by Lili Valente
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Why don’t you take your book and head back to your room? I’ll take care of this. No worries.” He reaches for the fallen novel, and my heart stops.
It literally stops, abandoning its work mid-beat as the horrifying realization shrieks through my head.
No! He’s going to see it! There’s no way he won’t—he’s not blind for God’s sake—but maybe he won’t notice the picture or the title.
But, of course, that’s a ridiculous hope.
Despite my fervent prayers, he doesn’t close the book and hand it over without a word. He reaches for the novel and freezes, his hand hovering over the image of the man thrusting between the woman’s legs while my entire being catches fire with embarrassment, and the horrified screeching in my head gets louder. I will the floor to open and swallow me whole, but that doesn’t happen, either.
Instead, Jeffrey clears his throat and stretches his neck to one side.
Then he clears his throat again before flipping the book closed and gathering it in one big hand.
He stands, turning stiffly to face me, making me even more keenly aware of the fact that he’s half-naked. I’m alone with a boy who isn’t wearing a shirt—an older boy who is very nice to look at, but also terrifying and mysterious in a way I’m not ready to think about outside the safety of those fictional pages I was after—and he’s holding a racy book he knows I was looking at. It’s the most desperately mortifying thing that’s happened in my entire life.
I’m about to burst into tears, or run, or run while bursting into tears, when he stretches out his arm, holding the volume between us. “I thought this one was sad. But I knew he was dying when he wrote it before I started reading, so…”
My heart jerks back into motion, but the rest of my body still can’t decide what to do. I continue to imitate a statue while Jeffrey takes a small step closer.
“It was tuberculosis,” he adds. “He knew he had it and that it was getting worse, but he rewrote Lady Chatterley three times anyway. Completely from scratch, beginning to end. It was what he wanted to do with the time he had left.”
“It must have been really important to him,” I say, a lead weight settling on my chest.
I know what it feels like to be living on a deadline.
I still have over a decade left—a generous stretch of years, it seems, especially to a girl who has only lived thirteen of them—but there are days when I feel “the end” looming large in front of me, casting a shadow I can’t escape.
Days when I worry about the legacy I’ll leave behind when I’m gone…
Will history remember me as anything but the shy and stuttering daughter of the last king and queen of Rinderland, half of a pair of identical twins, one of a set of triplets, interesting for the oddness of her circumstance, but not particularly notable in any other way? Or will I make my mark on the world? Will I leave behind something beautiful and thought-provoking—maybe a little sad—like the book I pluck from Jeffrey’s hands and hug to my chest, now desperate to read it for reasons more serious than carnal curiosity.
“You can take it with you when you leave,” Jeffrey offers generously. “Since you won’t have time to finish it tonight.”
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it with all my heart. “I’m glad I got caught by the nice prince.”
His lips quirk as he shrugs. “We’re all pretty nice.”
“Andrew put snakes in my bed,” I remind him. The first and only other time I met my fiancé, he had made it clear he wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement.
“He was eight,” Jeffrey says, holding up a hand as he continues, “I know that doesn’t excuse it, but he was a kid, too. And I think…” He rubs his palm over his close-cropped dark hair. “It’s hard for everyone. All of us, at least. Our generation. Arranged marriage isn’t a thing in our part of the world anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, letting Grandfather move forward with this.”
I hug my book tighter and parrot what I’ve always been told. “It will be good for our countries—to share blood ties as well as a border.”
Jeffrey’s forehead furrows. “It’s not like we’re at war. Or ever have been. We’ve always been good neighbors. I know your grandfather saved my grandfather’s life, and he feels he owes a debt to your family for that, but that’s no reason to sell you and Andrew both into marital slavery. It isn’t right. Especially for you.”
“Why especially for me?” I ask, mesmerized by the compassion in his dragon-scale-green eyes.
He’s so good. So kind. So lovely, inside and out, that for a second, I wish he’d been born first, but I just as quickly put the thought out of my mind.
I’m not going to live to make any kind, lovely boy happy.
The best thing I can do for anyone who might want to be my boyfriend is to stay far, far away from them. And, of course, Jeffrey doesn’t want to be my boyfriend. He said it himself—he sees me as a little girl who should be off playing with dolls.
But it turns out that’s not why he pities me so much more than his brother. “Because Andrew isn’t letting it change him,” he says softly. “He’s dating and…doing more than dating. He’s living his life the way he would if there weren’t an arranged marriage in his future, and no one is even trying to stop him. But with your parents…” He trails off, studying my face as if he’s afraid to offend me.
But of course, he won’t. I love my parents, and I know they love me, but I’m not stupid. “My parents are going to make sure I don’t do anything to mess this up,” I say with a smile. “But that’s okay. I don’t want to date.”
Jeffrey’s gaze flicks to the book held against my chest, and my cheeks catch fire. “You might want to, though,” he says, “Someday. It’s not fair for you to be held captive like some medieval princess in a tower, forced to put your entire life on hold for Andrew when he isn’t doing the same for you. It makes me sick every time I think about it. It’s so unfair and not something I want my country to be a part of.”
He’s truly upset, so upset unwise words come spilling out of my mouth. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. We’re not going to get married.”
His features soften with relief. “You’re going to call it off, then?”
“Not…exactly.” I don’t want to lie to him, but he’ll never believe the truth. I tried to tell my sister, Alexandra, about the curse once when we were little, and she laughed me out of the wading pool. Normal, logical people like Zan and Jeffrey don’t believe in curses or spells or Romani women who can see into the future.
I mean, they believe in Romani women—gypsies they’re still called by people who either don’t know or don’t care that they don’t like to be called that—because you can see a woman. But they don’t believe that they have special powers.
But I know the woman who took me from the village playground when I was seven was magical. I know because on the day I vanished—stolen away to a shed somewhere in the forest to learn the dark, hidden history of my family—I was gone for at least two hours. But when I ran back to the playground, breathless and weeping and desperate for a hug from my nanny and the safety of my sisters, they acted as if I’d only been gone for a few minutes.
I believe in magic because I’ve lived through an undeniably magical event.
It’s not Zan or Jeffrey or anyone else’s fault that they haven’t, but it does create communication problems. And it makes me lonely. I have two sisters who are as close to me as my own heart, but there are times when I still feel so alone.
“Then what, exactly?” Jeffrey presses when I’ve been silent and strange for too long.
I feel that way a lot—silent and strange.
Or stuttering and strange.
But I haven’t been stuttering with Jeffrey. It’s a minor miracle and enough to convince me to trust him with a nugget of the truth. “It’s not going to work out between Andrew and me. But he’ll end up with someone wonderful. Don’t ask
me how I know. I just…know things sometimes.”
He arches a skeptical brow.
“I do,” I insist.
“Like…you see the future?”
“Sort of,” I say, “but not in a crazy person way. In a real way.”
Jeffrey’s eyebrows contort, putting on such a show I can’t help but laugh.
“What?” he asks.
I point at his forehead. “Your eyebrows. They did a dance. A ‘This Girl is Crazy’ dance.”
His lips curve up on one side. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Now it’s my turn to do the skeptical eyebrow dance.
He laughs, a husky rumble that makes my skin feel cozy and…ticklish at the same time. “I don’t. I think you’re a kid. I thought a lot of wild things when I was a kid. When you get older, your thoughts change.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I don’t mean it, and I’m pretty sure Jeffrey can tell I don’t mean it.
But he keeps smiling at me anyway, a nice smile that makes the ticklish feeling shivering across my bare arms even worse.
“You want to watch a movie or something?” he asks. “We have a theater in the east wing, and a decent film collection. You can pick whatever you’d like. I’ll make popcorn.”
“Can we have popcorn and play cards, instead?” I hear myself asking, bold as you please. I don’t know what’s come over me, but whatever it is makes me brave enough to add, “Movies are okay, but I’d love to talk more. I usually stutter too much to talk to anyone outside my family, and I already know all their stories. I’d like to hear some of yours.”
“Yeah.” He nods slowly. “That sounds good. I’d like to talk, too. Just let me go grab a clean shirt.”
I nod, my gaze falling to the floor. “Okay. I’ll…wait here.”
“Though, you know, not liking movies is like not liking cake,” he adds as he backs toward the door. “Everyone likes cake.”
I shrug. “I know. I’m weird.”
He smiles again. “No, you’re interesting. There’s a difference. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being interesting.”
“All right,” I say, deciding I might have a little crush on Prince Jeffrey.
By the end of the night—after we’ve played cards, talked books, and crept down to the castle’s kitchen to steal cookies from the biggest cookie jar I’ve ever seen—my crush has become a fully flowered obsession.
On the drive back to Rinderland the next day, I write his name in my journal a hundred times, so distracted I forget to be carsick and my mother decides I’m coming down with a cold and should be sent directly to bed upon arriving home.
Lying in my bed that night, and many nights after, I read and reread Lady Chatterley’s Lover and think of Jeffrey, eventually imagining the two of us doing the things the lady and her stable hand are doing in those illustrations.
It takes years—four of them to be exact—for Jeffrey to fade from my memory. It isn’t until Rafe, the cook’s son, and I are trapped in the gazebo during a storm and end up adding kissing to our friendship that I start to simmer for someone else. But that’s all it ever is with Rafe—a sweet, delicious simmer that I refuse to allow to become a boil.
When he wants us to be each other’s first, I put him off, not wanting either of us to get any more attached. And when he eventually proposes, I say no.
It breaks my heart, but I say no. Because even at twenty, long past the days of childhood fancies, the curse is real for me.
My seven-year-old memories are dim and fading fast, but what I recall from my afternoon with the Romani woman remains sharp around the edges. Logically, I know that I was a dreamy child who might have imagined the entire thing. But I’m also the dreamy adult that child grew up to be, and I can’t help believing in magic.
And spells.
And the curse plaguing the Rindish royals.
There’s so much evidence—from history, as well as my own experience—that I can’t see any reason to doubt it. And then Sabrina agrees to go to Gallantia in my place for the month leading up to the royal wedding, and I have even more evidence that the future I was promised is real.
My sister is going to fall in love with Andrew, marry him in my place, and live happily ever after, and I’m going to die on my twenty-sixth birthday, probably from a fall down the stairs.
Or off a horse. Or out a window.
The Romani woman didn’t give me the “how” of my death, only the “when,” but an alarming number of my first-born ancestors died on their twenty-sixth birthday from tumbling out of or off of something. There are exceptions, firstborn relatives who lived longer or shorter lives—anomalies that give some reason for hope. But my hope is small and fragile, a mouse with a toothpick for a sword.
The fear is a giant beast with razor-sharp teeth.
The fear drives me to work harder, faster, fighting to finish my final collection before time runs out. Most people probably wouldn’t consider designing lingerie an activity worthy of the last few months of a person’s life, but my heart and soul go into every stitch. I’m making art, something beautiful that will live on after I’m gone, just like Lawrence’s novel.
Okay, maybe not “just like” his novel, but, like his novel, some people will turn their nose up at art designed to inspire love and passion. They will call it frivolous or smutty or wrong, but for me, knowing women will dress in my designs and feel beautiful, powerful, and worshipped and adored by their lovers makes me feel those things, too.
I will never know what it’s like to have a lover of my own, but I’m part of hundreds of loves stories. Maybe thousands, if I win the design contract for the spring collection and my work goes into mass production.
But first I have to finish.
I settle into my rented cottage far from my family’s drama and work until my eyes ache and my head throbs. I work until my fingertips are bruised and covered in pinprick scabs. I work until my shoulders are one solid knot of twisted tissue and I worry I might never be able to stand up straight again.
But I’m so close. The end is in sight.
I just need one final push, one last burst of frenzied concentration, and my baby will be born.
But first I need tea.
Or, better yet, coffee.
I love tea, but sometimes only the dark lord of caffeine will do.
I head for the coffee shop in the village near my cottage, expecting to fetch coffee and pastries and a few of the honey-flavored lollipops I’ve become addicted to in the short time I’ve been in town.
Instead, I open the door and run directly into six feet three inches of heavily muscled, scowling, prince-flavored trouble.
3
Prince Jeffrey James Von Bergen
A man who smells a rat—
a cute rat—
but a rat, nevertheless.
I don’t believe in fate.
I believe in hard work, willpower, and a man’s capacity to shape his own future—provided he’s willing to fight for what he wants. I come from a long line of stubborn men who refused to take “no” or “can’t” or often even “shouldn’t” for an answer, and I intend to follow in their footsteps.
I won’t be coming home empty-handed.
As I guide my sleek, Jaguar F-TYPE around the tight, Alpine curves, making my way deeper into the Rindish countryside, I vow to scour every mountainous nook and cranny of the nation. I will find Elizabeth Rochat, prove she’s Elizabeth, and confirm that the woman passing herself off to my brother as his fiancée is an imposter.
She’s Sabrina, Elizabeth’s twin sister, or I’ll eat my hat.
Or my coat, the heavy wool one.
I’m that sure Andrew’s being duped.
Yes, they look eerily alike, even for twins, but there are subtle physical differences that will be readily apparent once I tote the real Elizabeth home to Gallantia for a side-by-side comparison. And of course, there are the personality differences. Like that fact that Elizabeth is one of the most intriguing people I’
ve met and Sabrina…
Well, Sabrina is…nice. Friendly. Okay.
Andrew certainly seems interested in her, but Sabrina is no Elizabeth. I only spent three hours with Lizzy the last time we spoke, but even at thirteen, she was a layered, thoughtful, quirky-in-an-enjoyable-way sort of person.
I’m sure at twenty-five, she’s even more charming.
As angry as I am at the twins for pulling such a stupid stunt—an engagement is serious business, and a royal engagement even more so—I can’t deny that I’m eager to see Elizabeth again.
To talk to her. Listen to her. To discover her thoughts on the state of the world and the evolution of literature in the past decade, to learn what she’s been reading and if she enjoyed Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
We can talk about that now. Back when she was thirteen and I was sixteen, it would have been inappropriate to call her up and ask if she found the sex scenes in that book as depressing as I did. But at twenty-five and twenty-eight, we can talk about anything we damned well please.
Including the fact that she shouldn’t marry my brother.
Elizabeth and her sister are going about this the wrong way, but their instinct is spot on. This arranged marriage has been a disaster in the making from day one. It’s high time someone came to their senses and put his or her foot down.
Andrew, however, is determined not to be the “bad guy.” My older brother has always cared far too much about what other people think. In his defense, I’m sure it’s hard to go against our grandfather’s wishes now that he’s gone, so it falls to Elizabeth to call for a return to sanity.
I have no doubt she has it in her to end the betrothal.
The man Andrew hired to spy on his fiancée painted Elizabeth as a shy, stuttering, weak-willed woman, but I’ve met her. She’s calm and quiet, but there’s steel in her core. She might not stand up for what she wants often, but when she sets her mind on something, I bet she’s a force to be reckoned with.
The thought makes my lips curve as I push through the door of a small café in the village of Islip Downs. I’m frustrated with her deception, but I’m also…curious, though I’m sure our initial meeting won’t be pleasant.