The Princess

  When she looked back at him again, he seemed to be sleeping but he extended his arm out to her. Without thinking what she was doing, she climbed into the hammock beside him. She tried to turn her back to him but the hammock pulled them together and the stiff, cramped position made her back ache.

  “Pardon me,” she said, as if she were passing him on the street, and turned so that her head was on his shoulder. She made an attempt to pull his shirt closed but it was caught under him so she had to put her head against his chest. To her surprise, the sensation wasn’t unpleasant at all.

  He curled both arms around her and she heard him chuckle softly. It was better not to think seriously about what she was doing. A desperate situation called for desperate measures. Besides, his big warm body felt so very good. She moved her leg by his, then crooked one knee and put it over his leg. She sighed happily and went to sleep.

  * * *

  “Wake up, it’s morning,” said a cross voice in her ear.

  She had no desire to wake up, so she just snuggled closer to the man.

  He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away to stare at her. “I told you to get up. And fix your hair! It’s come down.”

  She wasn’t fully awake. Her eyes were half open, her hair falling over her shoulders. She gave him a soft smile. “Good morning.”

  The next minute he pushed her out of the hammock and onto the ground. Wide-awake now, she rubbed her bruised posterior.

  “You’re the dumbest broad I ever met,” he muttered angrily. “Didn’t you ever go to school and learn the facts of life?”

  “If you are referring to a public school, I have never attended. I had tutors and governesses.” She stretched. “I slept very well, did you?”

  “No!” he snapped. “I slept rotten. In fact, I didn’t sleep much at all. Thank God this is our last day together. After this ‘vacation’ I am going back to the war to rest. I told you to go fix your hair. Pull it back the way you had it, just as tight as you can get it. And put your underwear back on.” With that he stomped away down the path.

  Aria stared after him for a moment then began to smile. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with him but it was making her feel absolutely heavenly. She walked to the water and looked at her reflection in a clear little pool.

  Many men had asked for her hand in marriage but quite often they had done so without having met her. They wanted to marry a queen, regardless of what she looked like. Count Julian, sixteen years her senior, had asked her grandfather’s permission to marry her when Aria was eight.

  Aria felt her hair. It was dirty right now but when it was clean…She glanced down the path, didn’t see the man, so she looked inside his crate of provisions. There was no shampoo but she did find a fat bar of soap and a skimpy towel.

  Hurriedly, she undressed and stepped into the stream. She was lathering her hair when he returned. He stopped and stared, eyes wide, mouth dropped open.

  She grabbed the tiny towel and tried to hide her nude body behind a tree branch. “Go away. Get out of here.”

  With a look of dumb obedience, he turned and left the camp.

  Aria smiled and then she grinned. She began humming. That odious man and the awful things he had said to her: “skinny ass,” “you could walk stark naked in front of me and you wouldn’t interest me.” How utterly lovely his stares had made her feel. Of course he wasn’t really anyone, but sometimes that type of man…She wasn’t supposed to know about it but a cousin of hers had borne a child without being married and it was said that the father was the footman who wound her bedroom clock each night. Aria had heard her mother say that of course the footman had hypnotized the poor girl. Smiling even more broadly, Aria wondered.

  She took her time dressing—and didn’t put her underwear back on—and began to comb her hair. She was still combing when he returned.

  “I got lobster for breakfast and there’s crackers in the crate.”

  He stopped talking and she was aware that he was watching her. She smiled slightly as she played with her long, dark hair in the early morning breeze.

  Suddenly, he grabbed her shoulders and hauled her up to face him. “Lady, you are playing with fire. You may think I’m some servant of yours you can tease and still be safe with but you’re wrong.”

  With his fingers digging into her shoulders, he pulled her to him and kissed her in a fierce, hungry way. When he had finished, he pushed her away.

  “You’re a twenty-four-year-old child, an innocent little girl, and I’m willing to leave you that way for your Duke Julian, but baby, don’t push me. I’m not your servant and I’m not safe. Now get over there and haul up that net and give me those shrimp.”

  It took Aria a moment to react. She put her hand to her mouth. Julian had kissed her once but only gently and only after asking her permission. It was not a raw, hot thing like this man’s kiss.

  “I hate you,” she whispered.

  “Good! I don’t feel any love for you either. Now scat!”

  Breakfast was a quiet, sullen thing with neither of them talking.

  After they had eaten, he lit a cigarette. Aria opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have her permission to smoke but closed it again.

  She didn’t feel inclined to speak to him and now she was somewhat afraid of him. How very much she wished she could get off this island and away from him.

  After his cigarette, he stood, gruffly told her to stay in the camp, then disappeared down the pathway.

  Aria sat for a long while, hugging her knees to her and thinking of her grandfather. How she wished she could go home where people and places were familiar.

  After a few hours, when the man didn’t return, she made her way down the path to the beach. He was lying under the single palm tree, his eyes closed, his shirt open, his rifle leaning against the tree.

  “Planning to go fishing again?” he asked, not opening his eyes.

  She did not reply as just then they heard a motorboat.

  J.T. was on his feet in seconds. “Get down,” he commanded. “And stay there. Don’t come out until I say it’s okay.” He grabbed his rifle and started running along the beach.

  Aria crouched behind the tree and watched, but then she saw the man stand up straight and wave his arm in greeting. Feeling a bit foolish, she stood, smoothed her skirt, and tidied her hair. With a dress with no sleeves, a too short skirt, and hair that had not seen a hairdresser for a week, she did the best she could.

  With all the grace of her years of training, she walked down the beach toward Lieutenant Montgomery and the man who was not getting out of the motorboat.

  “I’ve never been so glad to see anybody in my life,” J.T. was saying to the man, who was a great deal smaller than Lieutenant Montgomery.

  “Dolly made me come early. She imagined all sorts of things happening to you. And besides, I thought I might stay here and do a little fishing before we go back.”

  “No thanks. I want to go back where it’s nice and safe.”

  “You did get lonely then. I told you—” He broke off when he saw Aria. “Well, you devil,” he said, chuckling and looking at Aria admiringly. She was obviously a classy dame, he thought. The way she walked, the way she stood, reeked with class. Bill knew J.T.’s family had some money and this was just the type of dish he had imagined J.T. would go for. He would like to see J.T. married—maybe he wouldn’t be so jealous then of J.T.’s friendship with Dolly if J.T. had his own wife. “You certainly put one over on me.”

  “It’s not what you think,” J.T. snapped at Bill, then turned to Aria. “I told you to stay out of sight.”

  Bill smiled knowingly. A lovers’ spat. Then he looked at Aria more intently. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” Bill asked. “And, J.T., aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  J.T. sighed. “Bill Frazier, this is Her Royal Highness—” He whirled on Aria. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Princess!” Bill gasped. “That’s who you look like, that princess who visited the plant day
before yesterday.”

  “But I was here,” Aria said, eyes wide. “I have been here for many days.” Years actually, she thought.

  J.T. was frowning as he grabbed Aria’s arm and pulled her toward the palm tree.

  “Hey,” Bill said nervously, “you think you ought to treat a princess like that? I mean, isn’t her country valuable or something?”

  “Yeah, something.” J.T. stopped under the tree. “Now tell me why those men were shooting at you.”

  “Shooting?” Bill asked, running up behind them. “When I saw her, she was surrounded by about fifty servicemen. I never heard anything about any shooting.”

  “Bill,” J.T. said. “When your princess was visiting the plant, this princess was here with me.”

  Bill looked confused. “You have a sister?”

  “She does not look like me,” Aria said, equally confused.

  “Start talking,” J.T. said.

  As quickly as possible, Aria told of being kidnapped and of escaping.

  “You can untie your hands but you can’t unbutton your clothes?” J.T. said, one eyebrow arched.

  “One does what one must.” She glared at him.

  “Ahem,” Bill said, drawing their attention. “You think the guys that kidnapped you slipped in a double?”

  “A double?” Aria asked.

  “Someone is impersonating you,” J.T. explained, and shocked Aria into silence.

  Bill gave J.T. a hard look. “How do we know which one’s fake?”

  J.T. looked Aria up and down. “This one is the real princess. I’d stake my life and the lives of my family on that. No one could put on an act like hers.”

  Bill looked at Aria as if he had never seen her before. “My wife sure wanted to meet you. When I got home the other day, she asked me a hundred questions about you—her. She wanted to know what you were wearin’, what you looked like, if you wore a crown.” He stopped. “But I guess that wasn’t you.”

  Aria gave him a hint of a smile. “Perhaps I will grant your wife an audience someday.”

  Bill looked back at J.T., his eyes wide. “Is she real?”

  “More or less. We have to figure out what to do about this.”

  Aria thought the problem had an obvious solution. “You must take me back to your government officials. I will explain what has happened and they will remove this imposter.”

  “And how are they going to know which one is the real princess?” J.T. asked with the voice of a father talking to an annoying child.

  “You will tell them. You are an American.”

  “I’m a commoner, remember?” J.T. said with anger.

  “I thought all Americans were equal,” she shot back at him. “According to my studies, each American is as important as another. You are each one a king.”

  “You—” J.T. began.

  “Wait a minute,” Bill interrupted. “Could we do this without you two fighting?”

  J.T. looked at Aria. “Do you know any higher-ups in Washington? Generals? Senators?”

  “Yes, General Brooks stayed a week in Lanconia trying to persuade my grandfather to allow me to go on this trip. My grandfather will not like—”

  “Her grandfather is the king,” J.T. said to Bill. “Then what we have to do is get you to D.C. and General Brooks.”

  Aria straightened her back. “I am ready to go. As soon as I get my clothes, I will be ready to travel with you. Oh,” she said, and for the first time she realized the enormity of what was happening. She couldn’t go back to her clothes or her dressers or her ladies-in-waiting. She had no way to even get back to Lanconia. “Did the woman actually look like me?” Aria whispered.

  “Come to think of it, she wasn’t nearly as pretty as you,” Bill said, grinning.

  J.T. gave Bill a look of disgust. “Look, the important thing is to get the vanadium for America. I imagine that the reason you were replaced is so the imposter can turn the vanadium over to an enemy.”

  “Vanadium?” Bill asked.

  “It’s an alloy that you put in steel to make it harder,” J.T. said impatiently. He gave Aria a critical look. “No general will see you looking like that. Bill, you think we can make it to Miami in that boat?”

  “Miami! That’ll take hours.”

  “That’s all the time we have. We’ll buy her some clothes, put her on a train to D.C., and that’s the end of it. We’ve done our part.”

  “But she’s a stranger in a strange country. Shouldn’t someone go with her?” Bill asked.

  “It’s war, remember? We both have to report to work at nine tomorrow morning. In war, they don’t dock you for being late, they shoot you. She’ll be all right as soon as she gets to General Brooks.” He hesitated. “Besides, I can’t go with her.” J.T. turned toward the path. “Come on, let’s go shopping.”

  Bill gave Aria a nervous smile then ran after his friend. “J.T., you’re crazy. It’ll be midnight by the time we get to Miami and besides that it’s Sunday. No stores will be open and how are you going to pay for clothes for her? She doesn’t have any money and you can’t very well buy her new clothes at Woolworth’s, you know. And then there’s clothing coupons. I think you’re going to have to turn her over to the government and let them handle her.”

  “No,” was all J.T. said.

  “I don’t guess you could give me a reason, could you? I mean, after all I’m in this too.”

  J.T. stopped and turned. “Somebody in Key West tried to kill her. If she walks up to this imposter princess and declares herself, I figure she’ll be dead in two days. I’ve heard of General Brooks, he has some brains. He’ll know what to do with her.”

  “You have more faith in the brass than I do.” Bill followed J.T. as they crawled on all fours through the brush.

  Thirty minutes later they had J.T.’s gear in the boat and were ready to go. Bill held out his hand to help Aria.

  “She’ll fall flat on her face before she touches you,” J.T. said with disgust.

  Aria concentrated on stepping into the swaying boat without falling.

  “Oh hell,” J.T. said, “we haven’t got all night.” He picked Aria up, and half tossed her over the side. “Now sit there and behave yourself.”

  Aria kept her back rigid and refused to look at him but she couldn’t keep the blood from reddening her cheeks. A dungeon was going to be too good for this man.

  They took off with more speed than she liked but she held on to the single seat in the boat as tightly as she could. It would no doubt give that odious man a good deal of satisfaction to see her tumble over the side of the boat.

  After a few moments J.T. took the controls of the boat away from Bill and somehow got even more speed out of it. The salt air hit Aria’s face, and after her initial shock, it began to feel good. Now and then Bill would ask her if she was all right, but Lieutenant Montgomery just kept his eyes on the water.

  In the late afternoon they stopped in Key Largo for gas. Although her muscles were stiff from holding on for so long, Aria sat in her place on the boat. She had been trained to sit still for hours at a time.

  “Where can I get some sandwiches?” J.T. asked the dock owner.

  “Gertie’s at the end of the pier.”

  Bill stayed with the boat and Aria while J.T. got the food.

  “What’s this?” Bill asked when J.T. returned. He was looking inside the bag of food. “A knife and fork for sandwiches? And a china plate?”

  J.T. took the bags from Bill’s hand. “You ready to go?” he snapped.

  “Just waiting for you,” Bill answered with a matching snap.

  Bill boarded while J.T. shoved off then jumped in. As soon as they were headed north again, J.T. slammed an egg salad sandwich on the cheap plate he had had to pay dearly for and handed it to Aria with the knife and fork.

  Aria, for the first time in days, felt comfortable eating. She didn’t notice the way Bill kept gaping at her.

  “A real princess,” he said. “Wait’ll Dolly hears about this.”
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  “Dolly isn’t going to hear about this,” J.T. said emphatically. “Nobody is going to hear about this. We keep it to ourselves.”

  Bill started to say something, but after looking at J.T., he closed his mouth.

  They arrived in Miami at midnight.

  “We’ll have to wait until morning when the stores open,” Bill said, then groaned. “The navy frowns on being late. Think we’ll get the brig?”

  J.T. leaped off the boat before it was fully docked. “Secure the boat and get her off. I have to make a phone call.”

  Aria unsteadily stepped onto the dock and made her way up the ladder. She was determined not to show her weariness.

  “It’s settled,” J.T. said. “There’ll be a cab here in a few minutes and my friend will meet us at a clothing store. There’s a train out of here at four A.M. Come on, Princess, you’re not too tired to buy clothes, are you?”

  Aria straightened her shoulders. “I am not tired at all.”

  The taxi arrived with a squeal of brakes and J.T. lost no time in pushing Aria into the back seat.

  “She seems awfully nice to me,” she heard Bill saying. “Maybe you shouldn’t treat her like that.”

  J.T. didn’t answer as he climbed into the front seat and gave the driver the address. They rode through the deserted, dark streets.

  “Are you sure this place is open, bub?” the taxi driver asked J.T.

  “It will be by the time we get there.”

  They stopped in front of a small shop in a residential area of big, expensive mansions that were hidden behind vine-covered walls.

  “Don’t look like much to me,” Bill said. “Maybe we oughtta try downtown.”

  J.T. got out of the car. “There he is,” he said, walking toward a long black Cadillac that was pulling to the curb.

  Bill jumped out.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience, Ed,” J.T. was saying, hand outstretched. “If it weren’t for helping with the war, I’d never have asked you.”

  “Think nothing of it,” an older, gray-haired man said. He had the plump, well-cared-for look of a wealthy man. “The clerk isn’t here yet?” he asked, frowning.

  “No,” J.T. answered. “How’s your family?”