The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  He was so quick-tempered, so impatient, so intolerant. She remembered their time on the island. She understood now some of his intolerance, some of his anger, but if he remained in Lanconia, he would be consorting daily with people whose lineage could be traced to generations of kings. Their snobbery made Aria’s seem like that of a peasant. How would they treat this American commoner? How would he react to their treatment of him? She had a vision of Lieutenant Montgomery wrapping Cousin Freddie’s pearls about his thin neck the first time Freddie looked down his nose at the American.

  And then there was the fact that the lieutenant didn’t want to be prince consort. She didn’t think he could do a good job at best, but if he was reluctant, he would be like a large, spoiled two-year-old.

  She took a deep breath and turned away from the window. Mr. Sanderson was right: it was over.

  Her easy, happy American interlude was over. It was time now to return to her destiny. She had been born to be queen and now she must continue preparing for that duty—no, the honor of being queen, she corrected herself.

  She was able to smile when J.T. reentered the room.

  He frowned. “I guess you’re glad to be home.”

  “Yes and no. America will always be a fond memory to me. Dolly said she will visit me, so I don’t plan to lose all contact with your country. Perhaps you will visit—”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Can we get this over? I mean our public argument?”

  “It has been postponed.” She was studying his face. Until today she had thought they were always to be married but now she knew these were their last few hours together. “We dine together and…and spend the night, then tomorrow or the next day I’ll be contacted, I’m sure. Tomorrow we must be seen as often as possible by as many people as possible.”

  He wore only a towel about his middle and was rubbing his wet hair with another towel. He looked so good her fingers ached to touch him.

  “I wish you hadn’t,” he said. “I need to get back to the base as soon as possible and the sooner…” He trailed off.

  She stiffened. “The sooner you get rid of me the better.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “It’ll be better for me to get this over with.”

  Dinner was one of the most difficult meals she had ever experienced. She felt like a fool because the idea of not seeing him again was making her very sad but he couldn’t wait to get rid of her. He was cool and remote to her.

  Aria had to hide her feelings and play the despicable American when any Lanconian was near.

  “You think we want a table out in the middle?” she demanded. “J.T., honey, they want to stare at me. They want to point at me and say I look like their plain-faced princess. Do we have to stay in this town? I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stand it.”

  “This way, madame,” said the haughty waiter, and led them to a secluded table in the corner.

  “What will you do when you get back?” Aria asked when they were alone.

  “Look at Buicks,” he said, then glowered at her. “Work. Do what I can to help in the war.”

  “Will they let you keep our little house?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  Aria smiled at that. Perhaps he too was upset at their parting. “I shall miss America and I shall miss you,” she whispered.

  He looked down at his empty plate. “It’ll be nice to have my time be my own again. I’ve been neglecting my work.”

  She didn’t say anything in reply to him. Their food came and still she said nothing.

  “Will you see Heather again?” she asked at last.

  “I’m going to go out with every woman in the southeastern U.S. And you? You going to marry your little count?”

  “Really!” she said, her eyes glaring into his. “Sometimes you can be most infantile. Count Julian is a perfectly suitable man and he will make an excellent prince consort. Better than you could do.”

  “Better than I could do? Let me tell you, baby, what this backward place of yours needs is a shot of new blood. You’d be lucky if I stayed with you, but I wouldn’t have this place on a platinum platter. There’s a war going on out there, but these people are so wrapped up in their own petty problems that they don’t even see anyone else’s.”

  “We are not involved in a war and that is what is wrong with us?” she seethed. “You aggressive, angry Americans could learn a lot from our peaceful country. We don’t destroy ourselves and other countries with our war machines.”

  “Because you don’t fight for anything. You just let the outside world take care of you. You’re willing to profit from the war by selling the vanadium but you aren’t willing to sacrifice your men for soldiers.”

  “Are you calling us cowards? Our country was founded by the greatest warriors in the world. In 874 A.D. we—”

  “What the hell do I care about your history? Now you’re a bundle of lily-livered extortionists with a petticoat ruler.”

  At that she rose and slapped him hard before storming out of the dining room. She ran out of the hotel and into the street, into the cool night air, past people who looked as if they were seeing a ghost, down one street after another. She had no idea where she was going. Her experience of the streets of Escalon was limited to rides in ceremonial carriages. When she was a little girl, she thought the driver merely followed the trail of rose petals to get where he was going.

  How could she have considered that man as prince consort? How could she have allowed bed pleasure to influence her rational thinking? He was the pigheaded, intolerant bigot she had first thought he was. She was quite willing to learn American ways and to see thoughts and ideas through American eyes, but he could see no other way than his own. His country was very young, with an adolescent’s energies. America wanted power and was willing to kill for it. Her country was old and had learned the power of peace. At one point her ancestors had ruled a big portion of Europe and Russia. In fact, the reason her family was in power was because they had bred the largest, strongest warriors.

  Yet this American had called them cowards! Extortionists!

  She walked for a long time, not seeing where she was going, just walking and cursing herself for being such a fool.

  She halted when she ran into someone. “Excuse me,” she said, still using the American expression. She looked into the eyes of her Lord High Chamberlain. He was an arrogant man who expected the streets to clear when he walked them. Intelligence burned in his black eyes.

  Aria wanted him to see her and to remember her. “Path not wide enough for you, bub?” she said. “You knock ladies into the street here?”

  He drew back from her as if she were a bit of fungus.

  Aria leaned forward and put her hands on his badge of office. “Hey! Are you royalty or somethin’? What’s that say on there? Is that Latin? We have Latin in America. Do you know the princess? People here say I look like her, but I don’t think I do, but I was thinkin’ maybe I could borrow a crown of hers and have my picture taken. It’ll be real funny back home. How much do you think she’d charge to rent one of her crowns? Or maybe she’d just loan it bein’ as we look alike an’ all. What d’ya think, buster?”

  The Lord High Chamberlain flared his nostrils at her and moved away.

  “That’s no way to treat an American citizen,” she yelled after him, disturbing the tranquil street. “We own your country, you know. You ought to be nice to us.”

  People looked out of their doors and windows at her.

  “I’m gonna report you to the American ambassador,” she said loudly, then turned to an openmouthed bystander and demanded directions to the embassy.

  It was after midnight when she arrived and she was surprised to see every light in the building on. Someone must have been watching the entrance because the door opened before she reached it.

  A large, matronly woman who was desperately trying to hold on to her figure via the use of rigid corsets swooped into the room like a decorated snow shovel and ushered Aria up the
stairs.

  “Oh my dear,” the woman said. “I mean, Your Royal Highness, it has been dreadful here. How could the American government do such a thing to you? You poor, poor darling.”

  “What has happened?” Aria asked, standing in the big bedroom, surrounded by sumptuous blue silk wall coverings and darker blue silk bed hangings. The Americans didn’t skimp on their embassies.

  “My goodness,” the woman gushed. “Everything has happened. We didn’t have much notice that you were coming, and with the war and all it was difficult to get what we needed. But I did manage a nightgown for you. It’s made by French nuns and the sewing is exquisite. I do hope you like it, although I am sure it’s not the quality you’re used to.”

  “What has happened?” Aria insisted.

  “That man was here, that awful man my own government married you to.”

  “Lieutenant Montgomery? Is he here now?”

  “Oh no, although it wasn’t easy to get rid of him. My husband the ambassador got rid of him but only after what could only be described as a brawl in the foyer. He had a fistfight with four armed guards.”

  Aria sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why was he here?”

  “He said he wanted to see you and didn’t believe anyone when we told him you weren’t here. We have been so dreadfully worried about you. My husband insisted he leave but he refused, thus the brawl.”

  “Was he injured?”

  “No, a bruise or two, no more. My husband finally had to tell him that he was not going to be king no matter what. That news made him calm down and they went to my husband’s study. I just hope the guards didn’t understand what my husband meant. It has been so difficult keeping all this a secret. I am to treat you as a niece, not as Your Royal Highness. I do hope you can forgive me. We have tried so hard to make everything comfortable for you but we were given such short notice that—”

  “What did your husband say to Lieutenant Montgomery?” Aria asked.

  “He explained that the bargain you’d made with the army could not possibly be kept and that no matter how hard he fought he’d never be allowed to be king.”

  Aria looked away from the woman. “So he’s been told,” she murmured.

  “My husband told him in no uncertain terms. The very idea of an American as king. I mean, it is my own country, but an American—especially one such as him—as king! The idea! Such a crude young man. Fisticuffs in the foyer!”

  “You may leave me now,” Aria said.

  Startled, the woman stopped speaking abruptly. “Yes, Your Royal Highness. Will you need help dressing?”

  “No, just leave me.” She waved her hand at the woman.

  Once she was alone, Aria took her time undressing and putting on the long, high-necked nightgown. It was indeed like she had worn all her life—no more Rita Hayworth style, she thought with regret. It seemed that minute by minute she was losing America and returning to Lanconia. Already she was dismissing people from her presence.

  She climbed into the empty bed and thought about her husband. He must be very angry about what he had heard tonight.

  She drifted off to sleep wondering why he had come to the embassy in the first place.

  * * *

  J.T. looked out the car window in silence. He had been told that he was to lunch with his wife, then he was to be taken on a token tour of Escalon then put on a plane and shipped out. After his initial rage, he was glad that that had been changed and it was at last over, that he could return to America and get back to work on something of importance.

  Last night he had felt guilty about their argument—not that every word he had spoken hadn’t been true—but because, after all, it was her country and no one wanted to hear the bad things about his country. So he had gone to the embassy to talk to her. He had been attacked as soon as the door opened.

  He had barely got himself out of that mess when he was informed he couldn’t be king no matter how much he tried to blackmail himself into the position. He listened to the pompous little ambassador for twenty minutes, somehow managing to keep his blood from boiling over.

  While the man postured and lectured and talked to J.T. as if he were semiretarded, J.T. was able to piece the story together. Aria had told the army she would put her American husband on the throne if America would help her. Now she was reneging on her word.

  J.T.’s anger was quiet, running through his body like poison. He had been used, duped into something that he stupidly had believed on a surface level. He had been told he was to marry her to teach her to be an American, but now he realized that a gaggle of women could have done that.

  As he watched the ambassador pose and strut as he lectured, J.T. thought of the real reason he had been married to Her Royal Highness. No doubt Warbrooke Shipping had something to do with it. Then there were the lumber mills and steel mills owned by the Montgomery family. How useful all that would be to this poor, desolate country.

  Wonder what she demanded, he thought. The richest American available? What a fool he had been. He had thought he was chosen because he saved her scrawny neck. He was angry at her, sure, but part of him had been flattered that he was chosen. Yet she had just wanted his money. No wonder she agreed to put him on the throne beside her. Montgomery money was needed in this poor country.

  He had stood. “I’ll be going now and I won’t bother you again,” he told the ambassador. “I’ll find my own transportation back to America. Tell the princess so long for me and I’ll arrange the divorce or annulment—whatever is needed.” He turned to go.

  The ambassador began sputtering and said that J.T. had to help them. He had to continue in his role as husband until the imposter princess was taken and Aria was once again princess.

  J.T. said he had had enough games and lies to last him a lifetime and he just wanted to get out of the country.

  The ambassador changed his tune after that. He began to ask rather nicely that J.T. remain as long as Lanconia and America needed him.

  “You are to be seen together today, at luncheon, then you will have another spat and separate. Her Royal Highness will take a walk by herself into the hills. We think she will be contacted there. At dinner a waiter will drop soup on you, and the two of you will be so angered, you will pack and leave Lanconia. Her Royal Highness will be taken off the plane a hundred miles south of here. You will return to America.”

  “You seem awfully sure they will contact her,” J.T. said.

  “The American government has said that if the papers giving the vanadium to us are not signed within eight days, America will consider Lanconia an enemy. The papers will not be delivered until after the princess is taken and I’m sure the king’s advisers will do anything to prevent the king from finding out that his granddaughter has been kidnapped, or he might be too upset to sign the papers. Or worse, it might give him another heart attack.”

  “Then the Lanconian government would have to sign the papers.”

  “The vanadium is on land personally owned by the king’s family.”

  J.T. was torn. He wanted to help his country and make sure it got the vanadium but he wanted to get away from the intrigue. Most of all, he wanted to get away from Aria, the woman who had made such a fool of him. Everything she had done in America, the lovemaking on the stairs, the grilled hamburgers, the being nice to his friends, it had all been to get his money for her country. All of it had been false.

  “I will stay in this country for twenty-four hours more and that’s all.”

  The ambassador gave a weak smile and held out his hand to J.T. but J.T. ignored it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AT eight A.M. tea had been brought to Aria’s room on a tray, served in a Lily set of Limoges china. All morning, as close as possible, her life in the palace had been duplicated. She could feel herself slipping back into the former pattern of her life. She allowed the ambassador’s wife to help her dress; she sent the strawberries back to the kitchen; she complained because her shoes had not been polished during the night
; she berated the maid for not putting toothpaste on her brush. Part of her didn’t like what she was doing but another part of her seemed to have no control.

  At twelve forty-five she hurried down the stairs, eager to greet Lieutenant Montgomery. When she saw him, she could feel her petulance falling away, and she began to think of beach cookouts and Tommy Dorsey’s band.

  But J.T.’s expression was one of controlled rage. He pulled her into a reception room. “So,” he said, his eyes black with fury, “you double-crossed me. You never meant for there to be an end to our marriage.”

  There was no need to ask what he was talking about. “It’s the only way your government would help me. I had to agree to make my American husband prince consort.”

  “King,” he snapped.

  She looked at him.

  “So, you lied to me and lied to them as well. I’ve always viewed this marriage as temporary.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “When did you plan to tell me about this? Some night when we were in bed, you’d say, ‘By the way, you have to live in this godforsaken country the rest of your life’? ‘You have to give up your family, the sea, ships, and everything in America so you can ride around in a broken-down horse and buggy and wave at a bunch of people who’ll hate you because you’re an American’? Is that what you expected of me?”

  “I never considered you at all. I thought only of my country.”

  “You thought only of what you wanted. Let me tell you that I’m an American and I plan to stay one. I don’t want to live here and I sure as hell don’t want to be a wind-up toy king. I’m not trading my freedom to live in a cage. I’m leaving for home today. The army’s deal was with you, not me. I’ll have our marriage annulled as soon as I return. It’ll be like it never existed and you’ll be free to once again dupe some other sucker into being a half-king.” He grabbed her arm. “Now let’s get this over with.”

  Aria’s body was so rigid, it’s a wonder she didn’t snap in half. She relied completely on her royal training to get her through that long, silent walk back to the hotel and into the dining room. “I believe we are to argue,” he said coolly as soon as they were seated.