The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  “I haven’t had so much fun in years.”

  “You’ll come home with us now?”

  Mrs. Montgomery laughed. “You, my dear new daughter, are going to have to face your husband alone. Just remember that the Montgomery bark is worse than the bite. Stand up to him. Give him a good long hard fight, then another good long time in bed, and you’ll be fine.”

  Aria blushed.

  “I have to go now. I have my own husband waiting for me in Maine. I hope the two of you come to visit very soon. Oh, by the way, were you actually suffering from morning sickness?”

  “No,” Aria said, smiling. “But give me time.”

  “The first one will probably be here before the year is out if I know my son. He’s always liked girls.” She kissed Aria’s cheek. “Now I really must go. Come see me soon.” She left the rest room.

  “She’s not like my mother-in-law at all,” Dolly whispered. “That woman would never pour tomato soup over spaghetti.”

  Aria looked toward the door. “Your American men do not deserve the women.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dolly said, and ran to lean against the door as the first people reached it and began trying to enter.

  “Grab your raincoat and climb out the window. I’ll hold them off. And you’re right about the women,” she called as Aria’s foot disappeared out the window.

  J.T. was waiting for her.

  “Of course,” he said before she was halfway out the window, “where else would I find my royal wife but climbing out the bathroom window?” He took her about the waist and helped her down. “You go shopping and you get arrested for shoplifting. Of course you’ve more than conquered that problem. All the shop owners in town now genuflect at the sight of you. You go to a ball and you humiliate me. You have my own mother prancing about half dressed.”

  He led her to his car, opened the door for her, and she climbed in. As she waited for him to walk around the car, she stuck her hands in the pocket of her raincoat and found his pocket knife. Mrs. Montgomery must have put it there.

  “This is not the way an American wife acts,” J.T. said as he opened the car door and got inside. “Nor is this the way a royal princess acts. Nobody acts as you did tonight.”

  “You are right,” she said contritely. “This is a terrible dress for anyone to wear.” Very solemnly, she took the knife and cut the inch of ribbon that connected the two cups of the halter top, and exposed her breasts to the dark interior of the car. “And the skirt must go too,” she said, holding the knife at the slit and moving so her leg was exposed from hip on down.

  J.T. started to speak, then he glanced out the back window. He was on her instantly, covering her body with his.

  “I want to see you in the morning, Lieutenant Montgomery” came a man’s voice from outside.

  “Yes sir!” J.T. replied, still covering Aria.

  The admiral looked embarrassed at the intimate scene and walked away.

  J.T. and Aria looked at each other then burst out laughing.

  He kissed her passionately, his hand fumbling under her coat and searching for her breast. “You were great, baby, absolutely great.”

  She kissed him back, moving her hands to the buttons on his dress uniform. “Was I? Better than your redhead?”

  “She’s my secretary, that’s all.”

  She pushed at him. “You kiss your secretary’s hand?” She was getting out of breath. He was tearing at her skirt.

  “When she stays up all night typing a report for me, I do. What did you sew this with? Fishing tackle?”

  His elbow hit the horn, making them both come to their senses. He looked at her, his eyes hot and hooded, then he rolled off of her and started the car.

  Using the same techniques she had used to free herself from her kidnappers’ ropes, Aria wriggled out of the remnants of the Carmen Miranda dress so that she was nude under the raincoat.

  J.T. drove too fast to reach their house and he must have cooled off some too because he started lecturing her again as soon as they were inside. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, yet you display yourself like tonight. This was not American behavior. This was not the behavior of my wife.”

  She dropped the raincoat and stood nude before him. “Is this American? Is this the behavior of your wife?” she asked innocently.

  He blinked a couple of times. “Not exactly, but it’ll do for the moment.” A split second later he was on top of her, knocking her to the floor. “I’m tired of fighting,” he whispered. “I’m going to enjoy what time we have together.”

  They made love on the living-room floor, then J.T. carried her to the stairs and, in a contortionist’s nightmare, made love to her with her back against a stair tread. She began backing up the stairs and he followed. They finished on the floor at the head of the stairs, both of them out of breath, sweating, and limp with exhaustion.

  “What do I get if I dress as Jean Harlow?” Aria whispered, her body feeling like rubber.

  “Not more of the same because I’m done for.”

  “Oh?” she said, wiggling under him, but it was a halfhearted motion.

  “You are definitely a quick learner. Now go take a bath.”

  “You’ll wash my back?”

  “Maybe, but not your front. Your front gets me in trouble.”

  She laughed at that.

  He sat in the bathroom while she bathed and she asked him questions about his mother. He was still in a state of shock over his mother’s performance, saying that the woman he knew was quite a bit different from the high-stepper of that night. He remembered milk and cookies.

  “And your father remembers begetting you,” Aria said, smiling, and she smiled broader when she thought she saw him blush.

  “You want your back washed or not?”

  “Sl, meester, I do,” she said in her Carmen Miranda accent.

  J.T. groaned but when he washed her back he kissed her neck.

  He bathed next and she washed his back. Aria put on a lilac spaghetti-strap nightgown and stood quietly outside the bathroom.

  “What are you waiting for?” J.T. asked.

  “I wondered which bed was to be mine tonight,” she said shyly.

  He pulled her into his bed. “With me, of course.” He cuddled her to him and went to sleep right away.

  “I got his attention,” she murmured.

  “What, honeybunch?” J.T. muttered.

  “A new name,” Aria said happily, and snuggled closer to him and went to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning she woke slowly, smiling at the sunlight coming into the room. It was already growing hot but she didn’t mind. Her body felt heavenly. She moved a bit to see J.T. lying beside her. Last night had been a dream come true. No pain, no discomfort at all, just pure sensual happiness.

  She eased onto her elbow to look at him. My, but he was good-looking. Wasn’t it odd how the more time they spent making love, the more handsome he became? He was much better-looking than Count Julian. In fact, right now she thought he was better-looking than any other man on earth.

  How would it be, she wondered, if he opened his eyes and whispered, “I love you”? How would it feel to have a man say those words to you? Of course Count Julian had said them to her but they both knew he had only wanted her kingdom. This man didn’t want her kingdom. In fact, all he wanted from her was her body.

  She smiled at that. On the island she had been a princess and he hadn’t obeyed her, hadn’t done anything she had wanted, but when she acted as a woman acts…then he did anything she desired.

  She realized that she wanted to please him. She had been taught to believe that the only persons she had to please were those of higher rank than she. But here in America she had wanted to please the wives of the other officers, she had wanted to please her mother-in-law (she swallowed at that memory), and now she wondered what it would be like to please her husband.

  She knew he wanted her to learn to be an American and she vowed to try even harder to
be as American as she could be. Maybe she would barbecue hamburgers for him; American men seemed to love big pieces of meat.

  He stirred in his sleep, opened his eyes, and looked at her. “Good morning,” he murmured as he pulled her to him and cuddled her against his big, hairy body.

  “What is that American bear the children hold?” she asked.

  “A teddy bear?”

  “Yes. That’s the one. You make me feel like your teddy bear.”

  “You don’t feel like any kind of bear to me,” he said softly, running his leg up hers. “You’re too thin and not enough hair.”

  “Too thin?” she said in alarm, turning toward him.

  “Too thin to be a teddy bear.”

  “Oh.” She slipped her leg between his. “But not too thin otherwise? Not, oh, what did you say? ‘A skinny ass’?”

  “I think it would be better if we both forgot what was said on the island,” he said before he kissed her.

  “It is…all right to make love during the daylight?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s try it and see. If the earth opens up and the devil takes us, at least we’ll go happy.”

  Aria made a sound remarkably like a giggle just before J.T. began to kiss her neck.

  He took his time caressing her body and she, for the first time, began to touch him too. How different his body felt from hers, no softness, just angles and planes and hard muscle. His skin was different too, coarser feeling, and his hairiness was a delight.

  “Happy?” he asked, looking at her, smiling.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps I can make you happier.”

  He did.

  Later, they lay together, sweaty but holding each other close, both of them content.

  “I have to get up,” Aria said. “I have to wash my hair and Ethel showed me how to set it in pin curls. It has to dry before this evening.”

  “Pin curls? Not those awful bobby pins that poke a man’s eye out?”

  She twisted away from him. “What do you know about women’s pin curls?”

  “Less than you know about Count Julian’s mustache.”

  “How did you know he has a mustache?”

  “A guess,” J.T. said, but Aria smiled, knowing he was lying. She hummed in the bathroom while she washed her hair.

  She managed with washing and rinsing her hair but the curling was beyond her.

  J.T. had stayed in bed, half dozing, half smiling at the sound of her in the bathroom.

  “Lieutenant Montgomery,” she called. “I need your help.”

  Stubborn wench, he thought. He had told her not to call him Jarl and for some reason she refused to call him J.T., so she insisted on Lieutenant Montgomery.

  Fifteen minutes later, to his utter disbelief, he was wrapping her hair about his fingers and fastening it with bobby pins. “I cannot believe I am helping you deceive me,” he muttered, making Aria laugh.

  But later, as he was getting dressed, Aria ran past, gave him a quick kiss, and said she was going to cook him lunch. He leaned back and smiled. There were redeeming features to this marriage: lovemaking for breakfast and home cooking for lunch.

  Later J.T. was just coming down the stairs when there was a loud knock at the door. Before he could answer it, the door burst open and General Brooks barged in. J.T. stopped on the third step, came to attention, and saluted.

  “What is this?” General Brooks roared as he shoved the door shut in the face of his adjutant. He was holding aloft a copy of the Key West Citizen and pointing at the front-page photo of Aria dressed as Carmen Miranda arm in arm with Amanda, both women doing a high kick. “Is this Her Royal Highness?” he bellowed. “Is this Princess Aria?”

  “Yes sir!” J.T. said smartly, eyes straight ahead.

  General Brooks began to pace, punching the newspaper as he walked. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve exposed our plan to the world, that’s what. Or you will have if anyone from Lanconia sees this.”

  “I don’t think anyone will recognize her, sir.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, young man. This is your fault. The army gave you a solemn responsibility and you have failed. What coercion did you use to get that poor young woman to do this? You were to teach her to be an American, not some South American hootch dancer.”

  “Sir! The idea was hers alone. It was a surprise to me.” J.T. was still standing on the stairs, still at attention.

  “Who’s playing that confounded radio?”

  “It’s—” J.T. began.

  “Her idea? You expect me to believe that? For God’s sake, man, the woman is a royal princess. She’s been raised in style and elegance, yet here she is wearing”—he held the paper up—“wearing platform shoes.”

  “Again, sir, it was not my idea.”

  General Brooks sat down on a wicker chair, the stiff straw creaking under his weight. “Well then, maybe you should have allowed her a little freedom. Sometimes women are like wild ponies: you can’t keep them locked up all the time, sometimes you have to let them run a little free or else they break the traces altogether.” He ran his hand over his face. “I’ve been married thirty-two years and I’m no closer to understanding my wife today than I ever was. What a day this has been! I’ve been on that plane for hours. You have any bourbon?”

  “Yes sir,” J.T. answered, but didn’t move.

  “Then get it!” General Brooks snapped.

  J.T. went to the kitchen while the general continued talking.

  “To pull this off, the princess has to act like an American. American women don’t dress up in barelegged skirts and dance at a Commander’s Ball. It seems like a simple thing to ask that you could explain that to her. Did she think it was one of her blueblood masquerades? And who is that harlot with her?”

  “My mother, sir,” J.T. said, handing the general his drink.

  “Lord,” General Brooks gasped, and downed the drink. “I thought they checked you out. Look, Lieutenant, this is an order, you take control of the princess or I’ll give you a desk job under the stupidest officer in the navy. You understand me? What the princess did was obviously a reaction against too tight a rein. My wife once reacted like that when we were first married.” He waved his hand. “That’s neither here nor there. Let the princess have a little fun now and then and maybe she’ll learn to be an American. Time is running out. She’ll never fool the Lanconian kidnappers this way. Damnation, but that radio is loud! Tell whoever is playing it to turn it off.”

  “Sir,” J.T. said, “perhaps I could show you something.”

  The general looked tired and greatly put out but he heaved himself up from the chair and followed J.T. to the kitchen window.

  In the backyard was a smoking barbecue grill and a cord stretched through an open window leading to a radio blaring “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me.” Aria was wearing baggy jeans rolled up to her knees, triple-rolled bobby socks, brown and white saddle oxfords, a plaid shirt of J.T.’s, and her hair was in pin curls with a polka-dot scarf tied over her head. She was chewing gum to the tune of the music while slapping hamburger patties between her hands.

  “That is Her Royal Highness?” General Brooks gasped.

  “She does look like an American housewife, sir.”

  “She looks too much like an American housewife.” He turned to glare at J.T. “There is such a thing as going too far in the opposite direction.” His expression changed and he put his hand on J.T.’s shoulder. “You want to talk about it, son? I mean, this isn’t exactly the usual wartime assignment. Has it been very difficult?”

  J.T., seeming to forget the general’s rank, poured out two glasses of bourbon and took a healthy drink of his. “I can’t make her out at all. One minute she’s stretching out her hand to me like I’m one of her damned subjects and the next she’s embarrassing me in front of hundreds of people and the next she’s—” He broke off. “Let’s just say that she’s not shy when we’re alone.” His eyes narrowed. “And she r
efuses to do what I tell her to do. I explained to her about ironing and she laughed at me.”

  “My wife refuses to iron too,” General Brooks said sadly. “Always has.”

  “I guess I don’t know much about wives, sir, only women, and this woman doesn’t fit into either category.”

  “You like her, do you?”

  J.T. grinned. “I’m beginning to, but I sure as hell don’t want to. I plan to fight it. I’m going to turn her over to her fiancé count with a clear conscience.”

  A look of guilt crossed General Brooks’s face but he didn’t say anything. “It looks to me like she’s got your lunch ready and I better go. Don’t tell her I was here. Tomorrow someone will come and tell you the details of returning to Lanconia. Do me a favor and don’t let her pack her Carmen Miranda dress when she goes. Who knows what she’ll do.”

  “No, sir, I won’t,” J.T. said, smiling as he walked the general to the door. He stood for a moment, thinking that the Carmen Miranda dress was in shreds, still lying on the floor of his car.

  Aria called that the hamburgers were almost ready and, still smiling, he went outside.

  The radio was blaring “Shorty George” and Aria took his hand. “Let’s dance.”

  “Wait until something slower is on. I’m not good at this dancing.”

  “Okay,” she said, turning back toward the hamburgers. “I’ll ask Mitch the next time I see him. He’s a great jitterbugger.”

  J.T. grabbed her hand, spun her around, and began a wild jitterbug with her. He had been rowing since he was a boy and his arms were very strong. He tossed her over his head, slid her beneath his legs, then whirled her out at arm’s length.

  She was breathless when the song finished.

  “I told you I wasn’t any good,” he said smugly, making Aria laugh.

  Companionably, they sat down to eat their lunch and J.T. watched Aria. Her hair in pin curls, her chewing gum stuck on the side of the plate, her fingers tapping to the music, eating a hamburger with her hands and drinking beer from a bottle, she was a different person from the princess on the island.

  He began to realize that the general’s visit had upset him because it made him aware that soon he would have to return his borrowed princess.