“True,” she replies after a long pause, then bristles and straightens, shaking a finger at me. “But you do have an appointment. Put in your Lens and let’s be on our way.”
“Certainly,” I say, dropping her a very shallow curtsy before turning to slip my shoes back on so I can walk down the hallway to the washroom.
“Where’s your father?” my mother asks, still staring too intently for my comfort at the Glitter on the sideboard.
“Napping.” By which we both know I mean lying on his bed in a blissful stupor.
“As usual,” she mutters.
I’m loath to leave Saber alone with her, but there isn’t anything else I can do, so I hurry instead, coming back down the hallway less than a minute later with a linen cloth, still dabbing at the saline under my eye and trying not to smudge my eyeliner. “Where are we headed, Mother?” I ask as I burst into the room, heedless of whether or not I’m interrupting.
She looks away from the grid of lip gloss, and I can practically hear the cogs in her brain grinding out hypotheses concerning the true nature of my activities here. The best I can do is get her out of the vicinity before she manages to formulate anything too close to the truth. “Your chambers,” she says after a long pause.
I ignore the com notifications blinking at the corner of my vision. I don’t have time to sort through them now; I need to keep all of my attention on my mother. Muting the incoming messages with a blink, I raise my brows and stare haughtily at Saber, knowing that after our adventures Sunday night he’ll understand it’s naught but an act. “You can tidy up here, can’t you?”
“Of course, Highness,” he says with a bow, slipping easily into his role.
“Good. Meet me in my chambers when you’ve finished. We’ll plan my ensemble for tonight. Oh, and see that these are delivered where they belong. You’re a good chap.” I tap his shoulder with my fan, hoping I haven’t gone too far over the top. But my mother pivots and leads the way out of the study, giving me a chance to cast Saber a grateful look.
In the atrium, I reach for my valise on the table by the front door and stop my mother’s forward movement with a light finger on her shoulder. “A moment, if you please,” I say, pulling on my gloves. “I don’t mind granting you precedence in your own home—you are my mother, after all—but that door,” I say, pointing to the main entrance of our apartments, “is in full view of anyone who might happen to be passing by. I’m the future Queen of Sonoman-Versailles, and it would be disgraceful for anyone to witness you presuming to precede me out of a room.”
It’s a petty scrap of vengeance, but I savor it. My mother thinks herself the mistress of this elaborate scheme, but her own actions have put me in a position of power over her. I’m not the biddable, helpless daughter I was six months ago—I’m an international celebrity and soon to reign as Queen.
We glide in silence for a fair while, the whisper of our skirts on the marble floor our only accompaniment. “I know what’s going on,” my mother says in a soft voice.
“Do share,” I reply, keeping my voice calm, though my stomach instantly feels sick. I have far too many secrets for a sentence such as that to sit well with me.
“You and that secretary,” she says, like the word tastes foul in her mouth.
“Everyone dallies with their staff.” It’s not the Glitter. I can fob off her other suspicions as long as she doesn’t know about the Glitter.
“You can’t afford to.”
“I don’t see why not. My affianced has made little secret of his own infidelity. You of all people should know that this isn’t a love match, whatever the illusion His Royal Highness has decided to cast.”
“But he is trying to cast it. You’d be unwise to disrupt his plans.”
“I’m being cautious.”
“So cautious I walked in on you with your legs wrapped around him.”
I pause and turn to face her. “It wasn’t nearly as salacious as you’d like to paint it,” I hiss. “One knee touching a man’s hip is hardly in flagrante delicto.”
“But it is something, and I caught you easily,” she retorts, hands on hips.
I shake my head minutely. Anyone in the world could pass by and see that she’s angry with me. I, however, refuse to play the little girl. I raise my chin, clasp my hands loosely in front of me, and look down on her as if she were a toddler throwing a tantrum rather than the woman who brought me into the world. Giovanni calls it creating a tableau: altering someone’s perspective on any scene simply by changing how you are perceived.
Now anyone passing us will see an older woman making a big deal of nothing and a tall, regal figure indulging her.
“Mother, you’re the only person who’d ever be in the position of walking in on Saber and me in that particular room. I’m hardly indulging in the royal suites in broad daylight—what sort of ninny do you take me for?”