A Christmas Prince

iv. deal

The following day, I had left Emily working on her new English paper that I had assigned her. We started the morning working on a thesis statement on what the royal women of her family. After she came up with a good enough thesis, I left her in the library to research, while I took a quick detour to the kitchen for some hot chocolate. Aldovian hot chocolate is absolutely delicious.

On my way back to the library, I heard a piano playing The First Noel. Following the sound of the music, I was surprised to see the prince was playing the classic Christmas tune. In the moment I laid eyes on him playing, I quickly fished out my phone from my back pocket to take a picture of him. 

I had never seen him more calm and relaxed. It surely gave me a new outlook of him. Maybe his cockiness was all a front, and I scolded myself for painting that picture of him in my head. Sure, my first encounter with him at the airport left that impression, but seeing him now, I admired his musical skills. However, the moment was cut short, when I leaned in too much into the door, that it creaked, disrupting the prince. He looked up from the piano, and I quickly put my phone away.

"I am so sorry, Your Royal Highness." I apologized.

"Please, just call me Richard," he smiled.

"I didn't know you could play piano."

"My father made me take lessons," he said getting up from the bench, "he said music was the food to the soul."

I smiled, "he's not wrong, I heard King Richard was a great man."

"He was," he agreed with me, smiling, reminiscing about his father.

In that single moment, I had discovered something completely new. In order to make my assumptions about him more clear, I went into journalist mode.

"Are you afraid?" I asked, and his eyes met mine, they displayed confusion, "are you trying to follow his footsteps into eventually replacing him as head of the country?"

"I'm not trying to replace him," he said defensively.

I gulped, and looked down momentarily at the floor, "I didn't mean to offend you, I just mean that maybe you're just under lots of pressure."

"Aren't you under more pressure by Mrs. Averill?" 

There it was, he's deflecting from the conversation, but why? From the cocktail party of yesterday, I was able to see the leader that's hidden inside him. He cares very much about his country and from the snippets of conversations that I heard, he has great plans for the future, but why hide it?

"I assure you, I know what I'm doing, but are you?" I challenged him.

There was a glimmer in the blue of his eyes, a grin slowly making its way towards his lips, "I can see why my sister has taking a liking to you, you're not afraid of making your opinions heard, specially when it come at our expense."

"Why would I be afraid of you? Or your family?"

"Many of the tutors that had come and gone are all the same, following protocol, and simply trying to hard," he said, standing by the piano, "and then you come, fearless and confident without loosing your poise, taking on my sister and Mrs. Averill," he chuckled, "I'm glad my sister has you too keep her company, especially since I wasn't there after my father died."

And there it was, the regret.

I wanted to give him a hug in that moment, but it wasn't my place, "I know a little bit of what that's like, loosing a parent..." The prince's expression changed into sympathy, as he also discovered a new outlook about me. "My dad died serving in Afghanistan, when I was around Emily's age, and just a few years ago, I lost my mom to breast cancer."