Page 22 of Her Royal Christmas

It melted instantly, leaving a tiny, ghostly star on the glass.

“Ha,” Vic said, leaning forward as if her disapproval alone could intimidate the weather. “Is that all you’ve got?”

The universe, unbothered, responded with a few more.

They drifted lazily at first, fat and slow, catching the light in the beams. Julia flicked the wipers once, then again a minute later when the pattern repeated.

Alone, if she hadn’t known the forecast, she might have called it charming. Picturesque. Exactly the sort of thing people imagined when they thought of Balmoral at Christmas—just enough snow to make the postcards happy.

Then the flakes thickened.

Within ten minutes, the air ahead was crowded with white.

“Okay,” Julia murmured. “Now you are showing off.”

Beside her, Vic had gone very still. “It’s fine,” she said, too quickly. “The roads are clear. They grit them. Scotland is prepared. They laugh in the face of weather events.”

“Yes,” Julia said. “And we’re in a Volvo with winter tyres. We’re not going to slide into a ditch and be eaten by deer.”

“That’s not how deer work,” Hyz pointed out. “They’re vegetarians.”

“They’re opportunists,” Vic muttered.

Julia inhaled slowly through her nose and let it out again. She kept her gaze fixed on the road, adjusting their speed down a notch. The tarmac was still mostly visible, dark between the slush, but the edges had begun to blur.

She had driven in worse. She’d driven Alex through protesters and torrential rain and once, memorably, through a flock of extremely stubborn geese. Snow was… snow. You respected it. You went slow. You stayed off the brakes as much as possible. You accepted the possibility that schedules might change.

Beside her, Vic was not accepting anything.

“What if the caterers get stuck?” she burst out suddenly. “What if the turkeys never make it? What if Mrs. MacLeod has to improvise and ends up serving beans on toast to the Queen on Christmas Day? What if the staff can’t get in? What if?—”

“Vic,” Julia said quietly. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing,” Vic said. “I’m inhaling panic and exhaling catastrophe.”

In the rear-view mirror, Julia saw Hyz’s eyes widen. Trouble. Mum was tipping out of “fun anxious” into “oversaturated anxious.” It was a fine line. One Julia had learned to watch carefully.

She eased off the accelerator another fraction, giving herself just a little more time, a little more room.

“New rule,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Anyone who says the word ‘what if’ more than three times in a row has to take a sip of water.”

Vic blinked. “I don’t have any water.”

“I do,” Hyz said, producing a slightly bedraggled bottle from somewhere in the depths of her booster seat. “It’s got glitter in it.”

“Why does it have glitter in it?” Julia asked.

“Art project,” Hyz said. “We were making snow globes in a jar.”

“It’s very festive,” Vic said faintly. “Also, I don’t trust any water I can’t see through.”

“It’s only a few bits,” Hyz said. “They go to the bottom.”

“See?” Julia said. “Even chaos settles eventually.”

“That’s not how physics works,” Vic said, but some of the frantic edge had left her voice.

Julia risked a quick glance from the road to her.