A Thoroughly Modern Princess

by Wendy Markham

  Granger sank into a chair. He wondered whether this was to be a formal meeting. If not, perhaps he could safely lift the footrest and lean his throbbing head back against the cushion.

  He regarded his grandfather, trying to gauge his mood. The elder Lockwood wasn’t the kind of man who typically tolerated overtly casual posture in a business setting, even when only the two of them were present. Yet there were times when he unexpectedly allowed himself—and Granger—to relax.

  Without betraying a hint of his physical frailty, his grandfather sat in the opposite chair, both feet on the floor and his spine just as he drank his aged single malt scotch—straight up. His wrinkle-etched features, beneath a thatch of white hair, were stern.

  Okay. So Granger wouldn’t bother to reach for the recliner button.

  “It has come to my attention,” Grandfather began, “that you have canceled three meetings in the last three days.”

  Oh. So that was what this was about. Granger steeled himself for the battle that loomed inevitably. “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t squeeze them in.”

  “You couldn’t squeeze them in,” Grandfather echoed ominously. “You couldn’t squeeze in a corporate CEO, a software billionaire, and the deputy mayor of New York?”

  “I’ve been swamped,” Granger said mildly. “And I’ve already rescheduled all three meetings for—”

  “We don’t do rescheduling,” Grandfather exploded. “That’s not how Lockwood Enterprises is run. If we say we’re going to be somewhere, if we are supposed to be somewhere, then we are there. Period. For God’s sake, Granger, I thought you learned that lesson when you started kindergarten.”

  Hell yes, he had learned it. Learned it in the most torturous way possible.

  Granger’s thoughts slammed back to Labor Day weekend nearly twenty-five years ago. The weekend his father, Granger Lockwood III—known, of course, as Trey—drunkenly steered his yacht into a piling on the Long Island Sound, not far from his Rye estate. The accident killed Trey; Trey’s younger brother John; and Granger’s mother, Elizabeth, who had been eight and a half months pregnant. Granger’s infant sister, Charlotte, was delivered stillborn after the accident.

  Somehow, that hurt more than anything else. He was devastated by the loss of his mother and father, of course. But Trey and Elizabeth were hardly doting, hands-on parents. It wasn’t until Granger reached his teens that he was old enough to understand that his ruggedly handsome father had been an alcoholic, cocaine-addicted philanderer.

  As for Granger’s beautiful, distant mother—well, he suspected she had battled her own demons. He remembered that she was often in tears, and that she fought bitterly with his father whenever he was home. When he wasn’t—and Trey frequently vanished for days at a time—Elizabeth spent a lot of time making phone calls, trying to track him down.

  Granger spent most of his time in the care of the household staff: the maids, the gardener, the cook, the chauffeur. Yet there was no nanny.

  Trey, who had been in the care of governesses from the moment he was born, had insisted that Elizabeth raise their son herself. Her method of mothering him consisted mostly of staring off into space, brooding, while Granger quietly played with his blocks, building ever-taller towers—just as Daddy and Grandfather did.

  When his mother told him, at some point that last summer, that he would soon have a little brother or sister, Granger was overjoyed. At last his solitary childhood would come to an end. He would have a companion, somebody to play with. Somebody who would look up to him, the big brother. Somebody who would want to hug and kiss him.

  His mother told him early on that if the baby was a girl, her name would be Charlotte. She said that Grandfather insisted that the baby be named after Charlotte Lockwood, some important family ancestor. But Granger liked to pretend that she would be named after the spider in Charlotte’s Web. Naming a baby for a fictional arachnid was far more appealing, to a small boy, than naming her for somebody he knew only from an unsmiling oil portrait in Grandfather’s study.

  The Charlotte Granger conjured in his mind wouldn’t be afraid of spiders, or of worms, or of climbing trees. She would ride on the back of his bike, when he was old enough to ride a bike, and she would bake cookies for him, when she was old enough to bake. For Granger, Charlotte existed long before the terrible day when she suddenly ceased to exist.

  Shortly after the accident, Grandfather—who was little more than a formal and infrequent visitor to their Rye household back then—appeared and delivered the shocking news about his parents and uncle in the usual stiff, decorous manner. He told the child about his dead infant sister, Charlotte, almost as an afterthought. The old man was completely caught off guard when that piece of information—unlike the earlier bombshell—plunged Granger into inconsolable hysteria.

  In retrospect, of course, Granger understood that Grandfather was also grieving that day. He now knew, too, that because Trey and John had been raised by their governesses, Grandfather was ill-equipped to dispense comfort to a suffering child. His method of helping Granger cope with the crippling losses was to advise him to be strong and carry on the Lockwood name in a way that would have made his father proud.

  So, immediately following the tragedy, five-year-old Granger found himself plucked out of the familiar Rye estate where he had been raised thus far, and plunked down in Manhattan, in the gruff custody of the grandfather he barely knew.

  The quadruple funeral—a vast, public affair held at a Park Avenue cathedral—was held on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Grandfather insisted that Granger start kindergarten as planned. Because it was too late to gain access to Manhattan’s most esteemed private schools, Granger remained enrolled at the country day academy his parents had selected in Westchester county. One of Grandfather’s chauffeurs delivered him to and from school each day in a black stretch limousine.

  The staff of the Rye household was promptly dismissed, of course. Granger would never again see the kindly cook who used to drizzle honey on his fingers for him to lick, or the old gardener with the twinkly eyes, who let the little boy sit on his lap and steer the riding mower over the rolling green acres of lawn. Nor would Granger ever again see that lawn, or that house overlooking the blue water of the sound, where he liked to count sailboats on summer days.

  Nor would he see his beloved kitten, Miggs. The feline was dispatched with a member of the household staff, as she’d have posed a threat to Grandfather’s exotic birds.

  Granger’s new residence was the mausoleumlike Lockwood mansion on the Upper East Side. His swiftly hired new nanny was a humorless British spinster who believed that honey rotted little boys’ teeth. And his new guardian was a moody tycoon whose main concern was that the future of his dynasty would one day be in the hands of his orphaned only heir. Grandfather was determined to see that Granger would grow up worthy of his future role.

  Even now, after all these years, Granger remembered in great detail the daily battles he had waged with his grandfather in the wake of his parents’ deaths. Every morning he would whimper, and sob, and beg not to be sent to school. But his grandfather insisted that it was for the best—that going to kindergarten was his duty.

  Just as going on to his grandfather’s prep school alma mater and later to Yale, where all Lockwood men went, was his duty.

  Just as taking over Lockwood Enterprises someday was his duty.

  Or, as Grandfather preferred to call it, his destiny.

  A destiny that now felt as smothering as the cloud of tobacco smoke wafting from Grandfather’s pipe.

  “Yes, well, I’ve learned a lot of lessons since kindergarten, Grandfather,” Granger heard himself say boldly. “One of them is that there are only so many hours in a day.”

  “True. And each hour must be filled wisely, and efficiently. Time must not be squandered on indiscreet and self-indulgent activities.” Grandfather leveled a stern look at him.

  Uh-oh.

  “It has come to my atten
tion,” Grandfather said, “that at two o’clock yesterday afternoon, while you were supposed to be meeting with the deputy mayor, you were in Sheep’s Meadow, flying a box kite with a European supermodel who has recently been released from a rehabilitation facility in Minnesota.”

  Granger nearly choked on his own spit. How on earth . . . ?

  “The spectacle made Page Six in the Post,” Grandfather promptly answered his unspoken question.

  The Post? As in the New York Post? Since when did Grandfather read the tabloids?

  Granger was well aware that the old man’s daily newspaper perusal was limited to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

  Of course, Granger also read both those papers. But he usually picked up a copy of the Post for balance. Today, however, he had been too dizzy to read—unwittingly sparing himself being blindsided by the Page Six account of his Central Park frolic with the breathtakingly beautiful and mind-numbingly stupid Millicent du Bois.

  Then again, he was certainly blindsided now.

  Grandfather had rested his pipe in an ashtray and steepled his gnarled hands beneath his square chin, leaning forward in his chair to regard Granger through narrowed, buckskin-colored eyes.

  “Page Six, hmm?” Granger found himself saying. “Well, at least it didn’t make the front page. I suspect that honor was reserved for some other errant blue blood.”

  “This is not something you should take lightly, Granger. I have looked the other way in the past, whenever rumor floated back to me about your . . . indiscretions. Until now, you have always managed to keep your personal life from interfering with our business. But I cannot allow you to—”

  “What personal life, Grandfather?” Granger cut in. “I have never had a personal life. You haven’t, either. For us, Lockwood Enterprises has been everything. We’re no better than . . . no better than . . . than those ridiculous Verdunian royals. All they care about is their kingdom. All you care about is yours.”

  For a moment Grandfather seemed speechless.

  Then, in an arctic tone, he said, “My kingdom, as you call it, has provided you with everything a man can possibly desire.”

  “Not everything,” Granger said, marveling that his grandfather could possibly know so little about a man’s desires. About this man’s desires, anyway.

  This man desired . . .

  He desired . . .

  Hell, he might as well admit it, if only to himself. He desired an incongruously delicate powerhouse of a woman whose hand belonged to another man—but whose heart, Granger surmised, never would.

  Nor would it belong to him.

  No, he could never have Princess Emmaline . . .

  But surely there were other worthwhile things in this world—not that he could think of any of them at the moment. He would, if he only had the time.

  He supposed that he could make time . . .

  But there was only one way to do that.

  And he couldn’t possibly . . .

  Or could he?

  His gaze fell on the caged cockatoo. The bird seemed to be looking back at him from behind the wire bars.

  “Grandfather,” Granger said, standing abruptly, before his hastily made-up mind could waver. “I’m leaving.”

  Grandfather checked his pocket watch, left to him by his father, the first Granger Lockwood, founder of Lockwood Enterprises. “You can’t leave now. In fifteen minutes we have that conference call with—”

  “No, I mean I’m leaving. The company. Forever.” It felt damn good to say it, even if his heart was beating nearly as fast as it had the night Emmaline had gazed at him with unexpected yet unmistakable desire.

  “Granger, I don’t find this the least bit amusing,” his grandfather said with an impatient wave of his hand.

  “Nor do I. I find it liberating.”

  “Liberating?” Grandfather appeared incredulous. “Is that what this is about? You feel the need for free time?”

  Among other things, Granger thought. He merely nodded, knowing it would be futile to try to articulate to his grandfather all that was missing from his life.

  Not that the old man was waiting around for explanations. He strode across the room to his desk and purposefully grabbed his leather-bound calendar. “If that’s the case, then perhaps we can arrange for you to take some sort of vacation in a few . . .”

  “A few what?” Granger asked when Grandfather trailed off, intent on flipping pages and scanning dates. “A few weeks?”

  “Weeks?” Grandfather snorted, looking up. “Months. Not weeks. Months. After all, I’d need enough notice to—”

  “No,” Granger cut in. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Perhaps if we look at the week after Thanksgiv—”

  “No, Grandfather. Put your calendar away. A vacation won’t be enough, whether it’s in a few weeks or a few months. I need more than that. I need . . .” He trailed off.

  His grandfather stared, clearly waiting for an explanation.

  “What, Granger?” the old man asked at last. “What do you need?”

  Not what, Granger thought, glimpsing a vision of a green-eyed brunette in his mind’s eye. Whom.

  Aloud, he said only, “I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

  “No, no, no, I need Granger Lockwood,” Emmaline repeated impatiently, pacing across her office with the cordless phone in hand. “He’s that American who has been here several times to speak with Papa. His office is in New York City.”

  “Lockwood?” echoed ancient, partially deaf Prudence, the palace telephone operator who would happen to be on duty now, of all times. “L-O-C-H-W-O-O-D?”

  “No, not Loch as in Loch Ness. I need Lock. As in locksmith.”

  “Locksmith? You need a locksmith? Whatever for?”

  Hearing the voice just over her shoulder, Emmaline spun around. Her sister, Princess Josephine, stood behind her.

  “Never mind, Prudence. I’ll get in touch with him later,” Emmaline said into the receiver. She slammed it down and glared. “Don’t you ever knock, Josephine?”

  “Never,” the younger princess said cheerfully. “Why on earth do you need a locksmith? Has poor dear Remi gotten cold feet, locked himself in a tower somewhere, and swallowed the key?”

  Remi? Remi!

  Why, in her tizzy to track down Granger Lockwood in the States, Emmaline had nearly forgotten her fiancé existed.

  Clearly, Josephine had not.

  Josephine, Emmaline suspected, would gladly trade places with her when it came time to march down the aisle at the abbey on Saturday. She had seen the way her sister stared at the dashing prince, had heard the coquettish tone Josephine used whenever she spoke to Remi.

  Of course, Josephine flirted with virtually every male who crossed her path. But Emmaline was certain her sister was particularly attracted to her dashing brother-in-law-to-be.

  Perhaps Remi was even secretly drawn to Josephine as well.

  What man wasn’t?

  Graced with a professional model’s height and cheekbones, a crown of untamed black curls, and seductive green eyes, lithe, lovely Josephine had trailed a string of broken hearts from Verdunia to Vermont. She had graduated from Bennington College in May, with a degree in visual arts and absolutely no intention of putting it to use.

  Josephine’s goal was to become a royal bride as quickly as possible. And of course not just a lowly anybody’s bride—but Somebody’s bride. With the English princes a bit on the young side and Prince Remi spoken for, she had recently set her sights on the unwitting Prince Lars, the dashing heir to a Scandinavian throne. Her rationale: at six-four, he still had a few inches on her when she wore heels, and besides, those rugged New England winters had seasoned her for life in the frigid north, where she would make a smashing fashion statement in elegant head-to-toe fur.

  “I thought you’d like to know,” Josephine said, “that you’ve received more wedding gifts. The sultan of Bekistan has bought you and Remi a pair of Thoroughbreds, and
Wyatt Jackson—he’s that Texas oil baron we met at the American president’s barbecue, remember?—has sent a Monet.”

  “How nice.” Emmaline smiled briefly, making a mental note to write personal notes of thanks for both those extravagant gifts.

  Of course, Fenella had hired extra staff for the sole purpose of cataloguing and acknowledging the thousands of gifts and congratulatory messages that had poured in from all over the world. But some gifts—like the quilt that had been painstakingly hand-embroidered by a ninety-year-old French-Canadian woman—deserved a note from the bride herself. The prospect was daunting. Emmaline resolved to worry about it after the wedding . . . then remembered that she had quite enough to worry about at the moment. She had almost forgotten.

  Noticing that Josephine seemed to be peering intently at her, Emmaline took a wary step backward. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.” But her sister’s gaze didn’t waver, and seemed to have settled somewhere around Emmaline’s midsection.

  “Why are you looking at my stomach?” Emmaline demanded. Surely Josephine couldn’t possibly suspect—

  “I heard that you’ve gained fifteen pounds and burst out of your gown in the designer’s fitting room yester—”

  “Josephine! Why would you say such a thing?” Genevieve, their elder sister, materialized in the doorway, frowning behind her owlish glasses.

  “Where did you hear that?” Emmaline asked in dismay, grabbing a manila envelope and clasping it in front of her to conceal her barely bulging tummy.

  Tabitha and Porfirio’s staff had been sworn to absolute secrecy about the dress disaster—and about Emmaline’s gastrointestinal episode. All that had been reported to the press, once she had landed safely in the hospital, was that she had fainted during her dress fitting due to stress. No mention of the button-bursting nightmare. Or of vomit.

  “It was in the morning paper,” Josephine said. “One of those blind items in that horrid Annabella Winfrey’s gossip column.”