Princess in Training (Prince Harry #3)

Chapter Six

"I'm bored!" Meredith yelled while lying on the couch. Today, in the early afternoon, was training, of course, yet nothing really prepared her for the previous night when the old president of the United States of America stopped by. While Meredith wasn't supposed to be nervous talking with her own president, it wasn't exactly a normal thing. Harry laughed and laughed with President Obama.

Harry came downstairs, laughing. "We have days off."

"And you're not bored?" she asked. "How aren't you bored?"

Sitting down, Harry smiled. "I can do whatever I like."

"Yet, we stay inside."

"We need days to relax, Mere."

"Perhaps you do, but to be honest, other people don't have the ability, so why do we?" Meredith flopped over. "Can I go out?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

"What do you want me to do?" Meredith wondered. "I'm bored. And I'm sorry, but you won't be able to keep me fully entertained here."

"If the weather was nice, I'd take you somewhere better."

Meredith groaned. "Why did we put training in the afternoon?"

"To give you time to sleep in."

She knew exactly when she woke up this morning, at six. She didn't even get up that early when was in university. She didn't need to get up that early now.  Standing up, Meredith paced. "What do you usually do on days off?"

"Relax."

Nope, can't do that. Meredith looked at things. "I thought we were trying to show me off to the world."

"People can get sick of you pretty quickly."

Meredith gave her fiancee a look.

"Not you exactly-- in general."

"In general people get sick of me?"

"No, not what I meant. It's just seeing our faces-- we royals-- some people don't like us."

"So we hide and take unnecessary breaks?" Meredith liked vacations as much as the next person, but she was bored out of her mind. For the last few years of her life, she worked day in and day out. Sometimes on weekends she worked too. Suddenly she wasn't supposed to do anything but lay low.

"It'll get better when you take on larger projects or when you start doing lone events."

An idea came into her mind. Bending down next to Harry, she looked him straight in the eyes. "I heard a rumor."

Smirking, Harry lifted an eyebrow. "What about?"

"They're going to send us on a tour afterward?"

With the look Harry wore, he heard this too. It meant this rumor was true. "Do you know where?"

"No. Do you?"

Harry shrugged. "Not right now. It all depends on how we do."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that we stay out of trouble," Harry warned. "Walk a straight line, Mere, and you'll get somewhere."

"That seems like a lot of work." Meredith knew she would do it anyway. While she had authority problems, Meredith liked to play by the rules. She knew them well. The problem wasn't the rules. The problems were being diplomatic or neutral, and her inability always look kind. It involved many times clamping her mouth down so she didn't say anything.

"If you're so bored, I know what we could do," Harry said.

"Have sex?"

"We haven't broken in the flat yet."

Meredith rolled her eyes. "It was a joke."

"Was it? Really?"

She ignored that comment because she was unsure what might come out of her mouth. "Can I sign up for more events?"

"Probably not right now, when you're just getting started."

"That's when I'm at my most bored," she said. "Down the road, we're going to have dogs to take care of."

Harry arched an eyebrow. "I think you mean children."

"Those too." Meredith paced again. "Do you think if I ask the Queen, she will let me do more? I can even follow around other royals. I can be Duke of Edinburgh's personal assistant. Anything!"

Harry sat up and watched his future wife. "She wants you to focus on training."

"And if I start to do really well at training, putting a hundred-and-ten percent in, will she let me?" she asked. "Do you think?"

Harry still wasn't so sure.

"I speak another language, which is more than you do, and I am learning Gaelic and Welsh. I can try to learn Spanish and French, but I'll tell you know now I don't do well with Latin languages."

Yet Harry didn't budge.

Meredith flopped down next to him.

After a moment, Harry asked, "Why are you so keen about doing more work, Mere? It's not a bad thing, but usually people want to go into it slowly. You just want to jump in, and we don't want to do that. You'll swim with our help."

Sighing, Meredith knew Harry meant well. She knew the monarchy went well. "The last person they threw in was your mum I assume."

Harry stiffened. "Yes, but--"

"People automatically liked her, didn't they? I don't have that honor."

No, it was work for Meredith to be liked. For some people, it was easy to like Meredith because she represented them in someway, with her unusual behavior or her lack of money or even that fact that she wasn't that pretty. For others, she was too far off course to be royal, let alone deserve to marry Harry. These people wanted her far away from the monarchy. The people who liked her usually didn't come from wealth or the upper class, but many supporters of the monarchy were.

"People will learn to love you."

Meredith snorted. "I used to not care what people think."

"You care what people think now?"

"No." She didn't have enough patience to care what people thought of her. "But now it's important. Now I have to be liked. Now I have to care, and I spent so much time not caring." Meredith looked at the old pictures on the wall. "If I start caring what people think of me, Harry, then I'm going to get hurt by their words. That's how it works."

Harry knew that.

"I can play the part. I can act nicer in public. I can follow orders. If they want me to act a certain way, I can do that. But I have remain true to who I am, and that means sometimes doing things that people don't like."

"I accept that."

Meredith nodded. "If I go to the Queen and I ask her politely-- beg even-- do you think she might increase my work load?"

"It certainly can't make it worse."