The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  In 1664 Anwen, the great lover of art, covered the old stone walls, enlarged the palace, and made it look like a very long, very large six-story Italian villa. The old castle was the east wing, with a new, larger central block and a new, matching west wing. At an expense that depleted the Lanconian treasuries, he imported a rare yellow sandstone from Italy for the facade.

  In 1760, Princess Bansada, the wife of the king’s fourth son, decided to do something with the grounds after overhearing a derogatory remark by an English duchess. She managed to put the kingdom in debt once again, but she made a splendid garden. There were a dozen hothouses that kept the palace supplied with fresh flowers at all seasons. There were formal gardens at the ends of the east and west wings, a twenty-acre wild garden, a rose garden, a man-made lake with a bridge across it that led to a ladies’ outdoor sitting room. There were three gazebos: one Chinese, one Gothic, and one made to look like a medieval ruin. There were statues everywhere, mostly of handsome young men. Someone unkindly said they were Princess Bansada’s lovers and that when her voracious appetite wore them out, she had them dipped in plaster. When Aria was an adult, she realized the statues were marble and therefore the story could not be true.

  When the Lord High Chamberlain rode with Aria to the palace, it was done in great secrecy. She was veiled and swathed in heavy black cloth so that no one would recognize her. She sat in the back of the black limousine and didn’t say a word. With every turn of the wheels, she came closer to the palace and she could feel the pull of the place. It was as if her ancestors were calling her home.

  The palace, so remote to some, was home to her and her eyes teared at the beauty of it, the way the sunlight lit the yellow facade, the way the mountains rose behind it. She was glad the veil hid her face and she was glad for the training she had received that kept her from showing her feelings.

  The Lord High Chamberlain, who had not deigned to speak to her for the entire trip, now spoke and his tone carried contempt in it, as if he refused to believe she had any intelligence. “You must remember at all times that you are a crown princess. You are to exercise the most rigid control. You must not relax for a second, not even when you think you are alone. For a princess is never alone. A princess is protected and watched and cared for.”

  He had not turned to look at her. “You are not to indulge in that despicable American custom of finding amusement in everything.”

  Aria opened her mouth to speak but closed it again. Her life could benefit from a little humor. She smiled at the thought of having a jitterbug contest in the Grand Salon. Perhaps she could introduce some of the more lighthearted and frivolous American customs to her relatives who lived in the palace.

  She and Julian, that is, she amended. She wondered if Julian would like to grill hamburgers by the river. She would have barbecue grills made, and instead of dressing in a long gown for dinner, they would wear blue jeans. She smiled as she thought of trying to persuade Great-Aunt Sophie to wear jeans.

  “You are not listening to me!” the Lord High Chamberlain snapped.

  Again, Aria bit back what she wanted to say. While she was princess, he had been the epitome of fatherly gentleness to her and all her royal family. She had, of course, heard rumors that he was not well liked by the people, but she had dismissed the complaints. He was such a sweet old gentleman that Aria couldn’t believe anyone disliked him. He had even generously refused to live in the house provided for his office. Aria had been touched, but now she had seen his country house and she understood he had other reasons for his magnanimous gesture. She vowed to look into her people’s complaints more thoroughly.

  He was droning on about her deportment, her duties, her responsibilities, telling how she was to be a machine, an automaton who did nothing but sign papers and dedicate factories.

  “Don’t this princess have no fun?” she asked loudly, enjoying his wince at her bad grammar. “I mean, she has a boyfriend, don’t she? When do they get together and have a giggle? You know?”

  “Count Julian does not”—he almost gagged—“giggle. He is the perfect choice of a husband for Her Royal Highness. When you are with him, you will not be alone—you are never to be alone together—so your conduct must be beyond reproach.”

  Aria kept looking out the window. Part of her was beginning to feel sorry for Princess Aria, who never got to play. But now she was a new Princess Aria. Her experiences in America had changed her—and she meant to change the life in her palace.

  Lady Werta had shown Aria a floor plan of the palace but she had been told that the Lord High Chamberlain would show her as many rooms as possible before taking her to her own chambers. Even with her heavy veil he predicted that many of the retainers would recognize her. The story they had spread was that, after her American tour, she had been felled with a particularly nasty strain of flu and had been taken to a private clinic in Austria until she recovered. No one knew when Aria was to return, and there were rumors that she had died.

  The Lord High Chamberlain started to lead her into the palace, but Aria stood where she was, refusing to let him precede her. He gave her a look of hatred then stepped behind her.

  The grand entrance hall was designed to impress people. Scrolled plaster work made panels on the walls and ceiling. The panels on the ceiling were filled with paintings depicting Rowan the Magnificent’s exploits. The wall held carved oak medallions of the coats of arms of every monarch and his queen. Aria’s arms were on the east wall, with a space below for the arms of her husband. For a moment she wondered what Lieutenant Montgomery would have put in that place. An UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU poster?

  The Lord High Chamberlain cleared his throat behind her and she walked through the big doorway into the war trophy room—another room made to impress. One wall held a twenty-foot-square portrait of Rowan on a rearing horse. Since Rowan had left behind no likenesses of himself, it was an artist’s conception of a magnificent warrior. Aria’s grandfather said Rowan probably looked a good deal more tired and dirty and wore quite a bit less gold braid than the artist depicted.

  Aria smiled at the memory and then remembered how Lieutenant Montgomery had said the people of Lanconia were now cowards.

  She sniffed and walked ahead toward the grand staircase, a staircase that a six-horse carriage could be driven up—Hager the Hated had proved that. Of course the driver of the carriage’s life depended on his winning his king’s wager. He had succeeded but the deepest nicks in the marble stairs had never been smoothed out.

  Behind her, the Lord High Chamberlain was whispering directions but she ignored him. At specific intervals along the stairs and outside the rooms stood the Royal Guard. They stood, with only one break, for eight hours at a time. Aria had never given them a thought before but now she knew a little more about waiting. Later, when this problem of her identity was solved, she might do something about these Royal Guards.

  The Lord High Chamberlain’s whispering became frantic with insistence as Aria approached her apartment, but she continued to ignore him. In the hall portraits of her ancestors looked down at her, their eyes solemn, as if they knew she was harboring unroyal thoughts. She could almost feel her mother’s horror: shall we supply the guards with chairs? Perhaps Rowan would have won his battles sooner if he had fought with his men in lounge chairs.

  Aria braced her shoulders and entered her bedchamber as the two guards opened the doors. Behind her the Lord High Chamberlain’s voice died away as the doors shut.

  On their knees in a deep curtsy before her were her four ladies-in-waiting and two dressers. They were all older women, all chosen by her mother, and Aria’s first impulse was to tell them to get off their knees.

  “Welcome, Your Royal Highness,” they chorused.

  She nodded to them but made no answer to their welcome. She really knew very little about these women as her mother had trained her not to be intimate with her attendants.

  “Leave me,” Aria said. “I want to be alone.”

  The women looked at
one another in question.

  Lady Werta stepped forward. “Perhaps Her Royal Highness would like a bath drawn.”

  Aria gave the woman a look that sent her retreating. “Must I repeat myself?”

  The women left and Aria breathed a sigh of relief. She lifted her heavy veil and looked about the room. This was her room, a room where she had spent many hours, a room she had had done, against her mother’s wishes, in yellow. The walls were silk moiré with the same draperies surrounding her many tall windows that looked out onto the wild wood.

  There were eleven tables in the big room, all of them with delicate legs, all of them in some way unique and precious. One was a gift from a sultan, inlaid with tiny bits of precious stones. Another had an enamel portrait of Aria, her parents, and sister, each holding a musical instrument. Several of the tables were covered with family photographs in silver frames.

  There was a seating arrangement of a tiny couch and three chairs, each covered with yellow and white silk. On the floor was an enormous blue, white, and gold Aubusson carpet. A year after her mother’s death, Aria had walked about the palace and chosen all the portraits and miniatures of the most beautiful women and had them moved to the walls of her rooms.

  Her desk was here, a small, exquisite ormolu and mahogany creation. Each instrument—letter opener, fountain pen, stationery holder—was a work of art, none of it chosen by her but given to her as her right. “Rather like Julian,” she whispered, but corrected herself immediately.

  Through the sitting room was her bedroom, done in the palest of sea green, the walls painted over a hundred years ago for another queen with fantasy scenes set in an imaginary forest peopled with unicorns and wood sprites. Her bed had been made for Queen Marie-August in the seventeenth century and had taken six men two years to carve the delicate tendrils and leaves and vines winding their way up the four posts. It was said that Queen Marie-August’s husband never saw the bed—nor did any man for that matter.

  One wall of the bedroom was a series of semihidden doors that led into her four closets. Each closet was actually the size of the bedroom she had had in Key West.

  The first closet contained her daily clothes, hundreds of silk blouses, many hand embroidered by the women of Lanconia. There were rows of tailored skirts and a wall-length rod hung with her silk dresses.

  She took one off the rod and looked with dismay at the buckram in the waist. “No more loose-fitting little rayon numbers.” She sighed, but then the feel of the silk made her smile.

  The second closet contained her ballgowns and ceremonial garments, each in a specially made cotton sack with a transparent voile shoulder so one could see the dress. Even under the voile, the gold work, the sequins, the tiny diamonds, even the pearls, glowed and made the pale pink of the walls look like a sunset.

  The third closet contained her accessories: hats, gloves, rows of handmade, hand-fitted shoes, purses, boots, scarves. One wall was lined with drawers filled with handmade underwear: slips, underpants, nightgowns. And the heavy, elastic Merry Widow foundations. She grimaced at those and shut the drawer.

  The fourth closet contained her furs, her winter suits, and, behind a mirror, the safe for her jewels. She tripped the three latches to the mirror, swung it back, then turned the combination to her safe. Two six-foot-tall rows of velvet-covered drawers greeted her. Red velvet meant sets: necklace, bracelet, earrings. Black velvet was for rings, yellow for earrings, blue for watches, green for brooches, and white was for her tiaras: pearl tiaras, diamond tiaras, rubies, emeralds. Each piece was in its own fitted compartment.

  Aria smiled as she opened drawer after drawer. Each jewel had a history; each had belonged to someone else. Aria had never purchased a jewel nor had she been given one that had not belonged to generations of royalty before her.

  Frowning, she shut the drawers and mirror abruptly since she heard someone in the outer chamber. On walking out of the closet, she saw Lady Werta standing there.

  “Very good. You are examining the princess’s belongings.”

  Aria was not going to allow this woman to think she could rule her. “How dare you enter my room without permission,” she said, all her anger showing.

  Lady Werta looked surprised for a moment then recovered. “You can stop the act with me. I know you, remember? We have to talk about tonight. Count Julian is here.”

  “I’ll discuss nothing with you.” Aria started toward the door leading to the hall.

  “Wait a minute,” Lady Werta said, grabbing Aria’s arm.

  Aria was actually horrified at the woman’s touch. She wasn’t the new American Aria pretending to be the princess. She was the princess.

  Lady Werta stepped back. “We have to talk,” she said, but there was no strength in her voice.

  “Call my ladies,” Aria said, turning away. “I must dress for dinner.”

  Aria wore a long white gown that was embroidered with thousands of seed pearls to dinner. It was high-necked, long-sleeved, very prim, very proper—sexless. The diamonds she wore in her ears Lady Werta had fetched for her, not showing her where the major jewel chest was hidden, probably for fear the American would steal the contents. Instead, she had selected three pair of insignificant earrings and presented them to Aria. “This is all?” Aria had complained so only Lady Werta heard.

  “We are a poor country,” Lady Werta sniffed, her eyes showing she was angry.

  “We are glad to see that you have fully recovered from your American illness, Your Highness,” her three other ladies-in-waiting said as they moved about the room, waiting to obey Aria’s merest whim.

  One of her dressers looked her over critically. “You are thinner than you were in America.”

  Aria gave the woman a withering look. “You will keep your personal remarks to yourself. Now dress me.”

  It was difficult not to be impatient with the women because she knew she could have dressed herself in half the time. The long foundation garment felt familiar and strange at the same time, and she felt as if the last vestiges of the American Aria disappeared when her dresser pulled her much shorter hair back into a tight chignon. Her secretary sat in a chair behind a screen, the princess’s social calendar in her hand.

  “Tomorrow at nine A.M. is riding; at ten-thirty, you will visit the new children’s hospital. At one you lunch with three members of the council to discuss the American vanadium contract. At two you will hand out gold watches to four railroad employees. At four you have tea with council wives. At five-thirty the Scientific Academy is giving a speech on the insect life of the northeastern Balean Mountains. At seven you return to ready for dinner at eight-thirty. And at ten—”

  “There is a jitterbug contest in the ballroom,” Aria said, making everyone in the room stop.

  Lady Werta gave her a quelling look. “It is from Her Royal Highness’s visit to America. She makes a joke.”

  Politely, the women laughed, but they looked at her oddly, as if her making a joke was a very, very strange thing to do.

  “Don’t do that again,” Lady Werta warned under her breath.

  Later, when Aria walked into the dining room, everyone came to a halt. They stared at her, waiting for some signal from her as to how to act. When the king was away, the crown princess set the tone.

  Aria took a deep breath. “Well, Freddie,” Aria said to her second cousin, Prince Ferdinand, “I can see you still have no manners. Do I deserve no greeting?”

  He came to her and bowed over her extended hand. “We have been worried about you,” he said in Lanconian.

  For a moment, Aria hesitated. This man was her cousin, they had spent a great deal of time together, yet he greeted her after a long absence as if she were a slight acquaintance. “In English please. If we are to deal with these Americans, we must be able to understand them. They do not learn other people’s languages.” She looked at him as if she had never seen him before. Freddie was a small man, a few inches shorter than Aria and quite thin. He slouched when he walked. Aria had always
ignored Freddie—as everyone did—but now she thought she saw anger burning in his dark eyes. He was third in line for the throne after Aria and her sister. Could he want the throne enough to kill for it?

  “You look good, Aria,” her Great-Aunt Sophie shouted. The old woman was nearly deaf and compensated by shouting at everyone. She was dressed as only Aunt Sophie dressed, in layer upon layer of baby-blue chiffon, big blue silk roses around the indecently low neckline that exposed her wrinkly bosom. What was that American saying? Mutton dressed as lamb. Her grandfather said Sophie had always had hopes of snagging a husband but so far no man had been so stupid as to ask.

  “Well enough, I guess, after having nearly died,” Aria shouted back, making everyone in the room look at her in surprise. Princess Aria did not shout.

  “Good!” Great-Aunt Sophie shouted back, and turned away to yell at a waiter that she wanted more brandy.

  “I am glad too that you are well” came a suave voice, and she was face-to-face with Count Julian.

  Lieutenant Montgomery had always referred to the man as Count Julie and had always insinuated that he was effeminate. But Aria saw virility in the man’s eyes. He wasn’t big and strong like Lieutenant Montgomery, but a woman could do worse. He was quite handsome, about the same height as she was, with the erect, straight carriage of a military man. Her grandfather said Julian had been forced to wear a steel back brace from the time he was four until he was sixteen.

  “Welcome home,” Count Julian said, taking her hand and lightly kissing the back of it. “Would you like something before dinner? A sherry perhaps.”

  “Yes, please,” she answered. She watched him walk away. What would he be like as a husband? Once the bedroom doors were closed, did he become a tiger? She smiled at him when he returned from the sideboard with her sherry. He stood silently by her and Aria realized how very little they had ever actually talked.