The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  “You—” She coughed.

  “Don’t talk, honey, just rest. Get all the water out and I’ll take you home.” He began to rock her.

  “You”—cough, cough—“may”—cough, cough.

  “Yes, love? You can thank me later. Let’s get you into dry clothes for right now. How about some hot fish soup?” His voice was deep and loving.

  The girl seemed to want desperately to say something so J.T. allowed her to move back a few inches so she could look at him.

  He pulled her back into his arms, cradling her as if she were the most precious object on earth. “It’s all right, baby. No one will try to hurt you again.”

  She struggled against him and he let her pull away again as he smiled at her indulgently.

  Again he was struck with the sheer prettiness of her. Not beautiful in a modern sense but in an old-fashioned way. Her small features and perfectly shaped head made her look as if she had stepped out of an old photograph. She reminded him of the ladies in the fairy-tale books his mother read to him as a child. She was a damsel in distress and he was her rescuer. Warmth flooded him.

  He kept his hands lightly at her back in a protective way. “All right, honey, what is it you want to say?” he said caressingly.

  Trying to talk made her cough again but he waited patiently, his eyes filled with tenderness while she made the effort to gain control.

  “You may not”—cough, cough—“touch me”—cough, cough—“I am”—cough, cough—“royalty.”

  By the time she finished, her back was ramrod stiff.

  It took J.T. a moment to comprehend what she had said. He stared at her stupidly.

  “I am a royal princess and you”—she looked down her nose at his bare chest—“may not touch me.”

  “I’ll be damned,” J.T. breathed, and dropped his hands from her back. Never in his life had he felt such betrayal. He was on his feet in seconds, leaving her sitting. “You ungrateful little—” he began, then stopped. His jaw hardened and his eyes glittered like blue fire as he looked at her before turning away and leaving her where she was. “Find your own breakfast, Princess,” he muttered, and stalked away from her.

  Chapter Two

  ARIA sat where she was on the beach. Her head hurt, her lungs hurt, her legs ached, and what she most wanted to do was lie down on the beach and cry. But a royal princess must never cry. A princess must never show anyone what she is feeling. To the outside world she must always smile even when she is in pain. She had been taught these things until they were second nature to her.

  Once when she was a little girl, she had fallen from her pony and broken her arm. Even though she was only eight years old, she didn’t cry, but stood, holding her arm close to her body, and went inside to her mother. Neither her groom nor her governess knew that she was in pain. Later, after her arm had been set—through which ordeal Aria shed not one tear—her mother had congratulated her.

  Now here she sat in a strange country after having had to fight for her life all night and the man who had rescued her was behaving very oddly. She glanced toward the tangle of trees and wondered when he was going to return with that fish stew he had promised. Of course she would have to insist that he clothe himself. Mama had told her never to allow a man to appear before her unclothed, whether he was a servant, a husband, or a native of some strange island.

  There was a single palm tree a few feet down the beach and she slowly rose and started walking toward it. Her head swam with the effort and her legs were weak from exertion, but she pulled herself up as stiff as possible and began to walk—no slouching or staggering for someone of the blood royal. A princess is always a princess, Mama had said, no matter where she is or how people around her are behaving. She must remain a princess and let others know of their status or else they’ll take advantage.

  Take advantage, Aria thought, such as that man did this morning. The names he had called her! She willed her cheeks not to blush in memory. And the way he had touched her! No one, ever, in all her life had touched her like that. Didn’t he understand that he wasn’t supposed to touch a royal princess?

  She sat down under the tree in the shade. She wanted to lean against the trunk and rest but she didn’t dare. She would probably fall asleep and it wouldn’t do for that man to see her sleeping when he returned with her meal.

  Instead, she sat up straight and looked out at the ocean and, without willing them to, the events of the last twenty-four hours came back to her.

  This past night had been the worst of her life, perhaps the worst night of anyone’s life. Three days ago she had left her country of Lanconia for the first time in her life. She was to be the guest of the American government, and while the officials were talking to her ministers, the Americans planned to take Aria on a round of official engagements. Her grandfather the king had explained that their hospitality was merely an effort to persuade him to sell Lanconia’s vanadium but he thought Aria might benefit from the experience.

  There had been a long, tiring journey on trains then an army plane that had hastily been outfitted with antique chairs and brocade that was taped to the walls. Some of the tape came unstuck but Aria did not let the Americans know that she saw. Later she planned to laugh about it with her sister.

  The Americans had treated her well if a bit strangely. One minute someone would bow to her and the next minute some man would take her elbow and say, “Watch your step, honey.”

  They landed in a place called Miami and immediately she was led to a small plane that was to take them to the southernmost tip of America, Key West. Here Aria was to be escorted about the big naval base and see where ships that had been injured in the war were repaired. Unfortunately, her two-week itinerary was full of visits to naval bases and army hospitals and luncheons with dowager societies. She wished that one afternoon could have included a gallop on a good horse but there didn’t seem to be any time. Grandpapa had said the Americans wanted to impress upon her the need their country had for the vanadium and they didn’t think that parties with handsome young men were likely to do that.

  Straight off the plane Aria was greeted with a red carpet, and several overweight ladies wearing dresses of pastel chiffon—dresses that were indecently short—and carrying heavy bouquets of flowers. Aria accepted the flowers, smiling even though her feet were killing her and the heat of Key West made her feel light-headed. Three times she had to stifle a yawn as she handed the flowers to her lady-in-waiting who handed them to an American officer who handed them to an enlisted man who handed them to the chauffeur who put them in the trunk of a long black limousine.

  Aria was escorted to a room in a building on the naval base that made her gasp. It looked as if the Americans had scoured the island for every piece of gilt furniture they could find and had put it all in the room. The hastily built, plain building with its purely functional rooms looked incongruous with the carnivallike carved, gilt furniture.

  Aria gave her lady-in-waiting a quelling look lest the woman offend the Americans, but she was afraid the room would give her nightmares. There was an hour for her two dressers to ready her for a banquet.

  At the banquet, she sat at a long table set on a dais surrounded by generals and town officials wearing suits smelling of mothballs. Every one of them had to give a speech and Aria tried not to show her sleepiness. She was also hungry but could not eat because the Americans had allowed photographers into the room for the entire meal. Royalty could not be photographed while ingesting food. So she sat, her plate taken away barely touched.

  By the time she got back to her room, her long black heavy dress was weighing her down and she knew that even though it was midnight she had to be up at six A.M. for breakfast with a politician, then at seven she was to see something called a gyro compass laboratory.

  Standing in the middle of the room, waiting for her dresser to come and remove her dress, waiting for her maid to draw her bath, in those few minutes when she was alone, someone threw something heavy over her head and carr
ied her out of the room, and, as far as she could tell, out of the building.

  She was nearly suffocated before the two men removed the covering.

  “You will be paid if I am returned unharmed,” she had begun, but a gag was put over her mouth then her hands and ankles tied. She was shoved into the backseat of a car and driven away.

  Her mother and grandfather had often lectured her on the hazards of being royal, and once before, when she was twelve, there had been an attempt on her life. Aria lay quietly in the back of the car but she never lost her wits. She began to work the cords on her wrists, wriggling them looser and looser.

  The men in the front seat didn’t speak, just drove. They stopped, got out, and Aria could smell the ocean. She had freed her hands then untied her feet, but she had wrapped the cords lightly back around them. By now she thought the alarm would have been given and people would be looking for her, but she had to wait until there was a good opportunity to escape.

  The men returned, but before she could see where she was, they covered her with a cloth again. This time she was put into what felt like a boat.

  “Let her breathe,” one of the men said as he started the motor, and the cloth was removed from her face.

  Aria had a good look at the men. With a jolt, she realized that if they allowed her to see them, then they did not mean for her to live. She could smell the ocean and see the sky but nothing else.

  After an hour or more one of the men said, “We’re out far enough. Let’s get it over with.” He slowed the motor and over her feet, Aria thought she could see tree leaves.

  She saw the other man lift a rifle and check to see if it was loaded.

  Aria made her move as quickly as possible. Under the cover she had removed the loose bindings and now she jumped up and over the side of the little motorboat. The action rocked the boat and startled the two men, giving her a few precious seconds. She dove, but when she came up for air the man was shooting at her. She dove again. After she dove the fourth time, she remembered nothing until that man was holding her and saying outrageous things to her.

  So here she was now, sitting under a palm tree in a country that was entirely too hot, having had no sleep and no food, and the only other person who seemed to be on this island was a half-naked commoner.

  She stood, tried to straighten her dress, smoothed her hair back, and decided to look for him. Americans certainly didn’t seem to know how to act. Why hadn’t he apologized for touching her? And why wasn’t he bringing her food? She would have to find him then allow him to return her to the American government. They would be frantic by now.

  He wasn’t easy to find. It took her an hour to walk around the narrow, smelly little beach but there was no sign of him. What a very odd way to treat royalty. Of course she had read that America had never had a king but surely even that couldn’t excuse this man’s behavior. In her own country the commoners were anxious to please her. Every time she left the palace they lined the streets to wave at her and present her with gifts. Perhaps this man was a prince and that was why he acted as if he had rights of familiarity. She dismissed that idea. He was an American and all Americans were equal—they were all commoners—no royalty, no aristocrats, just a nation full of commoners.

  She sat down on the beach. So why wasn’t he bringing her food? Even an American should know enough to bring a princess food.

  At noon she moved back to the palm tree. The heat, her hunger, and the lack of sleep were too much for her. She stretched out on the sand and went to sleep.

  When she woke it was dark. There were the calls of strange birds and she could hear movement in the bushes behind her. She moved nearer the palm tree and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. She dozed a bit but mostly she stayed awake and wondered what was happening on the naval base. If they told her grandfather the king she was missing, he would be very worried. She had to get back as soon as possible and let the world know she was safe.

  The sun rose and she sat up straight. Perhaps the naked man had left the island and she was alone here. Perhaps she would die after all.

  A shadow blocked the sun and she looked up to see the man standing over her. He wore an unbuttoned shirt that exposed a great deal of his chest which was covered with dark hair. She could not possibly look directly at him.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  He held a string of fish in front of her but she looked away. He tossed the fish onto a patch of grass then began gathering wood.

  “Look, I guess we got off to a bad start,” he said. “Maybe I was a little too friendly and maybe getting shot before breakfast doesn’t put me in the best of temper, so what do you say we start again? My name’s J. T. Montgomery.”

  She turned to look at him as he squatted over a fire, the fish on sticks as he turned them. With his shirt open and hair on his chest and black whiskers on his face, he looked very primitive, more like something out of a history book about Attila the Hun than what a proper man should look like. Her mother had warned her about men like him, or at least her mother had warned her about improperly attired men. She doubted if her mother had ever imagined that men such as this one existed. Such men were never to be allowed to take liberties.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, smiling at her.

  She didn’t like that overly familiar smile. It was imperative to stop it at once. “Your Royal Highness will do,” she answered, her jaw set.

  The man looked away, his smile gone. “Okay, Princess, have it your way. Here.” He thrust a fish on a stick at her.

  She looked at it in bewilderment. A princess was to eat whatever was offered to her, but exactly how did one eat this?

  “Here,” J.T. said, and dumped the fish on a leaf of the palm tree. “Have at it.”

  Aria looked at the fish with horror, then, to add to her horror, she saw the man was about to sit down on the other side of the fire and eat his fish.

  “You cannot,” she gasped.

  “Can’t what?” he asked, squinting at her, a piece of fish halfway to his mouth.

  “You cannot sit with me. You are a commoner and I am—”

  “That’s it!” he shouted, coming to his feet and towering over her. “I’ve had it with you. First I risk my life to save you and all the thanks I get is a ‘you can’t touch me, I’m royalty!’ ” he mocked. “Then I bring you food that you won’t eat and I’m told to call you Your Serene Highness and now—”

  “Royal,” she said.

  “What?” he sputtered.

  “I am a Royal Highness, not Serene. I am a crown princess. Someday I will be queen. You must address me as Your Royal Highness and you must take me to the naval base immediately. Also, I need a knife and fork.”

  The man said a few English words her tutor had not taught her.

  Was it possible, Aria thought, that the man was angry? She couldn’t imagine why. He would have the honor of escorting her back to the base—it would be something he could tell his grandchildren about.

  It was better to ignore commoners’ outbursts. It was their lack of breeding and training that made them so emotional, “I should like to leave as soon as I’ve eaten. If you wash that knife you’re carrying, I will eat with it.”

  The man removed his knife from his belt, opened it, and tossed it blade down so that it stuck into the ground an inch from her hand. She didn’t flinch. Commoners were so unpredictable—and their tempers made them dangerous. One must take the upper hand.

  She took the knife from the ground and waved it at him in dismissal. “You may go now and prepare the boat. I will be ready.”

  Above her, she heard the man give a little laugh. Good, she thought, at least he was in better humor. Even he had to see how childish his temper was.

  “Yeah, Princess, you just sit there and wait.” With that he turned away.

  Aria waited until he was out of sight before looking back at the fish. “Princess,” she murmured, “makes me sound like a collie.”
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  It took her a while to figure out how to eat the fish. Food was not something to be touched with one’s hands. She found a stick, cleaned it in the dying fire, and at last tackled the cold fish with the stick and the knife. To her amazement, she ate all three fish the man had left behind.

  Noon came and the man did not reappear with the boat. He certainly took long enough to do things, she thought. It had taken him an entire day to catch three fish so it would probably take two days to bring a boat around. The day wore on and still he did not return. Were all Americans like this? Her grandfather would not tolerate such behavior in a palace servant. America was very young compared to Lanconia and she wondered about the survival of the country if all Americans were as slow and uneducated as this one. How could they possibly win their war with men as undisciplined as this one? The Americans needed more than vanadium—they needed a new population.

  In the afternoon it began to rain. It was a light, warm drizzle at first but the wind rose and it grew colder. Aria huddled under the tree and wrapped her skirt about her legs.

  “I’m not going to recommend him for a medal,” she said, rain pouring down her face, her teeth beginning to chatter. “He is failing in his duties to me.”

  Lightning flashed and the rain began to come down in lashing sheets.

  “Don’t you know enough to get out of the rain?”

  She looked up to see the man standing over her. He was still wearing very little clothing and his cheeks had even more black whiskers on them. “Where is the boat?” she called up at him, over the rain.