Prince and Future... Dad?

by Christine Rimmer

  “He wouldn’t go back?”

  “That’s right.” Ingrid waved a hand. “Oh, it’s a long, sad story.”

  “Tell me.”

  After a moment, Liv’s mother continued. “Brian wanted, so badly, to become a true Gullandrian. To be accepted by Osrik, by the others at court, as one of the jarl. He badgered Osrik constantly. As king, Osrik had it in his power to make him a citizen, to declare him high jarl. Also, there was the fact that Freyasdahl is an old and respected Gullandrian name, so no one would have argued Brian’s right to take his place in the nobility.”

  “But Father wouldn’t grant him citizenship?”

  “No. Granny Birget and your grandfather didn’t want it. They wanted their son home, in America. They wanted him to finish his education and pick up his ‘real’ life here. Osrik, naturally, wanted to please his wife’s parents. And Brian was…spoiled. Hot-headed. There were a couple of incidents. He seduced and abandoned a serving girl. When the girl became pregnant, Osrik arranged a marriage for her with a steady, hardworking farmer. Also, Brian beat one of the grooms in the stables almost to death for putting his favorite horse away wet. Osrik wanted to send him to the Mystics then, the wise men beyond the Black Mountains. In Gullandria, troubled young people are often packed off to the Mystics, where they’re taught a little discipline and made to understand the error of their ways.

  “Brian refused to go, of course. And I interceded for him, to see he wasn’t sent away. Brian was…a troublemaker. I see that now, from the perspective of many years. He had a cruel and selfish little heart.”

  “But back then?”

  Ingrid lifted one shoulder in a regretful shrug. “I was used to loving him unconditionally. He was the ‘baby’ of our family. It was a huge blind spot with me. I wanted him to have what he wanted: citizenship and the title of prince. And Osrik kept putting him off. I was torn, I guess you could say—my beloved baby brother on one side, my parents and husband on the other. Finally Brian demanded the right to earn his place as a Gullandrian prince if Osrik wouldn’t simply grant it to him. You see, in Gullandria—”

  Liv smiled. “Mom. I know.” Ingrid had explained it all, years ago, in her stories to her girls of the land of their birth. If a man or a woman of another country desired Gullandrian citizenship, he or she could take a Gullandrian spouse, or petition the king for a special quest—an assignment that, when accomplished, would earn the petitioner all rights as a true Gullandrian. “Why didn’t Brian just find a Gullandrian girl and marry her? What about the servant he—”

  Ingrid made a low sound in her throat. “My brother, marry a servant, a mere freewoman? Never. Didn’t I mention he was a terrible snob?”

  “My uncle sounds like a complete rat, and if not the serving girl, what about some lady or other? He was heir to a few Freyasdahl millions, right? And he was also the brother-in-law of the king. Even if he was ugly as a gnome and a total jerk on top of it, that should have made him attractive enough to some ambitious lady with the proper pedigree.”

  “Brian didn’t want to do it that way. As time went by, he became nothing short of obsessed with the idea of ‘earning’ his citizenship by way of a special quest. Usually, in the past century or so, when the king grants a quest, it’s something pretty mundane—to paint a public building or clean up a roadway. That, along with a routine course in citizenship and proof that a man has a means of supporting himself, is usually all it takes. But Brian wanted something dangerous, something exciting. And blinded to his faults as I was, that seemed to me a noble thing, a proof that he was a better man than everyone else thought him to be.”

  Liv knew what came next. “So Father finally gave your brother what he wanted.”

  Ingrid nodded. “It was a covert mission into the Black Mountains and on to the Vildelund, to bring back a certain high jarl lady who’d run off to join the kvina soldars. The lady never did return. I understand she became a fine warrior. My brother was found dead at the gateway to the mountains, his head severed from his body and left on a pike a mile farther on—and a mile beyond that, his male parts were tied so they dangled from the branches of a spruce tree.”

  Liv winced. “That’s bad.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “And you blamed Father.”

  “Not at first. First, I demanded that he muster all his military forces and send them marching to the Vildelund, to avenge Brian’s death. He refused. He said that Brian was hated by many and there was no way to be certain who—or what—had killed him. Also, there was the fact that his body had been so horribly mutilated. In Gullandria, they only do things like that to the corpses of rapists or child molesters. Osrik said Brian must have deserved what he got. Osrik told me he wouldn’t wage war on his own people to avenge the death of a cruel, spoiled fool—and after that, yes. I hated him. You girls were born and I never returned to our marriage bed. I insisted I was leaving him. At first, he said he would never let me go. But then I swore I’d divorce him. It was, after all, my right as a Gullandrian woman. He kept me captive in Tarngalla for a while. Eventually, when he couldn’t stand the shame of being known as the king who had to keep his wife under lock and key to make her stay with him, we struck a bargain. I got you girls and the freedom to live in America. He kept our sons to bring up as candidates for the throne when the Kingmaking came around again.”

  Liv reached across the table once more. Her mother’s hand clasped hers.

  Ingrid went on, “At the time, I was wild with grief—and guilt, too, I realize now. I even imagined Osrik had wanted Brian dead. That he’d as good as killed him, to send him on that hopeless mission. When at last he allowed me and you three girls to leave for California, I swore never again to set foot on Gullandrian soil.”

  Liv asked softly, “And now?”

  Still holding tight to Liv’s hand, Ingrid pushed back her chair and rose. She came around the table and stood over her daughter. “Now, I would like once more, however briefly, to hold my eldest daughter in my arms.”

  “Oh, Mom…” Liv surged upward into Ingrid’s embrace. Over her mother’s shoulder, Liv sent Hildy a quivery smile.

  After a minute, Ingrid took Liv by the arms and held her away enough to look into her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what vows I make now. Now, as the mother of three proud and beautiful daughters, I only ask the gods most humbly that the three Norns of destiny show my girls the way on the twisting roads of their own separate fates.”

  The rattling fifty-seater Liv took from Heathrow arrived in Gullandria at three the following afternoon. It was a clear, cool day, with a brisk wind that made the rotors of the windmills lining the road to Isenhalla spin so fast they seemed like ghostly circles, rippling against the sky.

  There had been a black car waiting for her at the airport—sent by her father. She didn’t ask Kaarin Karlsmon, who’d been assigned the job of escorting her, how her father knew that she was arriving. It suited her just fine that he knew she was there.

  At the palace, Kaarin led Liv to the same rooms she’d shared with Brit during her previous visit. Brit was there, waiting, arms outstretched. Liv freshened up a little and changed into her favorite all-business dove-gray silk suit.

  Brit hugged her again. “Knock ’im dead,” she whispered.

  “Oh, don’t I wish.”

  Kaarin was ready and waiting in the suite’s formal sitting room. “This way, Your Highness.” She turned for the exit to the hallway.

  Kaarin left her when they reached the tall doors. The guards pulled them wide. Liv’s pulse picked up speed as she crossed the stone floor of the antechamber.

  Her father was alone, seated behind his massive inlaid desk. He looked up as she entered.

  “Well,” he said. “It’s about time.”

  She’d had a thousand trenchant, scathing points to make. She’d planned to descend on him, eloquent in her righteous fury, to bend him to her will—and to doing the right thing—by the sheer force and brilliance of her arguments.

  But inst
ead, she discovered, she had nothing to say to him beyond, “I’d like to speak with Finn, please. Will you have someone take me to him?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The cell was of lusterless gray stone—all of it: walls, ceiling and floor. One small barred window, high up, let in a square of light and meted out a view of a tiny slice of Gullandrian sky. A rough stone fireplace contained the usual Gullandrian-style insert that meant it burned natural gas. At least, Liv thought, as cheerless as the accommodations were, he wouldn’t be cold.

  An arch in the wall perpendicular to the entry door led into shadow—a sleeping alcove, Liv assumed, maybe some rudimentary sort of bathroom. The furniture was the basics only: a rough table and two straight chairs. A recessed and grated ceiling fixture directly over the table cast a weak glow on an area perhaps four feet square, so that the corners of the room faded out into gray gloom. On the table lay a stack of books, a tablet, a few pens….

  “Give a call through there, Highness, when you’re ready to leave.” The guard gestured at the small barred grate in the top of the heavy door.

  Liv quelled a shiver. “Thank you. I will.”

  The man saluted and backed out, pulling the door shut as he went. Liv faced the room again and heard the key turn in the lock behind her.

  Finn’s voice came to her out of the darkness of the second room. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  Liv swallowed away the traitorous tightness in her throat, faced the dark arch and announced, “Well, great to see you, too—that is, if I could see you.”

  He took form beneath the arch as he moved into the meager light. Her heart leaped and then seemed to stop cold in her chest. He was unshaven, his white silk shirt wrinkled and half-unbuttoned, his slacks unpressed. His eyes seemed so deep—and lightless. There were dark circles beneath them.

  How could this have happened? How could her lighthearted playboy prince have been brought so low?

  She wanted only to run to him, to throw her arms around him, pull his tousled head down and press her lips to his. But something in his haggard face stopped her. Something in those lightless eyes warned her to keep back.

  “Why?” she asked simply.

  For that she got a rueful shrug.

  “Please, Finn. Tell me. Why has my father sent you here?”

  He tipped his head, looked at her sideways. “You haven’t talked to him?”

  “I saw him for a minute or two, just long enough to ask that he take me to you.”

  Finn stepped closer and her heart seemed to swell with longing, to outgrow the space inside her chest. But he didn’t reach for her. He grabbed one of the crude straight chairs, pulled it out and dropped into it. “Go back home. Forget about me. Your father is a good man, a reasonable man at heart. In time, he’ll see the futility of keeping me here. I’ll be released—a little ragged, somewhat unclean, but not appreciably the worse for wear.”

  She took a step closer. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?”

  “Go home.”

  “It’s something to do with me, isn’t it?”

  He rested one fine hand on the table, idly flipped open the cover of a book, then sharply flicked it closed again. “Go home.”

  She took the second step that brought her to the table and then she pulled out the other chair and sat opposite him. “There’s no sense in refusing to tell me. You’ll only force me to ask him. I have a feeling he’s going to be all too willing to explain to me exactly why he’s put you here.”

  Finn grabbed the book and hurled it across the room. It landed against the stone with a hard smack, then slid, pages ruffling, to the floor.

  Liv looked at him for a long, cool moment. Then she rose, picked up the book and carried it back to the table, where she placed it on top of the stack. “Talk to me. Please.”

  A stare-down ensued, a strange echo of their earlier times together—only reversed. Now he was the one scowling and angry, and she returned his glare with a calm, pleasant smile.

  “Please,” she said at last, softly. Tenderly.

  “Go home.” He stood. And then he turned and walked away from her, disappearing again into the darkness beyond the archway.

  Her father rose from the chair behind his big inlaid desk when Liv returned to his private audience chamber. Prince Medwyn, his Grand Counselor, stood behind him, to his right.

  “Well,” said Osrik. “Have you enjoyed a warm and tender reunion with the father of my grandchild?”

  Liv resisted the urge to say something a woman should never say to a king, even if that king happened to be her father. “He won’t tell me why you sent him there.”

  Osrik shook his head. “So stubborn. And so surprising. Prince Finn has, until very recently, ever been a reasonable man.”

  “So I’m guessing you’ll tell me. Why did you send him there?”

  Her father sank to his chair again. He laid both hands on the desktop and looked down at them. He appeared to be studying the big ruby on his right hand. He lifted his proud gray head and looked at Liv once more. “He tells me you refuse to marry him.”

  Liv resisted the urge to explain herself. Instead, she proudly drew her shoulders back and answered, “That’s correct.”

  A slow smile took form on Osrik’s still-handsome face. “Well, then. You have it in your power to secure his immediate release.”

  She sucked in a slow breath. “By marrying him.”

  “Ah. Good girl. Bright girl.”

  Liv felt her temper rise. She made an effort to speak in an even tone. “I don’t believe this. You threw a man prison because he couldn’t convince me to marry him.”

  Her father gestured broadly. “Ahem. Well. More or less.”

  Clearly there was more going on here than she knew, more than she wanted to know. “What more?” she asked bleakly.

  “It matters not.”

  “Not to you, maybe.”

  “The plain fact is, you refused to marry him, in spite of all his efforts to seduce and cajole you. His charms are legendary, yet they failed against your stubborn determination to bear your child in shame. I was…disappointed in him. Extremely so. I sent him to Tarngalla in order that he might have the leisure to ponder my displeasure.”

  “This is not the whole story, Father. I know there’s more to it.”

  Osrik sighed. “You are here, now, aren’t you? You’ve left the summer employment you value so highly and come all this way to aid him. From this I deduce that the father of your child must mean something to you.”

  “Of course he does.” More than she had understood until she’d seen him in the darkness, brought so low. More than she wanted her father to know. More, she realized, than she quite knew how to handle.

  A rueful gleam lit the king’s dark eyes. “Medwyn and I have been talking,” he said. “At length. I see no harm in revealing to you now that at one time, we hoped that Elli, or you, or perhaps even Brit might marry Medwyn’s son, Eric. Eric is a fine man, much beloved by the people, a good candidate for king when the time for the Kingmaking is on us again. Since your brothers are gone, I have dared to dream that someday my grandson, at least, will claim the throne.

  “However, things are not working out quite as I had planned. Elli has married my warrior. Eric has disappeared into the Vildelund and refuses, at least up to this point, to return. You are with child by Finn. Much discussion has led us to understand that we must be more…open to other ways of viewing this situation.”

  None of this information was particularly surprising to Liv. Now that his sons were gone, it was only logical that her father would want one of his daughters to marry the future king.

  Osrik continued. “As a Danelaw, Finn is very much eligible for kingship. He could be groomed toward that end. Were you to marry him, you would be queen. And he seems an open-minded sort of man at heart, a man who would be quite amenable to the suggestions of a brilliant, politically minded wife. You could be, in the truest sense, the power behind the throne.”


  Liv gaped at her father.

  “Close your mouth, daughter,” said Osrik. “And tell us what you think of our idea.”

  Liv shook her head. “Oh, Father. You just don’t get it.”

  Osrik looked weary suddenly. “What is it I don’t ‘get’?”

  “I don’t want to be queen. I could never be satisfied with being the power behind anything.”

  Her father almost smiled. “Ah. Such ambition.”

  “That’s right. I’m ambitious, and proud of it.”

  “But do you have any hope of ever realizing your ambition?”

  “Yes. I believe I do. I’ll be a senator, or maybe governor.”

  Osrik grunted. “I know they’re…progressive in America. But isn’t it still the norm for a woman to marry first and then have children?”

  Liv stood tall. “Times change.”

  Father and daughter regarded each other across the expanse of his desk. Osrik said, “Marry Finn. Set him free. And give your child a name.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You can consider yourself responsible for his extended imprisonment.”

  The three princesses met in the private sitting room of the suite assigned to Liv and Brit. Brit assured them they could speak freely. She’d made an ally of one of the agents at the National Investigative Bureau—the Gullandrian version of the FBI. The agent had dropped in for a visit just yesterday and swept the rooms for bugs. And Brit had sent the cook and the maid out on a few errands, a series of odd jobs that should take them several hours.

  Brit said, “This is how I see it. Dad wanted Finn to get you to marry him—any way he had to. Finn drew the line at force. And it’s off to Tarngalla for him.”

  Elli was nodding. “I buy that. After all, when Father decided he wanted me here in Gullandria, he sent Hauk to kidnap me.”