The Princess

by Jude Deveraux

  The king took her chin in his hand. “I asked him to stay to protect you. Now he has the guard protecting you, so why is he still here? Why didn’t he go home last week?”

  Aria’s eyes widened as she thought about this. “I think I’m hungry. I think I’ll eat that whole plate of chocolates and do you think Ned could open a bottle of champagne? Lanconian champagne?”

  The king laughed. “Go tell Ned to open two bottles and get off my leg before it dies and get me a clean handkerchief, you’ve soaked this one. Really, Aria, didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners?”

  She laughed as she got up. “I guess they didn’t take.” She turned and started running across the lawn toward the house.

  The king crossed his hands on his belly and smiled contentedly.

  * * *

  J.T. woke instantly, at the first sound coming from behind the panel that led down to the concealed staircase. Silently, he left the bed and made his way toward the panel. His service revolver was in the drawer by the bed and he got it as he moved.

  With the revolver held ready, he waited for the door to open. It creaked on its hinges, then whoever was opening it stopped until it was silent again and pushed the door further open.

  “Freeze,” J.T. said, lowering the pistol.

  His answer was a hiccup.

  “Gena?” he asked.

  “Gena!” Aria said, her voice just a bit slurred. “Gena!”

  J.T. backed away from her as if she were diseased and turned on a floor lamp. Aria was clutching a bottle of champagne and wearing a thin, clinging bathrobe that looked as if she wore nothing underneath. “Get out of here,” he said under his breath.

  She took a step forward. “But, Jarl, aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Aria, are you drunk?”

  “I believe I am, but since I have never been drunk before, I’m not sure if I am. How does one know?”

  J.T. backed away from her until he was against the wardrobe. “Why did you come here? Someone might have seen you.”

  Aria advanced until she was just a few steps away from him. “I came to spend the night with you,” she whispered.

  He started to say something in protest but then Aria dropped her robe. She was not wearing anything underneath and the sight of her nude body made him forget his protests. He was wearing only his pajama bottoms and he opened his arms to her, feeling her bare breasts against his chest.

  He kissed her neck and cheeks and lips hungrily. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his lips trailing hot kisses up and down her neck and shoulders. “You have a reputation to uphold. A royal princess cannot—”

  She put her mouth on his. “I am your wife tonight, not Her Royal Highness.”

  He pulled back and looked at her. “I like that,” he whispered. “I like that very much.”

  Bending, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the big bed, laying her across the sheets and looking at her for a long while before touching her, and Aria thought he was looking at her as if he planned to remember her for always.

  “What is it you Americans say? ‘Aren’t you going to offer a lady a drink?’ ” Aria said, holding up the bottle of champagne she still held.

  J.T. was still looking at her, sitting on the edge of the bed and lightly running his fingers over her breasts and her ribs, down her arms.

  Aria used her thumbs to open the champagne bottle and the cork flew out. The champagne spewed over her belly and down J.T.’s back. She laughed and started to brush the flood of liquid away but J.T. caught her hands and begin to drink it off her body, his head moving upward until his mouth settled on her breasts.

  She was intoxicated, feeling wonderfully free, able to do anything. With a quick, strong move, she pulled J.T. to the bed then wriggled out from under him and began to drink the champagne droplets from his bare back. She straddled his legs, loving the feel of his strong, heavy thighs between her own as she ran her tongue up his spine, then began making nippling little kisses down his back. He lay absolutely still under her, as if, were he to move, she might stop. Her breasts against his skin felt so good that she raked the tips of them across his back, her stomach touching his buttocks. She stretched out on him, her legs straddling his, moving her body along his, savoring the sensation of his skin against hers. She rubbed her hair and face on his back again and again, feeling him, tasting him, smelling him.

  She moved downward and began to kiss his buttocks, his legs, the backs of his knees, his calves, his feet. She pressed the soles of his feet to her face, breathed deeply, then moved upward again.

  When she reached his neck, she took her kisses across his cheek to his lips, and when she kissed his mouth, he turned over. His eyes were on fire and his stillness was gone. His hands were rough and quick on her body as he picked her up and set her down on his manhood.

  She gave a delighted scream of surprise then began to move with all the abandonment she felt, her legs strong and moving with hard strength until they tightened and began to ache. J.T. turned her over and slammed into her with a few deep, hard thrusts until they came together in one blinding explosion.

  He held on to her tightly, holding her against his chest, her legs wrapped around him.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “And I want you to stay with me.”

  He was still for a moment, then he rolled off of her to sit on the side of the bed and pull on his pajama bottoms. “Is that what this is about? You climb into bed with me and then demand payment? We have a name for women like you.” He moved across the room and picked up her fallen robe. He didn’t look at her as he tossed it to her. “Get out of here.”

  Aria tried to react with dignity, but she was a little too drunk on champagne and lovemaking to be perfectly lucid. She got out of bed, tripping on her robe, and made her way to the panel door he held open for her. He kept his head turned away as he held out a flashlight to her and she went down the stairs. The sound of the door closing behind her was horrible.

  She was halfway down the stairs when a hand closed over her mouth and a gun was stuck in her ribs.

  She struggled against the person holding her.

  “So this is how you move about in this moldering old castle” came a familiar voice. “Keep that flashlight still.”

  She scratched at the hand on her mouth. “Freddie!” she gasped.

  “You say one more word and I’ll break your neck here and now, Aria. Everyone I’ve sent has failed at the job of killing you, so I might as well do it myself.” He was dragging her down the dark corridor away from the door leading to the garden. “They’ll find your body in a few days, and when they do, I plan to make myself king. All I have to do is get rid of Gena and I figure the old king will die of grief. I am next in line to the throne.”

  She managed to move her head enough to speak. “Why do you want to be king?” she gasped out.

  “Dear, stupid Aria. You only looked at the peasants, nothing else. This is a dying country. Better to sell it to the Germans than to try to keep its independence. Uranium, my dear. The country is riddled with it. I shall sell the whole place to the highest bidder and live in France. Damn, but you have been hard to kill, Aria.”

  “And she’s going to be harder” came a voice from the darkness.

  Aria had seen several American movies and she imitated a western now by ducking while Freddie was distracted. Her flashlight fell and went rolling as she flattened her body onto the filthy floor. Shots rang over her head, the stone walls of the tunnel echoing with the deafening sound. Dirt and bits of stone rained down on her head.

  She lay still for a moment until the air cleared. “Jarl!” she screamed, and she was as loud as the shots.

  “Here, baby,” he said, and she ran to him in the darkness.

  She held on to him with all her might.

  “It’s over,” he whispered. “You’re safe and I can go home.”

  It wasn’t easy to do but she pulled away from him. “Yes, you must return to your country and I must remain i
n mine. It will be better this way. Will you get a guardsman to see to my cousin?”

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness,” he said mockingly as he turned away and left her in the darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ARIA walked erectly as she left the limousine and made her way to the field behind the Lanconian Academy of Sciences building. The white plastered walls glared in the sun and hurt her swollen eyes. Even though she wore a little veiled hat, she knew the redness of her eyes was still visible.

  It had been two weeks since the encounter in the underground passage between Jarl and Freddie. Freddie had not been killed, only wounded, but the Royal Guard had given him time alone in the library with a loaded pistol and Freddie had taken the honorable way out by putting a bullet through his head. The official story had been that he had had an accident while cleaning his gun. Only Aunt Sophie had questioned that statement. “Freddie clean his own gun? Balderdash! I never heard of anything so ridiculous. What really killed him?” No one who knew answered her.

  Lieutenant Montgomery had left Lanconia the next morning without a word of farewell to anyone.

  Immediately after his departure, Julian had become so possessive that Aria had told him to leave Lanconia and her life. She wasn’t sure if he wanted her kingdom or the uranium. He certainly hadn’t wanted her.

  Young Frank Taggert had remained in Lanconia to help with the engines, but for all his size, he was just a boy, and a sudden long rain had left many vineyards with moldering grapes and no way to get them down the mountains fast enough.

  Hours after J.T. left, Aria was in her grandfather’s house and raging at him for not telling her about the uranium. He said she was more angry about that cowardly husband of hers leaving than about any secrets he had kept. She had defended J.T. but not for long. She had gone back to the palace to hear the news of Freddie’s suicide. She gave orders that a royal funeral be arranged for him.

  She had met with the people involved in putting Kathy Montgomery in Princess Aria’s place in the War Room. Not even the groveling and apologies of the Lord High Chamberlain had cheered her from her deep depression. Lady Werta had looked as if she might faint and had whispered that she would like to resign from Her Highness’s service. Aria said that whatever her ladyship had done, she had done out of faithfulness to the true princess. She awarded the woman the Order of the Blue Shield for her patriotism.

  She also met with her cousin Cissy and thanked her for what she had done for Lanconia. Cissy was glad Aria was alive and unhurt and all she asked in reward was a banquet. She had been put on a semifast by both the Lanconians who had switched her and later by the American government who had held her as prisoner. Everyone except Cissy believed she needed to lose weight. Aria ordered a feast that took Cissy three days to eat.

  Then, as if Aria didn’t have enough misery in her life, a committee of Lanconians presented her with a petition asking for the return of the American, Lieutenant Montgomery, so he could continue helping them with the grapes. She explained to them that his return was impossible, that his own country needed him. To her horror, they wrote to the American president and, somehow, the story got into the American newspapers. The short article made the Lanconians look like incompetent, backward peasants and said that they needed a red-blooded American to run their country for them. Aria crumpled the paper in disgust. She would find someone else to teach her people about dams and wells and vocational schools and car engines and whatever else needed doing. She just had to find someone who could figure out what needed doing and where to start looking for that person. If she only had someone to ask for help—if she weren’t so completely alone.

  Julian had been gone for three days now, Gena saw no one but her young American, and Aria had no one to talk to or laugh with. She had never felt lonely before she went to America and met that odious man, so what was wrong with her now?

  She went about her duties without feeling. Now she was never tempted to break through crowds and drink goat’s milk, and she accepted every engagement proposed to her so she never had a chance to be alone to think—and to remember. The people of Lanconia noticed her dreariness and attributed it to the loss of her fiancé, Count Julian.

  Today Aria was to unveil yet another statue of Rowan the Mighty, a twenty-foot-high stone sculpture of a square-jawed man sitting on a chair with lions’ heads for arms. She had not slept well last night or the night before, or the one before that for that matter, and her eyes were tired and red and her head ached.

  There had been built a raised stand that held a podium with a microphone (newly imported to Lanconia) and six chairs containing the sculptor and his guests. Three hundred people stood in the audience.

  Aria mounted the three steps up, opened her piece of paper, and began to read the prepared speech. She was halfway into the part about Rowan’s magnificent accomplishments when a noise to her left distracted her.

  * * *

  J.T. slouched in a chair in the big living room of his parents’ house on the coast of Maine. Outside he could hear the wind and not far off a ship’s horn sounded, but he had no desire to go see what ship was docking. In fact, for the last ten days he hadn’t had much interest in anything. He had caught a ride out of Lanconia on the first plane leaving with vanadium. He knew he was being cowardly in not saying good-bye to Aria, but he had said good-bye to her before and once was all he could bear.

  He didn’t really have orders from the navy as to where he was supposed to be, so after landing in Virginia, he had thumbed a ride to Key West. There he had found his Uncle Jason doing a better job than he ever could have. He saw Bill and Dolly that night, but they reminded him so much of Aria that they made him feel worse than he already did. Everything seemed to remind him of her, and Dolly’s hundreds of questions about Aria didn’t help any. He ended up leaving in the middle of dinner and walking along the beach all night.

  The next morning Commander Davis received word J.T. was to report to General Brooks in D.C.

  On the long train ride, J.T. stared out the window and thought of the things that could be done in Lanconia. With the money from the uranium, schools could be built—maybe even a university. The countryside was so beautiful that he was sure there was some way to attract tourists.

  The more he thought, the more depressed he became. He wondered if Aria was having a good time with Count Julian.

  In Washington, General Brooks said J.T. was a disappointment to America, that America needed him in Lanconia.

  J.T. made a halfhearted attempt at explaining that Aria could not put an American on the throne beside her, that the people wouldn’t accept an American. She would have to abdicate. “Unless the people asked for me,” J.T. mumbled.

  “And you didn’t stay there to fight,” the general said with disgust. General Brooks sent him home to Maine until he could find a “suitable” assignment for him—which J.T. guessed was going to be either the front line or the worst desk job in the military. J.T. didn’t care which.

  He went home but he wasn’t glad to be home. Nothing seemed to cheer him, not seeing his family or the sea, not rowing out to an island alone, nothing.

  “Get out of the way.”

  J.T. looked up to see his brother Adam wheeling his chair toward him, Adam’s healing leg stuck out straight in front of him. He had very little sympathy for J.T.’s sulks and moodiness, especially since J.T. refused to talk about what was bothering him.

  “There’s a special delivery letter for you from General Brooks,” Adam said, tossing an envelope in J.T.’s lap.

  “Orders,” J.T. mumbled, not caring much, not looking at the letter.

  Adam leaned over and snatched the envelope. “I’m interested in where you’re going. Maybe they’re sending you to hell to use your sunny disposition to further punish the occupants.” He opened the envelope. “It’s a clipping of a newspaper article. Hey! It’s about you. It says the people of Lanconia petitioned President Roosevelt for your return to their country. I’m glad somebody wants y
ou.”

  It took J.T. a moment to react. He snatched the paper from Adam’s hands. “They asked for me,” he said softly. “The people of Lanconia asked for me.”

  Adam knew the basics of what J.T. had been through in Lanconia. “It says they want you to tell them about raisins and cars. They did not say they wanted you for their king.”

  For the first time in many days there was life in J.T.’s eyes. “But maybe there’s a loophole in their constitution, maybe there isn’t a constitution, maybe the people wouldn’t mind an American king.” J.T. stood.

  “I thought you didn’t want to be king. Bill Frazier told Dad you hated the idea. I would. No freedom, always shaking hands, some tight-lipped queen for a wife, tea parties.”

  “You don’t know anything!” J.T. shouted at his brother. “You don’t know what it’s like to be needed, to be necessary. That place needs me and”—he paused—“and I need Lanconia—and Aria.” He started out of the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” J.T. shouted. “Home to my wife. They may not let me be king, but I’m going to die fighting for the right.”

  Adam laughed and tried to scratch under his cast.

  * * *

  Aria turned to see Lieutenant Montgomery standing at the edge of the platform.

  Anger filled her so she could barely speak, but she continued reading, a tremor in her voice.

  He walked to the podium and put his head between her and the audience, his mouth close to the microphone.

  “People of Lanconia,” he said, ignoring Aria, “I want to make an announcement. A few weeks ago your princess went to America. She was gone a long time and you were told that she had been ill. She was not. What took her away from you so long was her marriage to me.”

  Aria tried to push him away but he didn’t budge as the crowd began to murmur in disbelief.

  “I know I’m an American,” J.T. said, “and I know I’m not of royal blood, but if you’ll have me, I’ll be your king.”