“ ‘Opera singer’ was code for prostitute, and I can’t believe you’re pulling me into this conversation again.” She looked at Henry. “She’s the worst.”
But our brother was having a Very Bad Evening. He was dressed in his formal cardinal uniform, dripping with braids and shiny medals, had just sucked down a flute of champagne, and was anxiously grabbing another off a waiter’s tray. “Opera is the worst,” he said under his breath while carefully watching Big Gran, who had stepped to the side of the box to greet her guests.
“You should try a Xanax,” Sophie said a little too loudly. “That’s what I do.”
“There’s no way you just took a Xanax,” I observed. “You’re entirely too worked up about King Philippe’s opera-singer mistress.”
Sophie swung around to Nick, who was hovering over me in the shadows, his face a fairly close approximation of Henry’s horrified expression. “Does she do this when I’m not around? Or is it just to annoy the shit out of me?”
“Fuck, Sophie,” Henry said quickly, looking at Big Gran, “lower your voice.” Aw, the big military hero was scared of his grandma. So cute.
“Does she do what, exactly?” Nick asked my sister, pointedly ignoring my reminder from earlier this evening that he keep his mouth shut like a good little security guard.
“Ramble on with pointless stories about infamous Driedeners and inconsequential moments in Driedish history?”
“No,” Nick said shortly. “Although there was an illuminating lecture about the Driedish printing press.”
Sophie gave me a pointed look. “Illuminating.”
I knew what my little sister was attempting to do. She was trying the same thing that Henry was: avoidance. We had been dragged to the opera, which none of us enjoyed, and each of us was trying to distract ourself from the quickly approaching onslaught of boring screaming we were about to endure. Henry thought he could ease the pain with alcohol. Sophie thought a good, old-fashioned sibling feud would be fun.
Me? I eyed Nick in his well-tailored tuxedo. I would settle for my second-favorite avoidance tactic. History.
“You see,” I said, leaning toward Nick with a conversational tone, “the reason for the opera opening so early in the year was that King Philippe’s mistress—”
“Was a very demanding Florentine who wished to return to her native land before winter.”
It was none other than Pierre Anders who had finished my story. I turned, surprised to see the anti-monarchy government officer in the royal box. Especially since the only way he’d be here would be if he had been invited by the Queen herself.
Etiquette kicked in. “Mr. Anders.” I extended my hand. “So lovely to see you.”
The seventy-year-old politician bent his head, still full of thick gray hair. “I do apologize for interrupting your conversation, Your Highness. An unfortunate habit born from years of trying to be heard in Parliament.”
“No doubt your skills are the reason for your years of success.” I smiled politely even though my words meant nothing. Sophie slunk away, pretending to wave at someone across the box, and I was left with the politician who wished to render my grandmother unemployed. It was a good reminder that I needed to be very careful with Anders. “Are you a devotee of opera?” I asked. As far as small talk went, this was pretty much as small as it got.
“Not as much opera as history. I heard you discussing King Philippe and couldn’t resist jumping in.”
“Yes, he was a fascinating figure, wasn’t he? Very important.” This was a good opportunity to remind Anders of all the benefits that the monarchy had brought our nation. “Of course you know that he was called Philippe the Philanthropist for all he did. Such as starting primary schools. I recall that you are a strong proponent of public education.”
Anders nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. Education, labor reform, the arts . . .”
Aha. “Another of Philippe’s achievements.” I lifted a hand to the magnificent building we were in. “He opened the opera house to the people for weekly performances.”
“To encourage them to pay for the facility, he had collection boxes stationed at all of the exits after the show. And the primary schools, if I recall correctly, were for children of the aristocracy only.”
He said all this pleasantly enough, but I felt the barb as he intended. This was the eighteenth century we were discussing, however. “Surely you can agree that these acts were steps in the right direction,” I said.
“Surely you can agree that gilded halls and fine clothes do not put food into the mouths of Driedeners.”
I reminded myself that I was a princess, we were at an official event, and my grandmother the Queen had obviously invited her key rival for a reason. “Well, fine clothes can, in fact, provide income to Driedeners,” I said, invoking the serenity that Queen Elsa-Marie was known for. “This gown, for example.” I ran my hand down the garnet silk skirt of my ball gown. “This gown was designed and made by Yolande Reobert, a Driedish designer with an atelier here in the city.”
Anders eyed my beautiful dress—the one that had made Nick do a double take—with a glance that couldn’t manage to mask his disdain. “Ah, yes. Wasn’t that the same designer who hand-sewed three thousand pearls onto your wedding dress?”
I could see where this was going. It was so unfair. “Ms. Reobert and her staff were all paid in full for that dress. Which put food in their mouths, if you will.”
“And the national treasury? Other wedding expenses were never reimbursed.” I felt my face flush, in embarrassment or anger or both.
“I know the arguments of the conservatives,” Anders continued. “The tourists bring in that revenue. The tourists that only come to this country because we have a beautiful princess in need of a prince.”
I opened my mouth to spout off a charitable princess answer: that tourists visit Drieden for many other reasons—our beautiful landscapes, our culture, our history.
But then I realized I would be making his point. That Drieden didn’t need the royal family for tourism. That the royal family was, in fact, superfluous.
The lights dimmed for a moment, a sign that the opera was about to begin. Sophie and Henry quickly selected seats in the second row, behind Big Gran, where they could tune out without her notice. It was my perfect excuse to get away from the awful Anders. But as I opened my mouth to explain that I must take my seat, something else entirely came out.
“You are wrong,” I said in a low voice that only he could hear under the hustling and rustling of very important people being seated for a very boring event. “This princess has no need of a prince.”
Anders pulled back, as if to see me better. “Then why did this country waste hundreds of millions of euros to prepare for your wedding day?”
“You could ask my fiancé that,” I said bitterly.
“Next time I talk to him, I will.”
“No one wanted to be married more than me,” I assured Anders, but as soon as it came out, I knew it was a lie.
Christian had just happened to run away first.
twenty-seven
I HAD LANDED IN MY SEAT next to Big Gran as the first notes of Aïda had started playing when Anders’s words sunk in.
Next time I talk to him?
Next time he spoke to Christian?
What. Did. That. Mean?
The next three hours were an interminable aria hell, one where I couldn’t move, couldn’t whisper, and generally couldn’t do anything but applaud politely at the designated times. At Queen Aurelia’s side, photographs could be taken at any moment, and God help me if someone caught a glimpse of not perfect Princess Theodora, but the real me, the one who ached to chew on her fingernails and rip her hands through the sprayed and teased crown of blond hair she wore.
Even in the limo back to the palace, I bit my lip as Sophie and Henry bitched and moaned about the evening. They wouldn’t care about Anders’s offhand remark about Christian, or see what it had to mean.
But Nick would.
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An hour after I had returned to my apartments, he let himself in. I swung around. “Finally!”
He looked over my garnet ball gown, half-hanging off my shoulders.
“What?” I demanded. “I can’t get it off by myself.”
“Don’t you have someone who helps you with such things?”
I could have called in a maid, but I had been anxious for privacy as quickly as possible. “I need to talk to you.”
“You’re half dressed.”
“Could you focus, please? You’re like a fourteen-year-old boy who has never seen a girl naked before.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue but then shut it with a sardonic smile, which would have distracted me if I weren’t bursting to talk about Anders.
“Did you hear him? What he said to me?”
“What? Who?”
“Pierre Anders. You were five feet away; surely you heard.”
“I zoned out somewhere between the history of Driedish opera and fashion talk.”
“You’re supposed to be my bodyguard.”
“And if he’d taken a knife out to stab you, I would have dealt with it.”
“Dealt with it?” I was shocked. “What? Would you give him a stern talking-to?”
“No, he’s a leader of Parliament. I’d put him in time-out.”
“For stabbing me.”
Nick’s voice softened. “What did he say, Princess?”
I repeated the conversation to Nick, who paused for a moment before replying, “So?”
“Don’t you think it’s strange? As far as I know, he’d never spoken to Christian before in his life.”
“I think we’ve established that you didn’t know everything Christian was doing in the last year.”
“I didn’t think he was talking to Pierre Anders.”
“No, he wouldn’t have.”
“How do you know?” I demanded.
“Because I know my brother.”
I nibbled on my thumbnail. “There was something about the way Anders said it, though.”
“Made you think that Christian was secretly lobbying Liberal members of a Parliament that wasn’t even his?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.”
“Perhaps you didn’t notice I was joking, Princess.”
I’d caught his sarcastic tone but had dismissed it, because maybe he was on to something. “The entire conversation was like he was trying to send me a message. Anders chose his words very carefully, making a case against King Philippe.”
“Who is very dead, if I’m not mistaken with my Driedish history.”
I threw my hands up. “He was making an argument against the existence of the whole royal family.”
“He’s trying to dismantle the monarchy, remember? That’s his job. He was just trying to get under your skin.”
I shook my head and twisted my arms around my mid-back, trying to reach the hook between my shoulder blades. “This was something else,” I insisted.
With a muttered curse, Nick moved behind me, pushed my fumbling fingers down, and took my dress into his own hands. A moment later, a rush of cool air blew across my back as my gown pooled into a lush froth of silk and netting around my legs.
“He was just trying to get under your skin,” Nick said yet again.
“You just said that,” I said, hyperaware of his magnetic masculine presence behind me. The way I could almost feel his gaze on my skin. The way I wanted his hands on places so recently covered by red silk.
“It’s still true.” Nick’s voice came from farther away; he had moved out of the danger zone. I stepped out of my dress and turned to see him studiously examining an enamel box on top of my writing desk.
“I never knew Scots were such prudes,” I said, refusing to be ashamed about standing in the middle of my own home in a corset and stockings.
“I’m very good at my job, Princess.”
The non sequitur made me jerk my head back. “Excuse me?”
“I avoid distractions. There’s a time and a place for everything.”
“So I’m a distraction?”
He lifted his green eyes to meet mine. “Very much so.”
“There’s a time and a place?” My question came out a bit more breathless than I liked, and when he smiled a soft, rueful smile, I shivered with delicious anticipation.
Princesses weren’t usually good at delayed gratification, but it seemed Scottish spies were masters of it.
• • •
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, IN the mornings, Sophie and I visited hospitals and took photos with children suffering from leukemia. In the afternoons, Henry and I opened new train stations and toured exhibits at the military museum.
Then I would go back to the palace and read acres of the papers Nick kept downloading and bringing to my apartments. After finding nothing interesting in Claytere’s private documents, Nick thought a pair of fresh princess eyes might catch something in the publicly available files. He was so wrong. It was relentless, pointless work. There was nothing there. Nothing at all to connect Christian and the Boson Chapelle firm with the monarchy, Big Gran, or the Driedish government.
The routine was numbing, and I probably should have realized that I was in trouble when I’d started wandering the halls of the palace.
I was in the South Wing, in the viewing gallery above the garden portico, when they found me.
“Thea! There you are!” Lucy tutted, feeling my forehead as soon as she got within range. Nick was close on her heels, his face as dark as a Driedish winter storm.
“I’m fine,” I told her.
“You’re warm,” she said. “She’s warm,” she repeated to Nick.
“I’m sure she is.” He somehow managed to make a mumble sound sarcastic.
Lucy threaded her arm through mine, a secure lock as though I was about to make a break for it. “This is what happens when you’re pushed too hard.”
“She wanders off without telling anyone?” This time Nick’s voice was a full-out Scottish growl that somehow escaped the notice of my germaphobe secretary, fussing over me as she was.
Lucy tugged on my sleeve. “It isn’t right; you can’t worry your staff so.”
“I was within palace grounds. Perfectly safe,” I said as she started leading me back toward the residential wing.
“Very reasonable.”
“Not so much,” I heard Nick say behind us.
“He has a point,” Lucy said with a squeeze of my hand. “You don’t want your father to put more of him on you.”
Nick’s snort bounced off the three-hundred-year-old wooden parquet floors, but Lucy retained her sangfroid.
“You should stay in tonight. I’ll call Her Majesty’s secretary and tell her . . .”
“No.” I cut Lucy off, irritated by her suggestion. “I’m not sick.”
“But you need—”
“I need to go out and see people.”
“You saw people yesterday.”
In the stuffy basement of a training center for developmentally delayed adults. Rewarding work, of course. But there had been security and expectations and a decided lack of . . . windows. Sunshine. Fresh air.
If I said that to Lucy, she would overreact. Obviously, I was ill when I started counting windows. Obviously, I was about to . . .
Make a run for it.
As if he could read my mind, Nick barely let me out of his sight when we returned to my apartments. I was allowed to use the restroom and change into a black wool dress. Lucy had set out a perfectly sensible pair of sturdy black shoes for my event tonight, but when I came out of my dressing room, Nick’s eyes fell to the cherry-red lace-up, four-inch heels I had slipped into.
“At least I know you can’t run in those.”
“Not very far,” I said, chagrined.
I don’t know why I got these impulses. I really didn’t want to run anywhere, literally or figuratively, but I was so frustrated with not making any progress on finding out how the Cayman papers might have gott
en Christian kidnapped—or worse. That, combined with my complete lack of power in the palace, probably made the events of the night that followed inevitable.
It should have been easy enough. A formal dinner party in the China Ballroom, attended by the closest friends of the Queen and esteemed members of Drieden’s political parties, honoring the European Union president.
It shouldn’t have been a recipe for disaster. And yet . . .
There they were.
The usual set of potential acceptable husbands for Princess Theodora. Alexander of Bayern. The Duke of Manse-Rader. Hans DeGerald.
Sophie was holding court with a few other men I didn’t recognize. Maybe they were backup husband material, ones that would be suitable for the next eligible granddaughter of the Queen.
And then on the other side of the room, Pierre Anders stood talking to the other distinguished politicians. The ones with power and influence.
It was as if two versions of my life were laid out in front of me. To the left, stability, domestication, duty.
To the right? Curiosity. Adventure.
Control.
I took two steps toward the right, to where Anders would certainly answer my questions about his connection to Christian, when I heard my name called out by Harald. “HER HIGHNESS, PRINCESS THEODORA OF DRIEDEN.”
Damn. Harald could boom when he wanted to. The room’s focus shifted toward me. Postures changed. Smiles appeared. Ladies dipped. Gentlemen bobbed.
I acknowledged the room with a slight nod, still fully intending to go speak to Anders, but then who hopped next to me and clutched my arm but my dear Lucy, pulling me straight to the Approved Future Husband Brigade.
I couldn’t pull away from her tight grip without making a scene, so I resolved to talk to Anders later in the evening and find out when exactly he had spoken to Christian last.
As soon as I got within ten feet of the Eligible Aristocratic Bachelor Club, fawning and preening commenced from every gentleman who had been born to the country’s elite. Were they under some sort of mass delusion? Did they sign a contractual agreement with the palace? Because there was no way I was as delightful, as charming, or as beautiful as they swore I was. Especially since I kept darting my eyes to the other side of the room. To where the real conversations were happening.
The Royal Runaway Page 16