His Majesty's Measure

by Pamela DuMond

  The driver wore aviators, dressed in Royal Bellèno military uniform. He leaned against the outside of the van but straightened and sharp saluted when Esmeralda rolled me to a standstill in front of him. “Greetings, Ladies.”

  “Hello, Major Peters.” Esmeralda checked him out with a sweep of her eyes. “Before we get this party started, I need to make sure you and I are clear on one thing.” She pointed a finger at me. “You don’t see this one, you know nothing about this one, she is not here.”

  “Which one? All I see is an empty chair.”

  “Excellent, Major Peters.” Esmeralda smiled.

  “It is lovely to see you again, Lady Castile Hapsburg.” He slid open the van’s side door. “But my name is Captain Sam.”

  “Of course it is. It’s been a while since we last ran into each other…Carnival in Brazil. Rio, right?”

  “No,” he said.

  Bea and Joan stepped into the Mercedes.

  “Prince Leo is here!” Bea said. “Good morning Your Highness!”

  “Coffee!” Joan said. “Good day, Your Highness.”

  “We took the liberty of picking up fresh French-pressed coffees and a dozen donuts at The Edelweiss Bakery and Coffee Shoppe,” Leo said.

  “I love that place,” Bea said. “It’s right next to Royal Wedding Consultants headquarters. I stopped in for the buttermilk glazed a handful of times in the past few months.”

  “Sweet of you, soldier.” Esmeralda’s eyes swept over him. “Has someone been doing Crossfit?”

  “And Pilates, my Lady. One can never do enough Core.”

  “I’ll say.” She walked around him in a tight circle, then leaned in. “Remind me. When was the last time we, you know—”

  “Rome.” He blushed.

  “Of course. At the Festa di Santa Francesca Romana.”

  “You mean the annual festival in honor of Saint Francesca?” Joan asked.

  “The nun from 1433 who inspired the order that never took vows?” Bea asked.

  Esmeralda nodded. “I take a pilgrimage there every year.”

  “Unfortunately, no. I was in town for the Giro d’ Italia cycling event,” he said. “You were in Roma on your way back from Athens. A ‘quick layover’ you said.”

  “And what a lay it was, Major Peter,” Esmeralda said.

  “Captain Sam.”

  “Not in my book.” She winked.

  He cracked a smile and gestured toward the van. “Do you need any help getting in, Ms. DeRose?”

  “I’m good.” I stood up, stretched, and stepped inside. The Ladies were seated in the back row of seats. Leo in the middle and I sat down next to him. “Nice of you to join us. You didn’t need to.”

  “I did,” Leo said.

  “You could have slept in.”

  “Not today. I’m serving.”

  “Breakfast?” I arched an eyebrow.

  He held out a pink bakery box, its top cracked open revealing a dozen donuts. “More than breakfast.”

  “Thank you.” I took one. “Any word of Max?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. He would have wanted me to watch out for you until he returns.”

  “Right,” I said. “Good.”

  “Not so good,” Esmeralda climbed into the passenger seat next to me and picked up a thin newspaper.

  “I gathered copies of a few tabloids, All Right Magazine along with the coffee,” Captain Sam said. “It’s my honor to accompany you and Prince Leopold on the first leg of your mission. Congrats on being above the fold, by the way. After Rome, I expected nothing less from you.”

  “Oh,” Esmeralda said.

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked.

  “Graphic sex parts,” Bea whispered. “Don’t encourage her to get into the details. I don’t want to hear about what part went where, in what position, or how many times. Just want to enjoy my glazed.”

  Chapter 11

  LEOPOLD

  The SUV sped quietly through the town’s empty streets as we left the business part of Friedricksburgh behind and entered the old city with its cobblestone streets and mom and pop storefronts painted in candy colors. The town looked like a fairytale village in a movie—if the fairytale had been sacked by a horde of rampant litterers.

  Formerly festive banners lay soggy, filthy, on the streets and appeared trampled. A few signs protesting the amount of money spent on our nuptials were still tacked to telephone poles.

  “Where’s the Meat?” lettering on one sign asked.

  “Decrease Monarchy Spending!” was sprawled across another placard.

  But interspersed among them were signs that said. “I Heart Vivian!” with hand-made drawings of red hearts.

  “I never stopped to think about the political ramifications of marrying Max,” Vivian said. “I didn’t know, never dreamed that the Bellèno Royal Family had taken out more loans to cover the debacle that ensued after my last almost wedding.”

  I looked back at her. “You mean our last almost wedding?”

  “Yes. I feel horrible. All that money spent on silks and fineries, Champagne and flowers had gone to waste.”

  “Champagne seldom goes to waste,” Joan said.

  “You didn’t marry Prince Leo, either,” Bea said. “That doubled the unnecessary spending.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel worse you are succeeding,” Vivian said.

  The Mercedes engine hummed as we left Friedricksburgh proper and ascended the foothills into the Alps. I cracked the window, letting the fresh, crisp air wash over me.

  “Great news that your MRI and CT came back unremarkable,” Bea said.

  “Maybe that’s why Max left me,” Vivian said. “I’m unremarkable. Maybe I should go back to Chicago.”

  “You are breathtakingly remarkable,” I said. “And you are not going back to Chicago.”

  “If someone left you high and dry at the altar on your wedding day would you want to stay in town?”

  “I might not want to but I did. You were the one who left.”

  “Ouch,” Esmeralda said.

  “Could you pass the donuts?” Bea asked.

  I turned and handed them to her.

  “Don’t the mountains look lovely this time of year,” Joan said and hummed under her breath.

  “Leo, I’m sorry,” Vivian said. “I did a terrible thing to you. It was mean and thoughtless. I’ve apologized multiple times for the whole way that played out and I will forever regret pulling such a sloppy, hurtful move.”

  “It’s over.”

  “Doesn’t feel like that to me,” Esmeralda said.

  “Wasn’t your whole engagement to Prince Leo simply a ploy?” Joan asked. “Part of your job impersonating Lady Catherine Fontaine?”

  “That’s right,” Bea said. “The only feelings you and Leopold had for each other were friendship.”

  “That might have been true for Vivian,” I said, and looked back at the Ladies. “I had feelings.”

  The car went uncomfortably quiet and Vivian’s face turned as white as the snow banks on the sides of the road.

  Oh, crap, now I’d gone and stepped in it. “Look, I know that’s probably a horrible thing to say right now. An awful tidbit to reveal under shitty circumstances. Now I feel like the asshole. We’re headed up the mountain to plan some sort of House of Bellèno ‘save face’ mission. We don’t know where Max is. I’m sorry if blurting that out ruined everyone’s morning.”

  “I had feelings too,” Vivian said. “When I caught you fooling around with Daira, I practically blew a gasket. There, I admitted it.”

  “Oh,” Bea clucked under her breath. “Are there any more glazed?”

  “Leo just handed them to you,” Joan said. “Don’t the mountains look spectacular this time of year?”

  “Big fucking deal.” Esmeralda swiveled around and looked at us. “Real or fake. You two were engaged. Hormones fly. Shit happens. Everyone needs to take a chill pill.”

  “I thought I did that when I fainted at the
church.” Vivian sighed, stared out the window, and startled. “That sign. I recognize that sign. Pull over!”

  “You’ll just have to hold it for another fifteen minutes,” Esmeralda said. “We’re already running late.”

  “It’s the entrance to the St. Francis of Assisi Chapel, Queen Cheree’s Labrador Retriever Sanctuary. It’s where I went for guidance after Max said he couldn’t give me any reason why I shouldn’t marry Leo.”

  “Say what?” Joan asked.

  My mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

  “I hope you’re talking about a year ago, and not now, as that would make my head spin off its tracks.” Bea said.

  Me too.

  I didn’t know Max had never given Vivian a reason why she shouldn’t marry me. That along with him standing her up yesterday gave me pause.

  “You can visit another time, Vivian. We’ve got an important appointment,” Esmeralda said. “Hollandaise sauce is involved.”

  She gazed back as the sign for the sanctuary disappeared around a curve in the road. “I miss Maximillian,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Would someone pass more donuts, please?” Bea said.

  “No. You’re stress eating,” Joan said. “Let’s not forget the last time Max went missing was when Vivian dumped him for Leopold.”

  “He shacked up with Daira for a week,” Bea said.

  “He slept with the bug-eyed budget bitch?” Joan asked.

  “Max swore nothing happened with her. Besides, I did not dump Max. Technically, I was doing my job pretending to be Lady Catherine Fontaine.”

  “Not all that convincingly,” Esmeralda said, and sipped from her coffee.

  “Extremely convincingly. I had all of you fooled.”

  “Not me. I questioned your morals,” Esmeralda said. “You actually seemed to have some. Very suspicious. Very unlike Catherine.”

  “Your gait was off,” Bea said. “Especially when you wore heels. Catherine could play an entire soccer match in stilettos.”

  “Mr. Cartwright drilled me for hours on gait. ‘Wear these shoes, Vivian. Don’t pronate when you walk. Don’t hunch like an old lady.’ Gah, it was exhausting.”

  “I see Bea’s point,” Joan said. “I, on the other hand, wasn’t sure about your dance moves.”

  “Impossible. I’ve always had mad dancing skills.”

  “Vi has mad dancing skills,” I said.

  “After a lot of hard work on our part, they’ve improved,” Joan said. “But at the beginning all she could do was twerk and twitch.”

  I covered a smile.

  “Then why did that super cute guy at the club in Monte Carlo insist on dancing with me the whole night?” Vivian asked.

  “Because he was a dance instructor and we hired him,” Bea said.

  “That set me back five hundred Euros. You’re welcome,” Joan said.

  “Oh, come on!” Vivian said. “I bet Catherine would be handling this wedding debacle differently.”

  “Lady Catherine Fontaine was partially the reason why you got into this situation,” Joan said.

  “The other reason was Max,” Vivian said.

  “I don’t think we should be saying Max’s name right now,” Bea said. “Let’s just call him Bad Prince.”

  “That’s usually my nickname,” I said.

  “Besides, technically wasn’t it Catherine who hired you after you smoked the job application?” Bea asked.

  “I didn’t smoke it,” Vivian said. “Inhaled, might be a more accurate description. They offered me enough money to keep Uncle Florio in assisted living. I agreed to impersonate her for a brief period of time and travel back to Bellèno to protect her vested ‘interests’ in marrying Prince Leo.”

  I glanced at the Ladies in the back seat and winked. “I was a lucky man.”

  “How lucky?” Bea asked.

  Vivian wagged her finger. “Not that lucky.” “If it weren’t for Gabecca, I’d be the laughingstock of tabloids everywhere. I’m beyond grateful those gorgeous A-list actors stole my tabloid-perfect day out from under me.”

  “Right,” Bea folded the newspaper she was reading and slipped it under her ass.

  “What are you doing?” Vivian asked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “You folded the newspaper and sat on it.” Vivian snapped her fingers. “Give it to me.”

  “No. The leather seats are cold.”

  “Actually, they’re heated,” I said.

  Joan coughed, crumpled the paper she was reading, and tossed it out my window.

  “Citizen’s arrest!’ Vivian said. “You’re a barrister, Joan Brady, a representative of the court. You’ve never been a litterer.”

  “Sorry. I was overwhelmed.”

  “With what?”

  “Clearly the deliciousness of these donuts,” Bea said, grabbed one, and waved it in front of me. “Come on, have a bite. You know you want to.”

  Vivian batted her hand away. “No!”

  Esmeralda put her feet up on the dashboard, absorbed in her newspaper, and sighed. “No use hiding it. We made the paper.”

  “Good news!” Vivian said. “I’m thinking we bypassed the headlines and landed somewhere on page ten. Correct? Did they mention that actress—I mean I—was air lifted from Friedricksburgh to St. Luce where I’m now recovering nicely and contemplating what’s next in life?”

  “Sorry, no,” she said, flipped to the front page, and held the newspaper in front of us.

  The headline blared, “Princess Wanna-Be Dumped at Altar!”

  “Damn it!” Vivian said. “That is not on page ten.”

  I saw something worse. The second photo looked like Max was getting into the back of a flower van as a woman helped him.

  She leaned in and stared at it. “Wait minute. I know that woman. That’s Daira Ailey. Max abandoned me at the altar for Daira Ailey?”

  Esmeralda sighed. “It appears that he did.”

  Chapter 12

  VIVIAN

  “There’s no way Max would leave you for Daira,” Leo said.

  “Why not? You did.”

  “I did not leave you. That was simply a goodbye fling.”

  I grabbed the paper from Esmeralda and punched my index finger at the picture. “Daira’s in the photo.” I’d recognize those alien bug eyes anywhere. Why didn’t anyone tell me? And don’t say because you felt sorry for me.” I ripped up the copy of All Right Magazine into little bitty pieces.

  Joan wiped off little bits of paper off her jacket. “I didn’t tell you because I pick and choose my battles. I’m a seasoned barrister. I know these things.”

  Bea picked newspaper shreds from her remaining donut. “Absolutely, one hundred percent I did not feel sorry for you. I didn’t tell you because I’m a mother. Motherhood trains you in the delicate art of when to relay sensitive information.”

  “I felt sorry for you,” Esmeralda said. “There. I said it. I didn’t tell you because you had passed out in the middle of the Friedricksburgh cathedral and it was a big fucking deal. All those pompous, over-dressed, under-lived pinheads were gossiping about it. Sure, there were some nice people who felt sorry for you. But boy was I glad they’d imposed a ‘Check your cell phone in at the front of the church’ policy, because I saw at least fifty people clutching their purses and fingering their pockets when you went down. Go ahead and cry me a river but yes, I felt sorry for you.”

  “Crap.” I wiped tears away that spilled out and rolled down my cheeks. “I’m right here on the front page of All Right Magazine standing at the front of the church all by myself shoving a stupid note down my boobs while everyone looks at me horrified.”

  “Interesting,” Leo said. “Do you still have the note?”

  “Of course I have the note.” I pulled it from the little pocket sewn on top of the white acrylic sweatshirt that was making my skin crawl. “In the second photo on this stupid rag I’m passed out on the stone floor and those people have
their hands over their mouths like they’re watching a splatter movie like The Bride of Chucky. I’m an international joke, a big, fat American laughingstock. I want to go home.”

  “You’re not going back to Chicago,” Leo said.

  “Not yet,” Esmeralda said. “Something’s not right. I, for one, don’t believe Max would ditch you at the last minute for a tramp who meant nothing to him.”

  “She meant next to nothing to me, Leo said. “Therefore, she meant less than nothing to Max.”

  “Let’s not forget,” Joan added, “there’s still an arrest warrant out on Daira’s mother, Helga, for your attempted murder.”

  “But that was when I was impersonating Catherine. A year ago. I’m not sure it counts.”

  “Trust me, it counts,” Joan said.

  “I agree,” Bea said. “I watch Law and Order.”

  We arrived at a gated mountain estate and came to a stop at a tiny guardhouse. A uniformed guard checked our credentials and made a call. I sneaked a peek at Leo.

  The handsome heir to the Bellèno throne was ten months older than Max. In this light I could make out their resemblance: both strikingly good looking, muscular, high cheekbones, scruff on the face. Max was a ginger. Leo sported a darker tone. At 6 foot two, Leo had a few inches in height on his younger brother. If I hadn’t met Max first I’d have been tempted to jump on the Leo train. Seems everyone else had. He was spell-bindingly beautiful with full lips and sparkling brown eyes rimmed with black, long lashes.

  The guard buzzed us through. Captain Sam drove us up a switchback curve etched into a mountain cliff, stones grinding under the large tires.

  The Mercedes reached the top of the driveway and I peered out at the picturesque Alpine town of Friedricksburgh far below us. I could vaguely make out the hospital and the cathedral. I could almost hear wedding bells ringing for another bride, and I prayed she would enjoy her special day without the kind of devastating interruption that would drive her to drink more than she usually did, or catapult her into an over-priced therapist’s office.

  My stomach growled. I almost regretted not eating the last donut. I wondered what had happened to all the food from our wedding reception.