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

not private? Or did she no longer notice the cameras?
    And what of her much younger sister, the glamorous Lady Carissa, whose engagement to a Bisbanian count was called off on the
     very eve of the wedding, requiring embarrassing explanations to four kings and five queens, all of whom had traveled to the
     Selbar Isles for the occasion? What was the secret that Carissa revealed to her fiancé on the night before her wedding? And
     does it haunt the queen to this day? Does it explain why Raphael was never once publicly seen, nor even privately photographed,
     with his aunt, who was herself photographed quite a lot for the next several years, until she started putting on a bit of
     weight and took to wearing sweatpants in public?
    And when, in happier days, Reggie’s clothing budget was printed and criticized, we sympathized, having known firsthand a boyfriend’s
     raised eyebrow, a father’s terse words at expensive clothes—as well as we also knew their disappointment with women who did
     not dress prettily. (Consider the reaction to Lady Carissa in sweats.)
    Things have improved since then. But it used to be, even in my lifetime, even after things had already improved, that a woman
     could not win. And Regina’s struggle to win took place on a global stage.
    We wondered about the rumors of her affair with her chauffeur, and we gossiped into the night about her battles with the Queen
     Mother, and we saw in her life a giant reflection of our own, the life we had lived and the one that still lay before us.
     Disappointments and joys and in-laws and friends. Her life was just like ours, only lived on a grander scale, one that gave
     the mundane things—clothes, shopping, and in-law problems—a dramatic edge. Let our boyfriends talk about hockey and soccer;
     we were talking about the game of life.
    Then Isabella came along, and Isabella was so much better.
    Those of us who believe in princesses are often laughed at. But I believe the world needs princesses and dukes and queens
     and kings. We need people who glitter and shine and make a room silent with their entrance. We need them the same way we need
     ice cream and soccer and music and stories. Oh, how we need stories.
    And though the world didn’t know it until now, Isabella’s story—the sad one that you know so well and the grand one that is
     only now being revealed—began with Geoffrey.

Chapter 4
    W hat? You’ve never heard of Geoffrey? You’ve spent your whole life, it seems, reading about everything that the princess ate
     or wore or did, but you’re still unaware of the man who consumed Isabella’s thoughts on those wistful, lonely nights when
     she lay awake wondering what on earth she had gotten herself into?
    (I guess that proves my agent, Frederick, wrong when he said there was nothing new I could possibly reveal about the Princess
     of Gallagher!)
    Geoffrey Whitehall-Wright, né Jeff Wright, was a friend, perhaps ever so slightly more than a friend, whom Isabella had met
     in America. The first time she mentioned him to Raphael, the prince assumed Geoffrey was a former classmate from Yale. Isabella
     did not initially correct this assumption.
    He was actually the man who fixed her car. Well,
checked
her car. You know, looking for bombs and wear and tear and bugs. The castle insisted on such inspections for all friends
     of the prince, and although Isabella sometimes vaguely wondered what would happen if she simply refused to show up for her
     weekly appointments, it never seemed worth the bother. Once she got to know Geoffrey, whom she had selected out of the phone
     book because his family shop was near her dorm, she actually came to look forward to visiting the garage.
    Isabella’s reluctance to reveal that Geoffrey was what Raphael’s friends would call her “car man” had nothing to do with concerns
     about class snobbery or her upper-crust reputation. It was perhaps more sinister than that. She liked having a secret. She
     liked having a