The Royal Romance - The Valtoria Diaries

Olives and oranges

Maxwell was sitting in 'bedroom 15', the one with the bay window. The contents of this room were basically a colony of boxes, and had been ever since their trips to Ramsford and New York before the trial. Now that he'd sent off his final, final, final, even approved by the King of Cordonia version of The Royal Romance to his editor, who was just doing his final tweaks for him to read through and approve hopefully next week, he had found himself with not a lot to do today. Right now, Jen was meeting with the Duchy's accountants for the first time, and experience had taught him that staying awake during such a meeting would be a challenge no matter how much coffee was available, so he decided to sit that one out. He'd asked Jen if she had any ideas for something he could help with around the house while she was occupied, and after some of his recent DIY disasters, she'd just smiled politely, patted his head fondly, and gone on her way.

This hadn't deterred him too much, as he'd then had the superb idea of going through some of those boxes. By now it was late afternoon, and he'd managed to find homes for the contents of seven of them. All the little sentimental things like his school yearbooks and mixtapes and CDs and books and DVDs and photo albums and scrapbooks and sketchbooks and little notes from his mom and embarrassing attempts at poetry. He'd commandeered a small spare room for his guitar and his keyboard and other music related things that would still come in useful.

Now, there were only three boxes to go. But they were full of big things like speakers and decks and things that he probably didn't need since the installation of the legendary disco. Maybe he'd try to flog them. He could maybe add anything he got for them to Bertrand's sorry for running off with our sponsored suitor fund.

His eyes strayed to the pile of boxes on the far side of the room, that had come back from the New York storage centre. Jen had showed him some of the contents when they were there; he knew she wouldn't mind him having a little browse through. He wandered over, and settled beside the first box he came to. There were lots of photo albums, he flicked through a few and his heart melted at baby pictures of his beautiful wife, a tiny, green eyed, fuzzy haired tot sandwiched between her parents (and if you squinted a little bit, her parents looked a little bit like him and Jen, if you ignored the cringeworthy 90's fashions). They all looked so happy. It was something he didn't really remember from his own early childhood, being that happy. He sighed.

Then he found a pile of schoolbooks, all labelled on the front in cursive handwriting.

Jennifer Jones

This immediately confused him. He'd never heard Jen refer to herself as Jennifer before. I mean, it made sense, but on her wedding certificate she was Jen... wait, on her passport she was Jen. Well, her secret was out. A sly grin crept across his face. Clearly she wasn't keen on her full name. This was an excellent opportunity for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He'd obviously have to savour it for when it would have the most comedic impact.

"What you doing, babe?"

"Yikes!" His head swerved around to see her watching him from the door. "You crept up far too quietly! Look..." He sprung to his feet, pointing to the boxes on the other side of the room, and sang. "Today is the day when ten became three..."

She raised her eyebrows approvingly. "You have been working hard. Although if I open my drawers in the bedroom and find the greatest hits of Celine Dion nestled in with my panties, I won't be impressed.."

"Have faith, my dear wife, all personal items have been stored appropriately." He kissed her on the cheek. "And you may or may not have just caught me sneaking another look at your baby pictures, and can I say, you were an adorable infant.."