A muzzle on a dog that was never given the chance.
“It’s sunny!” Clara exclaims as her head pops out of the hatch and looks around. “Can we come up, Papa?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “Mind the deck, it’s a bit wet and slippery and stay down in the cockpit by Aurora.”
The girls climb out and go over to her, seemingly impressed that she’s steering the boat. I put on my sunglasses and scan the water in front of us, looking for any driftwood that sometimes blows out along here.
“Are those, like, X-ray vision?” Aurora asks.
I come over to the wheel and hand them to her. “They’re just polarized. It cuts out the glare so it’s easier to see into the water.”
She lets go of the wheel as I grab on to it and puts the sunglasses on her face.
“Wow,” she says softly, looking around her. Her smile is so bright, and I can see my reflection in the glasses. I’m smiling too. “It’s like a whole new world.”
“A whole new world,” Clara starts to sing dramatically. “A new fantastic point of view.”
I shake my head at her. She loves her Disney cartoons, but she didn’t quite inherit her mother’s singing voice.
Aurora is still looking around, then she takes them off and puts them back on again. “It’s hard to tell what’s reality now.”
“It’s all the same, it’s just you’re seeing it through a different filter,” I tell her. “It makes everything you’ve known seem brand new again.”
“It’s like another dimension.”
I chuckle at how enthralled she is and carefully remove the sunglasses from her face, staring at her. “Well this is the dimension you live in. It’s still beautiful.”
But love, I guess that’s the difference. Love is like looking at the world through polarized glasses. Every single thing has changed for the better. Everything murky becomes clear again.
“Papa,” Clara says, tugging at my jacket. “When do we get to the anchor place?”
“Soon,” I reassure her.
Though some of the best anchorages are on the Swedish side across the strait, we head down the Danish coast until we get to a little cove framed by a white sand beach. Much like the beach I took Aurora to around New Year’s, it’s deserted and won’t start filling up for another month.
Which is great because we have full privacy here.
We put the anchor down and then the royal attendants’ boat does the same right next to us and then we get started on dinner.
I hate to admit it, but I’m not much of a cook. Call me spoiled or having grown up a prince with countless cooks, but I certainly lack the culinary talent.
Aurora, on the other hand, takes charge. Down in the galley, she whips up a Spanish paella that rivals even the greatest chefs at my disposal. She even makes enough to give to the RAs and Johan rows over to deliver it.
“Another hidden talent,” I tell her after a few bites. We’re all sitting around the table, digging in, a nice bottle of Bordeaux between us. Johan can’t drink it because he’s officially on duty, so it’s just between Aurora and me.
“Believe me, this was easy,” she says. “I’ve made so many meals for so many families, this is the first time I’ve been able to show off for you guys.”
“How many families did you cook for?” Freja asks.
“Oh, I wasn’t a cook. I was just the nanny. But in those houses, they didn’t have a cook, so I did that as well. I was also the driver. I did everything.”
“Was their mother dead too?” Clara asks.
I nearly drop my fork, but Aurora handles it all in stride. “No, their mothers were alive. They just needed the extra help because they worked too much.”
“Like Papa,” Freja says quietly.
Ouch. I hate having that reminder.
“Everyone has to work,” Aurora says gently. “If I had children of my own, well I’m sure they’d be upset with me for spending all my days with you.”
“Why don’t you have children?” Clara asks.
“Clara,” I hiss at her. “That’s not an appropriate question.”
“Why not?”
“It’s fine,” Aurora says, giving me a sweet smile. She looks at Clara with kind eyes. “You only have children with people you love. Or, at least, you hope it ends up that way. But as you know, and often remind me, I don’t have a boyfriend or a husband. So, for now, you’re all I’ve got.”
I know she’s saying this in a glib sort of way, just trying to move past the conversation and go back to eating but I definitely catch the strain in her voice.
“For now,” Clara repeats. “What family are you going to go to after?”
“Where are you going?” Freja practically yells in horror.
“Nowhere,” Aurora says quickly, wiping her lips with a napkin. “Absolutely nowhere.”
Clara looks at me closely, like I’m going to tell a lie. “Aurora is staying with us forever, right?”
I meet Aurora’s eyes. “I hope so,” I say gravely.
Aurora nods. “I hope so too.”
Thankfully, after that the subject is dropped, the girls start talking on and on about the Minecraft game they like to play, which normally would bore me to tears but I’m just thankful they’re not grilling Aurora with the hard questions anymore.
If one of the advantages of being on the boat is that you get to get out of the palace and go on a vacation of sorts, the downside is that there really is no privacy.
Even with a yacht of this size, there are only so many cabins to sleep in. Johan gets one at the stern and Aurora gets the other one. The girls get a bunk cabin along the side, just above the salon, and I get the V-berth at the bow.
There’s no way that Aurora and I can sneak into each other’s rooms, we’d be walking past the girls each time and I know for a fact that they don’t sleep well on the boat because one of them always has nightmares about mermen, for some reason.
But that doesn’t stop me from going up to the cockpit after dessert is done, and the bottle of wine is gone, and the girls have been put to bed. I bundle up in my Helly Hansen jacket with a highball glass of scotch and a cigar and sit beside the wheel, taking in the night.
The skies have cleared above, and the stars are out like a shimmering velvet blanket. I take in a deep breath and try to light my cigar.
“Mind if I join you?” Aurora asks softly as she climbs up. She’s wearing one of my fleece jackets from one of the races I did, which is completely oversized on her. Looks like the sexiest damn thing I have ever seen.
I pat the space next to me and go back to lighting the cigar until I’m satisfied it’s lit.
She sits down beside me, her hips pressed against mine, maybe a little too close for some but still nothing people could get upset about.
Not that there’s anyone around to see us. The motorboat of royal attendants is dark and silent, and though I know that there is someone on the deck all night, they aren’t focused on me.
Still, I remind myself to not get carried away, not with wine and scotch and the bracing sea air running through my veins.
“The girls fall asleep with no problems?” I ask her.
She tilts her head back and forth, considering. “Maybe. You were right, Clara really is afraid of mermen for some reason.”
“Well, it would be a hell of a thing to see one.” I puff on the cigar and let the smoke fall out of my mouth before offering it to her. “Cigar?”
I didn’t expect her to take it, but she does, sticking it between her lips with ease.
Fuck, that’s sexy.
Then again, what about her isn’t?
“It’s nice out here,” she says, tilting her head back to look at the endless starry sky as the smoke leaves her mouth. “It reminds me of home.” She pauses and then says quietly, “Huh. I so rarely refer to it as home.”
“I suppose you must have a completely different sky.”
“It was a completely different world. I was a completely different
person.” She hands the cigar back to me.
I want to know more. She’s so guarded about her past, even now. I know it’s because she had a terrible childhood of neglect and it’s hard to talk about it. But I want her to share everything with me, the good and the bad. I want to know what her dreams are, as well as her nightmares.
“So you dropped out of school when you were a teenager,” I mention.
She sighs. “Yeah. When I was sixteen. I was dumb. I mean, I made some really dumb mistakes.”
“Why did you drop out?”
She looks off into the distance. The water has calmed quite a bit in this bay, enough to reflect some of the stars back. “Because I met a man and I fell in love.”
This is a surprise. “At sixteen?”
“Puppy love,” she says with a shrug. “Puppy love that morphed into something beastly.” Her voice is more acidic now.
“What happened? Who was he?”
“He was a criminal,” she says.
I stare at her. “Are you serious? I mean, I know there is a running joke among Australians but…”
“No, he really was. He came to town with a lot of cash and needed a safe place to put it. He bought an ailing pub and opened it. But it was a front. And then he saw me walking past the pub one day on my way back from school and that was that. My bike was broken, and the walk was hours and he offered me a free drink and I went in. His name was Dan. He promised me the world. They always do, don’t they. Only I had nothing and nobody and I stuck with him like a joey to his mother.”
“Where is he now?”
“Jail,” she says, brushing her hair off her face, which looks even more fair and pale in the starlight. “At least, I hope he is. He killed someone during a drug deal gone wrong…” she trails off.
“I’m so sorry you had to be with a man like that,” I tell her softly. When I wanted her to open up, I didn’t think it would be this. But at the same time, I’m glad I’m no longer in the dark.
“Sometimes I think about how he’s a villain and I’m a victim. Other times I think I’m the villain and he’s the victim. Then it turns out that everyone has both of those roles in a story.” She lets out a long sigh. “We’re just people doing stupid things because that’s what people do.”
It’s so silent now. I can hear Johan snoring downstairs. I glance over at the RA boat and see a guy at the back with his iPhone out, lighting up his face. There’s freedom out here, a place where confessions can set you free.
I need to be set free.
Especially with her.
We can’t move forward in this relationship, however you want to define us, until we’re completely honest and open with each other.
I clear my throat and steady myself.
This is just the last step in my salvation and she’s been my crutch each time.
Every dirty thing I do to her makes me feel clean inside.
Each time I come deep inside of her, I’m reborn a new man.
She is mercy incarnate, my absolution.
“I killed my wife,” I say. My words are quiet and soft and meant for her, but they still have the impact of a thousand storms.
Aurora slowly turns to look at me, her big eyes even more oversized, her face paling before me. She can’t even speak.
“It was an accident,” I go on, carefully choosing my words, hoping to make her understand. “I was driving that night in the car. It wasn’t Nicklas. I was angry, and the roads were wet and there was a fight in the car and I…I lost control. I so rarely lose control, but I lost control then. We went over the shoulder and plunged down. Flipping. I never thought the car would stop flipping. She wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and she went through the windshield. I saw her die.”
The air between us is so still, stretched thin with tension. Aurora is trying to breathe, I’m trying to calm my fevered heartbeat. I don’t know what I was expecting, I just know it needed to be said. And if she should leave me now…I can’t blame her.
“Where was Nicklas?” she finally asks.
“He was in the car. I picked up both him and Helena from the airstrip. I wanted the two of them together alone. It was the only way I could confront them in private.”
“Why?”
“Because Helena and Nicklas were having an affair. Probably since we got married, maybe even before. I knew, and I wanted them to know. It was stupid. I should have kept my mouth shut, that’s what was expected of me. To turn a blind eye to affairs. But I couldn’t. I was so hurt and more than that, my pride was hurt. Precious, precious pride.”
“So Nicklas wasn’t driving?”
“No. He took the fall because I’m a coward. I knew admitting what happened would destroy my family and the girls. And he took it because I promised him a job and I promised him the world would never know about him and Helena.”
“Jesus,” she swears, shaking her head. “Aksel…I don’t know what to say.”
It’s getting hard to swallow. Suddenly the fear is so real, that I will lose her. That she’s finally seeing who I am, the man beneath the crown and behind the mask.
Then she shifts and puts her hand on my thigh, squeezing it. “Thank you for telling me that. It must have been weighing on you so much. I wish I had that kind of courage.”
“Courage,” I scoff bitterly. “It’s not courage. It’s just that I can’t stand to keep anything from you. If you’re going to be with me, you need to know exactly who I am. A coward.”
“A good, brilliant man,” she says. “That’s what you are. Smart and funny and sexy and such a good father. You’re so many things, Aksel, and you’ve been through so much and being a coward isn’t one of them.”
“I feel terrible. All the time. Living this lie.”
“But it wasn’t your fault, you said so yourself.”
“It wasn’t, but it was me who picked them up, angry, me who drove them. I should have just…found another way.”
“But you didn’t mean to kill her. You almost died yourself.”
“I know. But facts don’t absolve guilt. Truth feels like a lie sometimes.”
“It’s because of Nicklas,” she says. “He constantly reminds you of what happened. God, how can you work with him? He was fucking your wife!”
I put a finger to my mouth to remind her to keep it quiet. Thankfully I don’t think anyone can hear us. “He was, and I hate him for it. I hate him for a million reasons. But if I fire him, he’ll tell the world the truth. And even if I am thrown under the bus, which I do deserve, my children do not. More than that, the truth about his affair with Helena will come out and that’s the one thing I swore I would do, protect her reputation until the very end. No one must ever know about her and Nicklas. She must remain an angel in their eyes.”
“So what are you going to do? He has something over your head every day. What is stopping him from writing a book or doing an interview?”
“The fact that people won’t believe him.”
“That hasn’t stopped other people before.”
I shrug. “Maybe he feels guilty.” Maybe he’s biding his time. “He is the one who hit me while I was driving, his actions made me lose control of the car. So, there’s that. And he knows it. That’s the only reason he accepted taking the fall for it, so as long as it was always known as an accident. And it was an accident, it’s just the roles were switched.”
She lets out a long breath of air, shaking her head slightly. “What a complicated mess.”
“It is.”
“No wonder you’re such a grumpy pain in the ass.”
I give her a look. “You watch yourself, kid.”
She looks around and then gently puts her head on my shoulder.
“You probably shouldn’t do that,” I say softly, taking another puff of the cigar. “The guard on the other boat might see.”
But then I put my arm around her anyway and hold her close to me.
I’m just comforting the nanny.
There’s nothing to see here.
And yet there’s everything.
Chapter 20
Aurora
June
It’s June 5th.
A date that used to have no meaning to me whatsoever, except that in France it was around the time that the tourists started to descend in droves and the weather was getting cracking hot.
But here, in Denmark, it’s their day.
As in their constitution day.
Denmark Day does have a nice ring to it, but they call it Grundlovsdag, which doesn’t have a nice ring to it.
Anyway, it’s a big ass deal to the Danes and as such it’s even a bigger deal to the royal family. I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to get Clara and Freja dressed into their traditional Danish costumes.
“Why do I have to wear this?” Clara complains as I pull her hair back into a braid, pinning it to her head before trying to attach a white bonnet/veil type thing.
“You love dresses,” I remind her.
“Yes, but this one is scratchy and hot,” she says, picking at the dark patterned skirt. She’s also wearing a full white blouse, red vest, and sash.
The kicker is, so am I.
“Hey, I’m wearing it too and you don’t hear me complaining.” I give her a big smile in the mirror we’re standing in front of. Of course, I am complaining in my head, because it’s June now and Copenhagen is going through a heat wave and this costume really is hot and itchy.
But when Aksel suggested it might be cute for me to spend the day in traditional gear, I went along with it. Because as much as I love keeping Aksel on his toes, I also like to please him, and I thought this might make me feel like an honorary Dane, not just an honorary goddess.
There’s also a ball tonight. Most of the public don’t celebrate that hard since some don’t even get the whole day off, but for Aksel and his family traditions, there’s a royal ball that they always put on in the palace.
I’m excited. I’m excited because I’m invited. Being the girls’ nanny means that I’ve missed out on countless occasions and events that Aksel and the others have attended but for this one, the girls are expected to be there, and so I will be there by default.
A Nordic King Page 25
