The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  “I do not feel like arguing,” she answered haughtily.

  “So, the princess has returned. I guess you got tired of pretending to be an American. You’ve returned to being the spoiled brat I met on the island. Am I supposed to bow to you? Kiss your hand? Lady, you should be given an Academy Award for your performance in Key West. You’ll have some great laughs when this is all over. Will you tell your royal relatives what fools we were, how we believed your act? Will you do your imitations of Dolly and Bill and the rest of us for your bluebloods? Will you tell your new husband of the sexual acts you had to perform with me in order to get your country back?”

  Aria went from stunned to hurt to a feeling of wanting to protect herself all in a few seconds. “I love my country as much as you do yours and one does what one must.”

  He glared at her. “Well, you lost out on this one. I’m returning to America tonight and I’ll have the marriage annulled immediately. You’ll never touch Warbrooke Shipping.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about but she wasn’t going to let him know that. “I can do without it.”

  “You’ll have to, baby.”

  “It is Your Royal Highness,” she said, looking down her nose at him.

  He started to say something else but the waiter arrived and J.T. didn’t speak.

  Aria began to chew as if she had gum in her mouth. “So! You’d rather have fat little Heather Addison than me,” she said loudly for the waiter’s benefit.

  “I’d rather have anybody than you,” he said, his eyes deadly serious. “You are a liar, a money-grubbing little bitch, and besides that you’re the worst in bed I’ve ever had.”

  There was no need for Aria to fake the tears in her eyes. “Really?” she whispered.

  “Really.”

  Slowly, she rose from the table and left the dining room. Her mother had been right: one cannot trust people not of one’s class. Right now she greatly regretted how much she had relaxed in his presence. She had let him see her as no one else ever had. She had even let him see her cry.

  The ambassador had shown her on a map where she was to walk, the place where she would be most visible to the townspeople. As a side street curved around, there was a dirt goat path winding up around the mountain.

  Her shoes weren’t made for climbing but the exercise felt good and she began to walk faster.

  She was startled when a man jumped from behind a bush at her. In her bewilderment, she almost greeted him by name. He was the king’s third secretary, a mild, quiet man one rarely noticed and certainly never thought of as a villain.

  “Mrs. Montgomery, would you come with me?”

  “Not on your life, buster,” she said, and turned to go back down the hill.

  Another man blocked her path. He was the Master of Plate’s assistant. “This is more than a request.” He took her arm and led her away as she yelled in protest, but they were too far away from town for anyone to hear her.

  She was taken to a goatherder’s hut and sitting inside was the Lord High Chamberlain. Aria had to conceal her anger. This was a man her grandfather had always trusted.

  He didn’t conceal his contempt for her. “Mrs. Montgomery, I have a proposition for you.”

  Twenty minutes later, Aria leaned back in her chair. “Let me get this straight. You want me to be your princess?”

  “For a short time only. We fear that the news of his granddaughter’s kidnapping will kill the king. He is old and his heart is bad and this news could be too much for him. You won’t have to do anything but stay in Her Highness’s apartments and be seen from a distance now and then. We shall say that you have an illness and cannot leave your room. Now and then someone will look in on you and you will have to play the invalid in bed, but for the most part you will be free to read or listen to records or whatever you Americans do.” There was a sneer in his voice.

  “So I’m to be a prisoner in a couple of rooms. I see what you get out of this but what’s in it for me?”

  The Lord High Chamberlain stiffened. “You will be helping an old man who is near death, and our country needs you.”

  “That’s just what I said: what’s in it for me?”

  The man’s eyes blazed. “We are not a rich country.”

  “Well, maybe you can pay me some other way. How about a title? I’d like to be a duchess maybe.”

  The man’s face showed his revulsion. “Duchess is a hereditary title. Perhaps a directorship. You would be addressed as Mistress.”

  “Mistress!” she gasped. “That’s what my husband’s got. I’ll not be called a mistress.”

  “It does not mean the same thing in our country. It is a title of great honor.”

  She stood. “Look, I gotta go. It’s been real nice meetin’ you, but no go. I don’t wanna sit in some rooms for a couple of weeks and pretend I’m sick.”

  “All right then, what can I offer you?”

  Aria thought a minute then sat back down. “Me and my husband ain’t been gettin’ along so well. I’d like to be this princess for a while, know what I mean? You teach me how to talk like her and act like her and maybe I can get somethin’ on with one of your dukes or somethin’. Then when your real princess gets back maybe I can stay and be married to a duke. Or maybe a prince. A prince would be nice.”

  The Lord High Chamberlain could not conceal his horror.

  “Take it or leave it, buddy,” Aria said, rising. “And who knows about what you’re tryin’ to do? This sick ol’ king know about this? The American ambassador? Are you sure this is on the up and up?”

  The Lord High Chamberlain left the room and a second later returned with Princess Aria’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Werta.

  “Can it be done? Can she be trained not only to meet Princess Aria’s family but also to carry out her rigorous schedule?” he asked.

  Lady Werta gave Aria a condescending look. “Stand,” she ordered. “And walk.”

  It was on the tip of Aria’s tongue to tell the woman to mind her manners, but she did as she was told. She slouched across the room, putting lots of wiggle in her hips.

  “Impossible,” Lady Werta said. “Totally impossible.”

  “Oh yeah?” Aria said. “Watch this, honey.” She strode across the little room until she was inches from Lady Werta’s face. “You will address me as Her Royal Highness and nothing else. And I will not tolerate such insolence of manner again. And you”—she whirled to face the Lord High Chamberlain—“how dare you sit in my presence? Now bring me my tea.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” they said in unison, then looked in shock at Aria as she grinned and blew a bubble.

  “I used to be an actress. I can play a part real good.”

  “Humph!” Lady Werta sniffed. “Perhaps she is trainable after all.” She left the hut.

  “Old biddy,” Aria said under her breath. “Well, I got the part or not?”

  “We will give you two days of instruction and we shall see at the end of that time.”

  “You’ll be amazed at how fast a learner I am.”

  “Mrs. Montgomery, I am beginning to believe you cannot further amaze me. Now, shall we discuss details?”

  * * *

  Aria sat in her hotel room, sitting utterly still, and waited for J.T. It had been a hideous afternoon. Her instruction in being Princess Aria had begun immediately and it had been as if she were training for prison. Her few short weeks in America had made her forget the loneliness and isolation, the rigidity of being a princess. Rules, rules, and more rules. Lady Werta had spit out one rule after another, all the things a princess was not to do. With each word the haughty old woman spoke, Aria could feel herself getting closer to being the crown princess than to being Mrs. Montgomery.

  Tomorrow Lady Werta said she would bring corsets and see if they could fit Aria’s expanded body—too much good American food—into them.

  Right now, more than anything, Aria wished she could return to America and go with Dolly to Ethel’s Beauty Parlor and cook J.T. some
spaghetti for supper.

  The thought of J.T. made her stiffen. She didn’t like to think how much his words hurt her. She had grown fond of him while all she had been to him was a pain—no, a royal pain—in the neck from beginning to end.

  When the door opened and he entered the room, she was sitting as she had been taught to sit for hours at a time: back utterly rigid, seated away from the back of the chair. “Good evening,” she said formally.

  “It’s Her Royal Highness,” he said sarcastically, then pulled his suitcase from out of the closet and opened it. “You pack this?”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Wives pack for their husbands. You taught me that.”

  He didn’t turn around and his shoulders were hunched as if in protest of something. “Let’s go down and get this over with. I’d like to go home.”

  She rose stiffly and formally.

  “Did they contact you today?” J.T. asked on the way down the stairs.

  “Yes.”

  He took her arm and halted her. “Look, I feel some responsibility toward you. I’m worried they’ll find out you’re the real princess. Somebody tried to kill you before, they may try to again.”

  “There will be people there to save me. People who will not be so burdened with my presence as you have been.”

  He looked at her for a long while and Aria held her breath because he looked as if he might kiss her. “Sure. You’ll be fine. You’ll have your country and you’ll get to sit on your gold throne—I assume you have a gold throne.”

  “It’s only gold leaf.”

  “Such hardship. Come on, baby, let’s go have our last meal together.”

  Aria had a great deal of difficulty trying to maintain her guise of obnoxious American. They were to wait for the waiter to spill soup on one of them before leaving in anger.

  “The embassy was to take you on a tour of Escalon today,” Aria said. “Did you see anything of interest?”

  “I saw a country living in the nineteenth century. No, maybe it was closer to the eighteenth. As far as I can tell, the newest car in town, not owned by an American, is a twenty-nine Studebaker. People don’t even have wells, they carry water from the rivers. I can understand this in some poor, uneducated country, but you have schools and you have access to modern communication.”

  “But we have no money. We are a poor country with no resources except the vanadium, and when the world isn’t at war, there is the tourist trade.”

  “You have the grapes. The only thing wrong with them is lack of water because of the drought.”

  “Yes, we pray for rain but—”

  “In the meantime, have you people ever heard of irrigation, of dams, of wells?”

  “I told you that we cannot afford such—”

  “Afford, hell! Two-thirds of your men sit on their duffs in cafes and drink bad wine and eat goat cheese all day. If they got up and did some work, maybe they could help this country.”

  “You have called us cowards and now we are also lazy?” she hissed at him.

  “If the shoe fits, baby.”

  “And I guess your country is so much better. Your people have the energy to create bombs.”

  “Your country is so peaceful that they kidnap their own princess then try to shoot her.”

  “You shot your Abraham Lincoln.”

  “That was generations ago. Look, let’s not talk about this. I’d like to eat one meal in this town and not get indigestion.”

  They began to eat in silence but they had taken no more than a few bites when the waiter spilled soup on J.T.

  J.T.’s exclamation was one of genuine anger. “I’ve had it,” he yelled. “I’ve had it with you and this country. There’s a troop ship coming through here to refuel tonight and we’re going to be on it.” He grabbed Aria’s arm and pulled her up the stairs.

  “That was foolish,” she said once they reached their room. “Lanconia cannot refuel military planes from any army. We cannot take sides in this war.”

  He didn’t say anything but grabbed their two suitcases and started out of the room. At the desk he plunked down a hundred-dollar bill and left. A taxi was waiting nearby and jumped at J.T.’s whistle. J.T. slammed the luggage into the trunk. “To the airport,” he said, nearly pushing Aria into the back seat.

  “You should have changed your uniform,” she said softly. “You have soup all over you.” He didn’t answer as he looked out the window and Aria wondered what he was thinking.

  For her, she knew he was her last connection to the freedom she had enjoyed in America. She tried to control herself and remember that all this was for her country. In another couple of weeks she would barely be able to remember this man, and if she did remember him it would be as someone who was rude and boorish. She would remember that dreadful week on the island when he had thrown fish in her lap. She would not remember the way he held her at night or the afternoon when they had grilled hamburgers in the backyard or dancing with his mother.

  “We’re here. You getting out?”

  Aria boarded the plane silently. On board was Mr. Sanderson with a lapful of papers. The plane took off and he started talking. The plane was to develop engine trouble a hundred miles south of Escalon and at that time J.T. and Aria were to separate, with her remaining in Lanconia and traveling back to the capital city in a goatherder’s cart. She could keep her early morning meeting with the Lord High Chamberlain.

  “We have no idea if he is the man who ordered Princess Aria’s execution,” Mr. Sanderson said. “The Lord High Chamberlain may just be reacting to the kidnapping of the woman he believes to be the actual princess. Lady Werta must know something. She’s too close to the princess not to know.”

  The plane had barely taken off before it was landing again.

  Mr. Sanderson looked out the window. “The goatherder is waiting for you. He’s one of our men and he’ll make the journey as pleasant as possible. There has been a bed made in the back of the wagon. I hope you can sleep.”

  Mr. Sanderson was waiting for her at the door, but J.T. sat in his seat looking out the window.

  She held out her hand to J.T. “Thank you so much for your help, Lieutenant Montgomery. Thank you for saving my life and I apologize for the inconvenience I have caused you. Please tell Dolly I will write her as soon as possible.”

  J.T. seemed to move in one lightning-swift motion. He pulled her into his arms and onto his lap and kissed her with passion.

  She clung to him and part of her wanted to beg him not to leave her.

  “Good-bye, Princess,” he whispered. “Good luck.”

  “Yes,” she said, realizing that he didn’t feel the way she did.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Mr. Sanderson said impatiently. “We must go.”

  She rose from J.T.’s lap. “I wish you the best of luck also,” she said formally, and left the plane.

  Minutes later she was hidden in the back of a smelly goat cart, its jarring making it impossible to sleep. It was over, she told herself, and from now on she must only look ahead. She would try her best to forget America and her American husband. From now on she must think only of her country.

  Perhaps she should marry Julian right away. He had been trained to be a king. Even though the monarchy had been abolished in his country in 1921, Julian’s father had reared his son to rule, and it was one reason her grandfather had chosen Julian for her husband.

  She snuggled deeper in the straw. Yes, Julian was the man she should look to. He was handsome, knew what the word “duty” meant, and had been trained for the monarchy. He understood protocol. He knew to walk two paces behind his queen-wife.

  For a moment Aria had a vision of J.T. as prince consort. The two of them would be mounting the stairs into the High Council building wearing the twelve-foot trains of state when J.T. would suddenly become impatient because their sons were playing in Little League—which he coached—that afternoon and he would grab Aria’s arm and pull her into the building.

  It wouldn’t do at al
l, she thought, but she smiled at the thought of their sons.

  Absolutely not! She was to be a queen, not an American housewife, and she couldn’t have a husband who knew nothing of duty and responsibility. She had to concentrate on Count Julian. She remembered their single kiss and wondered if Julian were capable of more. Before she went to America, she had no idea she was capable of passion, so how could she judge Julian? She would have to find out about him, not just as a prince consort but as a husband.

  Toward dawn she began to grow sleepy. How did one build a dam? she wondered. How could one irrigate crops growing on the sides of mountains? Perhaps Julian would know. Or perhaps she could hire an American engineer to help her.

  She slept.

  * * *

  “Lieutenant,” the pilot said. “It looks like we do have engine problems. It’s going to be a while before we take off, so if you want to get out and stretch your legs, we’ll have a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” J.T. mumbled, and left the airplane.

  It was dark out but the moon was bright and he walked to the far side of the runway, looking out at the short, sparse mountain vegetation. He lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it, wanting something to calm him.

  He had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted to get out of this country. He wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and his princess.

  “Not my princess,” he muttered as he threw the cigarette down and crushed it.

  “You will come with me,” said a voice behind him.

  J.T. turned and saw an armed man. He hadn’t heard him approach. Behind them, the airplane started its engine.

  “You will come with me, Lieutenant Montgomery,” the man repeated.

  “I’ve got to get on that plane.” J.T. started to push past the guard but three more men slipped out of the darkness, guns in their hands.

  “You are to accompany us.”

  J.T. knew when it was senseless to fight. Two men were in front of him, two in back; he followed them to a black car hidden in the darkness. From the car window, he watched the plane take off. “Damn her!” he muttered because he knew that what was going to happen now directly resulted from his having met Princess Aria.