Chapter Ninety

When the going got tough, the tough -- went shopping. With her wedding less than a month away, Anastasia went to the trendiest boutique in town (a download from the exchange) after coming from Jenny Lho's. When she saw a dress through the fogged-up windows, she said to herself, "I wonder if they have that in my size."



She combed through the racks and racks of men's suit jackets, and thought, "Lucian might like this for the reception," while examining one of them.



"Six grand for this gown?" Anastasia wondered to herself. "And it's not even a designer label." Even with her deep pockets, she found the price tag a bit steep. Frustrated, she left the boutique empty-handed.



While Anastasia was wrapped up in preparations for her upcoming wedding, Alexandra was making preparations for something as well -- to make her first major speech in front of the cadets at Fort Starch Military Academy. It was the kind of speech usually reserved for heads of state, a speech which in the past had been made by her father and by her mother, so for obvious reasons she wanted to convey the right message and strike the right tone.



But she didn't have a clue what she wanted to say, or even why Crown Prince Sebastian had even chosen her to make the speech in the first place. Frustrated, she stared at a blank computer screen. Sports, she was good at. Science, she was good at. Writing, she was not so good at. Or, at least, she hadn't had that much experience with it, other than school papers. This is a head-of-state speech, Alexandra thought, and I'm definitely NOT the head of state.



Of course, Alexandra was not going to make her first major address without the assistance of her twin sister and partner in crime. "What do you want to say to the cadets? How do you want to begin the speech?" asked Anastasia. "You want to get their attention right away. Wake them up. And you have to keep their attention at least most of the way through it."
"Yeah," Alexandra agreed, "these things tend to get really dry, really fast."
"Hey, there ought to be some old addresses on the Fort Starch web site. Let's look there, maybe one of daddy's might be there."