The Princess

  “Better not get too familiar, Princess, here comes your little stud. You better warn him that if he hits me with his little whip, I may wrap it around his throat. Probably go around about four times,” he added, smiling.

  “Leave us alone,” she hissed as Julian approached. “Just leave us alone.”

  “Not until I know he can be trusted. Howdy, Count,” he said loudly. “The princess here has given me a talkin’ to set my ears ringin’. I’m sorry if I don’t know how to treat royalty. We Americans ain’t used to kings and dukes and counts and such. You two go on ahead. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse and stay way back here.”

  Count Julian had been surrounded by servants all his life—servants who were respectful and knew their place in life. He imagined that this American had at last recognized his place. He turned back to Aria. “Shall we walk, darling? Perhaps we should discuss our wedding preparations. I think we should be married within three months at the most. It will be autumn then and we shall honeymoon in that mountain retreat of the king’s.”

  “I don’t know, there is a world war going on.”

  “And there are many marriages being performed. People need a little happiness now.”

  “I agree, Princess,” J.T. said from behind them as he moved forward. “You two make a fine-lookin’ couple and you ought to share your future with the world. The princess could wear a long white dress, symbol of her purity, and one of those diamond crowns—but not too tall ’cause of his royal countship here. I can see it now.”

  Count Julian raised his riding crop.

  “Of course,” J.T. continued, “America will pay for the wedding—sort of an appreciation gift for selling us the vanadium.”

  The crop lowered.

  “We will return to the palace,” Julian said, taking Aria’s arm and leading her away.

  She was angry herself, and as they returned to the horses, she vowed she was going to elude Lieutenant Montgomery and spend some time alone with Julian.

  Julian’s face was a mask as he helped Aria mount then mounted himself. The three of them started down the mountainside.

  “Was it something I said?” J.T. asked, eyes bright as he reined his horse next to Aria’s.

  She kicked her horse forward and reached for Julian’s hand. “Tonight I will meet you alone, at nine-thirty in the Queen’s Garden under the gingko tree,” she whispered.

  He gave a curt nod but kept looking straight ahead.

  They rode halfway down the mountain without speaking, J.T. staying just inches away from the back of Aria’s horse. She glanced back a few times but he was always looking at the scenery with an intent expression. When they were back at the palace, she meant to talk to him about what she would and would not tolerate. And interfering with her growing relationship with Count Julian was one thing she would not abide. Another was his seeming interest in Gena. Gena was very young and frivolous and Aria could not allow her to spend time with an older, experienced man like Lieutenant Montgomery.

  J.T. made no sound before he leaped. One second he was on his horse and the next he was sailing through the air, leaping toward Aria. She heard a sound behind her and saw this enormous man flying toward her. Only half of her scream escaped.

  The shot missed her by inches. She was tumbling down the side of the horse, J.T. clutching her when the bullet whizzed over their heads.

  Julian’s horse reared, he lost the reins, and the horse tore down the mountainside, Julian barely hanging on. The other two horses, now riderless, followed Julian’s.

  J.T. twisted his body so that he landed first on the rocky ground, Aria on top, then he moved so that they rolled off the path and into a little gully hidden by bushes and tall undergrowth. He covered her body with his, completely protecting her as he lifted his head slightly to look at the steep mountainside facing them.

  “Was it a shot?” Aria whispered, looking up at his face.

  “Something big, is my guess, maybe a sporting rifle because it had a shiny barrel. I saw it glint in the sun.”

  “Perhaps it was a hunter.”

  He looked down at her. “And they thought our horses were bighorn sheep?” He looked back at the mountainside. “They were shooting at you, Princess.”

  “Oh,” she said, and her arms came up to wrap around him. “You saved my life.”

  “Again.” He looked back at her. “I think I like this time better.”

  He looked as if he were going to kiss her but he pulled away. “We have to get you home. We can’t take the path, we’d be too exposed. We’re going through the forest and we’re going to stop and listen often. No talking. Where’s the nearest point of civilization? I guess it would be too much to hope for a car, but maybe there’s a telephone. We need to call your army and get some protection on the trip down.”

  “There is a hunting lodge up the mountain,” she said. “There are caretakers there who can take a message down but there are no telephone lines on the mountain. The nearest telephone is at the bottom. But Julian will bring help.”

  “Don’t count on it, baby. He didn’t look like he’d stop running for miles, and if he gets back to the palace, he’ll probably hide under the covers.”

  “I resent your saying that. Julian is not a coward.”

  “There was a rifle shot and all I’ve seen is the back of him. He should have returned with the horses by now. How far is this lodge?”

  “It’s not far if we don’t use the road, but it’s straight up.”

  J.T. groaned.

  “It is a difficult climb, I admit, but—”

  “We’ll be exposed on the side of the mountain. Stay down and keep in the scrub oak as much as possible. Try to keep something between you and the sight of the rifleman.”

  “Perhaps he has gone.”

  “And miss an opportunity to pick you off? Come on, get up and let’s go.”

  Aria had never made the climb before and she only knew about it because the son of one of her ladies-in-waiting had been lost from the lodge. During the three-day search she had heard much about the surrounding terrain.

  The climb was strenuous and made worse because J.T. insisted they take the most difficult way. But he helped her over rocks, through groves of five-foot-tall oak trees struggling to survive, and under brush too thick to navigate except at a crawl.

  It was noon when they reached the hunting lodge. J.T. pushed Aria into some shrubbery then began pounding on the door. A frightened-looking older woman opened it.

  “Sir, you cannot—”

  J.T. pushed past her and pulled Aria inside.

  “Your Royal Highness,” the older woman said, bobbing a curtsy.

  “It’s all right, Brownie,” Aria said. “This is Lieutenant Montgomery, an American,” she said, as if that explained his manners. “Could we have some lunch?”

  “No one told us of your coming. We aren’t prepared.” The woman looked as if she were about to cry as she stood there fiddling with her apron.

  J.T. moved away from the window he was looking out. “What are you having for lunch?”

  Brownie gave him a quick look up and down as if to determine what his status was. “A humble shepherd pie with a potato crust. It’s not fit for a princess.”

  “Sounds great to me,” J.T. said. “How about you, honey?”

  Brownie’s face showed her shock.

  “He is an American,” Aria reemphasized. “The pie sounds excellent. May we have one?”

  “Yes, my lady.” Brownie disappeared into another room.

  “Stop calling me honey!” Aria said the minute they were alone.

  “Is ‘darling’ the name royalty use?” He was looking out the window again.

  “Do you see Julian yet?”

  “No sign of the front or back of him.” He turned toward her. “You seem to be taking this well. But then you always recover from assassination attempts rather quickly. They only seem to make you hungry.”

  “It is part of my training. Since the beginning of time, people
have wanted to kill royalty, either for the attention it brought them, for personal grievances, or for political ideals.”

  “Who taught you to spout out that answer?”

  “My mother,” Aria said before she thought.

  He looked at her awhile. “You know something? I think I’m beginning to get to know you. How about a double whiskey?”

  “Please,” she said gratefully, and he smiled.

  She was doing her best to remain the princess, to keep her head high, but inside she was shaking. Someone here in Lanconia was trying to kill her. One of her own people wanted her dead. She was almost grateful when J.T. pulled her from the foyer into the parlor hung with medieval tapestries and filled with chairs covered in dark, threadbare needlepoint.

  “Sit down,” he ordered as he went to a sideboard and poured a Waterford glass three-quarters full of whiskey.

  She gulped a third of it. Her eyes watered but she needed the whiskey’s warmth.

  “I know about the time on the island and now this. Have there been any other attempts on your life? Maybe some ‘accidents’?”

  “I tripped over something on the stairs a week before I left for America. Lady Werta was behind me and caught my dress or I would have fallen.”

  “What else?”

  Aria looked away. “Someone killed one of my dogs,” she said softly. “I felt it was perhaps a warning to me.”

  “Who did you tell about these things?”

  “No one. There was no one I could tell. My grandfather is too ill—”

  “He’s as much ill from pampering as anything else,” J.T. said as he poured himself a whiskey. “I’m going to stay by you every moment. You’re not getting out of my sight. You’re to go nowhere without me.”

  “But I cannot possibly do that. I have many responsibilities. My grandfather has never believed in a monarch who dies one day and leaves the country to an untrained person. I am always in the public eye. It is the price I pay for the privilege of being a princess.”

  “So far I can’t see that it’s much of a privilege.”

  “And I have a duty to my fiancé,” she said, draining her glass. “Julian is right: a royal wedding would help our country.”

  “Luncheon is served, Your Royal Highness,” Brownie said at the doorway.

  J.T. drank the rest of his whiskey. “Great. Send me an invitation. I’ll do everything I can to help just as soon as I’m convinced he’s not involved in this. Let’s eat.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  TWENTY minutes later Count Julian arrived with what indeed looked to be an army. They were planning to use the hunting lodge for their headquarters while searching for the princess and her attacker, but Julian strode into the dining room to see Her Royal Highness sitting at a table with a commoner and sharing a disgustingly coarse meal.

  “Good to see you, Count,” the American called. “Thought we’d seen the last of your back.”

  “Seize him!” Count Julian ordered one of the four guardsmen behind him.

  Aria stood. “No,” she said to the guard. “He saved my life and he is not to be harmed. Leave us.”

  With a court bow, the guard and his men left the room.

  “Julian,” Aria said firmly. “The guard and you will escort me home. I have engagements this afternoon.”

  J.T. stood and walked back toward them. “You can’t go into the public.”

  “What am I to do? Lock myself in a tower? Should I find a food taster to check for poison? Am I to incarcerate myself?” She turned to Julian. “To explain the appointments I missed this morning, we will say that I fell from my horse and had to walk down the mountain. It will be better to be laughed at than to frighten people.” She walked ahead of him out the door.

  J.T. stopped Julian. “We can’t let her do this. It’s too dangerous for her.”

  Julian somehow managed to look down his nose at the taller J.T. “You cannot possibly understand. She is a crown princess; she will be queen.”

  “I understand that you’re supposed to love her,” J.T. said.

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “Her life is in danger, you little—” J.T. stopped. “Or would you like to see her out of the way?”

  “If this were another era and you were a gentleman, I’d call you out for that.” He stepped around J.T. and left the room.

  “I’m ready when you are,” J.T. called after him.

  * * *

  For J.T. the rest of the day was a nightmare. He stayed as near as possible to Aria but too many people pushed them apart. They were eager people with their hands outstretched, people with tears in their eyes who wanted to see their princess. She had been away for so long and they desperately wanted to see that she was well and not as ill as had been rumored.

  As an American, it was difficult for J.T. to understand what she meant to these people. An ancient man in a wheelchair burst into tears when Aria held his hands in hers. “I have not lived in vain,” he croaked out. “My life has some meaning now.”

  J.T. tried to envision the Americans’ reaction to seeing the president. Probably half of them would use the opportunity to tell him what he was doing wrong. Also, there was always the feeling of impermanence. Four years and he was out.

  But Aria was a princess for life—however long that would be, J.T. thought with a jolt.

  These people lined the street as she walked wherever she could. At the Scientific Academy he stood against the wall and listened to an incredibly boring speech about bugs. He let out a loud yawn that made that lipless Lady Werta turn and glare at him.

  At 6:45 Aria was ushered into an ancient, highly polished Rolls to be driven back to the palace. J.T. pushed his way through the crowd, opened the opposite door, and climbed in with Lady Werta and Aria.

  “Get out!” Lady Werta shouted. “Stop the car,” she screeched to the driver.

  “It’s all right,” Aria said.

  “No, it is not all right,” Lady Werta sniffed. “You cannot be seen with him. You are going to make people suspicious and then we will never get the real princess back. We will never see her again.”

  Aria started to pat Lady Werta’s hand but J.T. shook his head. “What do you want?” she asked angrily, playing Kathy Montgomery, but it wasn’t easy for her. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

  “Yeah, well, the old king hired me to protect the princess and I can’t do that if you’re out in the middle of all these people.”

  “She must do her duties,” Lady Werta said haughtily.

  J.T. started to say more but he stopped. Didn’t any of these people have a bit of sense? They adored their princess, but if they didn’t protect her she wasn’t going to exist anymore.

  It was only with reluctance that J.T. left Aria once they were back at the palace. His rooms were far away from hers and he knew he couldn’t get to her quickly enough should she need help.

  There was a small man wearing what seemed to be the household colors of gray and gold standing in his room.

  “What are you doing here?” J.T. asked suspiciously.

  “His Majesty has asked that I take care of you during your stay in Lanconia. My name is Walters and I will dress you, deliver messages, whatever you need. His Majesty has instructed me to be perfectly discreet. Your bath is waiting and your dress uniform is pressed.”

  “I don’t need anyone,” J.T. began, but then he thought that perhaps Walters might be useful.

  “Here is a letter from His Majesty,” Walters said.

  The letter, on thick cream-colored paper and sealed with red wax impressed with a coat of arms, told J.T. that he might trust Walters with his life, that he had been told everything, and that he was excellent at hearing things.

  J.T. began to undress, brushing Walters’s hands away when the older man started to unbutton his uniform shirt.

  “Did you hear what happened today?” he asked Walters.

  “It was put about that Her Highness had an accident.”

  J.
T. gave Walters a sharp look. “Was that all you heard?”

  “Count Julian said she’d lost her way, but I managed to overhear him telling Lady Bradley that someone shot at her. The count seemed to think it was a hunting accident.” Walters turned his head away as J.T. finished undressing and stepped into the bathtub.

  “What do you think?” J.T. asked.

  “I buried her little dog, sir. Someone killed it with a knife, but it had been cut open from neck to tail then put under her bed while she slept. She saw its tail sticking out between her slippers. She called me to take it away before anyone else saw it.”

  J.T. leaned back in the old-fashioned, short, deep, recessed tub. All the bathrooms in the palace had been added about the turn of the century and were sumptuously done in squares of marble, with heavy porcelain fixtures and taps in the shapes of swans or porpoises. There was hot water but it took an eternity to get it up from the bowels of the palace. J.T. remembered Aria saying she had told no one of her “accidents,” yet this servant, Walters, had taken her murdered dog away. How many other “no ones” knew nothing of what was happening?

  “Walters,” J.T. said, “tell me who lives in this place.”

  Walters recited a list of people and their lineages and titles that sounded like something from a fairy tale. There were three young princes, all direct descendants from a male monarch. There was Aria’s Aunt Bradley, the Duchess of Daren, a woman who was directly related to nearly every royal house in the world. “Except the Asians, of course,” Walters added. Her Royal Highness Sophie was the king’s sister, and Barbara—“a mere child,” Walters said—who was Aria’s deceased father’s deceased brother’s only child.

  “How did Aria’s parents die?” J.T. asked suspiciously.

  “Her father caught a cold but would not postpone or cancel a scheduled three-day trip to the southern part of the country. It rained and he stood in the rain to take the bows and curtsies of his subjects. He died two weeks later of pneumonia.”

  “And her mother?”

  “Cancer. It might have been operable but Her Royal Highness told no one until she could no longer stand.”

  J.T. digested the information. No wonder Aria was the way she was. It was bred in her.