The Reluctant Princess

by Christine Rimmer

  Shock had Elli staring. “You’ve never said anything like that before.”

  “Of course I haven’t. I’ve always prayed I’d never have to.”

  Elli found she was determined, now, to speak with her father, to learn all that he knew about the circumstances surrounding her brothers’ deaths.

  Ingrid stared into the middle distance. “I kept my word to your father. One son dead all those years ago. And then, last summer, the other vanishes. Sometimes it was like a knife, buried deep, turning cruelly inside of me, but I did what I had to do. I stayed here, in America, with you girls. I couldn’t save what was gone, but I kept my promise to your father. And I kept you three safe.” She shifted her burning gaze to Elli. “Please. I am begging you. Don’t go there. I’m afraid for you to go there.”

  Elli realized her father had been right to fear she might be swayed by a visit to her mother. Ingrid was very convincing. Her arguments not only made sense, they plucked hard and hurtfully at Elli’s heartstrings. Elli loved her mother. Greatly. The last thing she wanted was to see Ingrid suffer and know she herself was the cause of it.

  Over by the window, Hauk turned—just enough to meet Elli’s eyes. Something flashed between them: an insight, a knowing. Elli saw that the warrior understood exactly what she was feeling, that he had been warned by his king to expect it. It was why he guarded her so closely, why she had not been allowed to come here, to her mother, on her own.

  Elli pushed her doubts aside. She had made an agreement with her father. And she would keep it.

  Mustering her arguments, she spoke to Ingrid again. “It’s only a visit. Three weeks. And you just said it yourself. If there is any danger, it’s to the sons of a king.” A king’s daughter might be the only female jarl to claim the title of princess, but that didn’t make her eligible for the throne. “A princess is never even considered when the jarl gather for the kingmaking.”

  “First time for everything,” Ingrid said bleakly.

  “It’s not going to happen. You know it’s not. And we’ve had no proof that Kylan and Valbrand were victims of foul play. Even the scandal sheets never hinted at anything like that.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.”

  “Mom, please look at this logically. There’s no way I can be in any danger, because I am a threat to no one. I’m a kindergarten teacher from Sacramento and I’m going for a visit, that’s all. In three weeks, I’ll be back home where I belong.”

  Ingrid made a scoffing sound. “You aren’t listening. You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.”

  “Yes, I am listening. I do understand.”

  “Elli, he gave me his word, all those years ago. He kept my sons to bring up as kings. And I got you girls. It was a vow, between us—that neither would ever try to reclaim what was lost. And you know how highly a Gullandrian holds his vow. But what’s happening now?” Her voice gained power—and volume. “Our sons are dead. And he wants his daughters. His vow is nothing. He’s a liar and a cheat.”

  Elli could see Hauk. He stood very still, in profile to them, presumably looking out over the side yard. He had heard every word, of course. And he revered her father. Elli had the sense that if anyone else but his king’s runaway queen had dared to utter such slanders against the ruler he served, Hauk would have been on them and it would not have been pretty.

  Her mother had more to say. “Osrik and his Grand Counselor, Greyfell, have been plotting. I know it. I can feel it in my bones. Something more than a father-and-daughter reunion is up here. Something political. Something to do with who will end up on the throne. And you are the pawn at the heart of his game. That’s why he wants you, why he’s taking you away.”

  “It’s a visit, Mom. Nobody said anything about taking me away.” Well, actually, they had. Hauk, after all, had started out to kidnap her. But no way Elli was going into that part of the story—especially not now, with her mother looking so desperate and wild-eyed.

  Ingrid let out a cry. “Oh, my God. What about Brit and Liv? Is he after them, too?”

  “No. Absolutely not. He hasn’t contacted them.”

  Ingrid glared down at her. “How do you know?”

  “He told me so.”

  Her mother made that scoffing sound again. “And you believe him?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Then you are stone-blind.” Ingrid gestured at the phone on the side table a few feet away. “Give me that.”

  “Mom—”

  “Give me the phone.”

  With a long sigh, Elli rose and got the phone and handed it to her mother.

  Ingrid punched a number from autodial and pressed the phone to her ear. After a minute, she demanded, “Liv? Is that you?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Well. At least she answered.” She spoke to Liv again. “Yes… No… I just… Oh, Livvy, Elli’s here. Your father has contacted her…. Yes. That’s right. That’s what I said…. He wants her to visit him in Gullandria. She tells me she’s going. She’s got some big Gullandrian savage with her…. Yes, yes. Insane… You’re so right. And I need to know. Have you heard from him? Has he summoned you, too?” Ingrid let out a relieved-sounding breath. “Thank God for that, at least.” Ingrid cast a sharp glance at Elli, then said to Liv, “Yes. I told you. She’s right here… All right.” She held out the phone. “Talk to your sister. Maybe she can make you see reason.”

  Elli took the phone. She tried a light approach. “Hey, there. How’s torts?” Liv was a law student at Stanford.

  She was also ever the “big” sister, at fifty-nine minutes Elli’s senior. She started right in with a lecture. “Ell, are you crazy? There is no way you can do this.”

  “Liv—”

  “In the first place, you’ll break Mom’s heart if you go. And why would you even want to go, to take off out of nowhere for that throwback misogynistic block of ice in the Norwegian Sea? Step back. Get a grip on yourself. Ask yourself what’s really happening here. Who’s to say what that long-lost father of ours has in store for you once he gets you there and under his control?”

  “Liv—”

  “I don’t like this. It scares me. It—”

  “Liv.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Liv!”

  There was a silence, a hostile one. Then Liv finally grumbled, “What?”

  “I’ve talked to Father. And I’ve made up my mind. I want to do this. I want to meet him.” She sent a glance at her mother, who stared back at her through anguished eyes. “Mom is going to accept this, eventually.” Passionately, her mother shook her head. Elli said slowly and clearly, “I don’t believe for a minute that Father would ever do me—or any of us—harm. I’m going to be fine. I’ll be back in three weeks and I want you not to worry.”

  Liv swore under her breath. “You’re so easy most of the time. It was always Brit and I fighting over who got to run things. You’d just go along. But every once in a while, you’d decide to take a stand for your own way. And whenever you did…”

  “That’s right. You two couldn’t budge me. One time in a hundred, we’d do what I wanted. And this is that one time.”

  “It is strange, you have to admit it. He doesn’t know any of us. He’s made no effort to know us. Why now—and why did he pick on you in particular?”

  “Why now? I think it’s obvious. With Valbrand gone, he can’t help but think of the daughters he’s never known.”

  “Then why you?”

  “I don’t know. But I intend to find out, I promise you that.”

  “If anything happens to you in that place, I swear I will kill you.”

  Elli couldn’t help smiling. “I love you, Livvy. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’d better keep in touch on this.”

  “You know I will.”

  Ingrid took the phone again to say goodbye. The minute she disconnected the call, she tried Brit’s apartment in L.A. Brit’s machine answered. Ingrid left a message. After that, she dialed Brit’s cell, and then her other cell�
��Brit was forever losing her cell phones.

  Increasingly frantic, Ingrid tried the numbers she had for three of Brit’s friends. The third one finally picked up the phone. She suggested Ingrid try to reach Brit at work.

  Brit was a licensed pilot. She’d eaten beetles and jumped from a skyscraper on Fear Factor. She’d trekked the Amazon and the New Zealand wilderness. She’d also dropped out of college after only two years. Like Elli and Liv, Brit had a hefty regular income from a well-managed trust, but Brit was forever giving her money away and inevitably ran short before the next check came in.

  So she worked. At a series of menial jobs.

  Currently, she was waiting tables at an Italian restaurant on East Melrose, where the owner was Greek and all the cooks were from south of the border. Everybody hated to call her there. The owner did a lot of shouting whenever Brit used the phone.

  But Ingrid was desperate. She dialed the number—and sighed in relief when Brit came on the line.

  Ingrid asked her youngest daughter the same questions she’d asked Liv. She got the same answers. Brit was fine, too. No sign of any Vikings in her life. And she wanted to talk to Elli.

  So Elli took the phone and explained what she’d already explained to Liv, while in the background, the owner of the restaurant yelled at Brit to get to work and Brit had to pause every couple of minutes to shout at him to get off her back.

  “Just stay in touch, okay?” Brit demanded, echoing Liv.

  “I will. I love you. Don’t work too hard.”

  “Hah. Like I’ve got a choice in this place. It’s a hellhole, I’m telling you.”

  The call to Brit seemed to get Ingrid more upset than before. But Ingrid always got upset when it came to her underemployed, fearless, free-spirited youngest daughter.

  Elli tried again to soothe her mother, promising over and over that she’d be all right, she’d keep in touch.

  Hilda finally called them to dinner. They sat at the big table in the formal dining room—and Ingrid turned her fear and fury on Hauk.

  “What is going on between you and this man, Elli? Why did you bring him here? He watches you—” she gave a frantic laugh “—like a hawk.” The laughter died in her throat and she glared at Hauk. “You behave like a bodyguard. Is there some reason my daughter needs a bodyguard?”

  Elli spoke up. “Of course I don’t need a bodyguard, Mother. I told you why Hauk is here. He’ll escort me to Gullandria. I invited him to dinner because it seemed the polite thing to do.” Yes, it was an outright lie. But what help would the truth be at this point? In the end, in spite of her mother’s endless and convincing arguments, Elli intended to keep her word and go to her father.

  She said softly, “I realize now it was probably…unwise to bring him to dinner. I’m sorry.”

  Hauk let Elli’s answer stand for him. He was not a stupid man. He must have understood that anything he said would only make matters worse.

  In the end, Ingrid seemed to realize that nothing she could do would stop Elli from going to Gullandria. She agreed to care for the cats and extracted a promise from Elli that she would call as soon as she reached her father’s palace.

  At a little after nine, Ingrid stood in the driveway, waving, a brave smile on her lips, as Elli and Hauk drove away.

  “I think you should pack now,” Hauk announced right after Elli unlocked her apartment door and let them both inside.

  Elli didn’t want to pack. She didn’t want to do anything right then, except maybe sit on the couch in the dark and watch something mindless on TV and pretend that she hadn’t told all those lies to her mother, pretend that she hadn’t heard all the troubling things her mother had said about her father and her brothers and the land where her father lived.

  Hauk stood before her, huge and unmoving and waiting for her answer.

  “You think I should pack, huh?” she asked provokingly.

  “I do.”

  “Well, what you think is your business. I’m not packing now.” She dropped her purse and keys on the table.

  Hauk said, “The royal jet is ready and waiting, with the crew on call, at Sacramento Executive Airport. If you pack, we can leave tonight. The Gulfstream has its own bedroom suite. You will be comfortable. You can sleep in flight.”

  Elli had wandered into the living room and picked up the remote. She tossed it back down again. “I was just thinking that what I’d like to do more than anything right now is watch TV and forget everything that’s happened around here since you showed up yesterday and turned my whole life upside down. But just this moment, I realized, that if I watch TV, I won’t be able to forget anything. Because you’ll be here, sitting in that chair, watching me, guarding me against the possibility that I might do something I want to do rather than what my father wants. I have to tell you, Hauk, I find that upsetting. You could say that it really ticks me off.”

  “You should pack. We should leave.”

  “I’m not packing now. I’m not leaving now. And you have nothing at all to say about that, because it’s not Thursday and I have until Thursday if I want until Thursday.”

  “There is no need to linger here.”

  “Not to you, maybe.”

  “Other than to pack, you’re ready to go now.”

  “You’re not getting it. I may be ready, but I’m not ready.” She turned for the hall, then paused and turned back to him. “I’m taking a bath. This time, I’m staying in there awhile because it’s the only place I can go right now where you won’t be.”

  He had that soldier-at-attention look he liked to get when he wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do next—let alone how he ought to handle what she was going to do next.

  She glared at him. “I want an hour. To myself. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  She went to her room and from there to her bathroom and the second she got in there, she shut the door. Hard.

  Sixty minutes later—she had a travel clock she kept on the bathroom shelf, so she was able to time herself—she emerged from the bathroom. Hauk was waiting, boots off and bedroll at the ready, by the foot of her bed.

  She considered heading into the living room to channel surf in the dark for a while as she had threatened to do earlier. But he’d only follow her. Might as well channel surf from the comfort of her bed.

  She climbed under the covers and the cats came and cuddled in with her. Hauk continued to stand, staring off toward the door.

  “Is there some problem?” she demanded sourly. He wasn’t in the way of the TV, but he was distracting in the extreme, just standing there. It was like having a giant statue at the foot of her bed.

  The statue spoke. “You are upset about the visit with your mother and that has put you in a contrary frame of mind. It’s possible you will rethink your decision to go to bed at this time. I see no reason to become comfortable if you’re only going to go elsewhere.”

  “Comfortable? What are you talking about? You never become comfortable. You never even sleep.”

  “I sleep. Perhaps not as you would perceive sleep to be. I am capable of maintaining a state of readiness while technically sleeping.”

  “A state of readiness.”

  “Yes.”

  She resisted the urge to hurl the remote at him. “Hauk.”

  “Yes?”

  “Lie down.”

  He dropped to his blankets, disappearing from her view.

  She petted her cats, watched back-to-back Buffy reruns and told herself she was ignoring him. A state of readiness. Oh, fershure.

  At eleven, she turned off the television and rolled on her side. By midnight, she couldn’t stand it. She sat up and turned on the lamp and grabbed the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” His voice came from the foot of the bed. She couldn’t see him. He hadn’t even sat up.

  “My mother. And I’m not putting it on speakerphone, so don’t you dare try to make me.” She clutched the phone tightly, ready to whack him with it if he rose up from below th
e footboard.

  She thought she heard him sigh. “All right. Keep your word. Say nothing to endanger your visit to your father.”

  “I hate you, Hauk.”

  “Make your call.”

  Her mother answered on the first ring. “Elli?”

  “I love you, Mom. I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry.”

  There was a silence, then Ingrid said, “I won’t.” They both knew it was a lie, but a good lie, a loving mother’s lie. “Thank you, darling. For calling. I’ve been lying here thinking of you.”

  “I know. I was thinking of you, too.”

  A low, sad little chuckle came over the line. “Isn’t it ironic? Liv is so headstrong. And Brit? Well, we all know Brit is the type of daughter to make her mother prematurely gray. But you? An excellent student, always so reasonable. You were the one I went to when I needed help convincing one of your sisters not to do something dangerous or harebrained.”

  “Mom…”

  “Oh, I know, I know. This is something you feel you have to do. And it’s your choice to make.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hilda will be over tomorrow to pick up Diablo and Doodles.”

  “That should work.”

  “Elli.”

  “What, Mom?”

  “Have a good trip. A safe trip.”

  “I will, Mom. I’ll be back before you know it and…our lives will go on.”

  “Good night my own sweet Little Old Giant.”

  Elli whispered, “Good night, Mom,” and hung up the phone.

  From the end of the bed, there was silence.

  “Hauk?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t really hate you.”

  “I know.”

  Elli turned off the light and rolled onto her side. Within a few minutes, she was asleep.

  Hauk lay awake.

  Wide-awake.

  As a rule, he possessed considerable discipline when it came to the time for sleep. He’d been trained and trained well. Sleep, like good nourishment and regular physical exercise to muscular exhaustion and beyond, was a main building block of superior performance. He could sleep in a snow cave, in subzero temperatures with enemies on every side—and be ready to snap wide-awake at the smallest strange movement or sound. As he’d told Elli—