Guarding Her: A Secret Baby Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  And I need to forget about Matthias.

  After Emilie puts the dishes away and goes back to her couch full of fabric, I take out my phone and scroll through my contacts to Matthias’s number. I deleted myself from his life, from his thoughts, but I didn’t take him out of mine. The numbers sit there, blurring on my screen before my eyes. Suddenly, I feel very, very tired. More exhausted, in fact, than I’ve felt since the day after Kim died. I’d been up at the hospital with her all night, running interference with the nurses and the front desk receptionists to make sure that none of my family came to find her. She had a strict no-contact policy at the hospital—the only person who could come see her was me. And I was there, day after day, night after night. That fatigue settled into my bones, combined with a grief so deep and piercing I could barely see to finish my work for school.

  What I’ve been feeling in the past week is vaguely reminiscent of that time, bringing me back to Kim and the smell of antiseptic in the hospital. Maybe I’m lovesick, like Emilie says. Maybe it’s just the change—the change from living in Florida, kowtowing to my mother’s needs to traveling Europe to coming here and having no contact with home at all. As Emilie said last week, that might be enough to exhaust anyone.

  I walk to the living room and sit back on the couch, dizzy, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the tall purple cushion. A wave of undeniable nausea hits me, and my stomach turns when Emilie starts cutting garlic and onions in the kitchen.

  There’s an ache deep in my hips, like something is in there, suddenly expanding.

  It’s funny—it seems the time change and all the travel messed up my body in more ways than one. I haven’t had my period all summer long.

  My eyes pop open, heart racing like it did when I saw those text messages from Matthias’s mother and father.

  It’s not possible.

  It’s not even a little bit possible.

  I think of Kim telling me in hospice care that I’d need to carry on without her, have the family she didn’t have. She had laughed and told me just to have sex for a while, not to worry about all that other stuff. It had seemed years—lifetimes—away then. I’d imagined that I’d feel excitement. Instead, there’s a deep, cold, chilling fear.

  “Emilie?” My voice cracks when I speak.

  “Hm?” She’s busy at work on hemming one of the designs she made last week. “I left the omelet on the counter in case you were actually hungry—”

  “Em.”

  She looks at me this time. We’re not close friends—not yet—but she’s the nearest thing I’ve got. And if I went outside by myself to get to the pharmacist at this time of day on a Sunday, surely she’d know. Or she’d wait at the door until I came back, hands on her hips.

  “Is there a single pharmacy open in Paris on a Sunday?”

  “I don’t know. There’s the little grocery store down on the corner. I think that might be open until eight tonight. Why? What do you need?”

  “A pregnancy test,” I whisper, thinking back to that last time on the train. It was only three weeks ago. I do the math in my head. I will have skipped two periods this summer. The second one would have been due last week. “It’s probably nothing—”

  Emilie hops down from the couch and grabs my hand pulling me off the purple sofa. Her eyes linger on my unfinished glass of red wine, and my stomach turns again. Is it that same fear, or is it something more biological?

  Like my need for Matthias that last time. Like his need for me.

  Silently, she leads me down the stairs and out into the street.

  The windows to our apartment are still open. It’ll be cold inside when we get back.

  Would a pregnancy test show anything this early?

  And what if it does?

  Emilie holds my hand as we walk down the street, and for once, I’m grateful that I allowed one person to be my friend. Even if I don’t have Matthias, I have someone to walk me to the grocery store, and then to the chemist.

  I pick up a single test, and Em picks up a second one, putting it in my hand and closing my fingers around it. “You’ll want to see it twice, if it’s positive. To make sure. Same if it’s not. Trust me.”

  I walk back, my arm in Emilie’s, leaning on her shoulder from time to time and clutching the small bag with two home pregnancy tests. Before we go back upstairs, Em pulls me into a small brasserie near the apartment. We eat hot steak frites. I didn’t realize I was hungry before the crunchy, oily taste hits my tongue.

  When we go upstairs, I’m full and nauseous.

  It’s not a good sign.

  We go in.

  I take the tests with me to the bathroom.

  I can’t think of anything to do with the damn tests. Instead, I think of Matthias. How the apartment is colder than it should be. How I need to ask Emilie if I can borrow some of that blue-gray fabric with the swirls.

  I freeze where I sit, holding the first test, still in its package.

  It won’t be long now, and I’ll know.

  Matthias’s number is still on my phone.

  And maybe I should delete it before I give him the one thing he never, ever wanted.

  An heir.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Matthias

  I scroll through my contacts again. Just like it was last time, Mallory’s name is gone. I can’t say I blame her. I don’t at all, not really. It made me angry as fuck the first time I saw it. I flew into a rage in the white marble room at the palace my mother insisted on revamping for me and my new bride.

  Fiancée. Betrothed. Whatever she is. Caryn, wispy and beautiful and ginger-haired. Like an angel really, except one who’s been caught in my mother’s grasp. A princess kept in her own high tower at the other end of the castle. I guess they don’t want me accidentally fucking her and taking her virginity before we’re married. Caryn certainly has given me the eye when we’ve been at dinner. The past month, she’s made it very clear that she’s both ready and willing to do whatever I want of her as my wife.

  I admit it. She’s my type. More than any of the other women my mother has paraded before me.

  It might even turn me on—in another life, the one from before—that they’d found a woman more beautiful than I could have imagined, and they made sure she wouldn’t care about my lifestyle. The others, they were so formal, so drawn to the idea of marrying royalty. For Caryn, I think she feels that same draw, but with none of the formality the others expected. It’s all I could have hoped for—if I was in fact to follow my parents’ plans.

  I won’t. That’s not what I’m here for. But when I walked into their home again, my mother went into a panicked, angry uproar, talking about my choices to be with a parade of women, each worse than the last.

  And this last one, she was American, wasn’t she?

  That stopped me cold. They knew. They had seen her. Right now, whatever they’re thinking is just a threat. But I don’t know how much they know, or if she’s in any danger where she is.

  So, I’m here now, dining with them, taking walks with Caryn, spinning through the days on the quiet palace grounds. It’s all I can do.

  We know you were with some girl, Matthias. My mother hissed the words. We can find her quite easily, and the outcome for her wouldn’t be entirely pleasant. Not if you don’t do as we say.

  “It’s ironic,” I say to the white walls of my marble room. “They can find her. I can’t. Not from here.” It’s white like my apartment back home, but there’s no way I could ever feel comfortable in a place like this. No way at all. It’s too sanitary, too neat. My childhood room was torn apart when I left, and this is all that stands in its place—a neat palace room, its contents tightly controlled. If Mallory knew, would things be like they were before? I think of her, riding me, her body moving rhythmically against mine. I could have said it then, when she asked me to come inside of her, begged for it.

  Don’t go. Come with me. We’ll go somewhere we can’t be found.

  But there’s no such thing
, not when it comes to my parents. If I went right now, by myself, I might be able to hide for a time, as I’d planned. With Mallory, I’d be a walking target. A missing prince, with his American mistress. The media could put any spin on it they pleased, especially with my betrothed waiting back at the castle.

  Yes, it’s good that Mallory deleted her number. One less way for the poison of my family to creep into her life.

  There’s a soft knock at the door, and my heart stops for a second. If it’s Caryn, I might be forced to talk to her myself. Every time I’m with her, there’s someone else around, preventing us from touching, from kissing. But it’s three in the morning here, and if she comes into my room now, there’s only one reason she’d be here. In any other season of my life, I’d be happy to welcome her. As it stands, I look at her and feel nothing, less than nothing.

  At night when I sleep, Mallory weighs heavy on my mind.

  There’s a wedding planned for a month out.

  Photo opportunities for the prince and soon-to-be princess, the first photos of me that I’ve consented to release since I was fifteen years of age.

  And Mallory, she’ll see them. The world will. My wedding—my life—will become public property, just like the princes’ lives over in England.

  She’ll never know the time I’ve spent thinking of her in these hidden weeks, locked up in this castle, forced to spend time with a girl that’s nothing like her, a girl who only wants to become a princess and immediately get pregnant with my child.

  There’s another knock, louder this time.

  “Who is it?” I say after a minute of sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s Adelaide. Let me in. I have something to talk about.” A soft, accented voice comes through the door. She speaks in English only rarely, and only to me. Just turned eighteen, my sister, another pawn my parents like to move from place to place. After I’m married, Addy is next at the altar. With her decidedly meek nature, she’s quite likely to go along with every part of Mother’s plan.

  “Come in,” I say, switching to Dutch and walking over to the door. When I open it, she stands there, her small body clad in a white nightgown that might have cost Father thousands of dollars on his last trip to Paris. She brushes a pale, blond lock of hair behind her ear and tiptoes in, looking into the hallway behind her. Three years, and she’s grown into a woman. Whenever I look at her now, I’m overcome with heavy sorrow. She’s old enough to get it now—and that in itself is sad.

  “No one saw me leave my room,” she says, taking my arm and pulling me over to the couch. For a tiny thing, she’s strong. I wonder if she’s taken advantage of the judo lessons I attended when I was a boy. It doesn’t match her quiet little personality, but then again, coming to me secretly in the middle of the night doesn’t either.

  “You’re getting to know the game, Adelaide. Aren’t you?”

  She lifts an eyebrow. “What kind of game is that?”

  “The game where Mother and Father have us both locked up in the palace. They couldn’t be happier now, could they?” As I speak, my voice lowers into a whisper. It does that automatically, almost without my thinking about it. Nothing scares Matthias the gambler, the bad boy, walking the streets of Amsterdam. Thinly veiled threats and promises—those are the things that scare me now.

  “That game. Yes. They decided not to let me go to college at St. Andrew’s, you know. I tried to convince them that I needed to learn better English, but you’ve scarred them against letting their children leave the country.” She shrugs. “But I’ve got plans of my own—”

  “What are those?” This isn’t the sister I left all those years ago. When she looks at me in the dim light, I see that her eyes have hardened. For the past weeks, she’s been playing it up, pretending to be as mild and obedient as she ever was. I see someone different now.

  “None of your concern. Not right now. What I am concerned about is you. I make it my job to be innocent and listen sweetly to everything Mother and Father say. So I know about your girl—”

  “There’s Caryn. There’s only Caryn. Right now.” I back away slightly from Addy. I don’t want her knowing Mal’s name, either. If I’m the only one who knows, Mal is far safer.

  Addy laughs. “No. That’s not true at all. There’s nothing between you and Caryn.”

  “She seems pretty invested in being a princess.”

  “She does do a good job acting like that, it seems,” Addy replies with a cryptic look. But then she leans in, her eyes serious. “I’m talking about the girl in Brussels. The one who was with you when Cheon came to find you.”

  That fucker. He was sent by my parents. I goddamn knew it.

  “There wasn’t a girl in Brussels. No one special, I mean,” I say, stumbling over the words. I’d predicted I’d have to come here, certainly. But even when I was leaving Brussels, I never expected I’d be pushed this far, expected to go through with the plans as they were set out. They had nothing over me, until they got word from Cheon about a girl, a girl I’d spent a week with. Fucking her every night, sometimes twice, molding her to my every whim, and growing to know her like I’ve never known anyone.

  If I’d stayed any longer, I might have fallen for her.

  It might have just been a guess on their parts that she was special.

  “You’ve never spent a week with anyone.”

  “How do you know, little chick? You just graduated high school.”

  “I make a study of looking like I don’t know a damn thing, Matthias. But I know plenty. I know you don’t want to be here, and I don’t either. But you don’t want this girl hurt. They know her name, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  She shrugs. “They have ways. And I know something else too. Father isn’t well. You may have to take the throne earlier than you thought. He’s talked about stepping down when you marry Caryn and succeed in getting her pregnant. However that happens. You know they’ve already sent her to three fertility specialists?” She sneers when she says the last part, like the whole thing disgusts her. It should. But it still shocks me to see her face like that.

  “No, I didn’t know that.” I chew on my lip. The very idea of it is repulsive. No one’s said the North Islands is a progressive country. It sticks out in this part of Europe as positively medieval, with the church ruling every one of its citizens—and its monarchy. Male heirs are valued above all else, and I’m the only one. They need another to make their plans work.

  “Believe it. You need to get the hell out of here.”

  “And where is it you suggest I go? They’ll find me in Amsterdam. They’ll find me anywhere I go. And if what you say is true—”

  “It is,” she says simply.

  “If it is, then they’ll find Mal too.”

  “Not if you find her first.” Addy smiles a sweet, secretive smile. She draws something out of one of the pockets of her nightgown.

  “What’s that?” I reach out, grabbing for the paper.

  “I need a promise first, Matthias.”

  “What’s do you need?” My heartbeat quickens. Whatever that paper is—I can see now that it’s an envelope with my name on it—it has to do with Mallory. It’s her handwriting. I saw it only twice, but I memorized it, the loops of her letters, their jagged look.

  “I need you to remember me. I’m not going to be a part of this monarchy, not until it’s quite significantly changed. There are plans we need to make. And there’s your future to consider. Your heir.”

  I notice that the tattered envelope is slightly open. “I’m not marrying Caryn. And I’m not giving her an heir. I just haven’t figured out how to avoid that quite yet.”

  “I know,” Addy says. I reach for the envelope again and she pulls it away.

  “Then what in God’s name are you on about?”

  “Promise me. I don’t want to be married off, not any more than you do. But there are things we can both do to protect ourselves, and for that, you actually need to take the throne.”

&n
bsp; “Addy—no—I can’t.”

  “There’s a provision in the constitution, such as it is,” she says, transferring the envelope to her other hand. “It says you can marry a commoner and still take the crown. And once you’re married, you can take the throne if father is ill. And he is.”

  I shake my head dumbly. “What are you saying? And what’s this shit about an heir?”

  “I have friends who work in the palace. In the wrong hands, this letter sent to your apartment in Amsterdam would be disastrous. But in your hands, I think it can do a world of good. For you, for me. For Mallory Jane Matthews. And her child.”

  She shoves the paper in my hand.

  Matthias, it starts, in the sloppy cursive of Mal’s handwriting.

  I really hope this letter finds you well. I think of you often, but I know there’s no real relationship between us. I thought I’d inform you that I am six weeks pregnant, but I don’t expect a thing from you. I just wanted you to know. I’ll call you when the baby is born. I do promise that. It was so sweet while it lasted, and I’m so sorry this thing happened.

  —Mal.

  I turn the envelope over in my hands, the paper shaking. It’s postmarked from Paris, but I can see that Mal went to the central post office to mail it, giving me no indication of where she might be, or which school she chose in the sprawling, crowded City of Lights.

  “Paris?”

  Addy nods. “Congratulations, Matthias. You did exactly what Mum and Dad wanted, but not with a girl they picked. How do you feel about that?”

  A surge of fear rolls through my body—not because of the pregnancy, the one thing I feared for years. It’s for Mal. And the baby. Can they even call it a baby yet? Or is it still hypothetical? A piece of Mal’s body.

  Even if Addy hid this from the palace, it’s only a matter of time before my parents find out. The letter is postmarked two weeks ago. She’ll be showing soon. And I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they have someone watching her. Or they will, once they find out where she is. And there’s very little doubt that they’re looking.