Ouch. Elsa from Frozen had nothing on the bitch ice princess of Moncriano. If that was the way it was going to be, one cupcake was fine. Two would just make her fat. Or make her face break out.
Christian nudged Kelsey’s elbow to move her on to a woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a plumper build. “Duchess Mathilde, your aunt.”
A series of brisk nods was accompanied with a wide smile. “Oh, my dear, this is such a joyous day.” Two lines of fat tears tracked down her cheeks.
Well, Kelsey certainly didn’t want to make the woman cry. But it was gratifying to get some sort of emotional feedback. No hug yet. Although Mathilde did keep clasping and unclasping her hands at her waist. That had to count for something. “Trust me when I say I’m not worth crying over. I’m fairly ordinary.”
“There is nothing ordinary about the Villani royal family,” snapped the next woman in line, her snow-white hair feathered back from her stern face. “Not after holding this country together for almost seven hundred years.”
She wore black, and a blinding diamond pin on her lapel. Or was something that big and flashy called a brooch? And shouldn’t there be a rule about saving the more than four-carat jewelry for after lunch? Like the one about saving white tie and tails for after six p.m.?
“Gran, you’re not making a speech to Parliament. Dial back the rhetoric a little.” With a faint smile of apology, Christian said, “The Grand Duchess Agathe, your maternal grandmother.”
Kelsey curtsied again. If she stayed in Moncriano, she’d need to add squats to her exercise regimen to get her in shape for all this knee bending. “Nice to meet you.”
“Jumping to conclusions, aren’t you? As for my part, I shall withhold judgement until the end of this meeting.” She thrust a shiny white folder embossed with a golden seal at Kelsey. “It took a great deal of effort on my part to get things organized on such short notice. Do not be late to any of these appointments. Punctuality is the rule here, not the exception.”
Too bad she couldn’t say the same about warmth and courtesy.
Kelsey gripped the folder with both hands. “Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late. William Shakespeare agreed with you. As do I.”
That earned her a sniff. No way of knowing if it was good or bad, though. Her grandmother gestured to the folder. “That’s only for the next two days. Obviously more will be added, culminating in the public announcement of your return. Then we’ll set you up with a real itinerary.”
It was odd. They acted as if this was a done deal. As though this life was automatically better than the one Kelsey had worked and planned for in New York. When, in fact, all the croissants and new clothes in the world couldn’t just take the place of her lifelong dream. A dream she was in no way ready to give up.
Pride in family was a universal concept. She understood where they were coming from. Kelsey just wished that someone would put in a tiny bit of effort to understand where she was coming from.
The king broke off from the line. Kelsey was a little surprised an alarm didn’t sound as he left formation. “I’m sorry your old room was unavailable, but we didn’t think you’d want to sleep in what used to be a nursery. It’d be far too small for your current needs.”
Current needs? Mallory had discovered after their first supply run to an authentic NYC bodega that the twenty-four pack of ramen was too wide to fit on the kitchen shelves. They’d stashed it at the bottom of the coat closet. That was where her head was with “current housing needs.”
She swallowed back a laugh before answering. “The rooms are beautiful, Your Majesty. Far more than I need. I think the bathroom is the size of my entire apartment back in Manhattan. If you want to save it for a real VIP guest and move me somewhere else, that’d be fine.”
“Valentina, nobody is more important than you.”
Kelsey tried not to do an obvious crossing-the-street-left-right-left with her head, if not with her eyes. But who was the king talking to? Had someone else join—
Ohhhhh. That must be her name.
Her original name. Her princess name. It certainly sounded royal. Lilting, even.
Shocking beyond words, however, to hear her name for the first time in twenty-five years. How had Elias never so much as mentioned it to her? Or for that matter, how had she not asked? “Kelsey” was cute and spunky and not royal at all. She should’ve realized that immediately.
It wasn’t Elias’s fault. It was all hers. Okay, maybe she’d throw Mallory under the bus for at least 20 percent of the blame, too.
She needed to be on her toes. Stop letting change and information steamroll right over her. Stop letting everyone else take charge and herd her along. It was still her life. And she was the only one in charge of that.
Kelsey would be respectful and courteous and try her damndest. But she needed to stick up for herself way more. Get out in front of this avalanche of everybody else knowing more than her about, well, herself.
Crap. Being two people at once made it super hard to even think in normal sentences.
“Thank you, Your Majesty. That’s a very sweet sentiment. But may I ask a favor?”
“Of course. Anything you want is yours. Everything here is yours.” When the king said that, Kelsey caught her big sister’s discernible twitch from the corner of her eye. Not big on sharing, huh? Or just not a fan of all things Kelsey-centric? “Name it, and you shall have it.”
He really did talk like a king. Kelsey wondered if he kept up all that formality during, oh, game night or playing tennis. Was that stiffness and distance a part of King Julian? Or something she could ascribe to the horrible awkwardness of him loving a stranger and not knowing what to do with that?
“I’d like you to call me Kelsey.”
“Absolutely not,” snapped her grandmother.
Genevieve tilted her head the slightest bit so she could condescendingly glare down her nose. “That’s not a royal name at all. It certainly doesn’t fit here in Moncriano. It sounds like it belongs to a slutty girl on a reality television show.”
What. A. Bitch. Kelsey didn’t even have time to react to the slur before her aunt jumped in to protest.
“Valentina, my dear, you don’t realize how special your name is,” said Mathilde. “It was our great-great-grandmother’s. And she was an Italian principessa twice over.”
Their accents, while faint, made everything being thrown at her seem even more, well, foreign. Kelsey had a sudden flash of longing for Elias.
Not a rip-off-my-clothes-and-take-me-now type of longing. Well, that kind, too, now that she thought about it. But to have him next to her as somebody to be on her team. To guide her through this room that felt conversationally booby-trapped. Like invisible lasers crisscrossing a museum after lights-out.