Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Read Online Free Page A

revolting. Her face was contorted. The spray was oceanic. One of her chums was reeling back as
     if she’d been shot, a look of abject horror on her face.
    The queen in particular was beside herself over the whole event, imagining the antics at upcoming state dinners as prankish
     foreigners tried their best gags in an effort to prod Old Faithful into a repeat performance. “And
do
remind me to give the princess handkerchiefs for Christmas,” the queen sniffed to a lady-in-waiting.
    All the tabloids reported that Isabella quipped afterward, “At least they got my good side.” But she didn’t really say that.
     That was the line Secrest and Raphael came up with to spread among the “friends” who would leak quotes to the tabloids. The
     advisers and Rafie hoped the comment showed a jaunty, self-mocking attitude that would please the people, rather than make
     them feel guilty for buying up the tabloids and snickering at the picture. The things Isabella really said were almost too
     pathetic to repeat. She cried and carried on and kept telling Raphael that she was a miserable wife and a miserable princess
     and why couldn’t they leave her alone for one hour a week and it didn’t matter, she might as well do what the advisers wanted
     and give up on the luncheons because her friends would give up on her soon enough if that sort of nonsense continued.
    Raphael was sympathetic about the photo. (It could, after all, happen to anyone.) But he was mystified about why she wouldn’t
     just have the luncheons at the castle. The prince had only briefly experienced, on his honeymoon and other foreign trips,
     the freedom of being able to walk in the street and to browse at shops and eat in restaurants without a fuss. It was, he supposed,
     fun in its way. But it didn’t strike him, at least not in those days, as something you needed to do all the time.
    Instead of moving the luncheons to the castle, Isabella gave up the ritual altogether, trying in vain to explain to Rafie
     that the feel of the luncheons—five independent women carving out precious time to meet, stand in line for fruit plates, and
     giggle at one another as they tried to adjust the table umbrella—would be utterly ruined if situated in the Glassidy Gardens
     with butlers tending to their needs.
    “Explain it to him, Secrest,” she’d say. “We’re modern working girls, aren’t we? You understand.”
    And Secrest—who was enough of a modern working girl to know that she would get nowhere by pointing out that Isabella wasn’t,
     strictly speaking, working—would demur and flee the room.
    In the days that followed the “thar she blows” photo, Raphael stayed up late each night, indulging his interest in the mechanics
     of communication by reading a speech therapy text called
Enunciation and Pronunciation: A Layman’s Guide.
Between chapters, he would pause to think about his conversations with Isabella. He decided she needed to take up an interest
     herself and stop being so ridiculous.
    And Isabella? On most of those nights, she went to bed thinking . . . well, to be honest, Isabella was thinking of Geoffrey.

Chapter 3
    I guess I should explain before going further that I believe in princesses. Princes, too, of course, but especially princesses.
     A lot of people don’t, you know. Not these days. Not for a long time, really. We look back on the biggest royal weddings of
     old, watch the video of the outpouring at King William’s mum’s funeral, and we say those were monarchy’s glory days.
    But that’s revisionist history. We forget that there were protesters at those weddings and that people thought Will’s father
     should step aside, giving up his place in the line of succession. If European monarchies ever had glorious days, they were
     not as recent as that. I’m not sure there was ever a time when the very concept of a monarchy was not ridiculed and mocked—at
     least behind the king’s back.
    Anyway, it’s not that I believe