The Royal Runaway

by Lindsay Emory

  As a result of Lucy’s magic, I spent a spring in the Pampas, volunteering at a local school. I also helped my mother kick a nasty pill habit that Big Gran never seemed to know about, after a divorce from an Argentine polo player that Big Gran certainly knew about.

  As if she could read my mind, Lucy reached over and poured nearly a half liter of cream into my coffee. “You’ve lost too much weight. You’re frail. Four months away and you’re skin and bones. You’ll probably catch pneumonia this winter, and then where will the monarchy be?”

  It was a practice argument for Big Gran. Keep me healthy and happy and the future of the Driedish royal family will be better off.

  As arguments to Big Gran went, it could be a winner.

  Last week, however, the Liberal leader had once again invoked the R word in a speech to Parliament: republic.

  Big Gran did not care for the R word.

  She wasn’t anti-democracy or hopelessly old-fashioned. But she was Queen: the latest monarch in a six-hundred-year rule over a tiny coastal nation on the bony shoulder of Europe that had rebuffed English, French, Dutch, and German advances. You don’t just give that up because a sliver of the current crop of subjects answered an internet poll.

  Which meant Big Gran was on the offensive again. And I, the Princess and second in line to the throne, was her most effective weapon. Being engaged to a handsome (if penniless) Scottish duke and subsequently being left at the altar had helped reignite the nation’s enthusiasm for supporting the Crown.

  So I had been summoned back to the palace last week. My office had dealt with most of the headaches Christian’s abandonment had left us. Sending back hundreds of wedding gifts to VIPs around the world had required a staff of nearly thirty secretaries alone, not to mention all the thousands of other royal wedding details that had to be carefully unstitched under the avid media spotlight. And now Lucy’s eagle eyes were watching the coffee grow cold in my hands as I debated whether I should utilize her impressive methods of persuasion in order to skip out of the Chantal Louis interview for Drieden’s most-read weekly news magazine.

  “It’s my job,” I finally said, remembering the long hours the palace staff had been putting in to reassemble my routine, my life. I knew this was best. I couldn’t stay in hiding forever. My life was a public one and if my Queen said I had to be interviewed in a national magazine . . .

  Lucy saw the resignation on my face. “Fine, I’ll speak with them before you sit down. Give them our usual list of red topics.” She was crisp and efficient, but the press of her lips told me that she would have gladly gone to battle with Big Gran for me.

  She sighed, pushed her glasses back down on her nose, and began taking notes with a silver fountain pen in her leather-bound agenda.

  “There will be no questions about Caroline, Henry, or Sophie.” She scribbled the names down, even though this was standard operating procedure for me. I didn’t talk about my siblings in public. There were way too many minefields there.

  “Or Felice,” she added with an extra underline below the name. It was another long-standing rule, although the national (and international) press loved my mother. After she had divorced my father and run off with her second polo player, her titles had been winnowed down considerably, as had her yearly income, but the tabloids and mainstream journalists still gushed over her scandals, her style, and her incoherent “let them eat cake” ramblings that periodically took over the news for a day or two every year. There were Instagrams devoted to her and her lavish lifestyle. Social media fans were fun to try to explain to Big Gran. Yes, the internet adored my mother. No, it probably was not for the “right” reasons.

  “What do you think I should talk about?” I mused, reaching for my lukewarm coffee. “What international kerfuffle could I start this week?”

  Lucy looked at me with dismay. “Oh, Thea, don’t talk like that.”

  “You know they’re going to ask if I’m seeing anyone. What rumor should I start?”

  “The last thing we need is another scandal with you and a man.”

  I bit my lip, remembering the man I’d met last night and the scandal I could have so easily started with just a couple of glasses of whiskey, a stranger, and a few smartphones.

  I’d been reckless, not thinking clearly at all when I’d agreed to that stupid selfie. Lucy was absolutely, 100 percent right. If something had happened in that bar with Nick, if pictures had been taken and posted online . . . let’s just say I was thankful the guillotine had never been introduced to Drieden.

  Speaking of guillotines . . .

  “Do you think I could put a bounty on his head?” I closed my eyes and dreamt happily of a WANTED poster featuring my ex-fiancé’s face. “Or would that look petty?”

  I didn’t need to say Christian’s name for Lucy to know exactly whom I was talking about. “It would look bloodthirsty and common,” Lucy said calmly.

  “Maybe we could do an internet poll. Let the people decide how much Christian’s manhood is worth.”

  “Please don’t say those things around her. You know she doesn’t appreciate your sense of humor.”

  If only it had been my sense of humor that had gotten me into this mess, then I would probably have handled it better. But no, this was all perpetrated by one man. A man who had betrayed me in the most public way possible.

  “You never know—maybe she’d agree with me,” I said mulishly.

  “Or maybe she’d send you away again because she doesn’t know what you might do.”

  “Most women in Drieden would want to do exactly what I’m proposing.”

  “Most women in Drieden aren’t royal princesses.”

  Lucy frowned at her notes, which would be verbally communicated to an assistant palace press secretary assigned to my media, someone who deserved a huge bonus this year in the aftermath of the Royal Wedding That Wasn’t. The palace and the magazine would arrange the terms and in a few hours, after I had been painted and primped, I would sit down with the reporter in a cozy yet traditional drawing room, filled with art donated by my family and then “borrowed” back from the national museum.

  A photographer would capture candid shots of me, with blown-out, perfectly highlighted blond hair, artful makeup, and a conservative navy dress that hadn’t cost more than one hundred euros. Something the average Driedener could buy. My dress couldn’t be black, but I needed to wear a somber color. I was a sensitive, grieving woman, after all. It was important that the people be reminded of that.

  • • •

  THE INTERVIEW WENT AS WELL as could be expected.

  Roberto muttered under his breath about the dark smudges under my eyes.

  Lucy grumbled about mono and the flu and the Zika virus.

  My press secretary clutched a cross hanging from her neck during the whole thing.

  I wouldn’t say I flubbed it. With all of the training and practice I’d been subjected to over the years, an interview such as this was second nature for me: the reporter carefully selected, the questions vetted, the environment tasteful. I handled myself with poise and dignity, even as Chantal Louis delicately prodded into my abandoned wedding plans and my disappeared fiancé.

  When I answered, “I don’t know” to the question about Christian’s whereabouts, surely it wasn’t as sharp and brittle as it sounded in my head. I followed up with, “I hope he is well and has many happy years ahead of him.” It was well-meaning and gracious, I thought, but Lucy flinched and I wondered just what they expected of me. What was a woman supposed to say about a fiancé who left her at the altar in front of an entire nation? Was I supposed to declare my everlasting love? Offer to take him back? Compliment his excellent judgment?

  Afterward, when Lucy came to talk to me about it, I sent her away. I was tired, I said. Maybe even coming down with something. She made me promise to see my doctor and left me alone to crawl back into my bed to sleep for the rest of the day.

  Which of course meant that I was wide awake when night fell and the lights
of Drieden sparkled through my window.

  The twenty-euro bill that yesterday’s selfie had earned was still tucked in the pocket of my sweatshirt that I had folded and placed in a drawer in my closet when I returned the night before. If I left it hanging on the back of a chair or in a pile on the floor, one of the maids would have already washed, ironed, and put it away.

  I wandered into the massive closet next to my bedroom. This was just one of three that I had attached to my suite. There was off-site storage of my seasonal and special-occasion clothing, and there were vaults for some of the really important pieces.

  Like my wedding dress.

  With hand-stitched Driedish lace, thousands of real pearls, and a ten-foot train, it would have been worn for a mere six hours, for the trip to the cathedral, the forty-five-minute ceremony, portraits, the royal viewing, and to greet VIP guests.

  In the end, it was worn for thirty-six minutes.

  A wedding dress of a jilted princess couldn’t be donated to a charity. It wouldn’t be displayed in the National Galleries when my grandmother celebrated her fortieth anniversary on the throne next year. The dress would be under lock and key in the royal archives, masses of hand-stitched lace and custom satin, rotting away and completely useless. Not unlike certain royals I knew.

  After spending just a few seconds thinking about my former wedding dress, my favorite running sweatshirt was suddenly in my hand. Then it was being pulled over my head. Then I was grabbing Lucy’s spare spectacles that she kept in my desk, yanking on a stocking cap with the crest of the national football club, and slipping on my sneakers and sliding out the door.

  Tonight I took a different route.

  Taking the elevator, I stopped on the first floor and walked down the hall that led to the administrative offices. Here there was a back entrance for the staff, and in a few minutes I was out on the street.

  I started to walk, not stopping until I was at the bar from last night.

  The front doors were marked with their usual neon lights, and when they opened with a couple of loud, probably drunk patrons stumbling out, I remembered the American tourists. If they had come back tonight to look for the Princess Theodora look-alike, if they saw me again . . .

  I turned and headed toward the back door. What I wanted to find—what I wanted to see, to feel—I didn’t really know, and in the end, it didn’t really matter because before I could get to it, I heard a voice calling my name from the alley.

  “Thea. It’s been a long time.”

  five

  CHRISTIAN.

  For an instant, I thought he’d come back to me. As if he’d been here, waiting for the past four months, instead of escaping like a coward.

  But, no. The voice may have been Scottish, but this accent belonged to a very different man. A commoner. A stranger.

  A charismatic stranger, I amended as Nick stepped forward and the security light on the building caught his features.

  “It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” I said.

  “Did you miss me, then?” He was close enough that I could see that light in his eyes. The light that was dangerous.

  And sort of fun.

  I reached into my pocket, realizing that my subconscious had wanted this. Had planned this. I slapped the twenty euros against his chest. “This is yours.”

  “You earned it.”

  “You bought me a drink. Then you suggested the idea to those girls.”

  He caught my hand in his and I nearly gasped. His skin was so warm against my cold fingers. It was a trait of mine, cold hands and feet. Christian used to tease me that I had grown up in too many drafty Driedish castles. Little did I know, he was the one with the coldest feet of all.

  “Buy me a drink and we’ll be even,” Nick said with a smirk.

  I laughed. “In your dreams.”

  “What can I say? I’ve always had a weakness for sharp-tongued harpies.”

  He squeezed my hand. I ripped it away. The impertinence!

  “I’m not drinking with you,” I informed him as I started walking back down the alley.

  “What are we going to be doing, then?” He was following me, his voice light and teasing.

  “We aren’t doing anything.”

  “Where are we going?”

  That was a good question. I had no idea.

  I wasn’t really an expert on the bar scene. I knew I should just return to the palace and avoid this Nick person for the rest of my life.

  But my feet kept moving.

  The alley opened up on the bright lights of Lound, the main thoroughfare heading into the Sterling commercial district, and I felt more confident, even if my security staff would be having a collective coronary right now.

  I snuck a glance at the man who was still following me like a good-natured stray dog. His all-black ensemble lent him a piratical air, as did the dark hair sweeping back from his face and his bold, confident stride.

  “You don’t know where you’re going, do you?” Nick asked in my ear. I swatted him away like a nagging fly.

  “Go away.” I frowned. “Of course I know where I’m going.”

  “Would you like me to recommend a spot?”

  “Just arrived and you’re an expert on all the bars in the city. Why am I not surprised?”

  He wasn’t bothered by my insinuation. He grinned agreeably. “I’m looking for someone. Someone who might go to bars.”

  Oh, right. His lost relative. My curiosity seized me again. It was fascinating. How did people get lost, anyway?

  “How is your search going?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.

  He paused, and I presumed it was because a couple was walking past us with their hands in each other’s pockets and their tongues in each other’s throats, and neither of us could help but stare. But then he picked the conversation back up, rubbing his hand over his chin. “It’s a bit sticky, actually.”

  “How so?”

  “The family lost touch awhile back. And I’m here . . .” He made a futile gesture at the city’s historic buildings.

  “Are the authorities not being cooperative?” I couldn’t imagine that a foreign citizen would be treated discourteously by the police. “Or couldn’t your foreign office step in?” I searched my brain for the proper channels for this type of investigation. “You should ask them to access their records.”

  Nick grimaced. “That’s the problem. He became a Driedener. Renounced his British citizenship.”

  So Nick’s long lost relative was a subject of . . . well, mine. I stopped in front of a lit door wondering how, or if, I could get involved here when Nick looked over my head and said, “Ah, here we are.”

  We were in front of a British-style pub, The Crown and Crone. Just the sort of place an expatriate Scottish kinsman would come if he were homesick.

  “It looks loud, with all the matches on,” he said, and indeed we could see several football matches playing on television screens through the pub’s dark windows. “It’s probably not your sort of scene.”

  Here was my chance. I could lose him at the pub. A true Scot wouldn’t follow a woman around the city when he had the chance to immerse himself in a few pints and gaze at the pitch.

  But the same reckless impulse that had brought me out tonight made me tilt my head so he could see the Drieden emblem on my hat. “I’m sort of a fan. Since birth.”

  Appreciation and amusement were in Nick’s expression as he held open the door for us. “After you.”

  It was exactly the sort of place Princess Theodora of Drieden would never go, dark and grimy and filled with the stench of fresh beer and old sweat. I seemed to be the only female patron but no one paid me any attention, as their eyes were glued to the various matches broadcast from around Europe.

  The tables in the corners were all occupied, which was probably a blessing, as I imagined crusts of filth piled up under the booths. Lucy would have me dunked in disinfectant if she knew I’d been here.

  So we took a high table in the middle
of the pub. One beer, I told myself. One beer would satisfy this self-destructive urge that had overtaken me tonight. One beer and then I could slip out while Nick’s attention was riveted to the television. I would never see him again.

  With the twenty-euro note I’d given him earlier, Nick disappeared and returned with two lukewarm ales, and just as I’d expected, his attention was soon commanded by the Bundesliga.

  Even though it was smelly and loud and dirty, I told myself to savor it all. This would be my last walk on the wild side.

  After this, I would go home and become the princess that everyone wanted me to be, that I was supposed to be. The close call last night had made me realize that it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the alarm, inside or outside the palace.

  But you didn’t let that stop you tonight, Thea.

  There were five more minutes left in the match. Five more minutes to enjoy my freedom, I firmly told myself, keeping an eye on the television clock. After that, I’d be sensible again. I would leave.

  Nick finished his beer and went to grab another round, leaving me to sip in solitude until yet another burly stranger walked up to the table to take his place. Did this happen to all single women in bars, or did I just have a sign hanging over my head saying, yes, I want to be accosted in public by annoying drunk men?

  He spoke in sloppy Driedish with a muddled British accent. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “I already have one.”

  “Come on then, have one with me. I promise I’m more interesting than the loser who just left you alone.”

  A hand draped over my shoulder. It didn’t belong to my new annoying friend. It belonged to my old annoying friend.

  “She’s with me.”

  Nick’s hand moved up under my hair and he rubbed my neck with his thumb, a clear sign of ownership.

  But it wasn’t enough for the drunk jerk still weaving in front of me.

  “C’mon, darlin’. I can tell you’re looking for some real fun tonight, not this lightweight.”

  “I said, she’s with me,” Nick repeated, a little louder this time.

  The drunk leaned over and peered at me with observant if hazy eyes. “She doesn’t look like she’s with you. Kiss her, then, if you’re her man.”