The Princess Read online

  Dolly came over at one o’clock, just after Mrs. Humphreys left. “What’s going on?” she asked by way of greeting.

  Aria had always lived surrounded by servants and she knew that the only people in whom one could confide were blood relatives. “I was about to have luncheon. Will you join me?”

  “I’m not interested in food. Floyd told Gail who told Bill that J.T. was out all night last night. You two have a fight?”

  “There is a lovely shrimp salad and cold tomatoes.”

  “Honey,” Dolly said, putting her hands on Aria’s shoulders. “I know everything. I know you’re a princess and I know you want to get back to your country and I know how this marriage came about. But I also know something bad has happened, and I want you to talk to me.”

  Perhaps Aria was more American than she thought. In the last few days she had sat by quietly while the other women talked and revealed the most intimate secrets about themselves.

  To Aria’s disbelief, she burst into tears. Dolly’s arms about her felt good and Dolly led her to the couch.

  After Aria had regained some control, Dolly urged her to talk.

  “He…he made love to me.” Aria sniffed, part of her mind not believing what she was revealing. Royalty could never trust anyone not royal, as outsiders tended to write books—one couldn’t even trust the aristocracy. “But then he hated me. I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Bill and I fought about it but he finally told me some of what J.T. said. Who is Count Julie?”

  “That is Lieutenant Montgomery’s name for the man I was engaged to marry.” She blew her nose.

  “Did you know J.T. thinks you’re still going to marry this count?”

  Aria didn’t answer.

  Dolly leaned forward. “Why does J.T. think that?”

  “He wouldn’t marry me unless he believed our marriage was temporary. Of course I cannot get a divorce, it isn’t thinkable.”

  Dolly leaned back. “Then J.T. will be king.”

  “Prince consort.” Aria waved her hand. “But I don’t understand why he’s so angry with me now.”

  “Easy. Of course he never admitted it to Bill, but he’s afraid he’s falling in love with you. He thinks he has to turn you over to someone else and he doesn’t want it to hurt so much.”

  “Perhaps I should tell him the marriage is permanent.”

  Dolly’s mouth dropped open. “Tell a red-blooded American male that he’s been snookered? Bamboozled? Taken for a ride?”

  “Not the done thing?”

  Dolly laughed. “I think you ought to make him finish falling in love with you.”

  “Wear low-cut dresses, feed him strawberries and wine?” Aria said, having no idea how to make a man fall in love with her.

  “First you have to get his attention. You can wear a sexy dress to the Commander’s Ball.”

  “For his mother,” Aria muttered.

  Dolly laughed. “I heard she might be here. She’s some bigwig, isn’t she?”

  “Enough that the manners of a royal princess are considered to need work to meet her.”

  Dolly put her hand on Aria’s arm. “Every man is that way about his mother. Bill told me so many glowing stories about his mother that I was ready to worship at her feet. He constantly bragged about her cooking and he insisted that I beg and plead if necessary to get her fabulous recipes. So when we went to visit the first time I took along a pad and pencil to take notes. Some cook she was! You know how she made spaghetti sauce? Two cans of tomato soup and one can of tomato paste. It was ghastly. Her ‘famous’ turkey dressing consisted of nine slices of bread cut into cubes, a half cup of water, and an eighth of a teaspoon of sage. No onion, celery, or anything else. She stuffed it into the turkey and cooked the bird until it was so dry you could have used slices of the breast for powder puffs. Then the old biddy had the gall to ask me if I thought I was a good enough cook for her little boy.”

  Aria’s eyes twinkled. “Count Julian’s mother curtsies to me and addresses me as Your Royal Highness.”

  Dolly laughed. “A dream come true. I’d like to see Bill’s fat ol’ mother curtsy to me. Does she kiss your ring?”

  “She touches her forehead to the back of my extended hand,” Aria said airily.

  “That I’d like to see.”

  “If I ever get home, you have an invitation.”

  “Deal. Hey! How’d you like to go to a movie? There’s a matinee on today.”

  “I would love it.”

  The women had heaping plates full of shrimp salad for lunch and they drank most of a bottle of wine. They were laughing as they set off to walk to the movie theater.

  Aria was smiling and laughing when she heard Dolly gasp. When she turned to look, Dolly placed herself in front of Aria. “Let’s go this way,” Dolly said. “The cannonball tree is in bloom. I hear it’s the only one on the island. It’s really very beautiful and—”

  Aria stepped around Dolly to look across the street. J.T. sat at a tiny table at a cafe, a pretty redhead across from him. While she watched, he lifted the woman’s hand and kissed it.

  “Yes, let’s see the cannonball tree,” Aria said, starting to walk briskly.

  Dolly ran after her. “So what are you going to do?”

  “A wife ignores her husband’s infidelities.”

  “What!” Dolly grabbed Aria’s arm and halted her. “That may be the way in your country but that’s not American. You should have gone over there and snatched that floozy bald.”

  “The woman? But what has she done? She merely accepted his invitation. Perhaps she doesn’t know that he’s married. It is Lieutenant Montgomery who has committed the wrong.”

  “I never saw it like that, but I guess you’re right. So, anyway, what are you going to do to get him back?”

  “A royal princess is above revenge,” she said, her nose in the air.

  “There’s the difference between you and me. I’d do something.”

  They were silent the rest of the way to the theater. The movie was Springtime in the Rockies and one of the players was an outrageously dressed woman named Carmen Miranda. To Aria, she was a caricature of what Americans seemed to think all foreigners were like. Dolly kept laughing at the woman’s eye rolling and mispronunciations but Aria did not find the performance amusing.

  That’s what Jarl thinks the people of my country are like, she thought. He’s not sure but what I won’t show up at his American ball with a dozen bananas on top of my head. He worries that I’ll embarrass his pedigreed mother when the truth is my ladies-in-waiting have more exalted family trees than she does. He worries about my conduct while he publicly consorts with a redheaded harlot—a fake redhead, at that.

  Dolly’s words—What are you going to do to get him back?—echoed in her head.

  Maybe she was becoming an American, maybe the short hair and the flowered cotton dresses were making her an American, because she didn’t feel like ignoring Jarl’s (Only my mother calls me Jarl, she thought with disgust; one’s initials were what was embroidered on one’s linens) infidelity.

  She looked up at the movie. Carmen Miranda was wearing a purple and white frothy concoction now.

  Aria began to fantasize about meeting her illustrious mother-in-law with her belly bare, a slit up her skirt, and an eighteen-inch headdress weaving about on her head.

  “Something that sparkles,” she whispered.

  “What’s that?” Dolly asked.

  “Has this woman recorded any of her songs?”

  “Carmen Miranda? Sure. She has lots of records out.”

  Aria smiled and began studying the woman’s movements. She was so exaggerated that she would be easy to imitate.

  After the movie Dolly saw by Aria’s eyes that she was happier than she had been. “Cheer you up?”

  “I am going to be just what my husband thinks I am. I am going to the Commander’s Ball dressed as Carmen Miranda. I am going to meet Lieutenant Montgomery’s mother and