Danielle Steel: H.R.H.

“You look beautiful tonight, Cricky,” her father said affectionately as she walked into his room, and helped him with his cuff links. His valet was standing by to assist, but Christianna liked taking care of him, and he preferred it. It reminded him of the days when his wife was alive, and he smiled as he looked at his daughter. He and her brother and cousins were the only people in Europe who called her Cricky, although she had used the name in Berkeley when she went to school. “You look very grown up,” he said, smiling proudly at her, and she laughed.

“I am grown up, Papa.” Because she was so small and delicate, she had always looked younger than her age. In blue jeans and sweaters or T-shirts, she looked like a teenager instead of the twenty-three-year-old she was. But in the elegant black cocktail dress, with a small white mink wrap on her arm, she looked more like a miniature of a model in Paris. She was graceful and lithe, her figure perfectly proportioned for her size, and she moved with grace around the room, as her father continued to smile.

“I suppose you are, my dear, although I hate to think of you that way. No matter how old you are, in my mind, you will always be a child.”

“I think Freddy thinks of me that way, too. He always treats me like I'm five.”

“To us you are,” Prince Hans Josef said benevolently. He was just like any other father, particularly one who had been obliged to raise his children without a wife. He had been both father and mother to them. Both agreed he had done a remarkable job, and never failed them once. He managed to juggle his duties to the state and those as a father with affection, patience, wisdom, and an abundance of love. And as a result, all three members of their immediate family were extraordinarily close. And even though Freddy was badly behaved much of the time, he had a profound love for his father and sister.

Christianna had spoken to her brother in Japan that week. He was still in Tokyo and having a wonderful time. He had been visiting temples, museums, shrines, and incredibly good although very expensive nightclubs and restaurants. Freddy had been the guest of the crown prince for the first several weeks, which had been too restrictive for him, and now he was doing some traveling on his own, with assistants, a secretary, a valet, and bodyguards of course. It took at least that many people to keep Freddy in even moderate control. Christianna knew what he was like. He told her the Japanese girls were very pretty, and he was going to China next. He still had no plans to come home, even for a visit, until the following spring. It seemed an eternity to her. While he was gone, she had no one even close to her age to talk to at home. She shared all her deepest confidences with her dog. She could talk to her father, of course, about important things, but for the daily banter that occurred among the young, she had no one at all. She had had no friends her own age as a child, which had made Berkeley even more wonderful for her.

Christianna and her father arrived at the ballet in the chauffeur-driven Bentley limousine, with a bodyguard in front as well, in which they had traveled earlier that day from Vaduz. There were two photographers waiting outside, who had been discreetly informed that Prince Hans Josef and the princess would attend the performance that night. Christianna and her father didn't stop to speak to them, but smiled pleasantly as they walked in, and were greeted in the lobby by the ballet director himself, who led them to their seats in the royal box.

It was a beautiful performance of Giselle , which they both enjoyed. Her father nodded off to sleep for a few minutes during the second act, and Christianna gently tucked her hand into his arm. She knew how heavily his duties weighed on him at times. He and his father before him had turned the country from an agricultural center into a major industrial force with a powerful economy and important international allegiances, like the one with Switzerland, that benefited them all. He took his responsibilities very seriously, and during his reign the country had flourished economically. In addition, he spent a considerable amount of time on his humanitarian interests. At the time of her death, he had established a foundation in his late wife's memory, and the Princesse Agathe Foundation had done an enormous amount of good work in underdeveloped countries. Christianna had been planning to talk to him about it. She was becoming more and more interested in working for the foundation, although he had discouraged her from doing so at first. He had no desire to allow her to join their workers on site in dangerous places. She wanted to at least visit them, and perhaps work in the administrative office if he allowed it, if she didn't go to the Sorbonne. He had made it clear that he preferred her to pursue her studies. She was hoping that if she started working for the foundation at the administrative level, she might be able to convince her father to let her take an occasional trip with the directors now and then. It was just her cup of tea. Theirs was one of the most prosperous and generous foundations in Europe, in great part funded by her father from his personal fortune, in memory of his late wife.

They returned to Palace Liechtenstein shortly before midnight. The housekeeper had tea and small sandwiches waiting for them, and Christianna and her father chatted as they ate them, talking about the performance. They often came to see the opera in Vienna too, and symphonies. It was close enough and provided a break from their otherwise serious routines, and Prince Hans Josef loved his little trips with his daughter.

He encouraged her to do some shopping the next morning. She bought two pairs of shoes and a handbag, but she was saving her energy for London. The kind of things she bought in Vienna were what she wore at state appearances and formal ceremonies like the ribbon cutting. The clothes she bought in London she wore at home in Vaduz, or in her private life, when she had one, which she didn't at the moment. She had spent the last four years in jeans, and missed them now that she was at home. She knew her father didn't want her leaving the palace in them, unless she was driving out in the country. Christianna had to think of everything ten times before she did it—what she said, what she wore, where she went, with whom, even the casual comments she might make in public that could be overheard and misquoted later. She had learned already as a very young girl that there was no such thing as privacy or freedom for the daughter of a reigning prince. It would have been far too easy to embarrass him or cause a difficult diplomatic situation if she offended someone. It was something Christianna was acutely aware of, and made every effort to respect, out of love for her father. Freddy was far more casual about it, much to everyone's chagrin, when he found himself in the midst of some mortifying situation, which up to now he had done often. Freddy just didn't think. Unlike him, Christianna always did.

She was also very interested in women's rights, which was a sore subject in her country. Women had only had the vote for just slightly over twenty years, since 1984, which was unthinkable. She liked to say that her arrival had brought them freedom, since the year of their emancipation was the one in which she'd been born. In many ways, it was still an extremely conservative country, in spite of her father's very modern ideas about economics, and his politically openminded views. But it was still a small country, bound by traditions that had existed for nine centuries, and Christianna felt the weight and burden of them all. She loved the idea of bringing fresh ideas back from the States with her, and developing more job opportunities for women, but with only thirty-three thousand subjects, and fewer than half of them women, there were painfully few women who would be affected by Christianna's youthful, energetic outlook. Nonetheless, she wanted to try. Even the fact that she could never inherit the throne was an archaic tradition. In other monarchies and principalities she would have been as eligible to rule as Freddy, although inheriting the throne was the last thing she wanted. She had no desire to reign, but she thought the traditional discrimination was inappropriate in a modern country, on principle. She mentioned it to her father's twenty-five members of Parliament, whenever she saw them, just as her mother before her had hounded them about giving women the right to vote. Little by little they were coming into the twenty-first century, but far too slowly for Christianna, and in some ways even for her father, although he was less a rebel than she was. Ideologically, he still had deep respect for their old traditions, but he was also three times her age, which inevitably made a difference.