The Brooding Prince

Chapter 1

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     The news of the engagement travelled quickly through the palace, from the kitchens to the gardens to the stables, and by midday it had reached the edges of the kingdom.

Everyone seemed to thread about with an air of excitement and happiness. The Chefs took extra care with the preparing of the meals and the maids trotted around chirping happily whilst doing their chores and the young stable boys ran to the village and back screaming at the top of their lungs, making for a joyous and harmonical atmosphere.

"Pass me the feather duster, will you?" Charlotte instructed me from the other side of the room. I finished off my last bit of candle dusting from my side and carefully threw the tool across the room.

"Thank you." She smiled then went back to the dresser she was arranging previously. I heard her sigh deeply, as if her mind were somewhere else at the moment, which was no surprise to me, the whole day she's been sighing and singing, and I could swear I even heard her giggle at some point. And I only had to guess once to know what it was about.

"If no one was the wiser, they'd think it was your engagement that was being announced, not the Prince's." I said with a light chuckle as I arranged a couple of chairs around a small tea table.

"Oh, Emma. You wouldn't believe my happiness if I told you. I've never been to a wedding, let alone a royal one. I could only dream of it. The ceremony, the balls, the dancing, the flowers, the romantic atmosphere. Oh how I've longed for this day!" Charlotte's eyes lit up in wonder and awe as she spoke, her feather duster forgotten in the corner of the dresser. "Oh, my stars!" She hollered delightfully before running to my side of the room and snatching my hands from my task and twerling me around.

A shocked gasp left my mouth as she kept turning and turning. Then I reacted quickly before stumbling on my skirts and laughed loudly. "Charlotte!"

She laughed back and we continued dancing around the room as we giggled happily. "This will be the wedding of the century, and we will be there to witness it." She said as she threw her arms around my shoulders in a firm embrace.

And I, being finally settled from the turning, sighed and hugged her back firmly. "I know I've told you this before, Charlotte, but we will only be there to serve and arrange." I rubbed her back from my position.

"Yes, I know, you little nymph!" She squeezed the living daylights out of me. "But we will be there! Scraping stains off the tables and serving food to bratty rich snobs, but there none the less." She sighed again for the millionth time and finally released me from her death grip. "And while we do that, you and I will store any and every memory from that day, and relive it in our memories as two beautiful duchesses adorned in the finest of silks and the brightest of jewelleries, dancing in the arms of the handsomest courtiers, around the biggest and most extravagant of ballrooms." She said with her hands on my shoulders and her eyes closed, as if everything that came out of her mouth was playing behind her eyelids.

I felt my own eyes closing as I imagined all she spoke about, and I felt my mouth tilt up in wanderlust. My mind daring to go as far as I let it. Then I opened my eyes again and looked around. We were still in a common guestroom, half of it cleaned and the other awaiting us. Then I smiled again. My mother said it was alright to dream, for it was free, but to never let it dampen my view of the reality I live in.

Then I looked back at Charlotte's smiling face.

While it was wonderful to dream of a life of princes and princesses, I already had all I could wish for.

"Alright, you little minx." I laughed again and dragged her from her own little world up in her head. "I'd let you mop around and dream all day if I could, but we have chores to finish." She whined as I put fresh linens in her arms.