The Princess Read online

  “Where were we?” he asked. “Oh yes, Warbrooke.” He continued to tell about his town and his family until she began to feel she knew the place.

  The plane landed in London for refueling and for hurried dashes to the rest room for the two passengers. When they reboarded, they started again with the study. This time J.T. asked her questions about her upbringing in America and about her own vital statistics.

  They fell asleep against each other somewhere over Russia and didn’t wake until they landed in Escalon, the capital city of Lanconia.

  J.T. looked out the window and saw blue-green, snow-topped mountains in the distance.

  “Most of Lanconia is very high. We’re about seven thousand feet elevation now, so the air is thin.”

  He kissed her. “You know nothing about this place, remember? Neither of us has been here before.”

  “Okay, babe,” she said, snapping her gum.

  “That’s better—sort of. Do you have to chew that stuff?”

  “It’s very American, and besides, I’ll have to give it up soon enough. Crowns and bubble gum don’t go together. Hurry up and get off, I want to make sure no one hurts the box of records I brought my sister.”

  “Kathy has no sister, remember?”

  He was looking at her very sternly, so she crossed her eyes and blew a bubble at him.

  “Go!” he said, laughing.

  The air was cool and fresh and sharp as only mountain air can be; even the fumes of the planes couldn’t override the cleanness of it.

  It was a small airport, and with the war there was very little traffic through it. A car was waiting for J.T. and Aria.

  “Lieutenant,” said a man who was wearing a dark suit and carrying a briefcase, “everything is ready for you. Good morning, Your Roy—”

  “Good to meet ya!” Aria said, grabbing the man’s hand and pumping it. “It always this cold in this place? It looks pretty dead around here. What’s to do?”

  The man’s eyes sparkled. “Good morning, Mrs. Montgomery.”

  “Just call me Kathy, ever’body does. ’Cept him. Sometimes he calls me other things.” Chomping away on her gum, she hugged J.T.’s arm and gave him an adoring look.

  “Well, yes,” the man said uncomfortably. “Shall we go to your hotel?”

  “Who’re you playing?” J.T. asked when he opened the car door for her.

  “Every Lanconian’s image of an American.”

  The man who drove them was James Sanderson and he was assistant to the American ambassador to Lanconia and only he and the ambassador knew the truth behind the imposter princess.

  “Otherwise, your story is well covered,” Mr. Sanderson said. “Tomorrow, Lieutenant, you will be escorted to the local water plant. You are supposedly an expert on distillation plants.”

  “Then someone is starting to work on the grapes?” Aria asked.

  “We are working with the king every day,” Mr. Sanderson answered.

  “How is he?”

  “Aging,” Mr. Sanderson answered, but said no more.

  Aria looked out the window. Lanconia looked the same as it had for centuries and she could feel the place creeping into her bones. The streets had been made for goatherders and for walking, so they were much too narrow for the long, wide American car. The cobblestones were hard on the tires and made for a rough ride.

  The houses were plastered and whitewashed and everywhere were the distinctive blue-gray roof tiles that Lanconia manufactured. In the twenties Lanconia had briefly become a fashionable resort and the people who were in the know took crates of the tiles home and had little Lanconian playhouses built. But the fashion hadn’t lasted long and the factory was left with thousands of surplus tiles.

  The people in the streets were on foot or on bicycles and there were a few horse-drawn carts, but no automobiles. Their clothes were simple, in a style that hadn’t changed in centuries: long, dark skirts, white blouses, and pretty, embroidered belts. For a while, those belts had been fashionable too. The men wore heavy shoes, thick wool socks to their knees, and wool knickers. Their white shirts were covered by a sleeveless embroidered vest. The women were proud of their skill with a needle and showed off on their own belts and their husbands’ vests. The children wore smaller versions of their parents’ clothes, without the belts and vests, but with finely smocked shirts.

  J.T. and Mr. Sanderson had stopped talking. “It’s like going back in time,” J.T. said softly.

  “More than you know,” Aria replied.

  “Here we are,” Mr. Sanderson said, pulling the car into the circular drive of the three-story white hotel. He leaned forward to look at Aria. “I don’t think anyone will recognize you, but you should be prepared if they do. You want to be seen as much as possible, so when the imposter is taken—it’s planned for tomorrow, by the way—they will have an idea of where to look for a replacement.”

  “No idea yet who ‘they’ are?” J.T. asked. “No idea who tried to murder the princess?”

  “We have suspicions but nothing concrete yet. Okay, here’s the bellboy, let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Aria said, her hand on J.T.’s arm. “I know him.” The bell “boy” was actually a man nearing seventy. “He was our third gardener. His wife used to bake me cookies. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “We’ve come too far to blow it now. You’ve never been here before and never seen this man before.”

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  She stood on the bricked entryway while Mr. Sanderson went inside and J.T. helped load the luggage on a cart.

  The old man nearly dropped two bags when he saw Aria.

  She smacked gum out of the side of her mouth. “Seen a ghost, honey?” she asked the old man. He just stood and gaped so Aria leaned over and pulled her skirt halfway up her thigh and adjusted her nylons. The man was still staring. “Seen all you want?” she said rather nastily.

  J.T. grabbed her arm and pulled her inside the hotel. “You’re going to lower America’s reputation into the gutter. Use a little subtlety.”

  “Sure, ducky,” she answered. “Anything you say, sugar.”

  J.T. gave her a warning look.

  The inside of the hotel looked like a Russian czar’s hunting lodge: log ceiling, plaster walls, big pine furniture scattered about. Above the desk was a flag of Lanconia: a red ground with a stag, a goat, and a bunch of grapes on it.

  “Quaint,” J.T. said under his breath. “Do they have bathrooms in this joint?”

  “Remember America’s reputation,” she reminded him.

  While J.T. signed the register, the hotel clerk looked up and did a double-take on Aria. He stared at her until she winked at him. He looked down at the book.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant Montgomery, I must get something,” the clerk said, and disappeared through a door behind the desk.

  J.T. looked questioningly to Mr. Sanderson, who shrugged.

  The clerk reappeared with what looked to be his entire family: a fat wife and two plump teenage girls. They all stood and stared at Aria.

  Aria walked to the desk. “You got any postcards in this burg? Nobody back home will believe this place is for real.”

  No one moved; they just stared at Aria.

  She leaned across the desk and into the manager’s face. “What’s the matter with you people?” she asked belligerently. “How come ever’body’s starin’ at me? You people don’t like Americans? We’re not good enough for you? You think—”

  J.T. caught her arm and pulled her back. “Kathy, be quiet.”

  The manager began to recover himself. “Pardon our rudeness. We did not mean to stare. It’s just that you look like our crown princess.”

  Aria’s jaw dropped down. “You hear that, honey?” she said, punching J.T. in the ribs. “They think I look like a princess.”

  The manager’s fat wife reached under the desk and withdrew a postcard and held it at arm’s length to Aria.

  She took it and studied the official photo