Now Presenting (I'm No Princess Book 1) Read online

  Lia failed to hide a laugh and Rex and Hilde smiled.

  “Dear, by the time we’re done with you, no one will know you’re new to this,” Hilde said.

  Dmitri turned, muttering some more and Rex snapped at him with even more I couldn’t understand.

  “All right, first things first,” Hilde said, clasping her hands together. “The dinner tomorrow. Have your lady’s maids get you ready and we’ll see what we have to work with.”

  I gave them all a blank look. “Lady’s maids? My lady’s maids? Plural? Do we need–?”

  Dad grabbed my arm and started pulling me out of the room. “I’ll talk to her. See you at dinner. Rex. Hilde. Dmitri.”

  Lia curtsied to them all and hurried with us.

  “Did you know about this?” I asked her accusingly, not caring that I’d just given Dad’s oldest friend, his wife and his heir the worst first impression I probably could.

  Actually, no… At least, I hadn’t inadvertently broken something.

  “Come on, Tati. Let’s see your room and have a little chat.”

  Which we did. But I did not handle it in a proper adult manner.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up to blinding light behind my eyes and they opened despite my protestations.

  “Good morning, my lady!” a far too eager voice called and I blinked the sleep from my eyes.

  “Gerta?” I mumbled, trying to find my way out of the mass of pillows I’d just fallen asleep on the night before.

  When I finally got free, I blinked some more and rubbed my eyes. Gerta, one of my lady’s maids, was smiling at me as she picked up the clothes I’d strewn about the night before. I looked over at the clock and saw it was barely nine.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked me and I firmly believed that no one should be that chipper that early in the morning.

  “Do I need this many pillows?” I asked, sitting up further.

  “You could have thrown them on the floor with the rest of your things.”

  I looked up and saw she was smiling ruefully. “Maybe tonight I will.”

  She nodded. “Breakfast is being served. Then you have a meeting with your father. After that is an appointment with the royal seamstress. Lunch is at one. The afternoon is yours until we need to get you ready for the state dinner.”

  She rattled off my schedule as though it was a regular part of waking me up.

  “Gerta…?”

  “Lady Tatiana?” she asked as she opened the wardrobe.

  “Tell me this is just first day organisation.”

  “I’m not in charge of your schedule, my lady. I’m only responsible for making sure you are where you’re needed when you’re needed and dressed as needed.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “What?”

  She only smiled at me as she pulled a hideous dress out of my cupboard.

  “Gerta?”

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “Am I expected to wear that?”

  Gerta hung it up outside the wardrobe. “Shower, my lady.” She nodded her head towards my bathroom.

  I frowned and pulled myself out of bed. “Make sure I talk to Dad about all this, will you?” I grumbled.

  But this was all part of taking up the mantle of Lady Tatiana Bethany Penrose. Lia had gone through all the specifics of how her life had changed; the dresses, the maids, she’d even recently been assigned a bodyguard. When she’d told me, I’d had a specific discussion with Dad about how that was so not going to fly. He’d been quiet and I was starting to realise that was quite possibly because there were some aspects of this life that were unavoidable.

  I showered in record time and went back into my room to find my other lady’s maid Shelly had joined Gerta. Thankfully, I smelled coffee. Shelly passed me a mug while Gerta indicated I sit at the dressing table. I frowned but did as I was told.

  Gerta did my makeup, then my hair while I finished the coffee and Shelly fetched me a second one. As Gerta picked up the horrible Kate Middleton dress, I realised that they’d been briefed on how to butter me up.

  “Oh, I am so not wearing that,” I said as I stared at it, wishing it were true.

  It was this woven, pale brown thing.

  “Your father asked us to get you ready…a certain way, my lady,” Gerta said insistently.

  I hung my head back as I pulled myself to standing. “Fine. But make a note that I’m not happy about this.”

  “Consider the note made, my lady.”

  I nodded and put the horrid, itchy thing on. I even let them shove me into tights and booties. Looking at myself in the mirror, I looked like a carbon copy of Lia from the day before. I felt ill and I felt lost, but I remembered I was doing it for Dad.

  “Okay, take me to breakfast,” I sighed.

  Gerta opened the door for me and I found Nikolai from the day before standing there. That elicited another sigh and I shook my head at him.

  Oh, Dad and I are totally having a conversation about this…

  “Not happy, Jan,” I mumbled.

  “This way, my lady,” Nikolai said, his hand extending down the hallway.

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  I got down to the Small Morning Room (yes there were a million and one rooms in that place) and only managed to roll my ankle three times. By the time I walked in I was unsurprisingly the last one to get there and everyone turned to look at me because I rolled my ankle in those stupid shoes for the fourth time and yelped. Not that it hurt, it was just a surprise.

  Lia once again tried to hide a smile as she sipped her tea. Dad smirked. Rex and Hilde smiled at me the same way doting parents tended to do. And, Crown Prince Brooder… Well, it was no surprise that he gave me an unimpressed glare and went back to his newspaper, shaking it like that showed just how much more interesting it was than me.

  “Morning,” I said as I leant on Nikolai’s arm and pulled off my shoes.

  “Anya…” Lia muttered and Dad pointed to the chair between him and Dmitri.

  I threw my sister a teasing nose wrinkle as I dropped into the chair.

  “Coffee, kiddo?” Dad asked.

  I nodded. “Please.” As he poured it, I leant into him. “We’re having a conversation about this Nikolai business,” I whispered harshly as I smiled to Hilde.

  “It’s just in Albia, kiddo,” he whispered back as he passed me my coffee.

  Putting the coffee cup down, I told him, “I don’t care–”

  “He’s just a guide and a chaperone.”

  “What do you think I’m going to get up to?” I asked and he looked at me pointedly. “I’m not going to be…”

  Here, three things happened.

  One, I reached for my coffee again, my fingers brushing the cup in just the right way to knock it over instead of pick it up. Which made my planned hushed, “Shagging,” pop out about three times louder than even normal conversation. Then, the coffee spilled across Dmitri’s newspaper, which meant he looked at me just after I’d yelled the unfortunate word.

  “You were saying, Lady Tatiana?” the crown prince said as he looked at me like he couldn’t care less that the whole room knew what he thought of me.

  My cheeks went flaming hot and probably very red, but I held his gaze. “Shagging, Dmitri,” I said like it was normal breakfast conversation and I heard Lia choke on her tea. “Or, is that not what the kids are calling it these days?”

  My eyes slid ever so slightly to the left and I saw Lia’s face.

  Yeah, sis. I really just said that to the crown prince of my ancestral home.

  Kill. Me. Now.

  But, I was a firm believer in the philosophy that ‘life is 90% confidence and 10% competence’, which was great because I’d never met anything I was competent in, let alone good at. Unless we counted tripping on flat surfaces and making a fool of myself. And I wanted to say they weren’t skills… At least not ones to be proud of.

  Dmitri was as emotionless as they
said he was. His gaze slid down my body, then back up to my eyes without so much as disgust showing. Somehow he managed to totally dismiss everything about me in one blank glance, then he pushed from the table in one swift movement, bowed to his parents with a murmured, “I have a meeting,” and swept from the room silently.

  “Well, impeccable second impression, Tati,” Lia told me, a smile in her tone.

  I flushed again. I could apparently look the crown prince in the eye after basically shouting, ‘Shagging,’ at him. But, his parents? People who had already shown they accepted me no matter what? That was a no.

  “I haven’t heard it called shagging in years, actually,” Rex mused after a tense few heartbeats and I finally looked up at him to find him smiling, but looking pensive.

  “No, it’s been a while,” Hilde added thoughtfully.

  The rest of breakfast was not dedicated to talk about what the kids were calling sex these days, thankfully. And I managed to eat and drink to a satisfactory amount without making too much of a dick of myself before Dad dragged me to his study for our meeting. Where I sat through what felt like a zillion years as we went through daily palace routine, the names of the important people expected at the state dinner that night, things I would be expected to do in general and in the lead up to my ball, which included lessons in dancing, politics, Gallyrian and etiquette. After what felt like forever, we finally got around to the things I wanted to talk about.

  “Nikolai has to go.”

  Dad shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes. I don’t need Gerta, Shelly and Nikolai. I’m nobody. What do I need all these people for?”

  Dad leant his elbows on his desk and pressed his fingertips together. “You would deprive these people of their employment?”

  I sighed. “Don’t do that,” I pleaded.

  He shrugged as he sat back. “Do what?”

  He knew what.

  We might not have lived together for the last few years, but this was what discipline looked like when Dad was involved. We sat on either side of a table and discussed the issues like adults. If adults sounded like they were in the middle of a cold war negotiation, rather than the loving father and daughter they were.

  “I know for a fact that they can be employed elsewhere in the palace, my refusing them has no bearing on their incomes, and they’ve met me. They know it’s not personal. So you cannot guilt me into keeping them.”

  Dad gave a single nod, which did not indicate agreement but rather his acknowledgement that he was willing to hear me out. “Continue.”

  “Firstly, I am capable of dressing myself like a Lia clone if necessary. Secondly, no one knows I’m here, let alone cares. So the likelihood of me being assassinated or bothered is next to zero. If you’re concerned I’ll get lost, give me a map. If you’re concerned I’ll end up–”

  “Shagging?”

  I cleared my throat and rearranged in my seat. “Yes. Thank you. I’m not going to embarrass you… More. I’ve seen one guy even remotely close to my age here that would possibly be in any capacity to shag me and I will never be interested in finding an unused closet or otherwise with him. Thank you. So I’ll be fine.”

  Dad looked me over and I was suddenly aware how dismal my spiel had been. And he used the calm, collected, noble (the literal and pun-derful meaning here) bearing far too well. At the exact moment I was about to lose the fight against containing the nervous wriggles, he nodded and sat back.

  “Less elegant than you used to be. But you put forward your argument in a reasonable manner.”

  I grinned. “So Gerta, Shelly and Nikolai are history?”

  Dad shook his head. “Nikolai stays. You prove to me tonight that you don’t need Gerta and Shelly, then you only have them for big occasions–”

  “Big occasions?” I blurted. “A state dinner isn’t a big occasion?”

  Dad picked up some papers from his desk and I knew I was about to be dismissed. “No, kiddo.”

  “What the fu–” He looked up at me quickly and I stopped. “What the hell does count, then?”

  “Let’s leave that for after your ball.”

  “Okay. But only if we can stop calling it my ball.”

  “You can’t call a rose a dog merely because it suits you better,” Dad said for about the hundredth time in my life. “Now, you have a meeting with the seamstress, I believe?”

  I groaned dramatically as I stood up. “Apparently.”

  Dad inclined his head. “Nikolai knows where she’ll be.”

  I gave him my most sarcastic curtsey and started to head out.

  “Love you, kiddo,” he said as I opened the door.

  “Love you too, Dad,” I told him, still pretending I was mad at him but he saw right through me.

  “The seamstress, my lady?” Nikolai said as I closed Dad’s study door.

  I nodded. “That’s what they keep telling me.”

  “This way.”

  I followed Nikolai and was starting to appreciate the fact he didn’t react when I rolled my ankle or when I muttered something about the garish art, and just let me sit in my head and drink everything in. It was like those sweeping scenes of the Beast’s castle, or those movies where they go to a museum or an art gallery and it’s all just so…intimidating and beautiful and unreal.

  I heard muttered tones and saw Dmitri talking to a couple of guys in military uniforms. The three of them looked way serious and I had a fleeting image of him staging a coup and taking over the palace. But while my fantasy was amusing, it was stupid because Dmitri wanted out of royal life, not further in it.

  One of the guys saw us coming and nodded to Nikolai, which meant Dmitri’s notice was drawn and he turned to look at me while I was still gawping at him. Well, it would have looked like I was gawping. I might have thought he was as personable as rabies, but I was still just a little hung up on the nice placement of his features.

  He inclined his head towards me so very vaguely and I was sure a muscle in his jaw twitched, like the whole notion of greeting me politely pained him. I actually had to bite my lip so I didn’t blurt out something completely inappropriate about how he shouldn’t feel obliged to be polite to me. Because I had no idea who those people were and I was supposed to be not embarrassing Dad. My feet I could barely control, my mouth I would force into control if it killed me.

  I nodded back to him and watched him say something in Gallyrian to the other two men. One of them looked me over with a look in his eye I recognised, and I just managed to not roll my eyes. It was a little harder when he stepped in front of me and bowed.

  “Lady Tatiana.” He held his hand out and I knew enough about this stuff to know I was meant to put my hand in his and let him kiss it.

  So, I did. “Hi,” was about all I was able to say as he pressed an unnecessarily long kiss to my hand as his eyes fairly smouldered at me.

  “Officer Cadet Mikelson,” he told me, his voice telling me exactly what was going through his head.

  I leant towards him a little, unable to help opening my stupid mouth now. “I imagine you’ve heard I’m not my sister, Officer Cadet Mikelson. So, that won’t work on me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A devilishly handsome man in a uniform.” Which was lies. Lies. Who doesn’t like a hot guy in uniform?

  The other military guy sniggered and Mikelson gave me a winning smirk. “I’m not known to forfeit before I succeed in my mission, my lady.”

  “Think of it less as forfeiting and more in the terms of my masterful negotiation of your surrender after decisively defeating you.”

  He grinned knowingly and gave a single, appreciative nod. “My lady.”

  Sensing we’d come to an understanding, I gave him a single nod in return. “Officer Cadet Mikelson.”

  My eye caught Dmitri’s before I walked away and his face was that chiselled, blank perfection. Looking at that very pleasantly aligned face, I almost forgot just how rude and
condescending he was. He stared at me intently for a second before I remembered there were at least three other people in the hallway and I was the only one having a moment.

  I inclined my head. “Dmitri.”

  He did likewise. “Lady Tatiana.”

  I went back to following Nikolai and, when we were at a sufficient distance, I huffed out heavily.

  “You did well, my lady,” Nikolai said.

  I gave him a shaky laugh. “Uh, thanks. I think.”

  “Mikelson and I trained together. He will no longer see you as a conquest, but as an equal.”

  I snorted. “Oh good. I like that behaviour unbecoming of a lady is what makes him act like a decent human being.”

  “Mikelson is a man who understands one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Combat.”

  I nodded. “Ah.”

  “Those of us who make the best soldiers…” He paused and I waited, feeling like he was looking for the right words. “Don’t always make the best humans.”

  I thought about that as Nikolai directed me through more hallways and finally to a door behind which I found a fantastically gorgeous woman who would definitely be played by Helena Bonham Carter in the film of my life.

  And while Madame Jacqueline, Royal Seamstress, fussed over me and measured me and I tried to focus on the swathes materials she was holding up against my body, all I could think was that soldiers weren’t the only ones who didn’t always make the best humans.

  Chapter Four

  Okay, I could get through getting ready for a state dinner without the help of people who knew what they were doing… Right?

  Totally.

  They had YouTube tutorials on this side of the world. Right?

  Sure.

  So it couldn’t be that difficult.

  I spent the afternoon that was mine scouring YouTube for ‘how to be noble’. When I got to a video titled ‘How to know if a girl likes you instantly’, I decided that had not been the right search terms. Although that didn’t stop me watching the video… So while I was totally prepared to know if a girl liked me instantly, I still had no idea how to be a noble.