The Princess Read online

  She looked at the other dinner guests. There were her cousins Nickie and Toby, her Aunt Bradley, and her young, beautiful cousin Barbara, who was seventh in line for the throne.

  “Where are Cissy and Gena?” Aria asked Julian, referring to Freddie’s sister and her own sister, knowing that Cissy was in the custody of the American government.

  “Both are with His Majesty at his hunting lodge,” he answered.

  The meal was deadly boring. The men could talk of nothing but the number of animals they had killed in the last week—since blood sports were their only occupation, there was nothing else they knew about. Great-Aunt Sophie bellowed at the people around her, trying to carry on a conversation but not able to keep up with anyone’s replies. Freddie, Nickie, and Toby’s affectations made Aria want to shout at them. Barbara flirted with each man, batting her eyelashes and leaning forward to show her décolletage.

  “I think a husband should be found for Cousin Barbara,” Aria said under her breath.

  Julian looked at her in surprise but made no comment.

  Wouldn’t they be surprised, Aria thought, if she began to flirt? She looked at Julian, so properly eating his sturgeon in dill sauce, and she wondered if he would be very shocked if she batted her lashes at him.

  With her heart pounding, and quickly, before she lost her nerve, she reached out and touched Julian’s hand. “Will you meet me in the King’s Garden after dinner?”

  He nodded once, but she could see the slight frown between his brows as he moved his hand away. She had just done something a crown princess did not do.

  She turned away to answer a question Great-Aunt Sophie was bellowing her way.

  After dinner she had to work to escape Lady Werta, whose face showed she believed the end of the world to be at hand. Aria slipped through the Green Waiting Room, through the Mars Room, ran past the Gallery of Kings, then out into the White Horse Courtyard, past the Greek Orangery, and finally reached the King’s Garden. The garden was so named because it was believed to have a masculine air with its tall pine trees and secret, twisting paths. It was said that Rowan once had a camp in this place.

  Julian was waiting for her, a slight frown on his face.

  He was sixteen years older than she was and she had always been a little in awe of him. After all, now she realized that theirs wasn’t to be an ordinary marriage. Their marriage was arranged for political and diplomatic reasons; theirs was a marriage of state.

  “You wanted to speak to me, Your Royal Highness,” Julian said politely, but there was disapproval in his voice.

  She wished there was something snappy she could say, or something wise. “You are angry with me,” she said in a little-girl voice, and cursed herself for doing so.

  She thought she saw a hint of a smile on his lips. He was actually very handsome—in spite of what Lieutenant Montgomery said—and the moonlight made him more so.

  “I think only of your reputation. It would not do for us to be seen alone together.”

  Aria turned away. On their wedding night he was going to find out that she was not a virgin. She looked back at him and took a deep breath. “For an engaged couple, we have spent very little time together, alone or with others. Since we are planning to spend our lives together, I thought we should talk and get to know each other better.”

  He looked at her for a while before responding. “And what did you want to discuss? The coming elections? I am sure our current Lord High Chamberlain will remain in office. In fact I think he may pass on the office to his descendants.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I do want to discuss the council and its officers but I thought perhaps…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Your trip to America?”

  He was standing absolutely rigid, shoulders back, every hair, every medal in place, no flaw anywhere. Aria remembered Jarl coming home from work, his uniform dark with sweat, pulling it off as soon as he entered the door and saying, “Get me a beer, honey.”

  “Do you drink beer?” Aria blurted.

  Julian looked startled for a second then seemed to be trying to control a smile. “Yes, I drink beer.”

  “I didn’t know that. I know so very little about you and sometimes I wonder if we’ll be…compatible. I mean, we are to live together, and marriage is, I mean, I have heard, that marriage is so very intimate and…” She trailed off again, feeling a bit silly and childish because Julian was still standing so stiff and rigid.

  “I see,” he said.

  Aria didn’t like his smug tone or maybe she didn’t like the way she was feeling. “I am sorry to have imposed upon you with this trivial matter,” she said royally, and turned away.

  “Aria,” he said in a voice that made her halt. He stepped in front of her. “Your questions are quite valid. Before I submitted my proposal of marriage to the king, I gave a great deal of thought to the matter. Marriage is indeed a serious undertaking, but I have every reason to believe we will be most compatible. We have been reared in the same way, I to be a king and you to be a queen. We know the same people; we know the protocol of the monarchy. I think we shall make an admirable marriage.”

  Aria’s shoulders drooped. “I see. Yes, I think we will make an admirable royal couple.” She looked down at her hands.

  “Is there something else?”

  He was standing very close to her but he made no effort to touch her.

  There was no way to say it but to blurt it out. “But what about us? What about me as a woman? Do you feel anything for me besides as a queen?”

  Julian’s expression didn’t change, but he reached out and put his hand to the back of her head and drew her to him, then kissed her with what could only be expressed as long-repressed desire. When he pulled away, Aria still had her eyes closed and her mouth open.

  “I look forward to the wedding night with great anticipation,” he whispered, and she could feel his breath on her face.

  Aria opened her eyes and straightened her body. “I did wonder,” she managed to say at last.

  At that Julian smiled at her, and he smiled with great warmth. “You are a beautiful, desirable young woman. How could you have doubted that I am longing to make love to you?”

  “I…I guess I never thought about it.” Once again he was standing away from her, looking at her.

  “Has something happened?” he asked softly. “Tonight at dinner you seemed different, as if you were worried about something.”

  The thought that he had noticed made her smile. She had agreed to their marriage without giving the marriage much thought. She had been much more interested in his ancestors and his training than she was in Julian as a man. But now it was different. Now she understood more of what went on between a husband and wife.

  “In America,” she said, beginning slowly, “in America I saw young lovers holding hands, walking together, and kissing on park benches.”

  “I had envisioned America to be like that,” Julian said with disapproval.

  “America is a wonderful place,” Aria snapped. “There is a feeling there of moving forward. Nothing remains the same. They are not burdened with hundreds of years of tradition; they accept what is new. In fact, they seek the new.”

  “Lovers in a park is not new,” Julian said, amused and smiling. “I forget how young you are. You have never seemed to want courting. You accepted my marriage proposal without seeming to want more than a handshake and a ring. Was I wrong?”

  “No, but things happened in America…”

  “The sight of the lovers made you wonder what it would be like if you had your own lover?”

  “Something of that sort,” she murmured, then looked straight at him. “Julian, I want our marriage to work. I need for it to work. It has to be more than a marriage for Lanconia. I am a woman and I want to be loved for myself and not just for my crown.”

  Julian looked even more amused. “No one has ever asked something easier of me. Shall I court you?” He took her hand in his and kissed her palm. “Shall