Prince Christian rode with his eyes focused straight ahead. As long as he didn’t make eye contact with any of the girls lining the streets of Damerhavn to watch him go by, they wouldn’t do anything foolish.
Like pretend to faint under the hooves of his horse.
Or throw a handkerchief at him, hoping that he would keep it as a memento.
The last time that had happened, his horse had spooked at the sight of the white fluttery thing, and Christian had nearly been thrown into the waiting arms of a horde of hopeful young ladies. He wanted to ride, needed to get out of the palace and away from his parents and tutors, but it was never as relaxing as he hoped it would be.
Today he was even more distracted than usual. On his way to the stables, his father had popped out of his study and made Christian promise to speak with him immediately upon his return.
Christian had extended his daily ride to stall for time.
With a sigh, he saw from the angle of the sun that if he didn’t return to the palace soon his father would send soldiers to find him. Not because he was a prisoner, but because Christian’s parents loved him, and cared for him, and worried for his safety.
Constantly.
“You’re alive today because we smother you,” King Karl was fond of saying when Christian accused his parents of being overprotective. “Imagine if we’d sent you off to Westfalin, and you’d had your soul sucked away by those horrible girls!”
Mention of this always made Christian uncomfortable. When the king of Westfalin had pleaded for a prince to help solve the mystery behind the princesses’ worn-out dancing shoes, Christian had been eager to go. His parents, however, had not permitted it. From the beginning they had been certain that dark magic was involved, and when the reports came of the failed princes dying in strange accidents, King Karl had put Christian under house arrest. No son of his would sneak away to Westfalin and attempt to meddle with those “cursed girls.”
Not that Christian had wanted to get married. He had only been fifteen at the time, after all. But he had never been outside of the Danelaw, and it all sounded like such a great adventure. In the end it had been a common soldier who had solved the mystery and ended up being knighted and married to the oldest princess. The intrepid fellow had solved the problem using an embroidery hoop or some such strange thing, but Christian rather doubted that part of the story.
Back at the palace, Christian groomed his horse himself, still trying to put off this talk. Then he had to go and change out of his riding clothes, wash his face, and comb his hair—which needed to be cut, he noticed—and find his father. The king was not in his study after all, but up on the roof of the palace where a telescope had been mounted next to the pole bearing the royal flag.
“See this?” King Karl pointed the telescope at the harbor and gestured for Christian to look through it.
He looked. “It’s the harbor,” he said.
“I know it’s the harbor, Christian,” his father said patiently. “Look at the ships in it.”
“Two of our navy gunners and a merchant from Norsk-land,” Christian reported, not sure where his father was going with all this.
“And there, to the left of the Norske ship?”
“It looks like a Bretoner.” Christian pulled away from the eyepiece to blink for a moment, then looked again. “Yes, a Bretoner galley. Royal Navy, in fact.”
“Very good.” King Karl nodded in approval. “Yesterday I received the ambassador from Breton. It seems that King Rupert has some ideas about the future of Ionia.” Karl chuckled. “Funny, isn’t it? When Breton is doing well, they’re an island unto themselves, but if there’s ever any unrest, suddenly ‘all the nations of Ionia need to band together.’”
Not knowing how to reply to this, Christian merely continued to look at the harbor through the telescope. A sinking feeling was growing in his stomach, however, and he knew that somehow this news from Breton involved him.
“Westfalin’s war with Analousia was not a pretty thing,” King Karl went on. “It cost a lot of lives, and caused a lot of bad blood between former allies. Then there was that business with Gregor’s gaggle of daughters and those fool princes dying left and right.”
The Westfalian princesses again. The back of Christian’s neck prickled.
“A lot of old alliances need renewing,” his father was saying. “Rupert’s quite concerned about it, and I know that Francesco of Spania’s been talking about the same thing for a while. Some official state visits and exchanging of gifts would not be remiss.”
“Do you want me to send a gift to Prince George?” Christian had met the heir to the Bretoner throne once before, and he was a nice enough chap if a bit too obsessed with foxhunting. Christian shrugged. “I could send him a new riding crop or some such.”
But his father was shaking his head. “Well.” King Karl paused. “I suppose if you wanted to take a gift to George you could. But that’s not exactly what we have in mind.”
Christian’s heart began to race. “Take a gift? You want me to go to Breton?” Christian blurted out the question, incredulous.
King Karl nodded, looking uncomfortable.
Jaw agape, Christian stared at his father. He’d been to Breton once, as a child, and once to Analousia before the war, but since then he’d had to fight to even leave the palace grounds. Now his father wanted to send him to Breton?
“Why? Why now?”
“Because we must,” King Karl said simply. “As I said, since the war, things haven’t been right between the nations of Ionia, and the Westfalian princesses did nothing to improve that. It’s time to prove to our neighbors that we trust one another—”
Christian interrupted. “Do we?”
His father looked grim. “We pretend that we do,” he said. “And we pretend that we aren’t all thinking the same thing: that the death of so many princes has left a lot of countries in a vulnerable state. Not all of those poor boys were second sons, you know. Helvetia sent their only heir, the next in line is a cousin’s son. Unless Markus decides to take Westfalin’s lead and declare his daughter and her future husband co-rulers.”
Frowning, Christian asked, “Who is she going to marry?” His tutors had drilled the names of every royal family in Ionia into his head, but it always seemed that there were so many young princesses that their names blurred together in his mind.
“No one yet, and that’s what makes Rupert’s little plan so perfect. We’re going to be exchanging our sons and daughters for a while: sending you to Breton while George goes to Analousia, and Analousia’s little Prince Henri comes here. Ostensibly it’s to make friends among the next generation, but go a little deeper and it’s a grand matchmaking scheme.”
“What?”
“That’s right,” King Karl laughed. “Think about it: George will leave for Analousia shortly after you arrive in Breton, and then you’ll be at the mercy of his sisters and cousins. You’ll come back here for the holidays with your family; your mother put her foot down over that. But after the New Year I might have you visit Spania, or La Belge, we’ve just sent them a courier. There are a number of lovely ladies at those courts as well, and you, my boy, are of an age when you should be thinking of a royal alliance.”
Christian felt as though his world were dropping out from under him. In the space of a few hours he had gone from feeling smothered by his parents to being thrown to the wolves, so to speak. He would be alone in a strange country, expected to talk and flirt and possibly even marry some silly princess.
And if he failed, another war might break out.
This wasn’t remotely what he had thought his father wanted to talk about. Christian slapped the side of the telescope and watched it spin on its tripod. He was being offered an adventure, but was it one he wanted to embark on? There would be no battles to fight on horseback and with rifle in hand, only fancy dress parties and balls.
King Karl’s gaze softened and he put one hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Son, we need you to do this. You know your mother and I have always tried to keep you safe,” his voice roughened and he barked a laugh. “All right, we’ve fussed like a hen with a new chick. But it’s because you’re our only son and we love you. Sending one’s heir off to a foreign land is never an easy thing, but your sisters are too young. Your mother and I, well, we paced the floor all night arguing about what to do. And we think that this is the right thing.” Karl looked down for a moment. “If you cannot bring yourself to go, we’ll make other arrangements.” The king grimaced.
It was reassuring to know that this wasn’t an easy decision for his parents. For a brief, wild moment Christian had been wondering if they wanted to be rid of him after all.
But at last he was being offered a chance to travel! Even if it wasn’t where or how he had dreamed, it was better than nothing.
“I’ll go,” Christian said.
His father gave him a rough, quick hug. “Good lad.”