Authors: Meg Cabot
Royal Wedding (13 page)
The wedding will take place in Genovia in the summer of 2015. Further details about the ceremony will be announced shortly.
Princess Mia and Mr. Moscovitz became engaged on her 26th birthday during a holiday this past weekend in the Bahamas.
Mr. Moscovitz sought the permission of the princess's father prior to proposing.
Following the marriage, the couple will live in Genovia, where the princess and her consort will devote their lives to serving the needs of the people of Genovia.
3:15 p.m., Monday, May 4
Still in the HELV
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1
I am going to kill my grandmother.
Michael and I
promised
we'd tell our parents first (which we were going to do tonight after he gets back from a speech he has to give on neural prosthetics at a medical conference in Elizabeth).
Only now they're going to hear it first on the news.
Of course I can't get through to Michael. He took his own town car from Teterboro to the medical conference, and for whatever reason my calls are going straight to voice mail.
Probably he's already been kidnapped by RoyalRabbleRouser and is being held for ransom in an underground bunker for my exact net worth according to Rate the Royals. Only how am I going to pay it, in scepters?
Seriously, though, I know my grandmother is behind this. But how did she find out?
It had to have been Mo Mo. He was so nice, but she got to him. She gets to everyone eventually.
3:25 p.m., Monday, May 4
Still in the HELV thanks to the horrible
traffic on the Upper West Side
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1
Still no Michael.
Am checking all my messages.
HRH Mia Thermopolis “FtLouie”> |
Mia, r u back? How was it?
Yes, I'm back. I guess you heard the news?
You mean you didn't announce it?
Of course I didn't announce it.
Oh, Mia, I'm so sorry! I did kind of wonder, because the details about the ring were wrong. I was like, “Did Michael get a different ring at the last minute”? And it's more your style to let your closest friends know about things before announcing them to the press.
You think?
Wait, are you being sarcastic?
Yes, sorry. I'm just upset right now.
I'm sorry! But congratulations, anyway! Were you surprised?
Of course I was surprised! It was
amazing
. Best tripâbest birthdayâbest time of my life! Until now. Thanks for helping Michael to plan it, anyway.
And you like the ring?
I LOVE the ring. I love love love it. I'm just so sorry you had to hear the news from the press. FYI, I've decided not to go on the Internet anymore, especially after all this. You know this morning I saw a majestic stingray leap from the water for the sheer joy of it and now I realize I am wasting too much of the short time I've been given here on this planet worrying about my online social media image.
Oh. That's cool about the stingray, but what's wrong with your social media image? I think you do a fine job with it.
You mean Dominique does, but thanks for saying so. The whole point, though, is why do we even have to have a social media image? Stingrays don't, and they live totally fulfilled lives.
Stingrays don't have higher-functioning cerebral cortexes, so they don't have the ability to worry about things like their online presence.
Oh. Good point.
Also they leap out of the water in order to catch food or avoid predators or to get rid of parasites that are bothering them. I don't think they experience intense emotions like joy.
I'm not going to say it's pointless to argue with Tina about more esoteric things these days (especially given what happened with Boris), but she has developed a tendency since starting medical school to insist there's a scientific explanation for almost everything.
OK, Tina.
That's when I got another message. It was from a member of the Moscovitz family, but not the one I was hoping to hear from.
HRH Mia Thermopolis “FtLouie”> |
I suppose I should say “mazel tov” but really? Then again, the best friend is always the last to know.
I'm sorry! We were going to tell you in person, Lilly, but “someone” blabbed to the press. One guess as to who the someone was.
Really? You told Clarisse before you told your BFF?
Of course not. I think she must have weasled it out of the help.
Why doesn't the CIA hire your grandmother to interrogate terror suspects? She does a much better job than they do of getting classified information.
Sadly, Lilly's right.
Actually, now that I think about it, it probably wasn't Mo Mo, but the chef, Gretel, who Grandmère managed to con out of all the intel about Michael's proposal to me. I
knew
there was something sweetly gullible about her. Her hair was flat-ironed. Who bothers to flat-iron their hair in the tropics?
Someone who's anxious to leave there, that's who, and so willing to accept bribes from my grandmother.
I should have known. Paradise, my butt.
And to think, I fantasized about moving there forever.
3:45 p.m., Monday, May 4
Still in the HELV, still on the WSH
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1
Finally got through to Michael. He wasn't picking up because he was on the phone with his parents. They heard it on 1010 WINS, New York's twenty-four-hour news radio station.
I told him I was so, so sorry.
“It's all right,” he said. “They actually didn't believe it until I told them it was true. They thought it was only a rumor, like the time the
Post
announced you were carrying Prince Harry's royal twins.”
Great.
“Are they mad?”
He hesitated. “. . . No, of course not.”
“Michael, I can tell you're lying. You have the same tone of voice that you get when I ask you if I look terrible in khaki shorts.”
“No one looks good in khaki shorts. And they're not mad that we're getting married, just upset that you aren't converting to Judaism. They're very concerned about how I'm going to be able to keep kosher in the palace.”
“Michael! Stop it. It's not funny.”
“Also, that when I become Prince Michael of Genovia, my children are going to be Renaldos and not Moscovitzes.”
I stopped laughing. “Wait . . . they really did say that last thing, didn't they?”
“Well, I'm their only son, so you can understand their concern. I think they're torn between the idea of losing a son and the idea of gaining a prince. I told them not to worry, that in the unlikely event Lilly ever gets married, she won't take her husband's name, so her kids will be Moscovitzes. Weirdly, this didn't seem to placate them.”
“Of course it didn't,” I said. “Lilly swore off men her junior year in college.” I knew better than to mention the thing about Lars, especially with Lars sitting right there in the car. I thought it would be good for him to hear the thing about her having sworn off men, though. Lars's ego is inflated enough. “She says she's never getting married. How could you forget?”
“I didn't forget,” Michael said. “What she actually said was that you fall in love with the
person,
their gender doesn't matter. Although to be honest, if you were a guy I don't know if I'd be as into you.”
“Maybe we should call this whole thing off.”
He sounded shocked. “
Why?
Because I said I wouldn't be as into you if you were a guy? I mean I guess I could get used to it, but it might take time.”
“No, because your parents are right. Michael, you know you're not only going to have to take my name, you're going to have to renounce your American citizenship when we get married.”
“I'll be Genovian on paper,” Michael said, “but I'll always be American in my heart. These colors don't run.”
“Uh . . . maybe we're rushing into this.”
“Mia, I'm kidding. We've been going out for
eight years
âmore if you count high school. How can we be rushing into anything? And I couldn't care less what last name I or our kids have, or even if we
have
kids, or what country I'm a citizen of. I just want to be with
you
, and I'll renounce whatever I have to in order to make that happen.”
My heart swelled with love for him. “Aw. Michael, that's so sweet,” I whispered (I had to whisper because of Lars, and also François, the driver. It would be nice to have some privacy, but privacy goes out the window when you get a chauffeur/personal security). “I just want to be with you, too.”
“Then how come at the first sign of trouble you're ready to bail? I thought you were made of stronger stuff, Thermopolis.”
I had to ignore the little thrill I always get when he calls me Thermopolis. “I'm only thinking of you. Things are just going to get worse from here on out, you know. She's trying to Game of Thrones us.”
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
“My grandmother! The story about our engagement is going to be everywhere in exactly one hour. Reuters. BBC. TMZ. They're all going to be covering it. Our royal wedding will be the lead on the national news tonight. And after that, there is no way we're going to get our small, private, family-and-friends-only wedding. We're going to have to do what my grandmother says, which means there probably
will
be a national day of celebration declared, and a commemorative stamp issued of your head.”
“I don't care,” Michael said, sounding bravely determined. “If that's what I have to go through in order to marry you, I will.”
“Oh, Michael, thanks.”
“That's the worst of it, though, right? There's no weird secret royal Genovian marriage ritual I have to undergo, do I? Sacrificial scarring? Ritual cutting?”
“Well, you're already circumcised, so no.”
There was silence from his end of the phone.
“Oh my God, I'm kidding,” I cried. “The first rule of being a royal is that you have to learn to take a joke.”
“The first rule of jokes is that they have to be funny,” he countered.
“Fine. Can we get down to the real question, which is how my grandmother even found out? I know Tina didn't tell her.”
“It wasn't me,” Lars supplied, from the front seat. “I didn't tell.”
“Of course it wasn't Lars,” Michael said, having overheard him. “Tell Lars no one is blaming him.”
Seriously, if my life were one of those romance novels with a love triangle, Lars and Michael would be the sexy paranormal alpha males, but the two of them would be in love with each other and just ignore me.
“We know it wasn't you, Lars,” I said. “And before we left this morning, I put the ring on my snowflake necklace around my neck so no one on the plane saw it. It had to have been Gretel.”
“Gretel?” Michael echoed.
“The chef. Who else could it have been? I swear, I'm going to write the meanest review about her on TripAdvisor. Unlessâ” I gasped. “Unless there were
cameras
in the cabana. You don't thinkâ”
“Mia,” Michael said. “Calm down. I know who leaked the story.”
“You do? Who?”
“It was me.”
“You?”
I was stunned. “Michael, what are you talking about?”
“That part of the press release about me asking your father's permission to marry you was trueâwell, partly true, anyway. I didn't ask permissionâI knew you wouldn't like that, it's sexist. You're not your father's property. But I did see him before we left, to tell him I was going to propose to you this weekend, and ask for his blessing.”
I was stunned. “Wait . . . is this what you meant when you said before we left that you'd talked to my parents?”
“Yes. I spoke to your mother, too, because she played an even bigger role in raising you. I thought it was the right thing to do. How do you think you got out of doing all those eventsâand birthday Cirque du Soleil with your grandmotherâso easily?”
“Oh, Michael,” I said into the phone. I was feeling a maelstrom of emotions. “That's so . . . that's so . . .”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. Messed up, right? Especially considering the way everything's turned out.”
“No,” I said. “That isn't what I was going to say at all. It was very romantic of you. In an
ordinary
family it would have been a sweet thing to do.”
“I can see that now,” he said. “I think your dad must have mentioned it to someoneâ”
“You don't have to be coy, Michael,” I said. “You're family now. You can come right out and say it. My dad must have mentioned it to my grandmother, who turned it into an opportunity to drum up some positive press for my dad after his brush with the law.”
Michael sighed. “I guess I should have known better after all these years.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said affectionately. “I wouldn't change a thing about this past weekend for the world, not even this. But why didn't you tell me you'd asked them?”