There was something about her mood that chilled me. Bad news. Very bad news. “What? What is it?”
Ismelda had a tablet clutched to her chest; as if what was on the screen was so bad, she had to block it from oozing out. “A French magazine....” She bit her lip. “They’ve published a picture.”
I’d never heard the word “picture” sound like that. I realized that the word had a different meaning to PR people. When a “picture” exists, it’s rarely good.
“Let me see,” the Queen ordered. Credit to her: Ismelda actually hesitated, her eyes flicking to Jagor and me first. But the Queen wasn’t someone you could resist. Ismelda passed her the tablet.
The Queen stared at the screen. Then she looked at me.
Oh God, it’s something about me. What had I done? “What is it, Your Majesty?” I asked.
But she just passed the tablet to Jagor. He turned his body so that I couldn’t see it – trying to protect me, I suppose. I actually saw his body respond, his shoulders rising and his back tensing in rage.
“What?” I demanded. “What is it?”
At last, he passed the tablet to me.
The photo had been taken from above and slightly to the side. I was lying on a sun lounger, wearing just the bottom half of a bright scarlet bikini: above that, I was naked, my breasts gleaming with oil.
My jaw dropped open.
“Did it not occur to you, Exkella,” the Queen asked, “that exposing yourself in public might be inappropriate?”
I was having trouble breathing. “I—But there was no one there!”
The Queen arched an eyebrow at me. “The photo is a fraud, then? Because the woman with her breasts on display does look an awful lot like you.”
“It’s my fault.” Jagor had his fists bunched. “I should have warned you to stay indoors, or to think about what you did—”
“I hardly think she should need to be told not to parade herself half-naked—” said the Queen.
“Mother! Please!”
The Queen sighed and sliced off a chunk of fish, sawing as if she wished I were on her plate.
“But…there was no one there! There weren’t even any buildings overlooking us!” I didn’t understand: the photo was as close up as if the photographer had been in the garden with me. You could see every detail, every freckle.
“They were probably in a helicopter,” Ismelda explained. “With a long lens.”
Jagor’s huge fist thumped the table. “This is unacceptable,” he growled. “Ismelda, come with me: we’ll discuss our response. Lucy, you stay here.”
I felt the Queen’s gaze boring into me from across the table. “But—”
“Please, Lucy, stay here!” he snapped, and marched off, Ismelda hurrying along behind him.
“Well,” said the Queen. “You’ve made quite the first impression.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” I stared at the table.
“Do me the courtesy of looking at me when I speak to you,” she snapped.
My head jerked up.
“You made a mistake, Exkella—”
“I know—”
“Be quiet. You will continue to make mistakes because you don’t understand the world you’re in. Calara spent years learning decorum and building trusted relationships with the press. They had nothing to hurt her with and they didn’t want to hurt her. You, on the other hand....” She sighed. “I want you to think seriously about what is best for Jagor.”
I went cold. Was she really suggesting….
“My son needs someone he can rely on: he’ll rule soon and he mustn’t be undermined by some rolkvatch who can’t keep her clothes on.”
There wasn’t a direct translation for rolkvatch: it meant something along the lines of hussy but of a far greater magnitude. The Queen rested her hands on the table and leaned forward, as if offering me an olive branch. “I don’t think you’re a bad person, Lucy. I think when you saw Jagor, you saw a way out of your humdrum little life and you took it: and who could blame you? But this photograph is a sign: a wake-up call. It’s time to stop playing princess, now, before you irreparably harm Jagor and this family.”
I was frozen, unable to speak. She stood up and walked around the table until she was standing behind me, her hands on my shoulders.
She’s right, I thought. I’m not cut out for this. What’s going to happen next time I screw up? And the next, and the next? I’d been determined to help Jagor’s image and already I’d done the exact opposite.
“Go home to America. We will put out a statement that the Prince made an unfortunate mistake: a last fling before settling down. It will be embarrassing, but we can overcome that. We will allow Calara to return as his betrothed: she will accept, of course, and it will look like nothing more than a lover’s tiff.” She paused to think. “Calara was travelling in the Far East and while she was away the Prince satisfied his base urges with an American. When Calara returned she was angry with the Prince - not realizing it was just a sordid little affair that meant nothing - and foolishly broke off their engagement. A heartbroken Jagor proposed to his American lover on a whim, but when he discovered her true nature he quickly repaired his relationship with Calara...and they lived happily ever after.” She squeezed my shoulders like a vice. “Now, doesn’t that sound better?”
I thought I was going to be sick. I nodded mournfully. The Queen leaned close. “You think I’m a vakt, don’t you? How do you say it? “Bitch”. But this is what makes us different. I’m strong enough to do what needs to be done, Lucy, and you aren’t.” She stepped back. “I can see to it that you’re taken care of, when you return to America. Money won’t be an issue.”
I realized she was waiting for me to nod, so I nodded.
“Run along, then, Exkella, and as soon as it’s convenient, tell my son you’ve changed your mind.”
Walking away from the table, I didn’t cry. Something had broken inside me, something too awful for tears to help.
***
I debated whether to find Jagor, but I wasn’t strong enough, yet. I called Gwen instead: it was two in the morning in New York, but knowing Gwen she’d still be awake.
“Luce! I was just about to call you. Have you seen it?”
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“I never knew your tits were that small. You really know how to work a push-up bra.”
I closed my eyes. “Why did you tell me to go topless, Gwen?”
“I didn’t mean where someone could see, you idiot!” She meant it playfully, but it still stung. “How’s his Highness taking it?”
“It’s not good, Gwen.”
“It’ll blow over.”
“I don’t think so. I think...I think....”
“What?”
“I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up and turned my phone off. I’d been kidding myself. Talking to someone else wasn’t going to help me make the decision. I had to do this one on my own.
***
I found Jagor in the press office, which had taken on the mood of a war room. When he looked at me, his jaw tightened in frustration. “It’s not a good time, Exkella,” he told me.
“I just wanted to…can we talk?”
A phone rang and he snatched it up. I saw him glance meaningfully at Ismelda and she shepherded me out of the room. “He’ll find you later,” she told me firmly. She was mad with me as well.
“Ismelda, I’m sorry—”
“Of course, Exkella. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”
***
I couldn’t face returning to our bedroom. I knew that if I sat in one place, staring at the wall, I’d explode: I needed to keep moving. So I stalked through the endless palace corridors, not caring where I went or who saw me. I worked my way gradually downwards, through the private rooms, the reception rooms, and finally to the service rooms we were never supposed to see. I banged through storage rooms, with flags and bunting brought out for royal celebrations. Then an underground garage, with a fleet of SUVs and limousi
nes. Finally, I rounded a corner and found myself in a windowless, fluorescent-lit kitchen, bigger than any restaurant’s. Twenty people were working, preparing lunch. The royal chef, a grey-mustached man in his fifties, turned, resplendent in his whites. “Exkella! Is there something you need?”
I shook my head and hurried through, darting between astonished cooks, until I lost myself in the maze of larders and walk-in refrigerators. It was food on an industrial scale: hundreds of eggs, gallons of milk, rack upon towering rack of vegetables.
I put my back against a wall of shelves and slid down to the floor, amongst the sacks of oats and rice. And there, finally, I cried.
***
It was dark in the larder and bright in the kitchen corridor outside. When he found me, I could only see a silhouette: broad shoulders and a trim waist, in an elegantly cut suit.
“Jagor?” My voice sounded tiny.
“Just me,” the King said, and stepped closer. I started to scramble to my feet. “No, no: don’t get up,” he told me.
“Did you come here to find me, Your Majesty?” I was horrified by the idea.
He smiled. “I come here for the sweets,” he told me. I thought I’d misheard, but he rummaged in a cardboard box and pulled out a bag of jelly sweets. “They make these especially for the palace. They’re meant to be gifts, for children who get a tour. But I always make sure we order extra.” He threw me a packet and I caught it automatically. “My doctors have me on a diet,” he explained. He tore open his pack and tossed a jelly crown into his mouth. Not knowing what else to do, I opened my packet. He sat down on the floor opposite me.
“You must be having a bad day,” he said. He was watching me carefully, his eyes full of compassion.
I almost lost it and started crying again. Ironically, what held it back was the sudden realization that he’s seen my breasts and the crushing humiliation that followed. I wanted to say something snappy and clever, like “I’ve had better,” but I just didn’t have the energy. I nodded.
“Did you know,” he asked, “that there are two sorts of people?”
I felt my stomach churn. He’d come to give me the same lecture the Queen had. “Yes,” I said bitterly. “Commoners and royals, and I’m—”
“No, no!” He was annoyed: but not annoyed with me. “Has the Queen been talking to you?”
I have a lousy poker face. His lips tightened. “There are two sorts of people,” he began again. “Those who follow the rules and—”
“Those who make the rules?” I finished. I was still pretty sure I knew where this was going.
“No! Should I order you to be quiet?”
I closed my mouth and rested my chin on my knees to listen.
“Those who follow the rules and those who break the rules. Without those who obey the rules, we have anarchy. But without those who break the rules, we have stagnation: and that is far more dangerous.” He watched me carefully while he ate another jelly sweet. “You, Lucy Snow, are a rule breaker.”
That was hilarious. “Your Majesty, I’ve never even got a parking ticket,” I told him. “Jagor jokes that I’m a librarian.”
He shook his head. “A rule follower would never have met my son: and certainly wouldn’t have attracted him.”
I thought back to the embassy party. “My friend sneaked us in: it wasn’t my idea.”
“But there must have been another step. A moment when you went against everything you’d been taught, when you decided to take matters into your own hands.”
For a moment, I was back in the embassy bedroom. I’d been on the verge of leaving, of returning downstairs to Gwen and sanity. But I’d stopped on the threshold and spoken to him in Asterian. That was what made him close the door. That was when it had all started.
I looked back at the King and ate another jelly sweet.
He nodded and smiled. “You broke the rules by getting involved with him. Then, when he hired you as his aide – that was how it happened, yes? – you must have accepted.”
I remembered sitting in Foster-Thomas’ office at the UN, my heart pounding as I agreed to the position.
“You accepted, knowing it wasn’t sensible: you did it anyway. Not because you’re stupid and impulsive; quite the opposite. You’re very thoughtful…maybe too thoughtful. You did it because you know that sometimes, breaking the rules is the right thing to do.”
I thought. I ate another sweet.
The King leaned forward. “I don’t think Jagor needs another rule-follower, Lucy. I don’t think any of us does.” He was smiling at me, and I realized that I was smiling a little, too. I understood now why the people liked him so much.
He stood up. “That’s all I have,” he said simply. “Good luck, Lucy Snow.”
***
I went to the press office to look for Jagor. I still hadn’t made up my mind what I was going to say, but I couldn’t wait any longer to speak to him. Halfway there, my phone rang.
“Can you meet me in the ballroom?” he asked.
I hadn’t even known there was a ballroom, but after asking three different people for directions, I found it.
The room was vast, the ceiling somewhere far, far above, the only sign of it a chandelier as big as a car hanging from a chain that disappeared out of view. Huge arched windows let the morning sunlight stream in, fixing dust motes in its shafts.
Jagor was standing in the very centre. When I walked to him, every footstep was like a crashing, echoing thunderclap in the huge space.
He took my hands in his. “I’m sorry,” he told me. “I was angry at the wrong person. It wasn’t your fault.”
I didn’t speak, just slid my body right up to him, pressing myself against him. Normally he was my rock, and just touching him would give me strength. But now….
“What’s wrong?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “I’m sorry,” he said again, but I shook my head. He sighed in frustration. “You wanted to talk to me, in the press office. What did you want to say?”
I wanted to break up with you, I thought. But now? I stared into his eyes, trying to find the answer there.
I could see him desperately searching for what I needed to hear. “They’ll never hurt you again, the people who took that photo. They’ve been dealt with.”
“Dealt with?” I asked in a small voice.
His face hardened, just at the memory of it. “Do you remember the press baron in Monaco?”
Jagor made him move so that I could sit down. He’d joked at the time that he might get bad press because of it, but…. “It was him?”
“He part-owned the magazine. Until today. I just bought it out from under his nose and shut it down. We can’t stop the photo, now it’s out on the net. But they won’t do anything like this again, to you or anyone else.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Part of me was appalled: freedom of the press! screamed my liberal mind. But not so loudly it could drown out the vengeful glee.
He looked down at me, concerned. Worried that it was his snapping at me earlier that had upset me, wondering what he could do to fix it. “Would you like to dance?” he asked at last.
That was straight out of left field. “Dance?”
He glanced around. We were in a ballroom. “It can help you think,” he offered. He walked to a panel on the wall and pressed a button. A slow dance number filled the room.
“You can dance?” I asked incredulously.
“You have no idea how many formal dances I had to go to as a teenager.”
He scooped me up and started to dance with me. I had no idea what dance we were even doing, but tried to follow along. It was the last thing I’d been expecting, but a few minutes’ thinking time might be just what I needed.
We started to move awkwardly around the room, him leading and me clumsily following. I hadn’t been able to reconcile the idea of Jagor, so strong and athletic, and dancing. But seeing him now, all tightly-controlled power and smooth elegance, it made sense. The way his muscles moved under his shirt, the
iron strength of his arm around me… I could feel myself falling for him all over again, just like back in the embassy. When I broke the rules, I thought.
But he needed a partner who could match him. All I was doing was stepping on his toes and tripping him. I had no idea what I was doing. I bet Calara had dance lessons from birth, I thought viciously.
“I can’t do this,” I told him suddenly.
“You can.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how.”
“Just relax. I’ll guide you.”
He snuggled an arm tight around my waist, the other clasping my hand. Then he lifted me, making me gasp, my feet barely on the floor. We started to move again, and this time I didn’t try to step until I could feel, instinctually, what to do. I pressed myself harder to him, molding myself to the warm curves of his chest, feeling his muscles moving. I let it go, all the pain and doubt; threw it up in the air and let it fall.
When the song finally ended, I found my feet were back on the floor: I’d found the steps, or at least some vague approximation of them. And I had my answer.
“What did you want to say, before?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “That I love you. And I want to be with you forever.” And suddenly we were kissing, my head tilted up to meet him, his arms scooping me up and lifting me until we were level. I wrapped my legs around him in a very undignified way and clasped my arms around his shoulders, clinging to him with everything I had.
When he eventually put me down, I heard a tiny noise behind me. The Queen was standing in the open doorway and I couldn’t stop the look of anger that crossed my face.
Jagor saw it, and glanced between us. “Mother?” He started to stalk towards her. “Did you say something to Lucy?” Anger was twisting his face now. It was the one and only time I’d seen the Queen look scared.
I caught Jagor just as he reached her. “No,” I said quickly. “No, nothing like that.” Jagor glared at his mother, unconvinced, but relented. “In fact, we should talk now. Could you give us a moment alone?”
Jagor’s gaze flicked between the two of us, but he nodded grimly. He kissed me, as if to make a point, and left.
Asteria - In Love with the Prince Page 20