in this case, under.
And the gift my errant goose dropped on the shoulder of the really fetching dark green velvet doublet the Queen gave me for Christmas wasn't golden to match the embroidery. Or even an egg at all. At that moment, I actually would have been thrilled to literally have egg on my face.
Rapunzel lost no time procuring an embroidered hankie from a pocket and as she began swiping at the goose dropping, I felt the King's hand once again upon my other shoulder. I looked up to find his eyes, you guessed it, crinkling at the corners.
"As I was saying before we were interrupted-it's the thought that counts."