The Princess Read online

  “I haven’t had so much fun in years.”

  “You’ll come home with us now?”

  Mrs. Montgomery laughed. “You, my dear new daughter, are going to have to face your husband alone. Just remember that the Montgomery bark is worse than the bite. Stand up to him. Give him a good long hard fight, then another good long time in bed, and you’ll be fine.”

  Aria blushed.

  “I have to go now. I have my own husband waiting for me in Maine. I hope the two of you come to visit very soon. Oh, by the way, were you actually suffering from morning sickness?”

  “No,” Aria said, smiling. “But give me time.”

  “The first one will probably be here before the year is out if I know my son. He’s always liked girls.” She kissed Aria’s cheek. “Now I really must go. Come see me soon.” She left the rest room.

  “She’s not like my mother-in-law at all,” Dolly whispered. “That woman would never pour tomato soup over spaghetti.”

  Aria looked toward the door. “Your American men do not deserve the women.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dolly said, and ran to lean against the door as the first people reached it and began trying to enter.

  “Grab your raincoat and climb out the window. I’ll hold them off. And you’re right about the women,” she called as Aria’s foot disappeared out the window.

  J.T. was waiting for her.

  “Of course,” he said before she was halfway out the window, “where else would I find my royal wife but climbing out the bathroom window?” He took her about the waist and helped her down. “You go shopping and you get arrested for shoplifting. Of course you’ve more than conquered that problem. All the shop owners in town now genuflect at the sight of you. You go to a ball and you humiliate me. You have my own mother prancing about half dressed.”

  He led her to his car, opened the door for her, and she climbed in. As she waited for him to walk around the car, she stuck her hands in the pocket of her raincoat and found his pocket knife. Mrs. Montgomery must have put it there.

  “This is not the way an American wife acts,” J.T. said as he opened the car door and got inside. “Nor is this the way a royal princess acts. Nobody acts as you did tonight.”

  “You are right,” she said contritely. “This is a terrible dress for anyone to wear.” Very solemnly, she took the knife and cut the inch of ribbon that connected the two cups of the halter top, and exposed her breasts to the dark interior of the car. “And the skirt must go too,” she said, holding the knife at the slit and moving so her leg was exposed from hip on down.

  J.T. started to speak, then he glanced out the back window. He was on her instantly, covering her body with his.

  “I want to see you in the morning, Lieutenant Montgomery” came a man’s voice from outside.

  “Yes sir!” J.T. replied, still covering Aria.

  The admiral looked embarrassed at the intimate scene and walked away.

  J.T. and Aria looked at each other then burst out laughing.

  He kissed her passionately, his hand fumbling under her coat and searching for her breast. “You were great, baby, absolutely great.”

  She kissed him back, moving her hands to the buttons on his dress uniform. “Was I? Better than your redhead?”

  “She’s my secretary, that’s all.”

  She pushed at him. “You kiss your secretary’s hand?” She was getting out of breath. He was tearing at her skirt.

  “When she stays up all night typing a report for me, I do. What did you sew this with? Fishing tackle?”

  His elbow hit the horn, making them both come to their senses. He looked at her, his eyes hot and hooded, then he rolled off of her and started the car.

  Using the same techniques she had used to free herself from her kidnappers’ ropes, Aria wriggled out of the remnants of the Carmen Miranda dress so that she was nude under the raincoat.

  J.T. drove too fast to reach their house and he must have cooled off some too because he started lecturing her again as soon as they were inside. “You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, yet you display yourself like tonight. This was not American behavior. This was not the behavior of my wife.”

  She dropped the raincoat and stood nude before him. “Is this American? Is this the behavior of your wife?” she asked innocently.

  He blinked a couple of times. “Not exactly, but it’ll do for the moment.” A split second later he was on top of her, knocking her to the floor. “I’m tired of fighting,” he whispered. “I’m going to enjoy what time we have together.”

  They made love on the living-room floor, then J.T. carried her to the stairs and, in a contortionist’s nightmare, made love to her with her back against a stair tread. She began backing up the stairs and he followed. They finished on the floor at the head of the stairs, both of them out of breath, sweating, and limp with exhaustion.

  “What do I get if I dress as Jean Harlow?” Aria whispered, her body feeling like rubber.

  “Not more of the same because I’m done for.”

  “Oh?” she said, wiggling under him, but it was a halfhearted motion.

  “You are definitely a quick learner. Now go take a bath.”

  “You’ll wash my back?”

  “Maybe, but not your front. Your front gets me in trouble.”

  She laughed at that.

  He sat in the bathroom while she bathed and she asked him questions about his mother. He was still in a state of shock over his mother’s performance, saying that the woman he knew was quite a bit different from the high-stepper of that night. He remembered milk and cookies.

  “And your father remembers begetting you,” Aria said, smiling, and she smiled broader when she thought she saw him blush.

  “You want your back washed or not?”

  “Sl, meester, I do,” she said in her Carmen Miranda accent.

  J.T. groaned but when he washed her back he kissed her neck.

  He bathed next and she washed his back. Aria put on a lilac spaghetti-strap nightgown and stood quietly outside the bathroom.

  “What are you waiting for?” J.T. asked.

  “I wondered which bed was to be mine tonight,” she said shyly.

  He pulled her into his bed. “With me, of course.” He cuddled her to him and went to sleep right away.

  “I got his attention,” she murmured.

  “What, honeybunch?” J.T. muttered.

  “A new name,” Aria said happily, and snuggled closer to him and went to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning she woke slowly, smiling at the sunlight coming into the room. It was already growing hot but she didn’t mind. Her body felt heavenly. She moved a bit to see J.T. lying beside her. Last night had been a dream come true. No pain, no discomfort at all, just pure sensual happiness.

  She eased onto her elbow to look at him. My, but he was good-looking. Wasn’t it odd how the more time they spent making love, the more handsome he became? He was much better-looking than Count Julian. In fact, right now she thought he was better-looking than any other man on earth.

  How would it be, she wondered, if he opened his eyes and whispered, “I love you”? How would it feel to have a man say those words to you? Of course Count Julian had said them to her but they both knew he had only wanted her kingdom. This man didn’t want her kingdom. In fact, all he wanted from her was her body.

  She smiled at that. On the island she had been a princess and he hadn’t obeyed her, hadn’t done anything she had wanted, but when she acted as a woman acts…then he did anything she desired.

  She realized that she wanted to please him. She had been taught to believe that the only persons she had to please were those of higher rank than she. But here in America she had wanted to please the wives of the other officers, she had wanted to please her mother-in-law (she swallowed at that memory), and now she wondered what it would be like to please her husband.

  She knew he wanted her to learn to be an American and she vowed to try even harder to