A Thoroughly Modern Princess

by Wendy Markham

  She had requested discretion.

  Her white, horse-drawn royal wedding coach would have been more discreet here than the motorcade, which might as well be accompanied by a pair of trumpet-bearing, costumed town criers bellowing the news that this dilapidated block of Eldridge Street was about to be graced with a royal presence.

  Part of Emmaline was grateful Granger wasn’t there—but the rest of her longed for his reassuring presence.

  She had no idea where he had gone. The sofa bed where he had slept had been neatly folded by the time she woke up—far later than usual, given the fact that she hadn’t dropped off to sleep until dawn.

  Emmaline rose swiftly and brushed the toast crumbs from her white silk maternity blouse, with its discreetly sewn button flaps for future nursing sessions.

  Maternity clothes really weren’t a necessity yet, despite her slightly expanding belly. But they were all she had, courtesy of Brynn’s shopping excursion, and anyway, in the past few days Emmaline had noticed that her waistbands weren’t all that felt snug. Her bra size seemed to have increased as well, and her breasts were heavy and tender, even painful.

  Emmaline made her way quickly and queasily to the door, with the dogs padding along beside her. The lightly buttered toast that had, only moments ago, helped to quell her daily nausea now felt ominously unsettled in her stomach.

  Or maybe it wasn’t morning sickness.

  Maybe it was the knowledge that she was about to face the man who held her destiny in his hands.

  Emmaline leaned her head against the door jamb, her hand on the knob, her heart racing.

  She told herself that she couldn’t get sick now.

  She told herself that she couldn’t back out now, either.

  It was too late.

  What was done was done.

  Prince Remi was here.

  And Granger wasn’t.

  Footsteps echoed up the stairs outside the apartment—several pairs of footsteps, belonging, no doubt, to the ever-present security detail.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  Newman growled.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Emmaline said, giving him a reassuring pat.

  Emmaline took a deep breath and opened the door, forgoing the usual peer through the peephole that Granger and Brynn had both advised was New York standard.

  After all, she already knew whose face she would see on the other side.

  But when she gazed across the threshold, she found herself looking into the stern eyes of a man she didn’t recognize.

  This wasn’t Remi, after all.

  But, given the motorcade out front, and the half-dozen official-looking clones who stood beside him, it was undoubtedly a member of Remi’s security team.

  “Good day, Your Highness,” he said brusquely. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready . . . ?”

  She looked past the detectives, seeking the familiar face. Then she realized what was happening.

  Remi wasn’t there.

  Remi had no intention of personally escorting her from the premises. He probably hadn’t even come to New York.

  Of course he did, she scolded herself. He said that you were his beloved. You heard him with your own ears.

  He said that he would do anything to hold you in his arms again.

  But . . .

  Again? her inner voice scoffed.

  And anyway, he hadn’t said that to her personally. Only to Debi Hanson, on global television.

  To Emmaline, when she had reached him last night, he had said only “Why on earth did you disappear?”

  “Cold feet,” had been her lame reply.

  “Are you over it now?”

  She had hesitated, unwilling to lie.

  “I’m not sure,” she finally told him, thinking that her feet really were cold at the moment, on the bare bathroom tile in the middle of the night, where she was huddled with the phone as Granger slept soundly on the sofa bed in the next room.

  “Come back,” he said simply. “We’ll resolve this and get married.”

  But would he still want to get married when he learned of the baby?

  She had no way of knowing until she spoke to him.

  She reached down to grab Newman’s and Kramer’s collars as the dogs growled and barked at the visitors.

  “It’s okay, boys. Settle down. It’s okay. Where is Prince Remi?” she asked the security team.

  Perhaps he was waiting for her in a suite at the St. Regis, with roses and champagne.

  “At the palace, Your Highness, awaiting word of your imminent safe return.”

  So.

  He would do anything.

  Anything except jump on the first Concorde to New York.

  Instead he had sent his detectives to fetch her and bring her home like a poodle that had strayed off the property.

  “I thought . . . I thought he was coming for me. He said he was coming for me.”

  Was it her imagination, or did all the detectives suddenly avert their gazes, looking down and shuffling their feet.

  “He was planning to come, Your Highness,” one detective said. “But after he spoke to you, he received an unexpected visit from your—”

  “Something urgent came up,” another detective cut in sharply, with what appeared to Emmaline to be a warning glance at the other man. He quickly turned his attention back to her. “Shall we vacate the premises, Your Highness?”

  Emmaline looked down at Newman and Kramer, and then over her shoulder. She couldn’t just leave without gathering her things, could she?

  And she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye—and thank you—to Granger.

  But when she pictured that—pictured actually bidding him farewell—she felt sick inside.

  He might try to talk me out of it, she told herself.

  He would probably tell her that she could stay—that she should stay. He would nobly try to pretend that he didn’t mind the burden of a pregnant princess; that he was eager to go back to work at the Lockwood Enterprises for her sake.

  But she couldn’t let him do it.

  She couldn’t let him sacrifice his dream of being accountable only to himself.

  Yes, but what about the baby?

  There were times when Granger almost seemed to be looking forward to the baby.

  Well, it most certainly was an act. Granger Lockwood IV wasn’t cut out to be a father. He had said so himself.

  “Your Highness . . . ?” prodded one of the security officers.

  She spun abruptly toward him, turning her back on the apartment and lifting her chin to keep it from trembling.

  “Are you ready to leave?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, fighting back a wave of longing for Granger, and what could never possibly have been. “I am ready to leave.”

  At dusk, with an empty stomach and a throbbing head, Granger reached the foot of Newport’s Bellevue Avenue at last. It would have been a four-hour trip, at most, by car from midtown Manhattan.

  The bus was a different story. It was a local, which meant that it stopped in every rinky-dink suburban and New England town between the Port Authority and Pawtucket, located a good half hour past the Newport exit off the Interstate. In fact, it seemed to stop everyplace but Newport itself, meaning Granger had to catch a local bus and backtrack south to Aquidneck Island.

  The bus had let him off downtown, where he had walked past the charming shops of tourist-clogged Thames Street; past seafood restaurants with their tantalizing aromas; past luxury hotels, and rollicking bars, and extravagant yachts moored in the broad harbor.

  Granger had never before walked from the heart of town to Bellevue Avenue. Now, as he headed toward Seaside Serenade, the Lockwoods’ summer “cottage” located at the far end of the avenue, he found himself gazing at the opulent mansions. He had been inside most of them—all, in fact, but those that were now museums open to “regular” folks.

  All his life, Granger had been a part of this world. He had been to parties, clambakes, an
d charity balls there; had sailed with the heirs and dated the heiresses who inhabited these lavish homes.

  Now he was an outsider, who didn’t belong here any more than the nearby pair of sweatsuit-clad Midwesterners who stood gawking and taking pictures of the Vanderbilts’ Marble House through the massive gates.

  But that would change if Grandfather agreed to take him back. He could spend the night in his luxurious bedroom at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, and he could breakfast tomorrow on the terrace overlooking the Atlantic before departing for New York in a chauffeured limousine.

  Never, until these last few days, had he appreciated the trappings of his wealth. He would no longer take for granted the comforts and perks that accompanied the Lockwood name and fortune.

  Money couldn’t buy everything—but Granger had now come to realize that it could buy most of the things that mattered. And if you also possessed the other meaningful things—the things money couldn’t buy, like health, and family, and love—then you did, indeed, have everything.

  Brimming with renewed determination, Granger arrived at the tall iron gates of Seaside Serenade. The curving drive was lit by century-old lampposts, and strategically placed spotlights illuminated the mansion’s three-story granite face. Even now, at summer’s end, lush gardens gave off a tantalizing floral scent that carried Granger back to that day in the palace rose garden at summer’s beginning.

  He was filled with a fierce, aching need to hold Emmaline in his arms once again. Mere hours had passed since he had tiptoed out of the studio apartment, giving her one long, last look as she lay sleeping.

  Yet already he missed her desperately.

  He had so much to tell her. So much to ask her.

  If he dared . . .

  And he would dare, he decided—as long as he had more to offer her and their child than a cramped studio apartment in a lousy neighborhood.

  He wouldn’t spend the night here, Granger decided restlessly.

  He would do what he should have done upon discovering that Emmaline was pregnant. He would swallow his pride and have his conversation with Grandfather.

  Then he would rush directly back to New York, and Princess Emmaline, and say what he should have said all along.

  Thanks to supersonic trans-Atlantic flight, Princess Emmaline found herself back in Verdunia less than eight hours after leaving Granger’s studio apartment. While Prince Remi’s security escorts had tried to insist that she go directly to Buiron, all it had taken was a simple heartfelt phone call placed to Papa to get her own way.

  Remi had apparently kept the king apprised, so he knew already that she was en route to Europe. But Papa was elated when he heard her voice—so elated that he had quickly agreed that her reunion with Prince Remi should take place in Verdunia and not Buiron.

  Midnight had long since come and gone there, but the palace in Chimera was ablaze with light when Emmaline’s motorcade pulled through the tall gates. There was a crowd of press gathered in the street, but nowhere near the size of the throng that had been there on her wedding day only a few weeks earlier.

  A lifetime seemed to have passed since then, Emmaline thought wearily, resting her head against the leather upholstery as the car pulled around to the side entrance of the palace, out of view of the media.

  Her family was waiting inside, she knew, along with Prince Remi, who had been spirited into Chimera a short time ago without the knowledge of the press.

  As the car pulled to a stop, Emmaline brushed dog fur from her lap, trying not to think about the reproachful gazes Newman and Kramer had given her when she hugged them goodbye earlier.

  She closed her eyes, and Granger’s face appeared before her.

  “Your Highness, we’ve arrived,” a security guard said from the front seat beside the driver.

  Emmaline sighed and opened her eyes. “Yes, I see that, thank you.”

  Another guard was already opening the car door for her.

  She stepped out into the chilly night air and wrapped her bare arms around her stomach, subconsciously cradling the child within.

  The palace door was opened by a familiar uniformed butler.

  She looked past his shoulder, half expecting to see her parents, or her sisters, or Remi himself waiting there.

  But the great hall was empty.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked the guard.

  “Asleep, I would guess, at this ungodly hour.”

  Asleep. They were asleep. All of them. Even Remi.

  I adore you, and I would do anything to hold you in my arms again.

  Anything except fly to New York.

  Anything except lose sleep.

  Granger would have been waiting for me.

  The thought flitted into her mind out of nowhere, along with another image of the face she never again expected to see outside her wistful daydreams.

  She retreated to her private quarters, where she took the long, hot bath she had craved for days. Afterward she slipped into silk loungewear with a convenient drawstring waist. As she was combing her damp hair, there was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” she asked, braced to hear Remi’s voice.

  “Tabitha,” came the reply.

  Emmaline dropped the brush and hurried to embrace her lady-in-waiting, who had brought her a mug of hot tea and some buttered toast.

  “You look well,” her loyal friend told her.

  Emmaline glanced at her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror. She didn’t look well. She looked exhausted and ill, and there was a haunted expression in her eyes.

  Brynn would have told her the truth, she realized. But Tabitha wasn’t Brynn, and Emmaline wasn’t in America any longer. She was home in Verdunia, where she was royalty, and treated with the customary reverent respect.

  “Thank you, Tabitha. I feel well,” she lied.

  Tabitha lowered her voice to a whisper. “Did Mr. Lockwood take good care of you in your absence?”

  Mr. Lockwood. Granger. Emmaline was struck by a fierce wave of longing. She hadn’t even said goodbye.

  She looked at her loyal friend, and this time, she dared to speak the truth, heedless of the wistfulness her tone or expression might betray.

  “Yes, Tabitha,” she said softly. “He did take good care of me. Very good care, indeed.”

  * * *

  This time Debi Hanson wasn’t alone or asleep when the phone rang in her hotel suite in Buiron at three-thirty in the morning. She groaned and extricated herself from her companion’s bare, muscular limbs and reached past several cellophane-wrapped congratulatory gift baskets on the bedside table.

  “Yes?” she said curtly, trying not to pant into the receiver.

  “How quickly can you get back to Chimera?” Jack asked from across the Atlantic.

  Déjà vu, she thought, running a hand through her sweaty, passion-snarled hair.

  “At least two hours—why?” She wondered if the hotel conditioner would untangle her tresses. She had left her own back in Verdunia in her haste to get out of that last hotel in the wee hours.

  Jack said, “Because there’s a rumor—”

  She stifled a moan as a warm, wet mouth nuzzled the back of her neck.

  “—that Princess Emmaline is back at the palace.”

  Debi froze. “She’s back?”

  So Prince Remi’s ploy had actually worked?

  This was even better than she had imagined. Not only had she landed the interview of the century, but she had played a role in getting the star-crossed couple back together. Yes, it certainly appeared as though she, Debi Hanson, had singlehandedly—well, with a little help from Jack and of course Prince Remi—saved both kingdoms.

  “Where has she been all this time?” she asked Jack, brushing her lover’s groping hand from her breast as though it were a buzzing insect.

  “Nobody knows where she’s been. Possibly in New York, holed up in a grungy downtown apartment.”

  “In New York? In a grungy apartment?” Debi tried, and failed, to
picture the elegant princess slumming it in lower Manhattan.

  It was easier to imagine Princess Emmaline anywhere else—here, for instance.

  Debi gazed appreciatively around the lavish hotel suite, which had been upgraded as a courtesy after her triumphant interview aired. Management had also sent her a complimentary bottle of champagne—now empty, having rolled somewhere under the king-sized bed, she assumed, thinking back over the last few decadent hours.

  If Naomi Finkelmeyer could see me now, she thought gleefully, before turning her attention back to the conversation at hand.

  “Was she abducted?” Debi asked Jack, imagining a blindfolded, handcuffed princess with a duct-taped mouth being held in some downtown rathole.

  “It doesn’t sound like it. I’ve heard that an accomplice must have helped her escape Verdunia and that she willingly went to New York, but it’s unsubstantiated,” Jack was saying.

  “Was she actually seen there?”

  “A couple of homeless drunks claimed they saw a royal motorcade whisk her away this morning. So far nobody’s given them much credibility, but you never know. I’ve got a news team interviewing them now, and another one out at JFK trying to confirm that Princess Emmaline boarded a Concorde earlier. In the meantime, you have to get yourself over to the palace right away, Debi.”

  “Are they giving me another exclusive?”

  Jack hesitated.

  Debi scowled, knowing what that meant.

  “There’s been no official comment from the palace,” he said, “and no indication that the princess is willing to do any press with anyone.”

  “What about Prince Remi?” She certainly had an in with him.

  “Nobody’s saying a thing in Buiron, either. But you have to get to Chimera and see what you can uncover.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said, and hung up the phone.

  “Come on, baby,” Dolph Schumer said in his thick German accent, trailing moist kisses up her throat to her mouth, his breath hot in her face.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said, pushing him away. She wrinkled her nose as she bolted from the bed.

  He might be the most sought-after rock star in Europe, and a phenomenal lover as well, but he had the worst breath she had ever encountered.