Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle
Read Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Online
Authors: Beverly Bartlett
Copyright © 2006 by Beverly Bartlett
All rights reserved.
WARNER BOOKS
Hachette Book Group
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.
First eBook Edition: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56213-3
To Jim and Simon
Contents
I
first want to acknowledge the lifetime of encouragement and support that my parents, John and Ann Bartlett, have provided
to me and my writing. From editing my earliest childhood efforts to giving me a laptop so I could write at the coffee shop,
they have helped make it possible for me to pursue a dream.
My husband, Jim, not only encouraged me to write but practically insisted on it. He was brave enough to tell me what was horrible,
and kind enough to say some things were good.
Katy and Jeff Yocom, Graham Shelby, Rebecca Barnes, Glen Ow, and Elizabeth Bevarly also gave me valuable advice and feedback.
Fran Ellers, Cynthia Eagles, and Kirsten Tagami spent countless hours of their otherwise well-spent youth helping me hone
my royal punditry skills.
Finally, I want to thank my agent, Scott Hoffman, and my editor, Beth de Guzman, both of whom made this a much better book.
T
he press always hated it when she wore brown. It wasn’t that it didn’t look smashing on her. It did. Oh, it did. Brown captured
the hazel tint in her eyes, gave a glow to her skin, made her hair look slightly brighter, fresher, more alive. “But how are
we supposed to write about it?” Ethelbald Candeloro would often say, speaking for all the reporters on the royalty beat. “We
can write a smart sentence about a princess in an electric-blue suit with platinum buttons. And we can write a sweet story
about a princess in a sea-green ball gown with pearl detailing. And we can go gaga about a princess in red. But what the hell
are we supposed to write about a princess in
brown
?”
That’s how bronze became a chic fashion term during the height of her celebrity. But that is another story for another venue.
I have not prepared a discussion on the princess’s influence on hemlines or hats or any other aspect of haute couture. I raise
the subject now only because I want to start the story of Isabella Cordage on the unseasonably cool October day, all those
years ago, when she agreed to become Her Royal Highness the Princess of Gallagher.
From that day forward, the world would always note what Isabella wore. So it seems I should mention what she wore that day,
before it mattered so, before she had professional advisers and complaining photographers and the biting commentary of a nation
of so-called journalists.
On that day, she wore a brown wool sweater with a bright pink turtleneck that provided just a bit of color around her face.
A wool skirt, also brown, barely reached her knees, and below that she wore brown tights. It was a simple, unexceptional outfit
that she wore an awful lot back then. It was comfortable and versatile, and her mother had told her the color looked great
on her. So that was what she wore the morning she went for a walk in the gardens of Glassidy Castle with His Royal Highness
the Prince of Gallagher, who was commonly known as Prince Raphael and whom she had called Rafie ever since they were quite
young.
And he asked her to marry him. And she said yes.
She never wore that outfit again. For several years, in fact, she didn’t wear brown at all. People forget that. Her insistence
on brown now, the press’s disdain for it—these have become part of her legend. In researching this book, I discovered that
after the day of her engagement, there was not a documented case of her wearing brown until five years into her marriage,
on that infamous stormy morning . . . But now I’m getting hung up on fashion again. I apologize. I had merely wanted to mention
that brown outfit she loved so much, the one she never wore again after accepting the proposal. Some people would read a lot
into that. But not me. At least not yet. I never editorialize until the end. When you’ve seen all that I’ve seen and come
to know the princess the way I’ve come to know her, you realize that things are not always the way they seem with her. Wait
and see. That’s been my motto. Wait and see.
A
s far as he was concerned, the great tragedy in the otherwise comfortable life of His Royal Highness the Prince of Gallagher
was that he knew from the time he was twelve that he could not, would not,
should
not even dream of marrying for love. His mother and father had made that clear. On the rare occasions when the royal family
dined alone, they would always go on and on about the troubles that had recently plagued their British cousins in the House
of Windsor. The scandals, the divorces, the unending criticisms of the royal family.
“But that,” King Philippe would proclaim, “is what happens when heirs to the throne do not marry wisely.”
So Raphael began to settle into the notion that he must marry sensibly. He couldn’t be bothered with what he might personally
find attractive or interesting; he was to think solely about the good of the country and of his family. He had to find a woman
who was handsome enough to represent a good-looking country, but not one who was too caught up in looks and fashion and all
of that. Such interests, he observed, brought nothing but trouble.
In fact, it would be preferable if the woman in question had no interests at all. The ability to
feign
interest—that was the important quality in a princess. A princess—or prince, for that matter—who is genuinely interested
in things is bound to start thinking that the clinic she’s touring might need money more than it needs royal visitors, or
that the Saudi government’s desire to dress her in black garb on state visits is inexcusable, or that,
my word,
Prince Andrew really is an old bore and must they invite him to the wedding, third cousin or not?
Far from the popular notion of a princess being privileged and spoiled, a good princess is the most undemanding of creatures.
She smiles at anything placed before her. She is impressed by anything people attempt to impress her with. (“Well now, look
at how the children used macaroni to spell out ‘Welcome Your Highness’! I must say, I’ve never seen its equal!”) Above all,
she must be absolutely uninterested in her own feelings, which are the hallmark conversation topic of common women. Such nonsense,
Prince Raphael had noted, tended to annoy even his professors at school, educated but common men, all of them. So for a crowned
prince like himself, well, it would just be . . . unbearable.
No, his parents were quite right. He should not marry for love.
At least that was his thinking as a boy, and as I said, he later considered it one of the great tragedies of his life. But
if you assume, therefore, that the prince did not love Isabella Cordage, then you are assuming a bit much. For the truth is,
despite all that talk of duty and family loyalty and the good of the country and other such sensible nonsense, when it came
time for Raphael to marry, he paid no more attention to his parents than most young men do. He married exactly whom he wanted
to. He just didn’t admit to doing so.
And the fact that she had some noble ties and was very presentable and could feign interest at even the most dreadful exhibit
of mid-twentieth-century household tools was so much the better. The truth was, he adored her. He just didn’t realize it.
He had known Isabella, of course, since he was a small child. Her father was of minor but storied nobility, having inherited
the title “Earl of Cordage” from the legendary man-child who had, six centuries earlier, played such a critical role in the
War of the Hundred Hills. But there is no need to get bogged down in that sort of familiar history. The point is that her
minor nobility was just enough to make Isabella Cordage a suitable playmate for the little future king. So she was among about
two dozen children, all about the prince’s age, who were regularly summoned to the castle—via elegant hand-painted invitations,
of course—for small circuses and large birthday parties.
At first they played together with the unself-conscious abandon of all small children, unconcerned with their differences
in gender or the degree of their nobility. But as the years wore on, the relationships became more strained. The boys and
girls resented the adult expectations (which, by puberty, hung in the air like the stifling humidity of the worst summers
along the Bisbanian Sea) that they would, out of all the world, date and marry only within this small circle.
Furthermore, the boys resented that they were so obviously a mere consolation prize compared to one particular classmate.
The girls, meanwhile, were annoyed that in the whole melodrama of their young and difficult lives, the only story anyone cared
about was which of them would marry Rafie.
Isabella, being among the least noble of the children, perhaps resented the whole thing more than most. In her teenage years,
she developed—in addition to a small acne problem and the fine, flyaway hair that she battled through life—a tart tongue and
smart attitude with His Highness, once famously going so far as to tell him that any modern woman would consider a man with
a crown about as desirable as a man with a sexually transmitted disease.
“If she wants money, there are plenty of men who have that,” she said, loudly enough to be overheard by guests at the largest
ball of Bisbania’s summer racing season. “And if she wants fame, a good rock star will do nicely. What does marrying a king
get you except endless grief, tawdry speculation about your reproductive system, and a steady stream of editorials saying
you’re too formal and frumpy or else asking why you don’t carry yourself with more grace and poise? A princess can’t win,
can she? If I were you, I’d worry about whether anyone would have me.”
Not even a flicker of reaction passed over the prince’s face as he replied simply: “How interesting.”
And he walked away.
Isabella was unreasonably flustered by his even, royal response. The prince, despite his decorum, was hurt and strangely intrigued.
There were a hundred women at the ball, and he thought only of her:
Why doesn’t she like me?
But do not misunderstand. This is not one of those predictable romantic comedies in which the man and the woman spit fire
at each other for dozens of episodes before falling completely in love. It is true that Isabella and Raphael were often curt,
sour, or standoffish with each other. But it wasn’t so bad as all that. They were just children, after all. They sparred at
times, but they also quite enjoyed each other. The tabloids reported the “sexually transmitted disease” comment many times
over the years, but they mostly never bothered with what happened a few days later, when Raphael and Isabella saw each other
at the races and Isabella, who had managed to find a way to pull her problem hair into an attractive bun, tried to smooth
things over. “Oh, Rafie,” she said, “I’m afraid I was dreadful the other night. I was trying to start a philosophical discussion
about the unreasonable expectations of royal women, but I fear it came out like some sort of disrespectful rebuke.”
She smiled here in what she hoped was a winsome way and pinched his arm in a friendly guy-chum manner. “I’m sure you’ll find
a woman who is quite up to the job,” she said. “Someone who will not only appreciate you for your own sweet nature but will
think of all the good she will someday do as queen.”
Raphael brushed off the incident as though he barely remembered it. “Oh, of course, I knew quite what you were getting at.
If I appeared put off, I was just rather distracted by the visiting grand duchess. She does take quite a lot of attention.”
Then they smiled weakly and cheered the horses, and Isabella cashed a very nice ticket by correctly putting a little money
on a long shot named Apology Accepted.
