Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries 11)

• Found out I’m a princess of a country no one’s ever heard of, but everyone wants to move to? Check!

• Getting married in less than three months on live international television and don’t yet have a dress, or anything else ready? Check!

• Discovered I have a long-lost sister? Check!

• Exposed her identity to the entire world by showing up at the wrong time, getting my picture posted on every website in the world, and ruining her life? Check, check, and check!

CHAPTER 54

5:32 p.m., Wednesday, May 6

Traffic jam on Houston Street

Rate the Royals Rating: 1

When I phoned just now to say that I was on my way to her apartment with her long-lost grandchild, Grandmère’s reaction was unsurprising but still not satisfactory.

“But I don’t even have my eyebrows on! I can’t meet my only other grandchild with no eyebrows.”

I told her that we still have to drop off Tina and Lilly at their respective domiciles, which should give her plenty of time to draw on her eyebrows.

Olivia, who’d been eavesdropping, asked brightly, “Our grandmother likes to draw, too? That’s so great!” and held up her notebook. “We have something in common already!”

When she finds out all Grandmère likes to draw are eyebrows (and from her Swiss bank account, of course), she’s going to be crushed, but I tried to sound encouraging. “Yeah! It’s great!”

“Is that her?” Grandmère demanded. “I cannot believe you’ve done this, Amelia. It’s going to ruin all my careful plans.”

“Yes, it’s her,” I said, then switched to French. Never in a million years did it occur to me I’d be using my ability to speak French—learned over the many summers I spent visiting my grandmother, then perfected with Mademoiselle Klein in high school—to keep my secret sister from knowing what I was saying about her over the phone to our grandmother. “And that’s a nice attitude to take about your grandchild. Why don’t you have your eyebrows on? It’s cocktail time.”

“I, er, had an afternoon visitor, and somehow they must have become smudged—”

“Oh, sure, somehow. Who was it this time? Please don’t say Chris Martin. You have got to leave that poor man alone.”

“José de la Rive, if you must know, though I don’t see why you—”

“You were making love with the director of the Royal Genovian Guard while your son was in court?”

“Amelia, must you be so coarse? José merely stopped by to share with me the very interesting results of his continuing investigation into Olivia’s uncle’s personal finances, and I suppose one thing led to another, and before I knew it, we’d—”

“Continuing? I didn’t know he’d begun a secret investigation into Olivia’s uncle’s personal finances.”

“What do you think the director of the Royal Genovian Guard does all day, Amelia, besides check for bombs along my shopping routes? In any case, he discovered something else very important. Are you aware that Ivan’s grandfather—my own sweet Count Igor—owned a controlling interest in Monarch of the Seas Cruise Lines, one of the largest cruise-ship companies in the world?”

“Uh, no.”

“And that when Igor passed, he left his controlling interest in the company to his only grandson, Ivan?”

I was aghast. “But, Grandmère, that would mean—”

“Of course. He never disclosed that conflict of interest, did he? And while running on a platform of economic reform that included a promise to dredge the harbor to allow for larger—and more—cruise ships. Naughty, naughty boy.”

I was stunned. “But that’s criminal!”

“Of course it is, Amelia,” Grandmère purred. “That’s why José’s on his way to the airport right now to catch a flight back to Genovia and meet with Count Ivan. He’s going to ask the count whether he prefers to quietly withdraw from the race—for medical reasons, I think—or face public humiliation and arrest.”

“Don’t tell me. José’s going to cause the reasons for Ivan’s medical withdrawal if he doesn’t agree to go quietly, isn’t he?”

“Don’t be so cynical, Amelia, it isn’t becoming in a young bride. Now tell me about my granddaughter. What is she like? Will she make a trainable flower girl? I already asked some of your second cousins to fill that role, but as you know they’re not particularly telegenic, having inherited your grandfather’s troubling jawline. You were so fortunate to have inherited mine, Amelia. What about your sister? Is her jaw shaped normally?”