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“Only room for crab cake sandwiches on that particular plate,” he said.
I smiled. “Yeah, you got it. Romance… I’d get to it eventually. That’s what I’d always told myself. And besides, it’s not like dicks are going anywhere.”
Luc let out a quick bark of a laugh at my words. It was a sound I hadn’t heard from him before.
“You know,” I said. “That’s the most I’ve heard you laugh at anything since we’ve met.”
“What can I say? You bring it out of me.”
I grinned. Together, we pulled onto the main road back toward the palace. I gazed at it on the horizon. This time, however, there was no tension.
Chapter 14
Luc
“Are you listening to a word I’m saying, girl?”
“Oscar! You simplycannotspeak to the princess that way!”
“Princess or not, she needs to learn!”
I had to admit, I was entertained.
Madame Giselle, along with her business partner, Oscar Townsend, were in the middle of the first of what would likely be many etiquette lessons for Ava.
“She will learn!” Giselle said, her voice thick with the French accent of her native Marseille. “But she isnotgoing to learn if you keep berating her this way.”
“It’s how I get results,” Oscar, a native Londoner, barked back, his hands on his hips. “And I’m not giving up until I get the results I seek.”
Oscar and Giselle were dressed in their usual effortlessly stylish outfits, Giselle’s luminous blonde hair in curls, Oscar’s ink-black hair slicked back, his mustache in a slight twirl. Both were around my age, and both, despite their brash attitudes, were very good at what they did.
“How about easing up for a dang second?” Ava asked. Her casual clothes of jeans and an oversized Nirvana T-shirt were a stark contrast to both the outfits of her instructors and the surroundings of the ballroom where the lessons were taking place. I was enjoying the show, coffee in hand, from the second-floor balcony. “This is lesson number one, right? What’s wrong with, you know, easing into this stuff?”
Oscar huffed. “Because every time I think we need to start from the drawing board, you give me a new, even blanker drawing board! For example, what you just said…stuffis not a word that should ever pass the lips of a princess.”
“How about shit?” Ava offered with a smile. “Got a little more punch to it, if I do say so myself.”
Oscar groaned, grabbing onto the side of the nearby table as if her words were making him weak.
“MyGod!” he said, shaking his head. “What crime did I commit in a previous life to be given a princess such as this?”
Ava laughed, seeming just as amused as I was by the whole thing. “Oh, lighten up, Oscar. I get it, I shouldn’t saystuff.”
“It goes beyond that mere word,” he said, his accent as posh as they came. “It’s…emblematicof the problem as a whole.”
“But it is a good place to start,” Giselle said. “Here is what we mean. As the princess, it is imperative that you express yourself clearly and eloquently.”
“No swearing,” Ava said.
“Noswearing,” Oscar echoed, exasperated. “Not even a little.”
“Instead of stuff,” Giselle went on, “try another word. Perhaps…matters.”
Ava laughed. “Like if someone wants to pull one over on me, I should say ‘this is a whole load of bullmatters!’”
Oscar let out another sigh, and I had to do my best to keep myself from bursting out laughing.
“Let’s try it one more time,” Giselle instructed. “Unless your goal here is to send our friend Oscar to the madhouse.”
