“Oh no, although it wasn’t easy to get rid of him. My husband the ambassador got rid of him but only after what could only be described as a brawl in the foyer. He had a fistfight with four armed guards.”
Aria sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why was he here?”
“He said he wanted to see you and didn’t believe anyone when we told him you weren’t here. We have been so dreadfully worried about you. My husband insisted he leave but he refused, thus the brawl.”
“Was he injured?”
“No, a bruise or two, no more. My husband finally had to tell him that he was not going to be king no matter what. That news made him calm down and they went to my husband’s study. I just hope the guards didn’t understand what my husband meant. It has been so difficult keeping all this a secret. I am to treat you as a niece, not as Your Royal Highness. I do hope you can forgive me. We have tried so hard to make everything comfortable for you but we were given such short notice that—”
“What did your husband say to Lieutenant Montgomery?” Aria asked.
“He explained that the bargain you’d made with the army could not possibly be kept and that no matter how hard he fought he’d never be allowed to be king.”
Aria looked away from the woman. “So he’s been told,” she murmured.
“My husband told him in no uncertain terms. The very idea of an American as king. I mean, it is my own country, but an American—especially one such as him—as king! The idea! Such a crude young man. Fisticuffs in the foyer!”
“You may leave me now,” Aria said.
Startled, the woman stopped speaking abruptly. “Yes, Your Royal Highness. Will you need help dressing?”
“No, just leave me.” She waved her hand at the woman.
Once she was alone, Aria took her time undressing and putting on the long, high-necked nightgown. It was indeed like she had worn all her life—no more Rita Hayworth style, she thought with regret. It seemed that minute by minute she was losing America and returning to Lanconia. Already she was dismissing people from her presence.
She climbed into the empty bed and thought about her husband. He must be very angry about what he had heard tonight.
She drifted off to sleep wondering why he had come to the embassy in the first place.
* * *
J.T. looked out the car window in silence. He had been told that he was to lunch with his wife, then he was to be taken on a token tour of Escalon then put on a plane and shipped out. After his initial rage, he was glad that that had been changed and it was at last over, that he could return to America and get back to work on something of importance.
Last night he had felt guilty about their argument—not that every word he had spoken hadn’t been true—but because, after all, it was her country and no one wanted to hear the bad things about his country. So he had gone to the embassy to talk to her. He had been attacked as soon as the door opened.
He had barely got himself out of that mess when he was informed he couldn’t be king no matter how much he tried to blackmail himself into the position. He listened to the pompous little ambassador for twenty minutes, somehow managing to keep his blood from boiling over.
While the man postured and lectured and talked to J.T. as if he were semiretarded, J.T. was able to piece the story together. Aria had told the army she would put her American husband on the throne if America would help her. Now she was reneging on her word.
J.T.’s anger was quiet, running through his body like poison. He had been used, duped into something that he stupidly had believed on a surface level. He had been told he was to marry her to teach her to be an American, but now he realized that a gaggle of women could have done that.
As he watched the ambassador pose and strut as he lectured, J.T. thought of the real reason he had been married to Her Royal Highness. No doubt Warbrooke Shipping had something to do with it. Then there were the lumber mills and steel mills owned by the Montgomery family. How useful all that would be to this poor, desolate country.
Wonder what she demanded, he thought. The richest American available? What a fool he had been. He had thought he was chosen because he saved her scrawny neck. He was angry at her, sure, but part of him had been flattered that he was chosen. Yet she had just wanted his money. No wonder she agreed to put him on the throne beside her. Montgomery money was needed in this poor country.
He had stood. “I’ll be going now and I won’t bother you again,” he told the ambassador. “I’ll find my own transportation back to America. Tell the princess so long for me and I’ll arrange the divorce or annulment—whatever is needed.” He turned to go.
The ambassador began sputtering and said that J.T. had to help them. He had to continue in his role as husband until the imposter princess was taken and Aria was once again princess.
J.T. said he had had enough games and lies to last him a lifetime and he just wanted to get out of the country.
The ambassador changed his tune after that. He began to ask rather nicely that J.T. remain as long as Lanconia and America needed him.
“You are to be seen together today, at luncheon, then you will have another spat and separate. Her Royal Highness will take a walk by herself into the hills. We think she will be contacted there. At dinner a waiter will drop soup on you, and the two of you will be so angered, you will pack and leave Lanconia. Her Royal Highness will be taken off the plane a hundred miles south of here. You will return to America.”
“You seem awfully sure they will contact her,” J.T. said.
“The American government has said that if the papers giving the vanadium to us are not signed within eight days, America will consider Lanconia an enemy. The papers will not be delivered until after the princess is taken and I’m sure the king’s advisers will do anything to prevent the king from finding out that his granddaughter has been kidnapped, or he might be too upset to sign the papers. Or worse, it might give him another heart attack.”