Princess In Denim

by Jenna McKnight

  He liked it down—so much more "her" than that stuffy French braid.

  "Really?" He strove to sound as if he were surprised. "You do not like it?"

  "If I died and someone buried me in that one, I'd come back to life just to hurt them."

  "I see." He did his best to appear thoughtful; frowned a little, pursed his lips a little, stared at the sketches for a full minute. He pointed toward another. "Perhaps this one then?"

  "For a man who dresses as well as you do, you have abominable taste in wedding gowns."

  "You think I dress well?"

  She looked away, but not before her cheeks pinkened. If she was trying to annoy him by being difficult, William thought, she was doing more suffering than he. He held up a different sketch. "This one?"

  "Terrible."

  "Yes, I thought so, too."

  He went through them one by one, gauging her expressions, noting her adjectives. Only one escaped an instant rejection, though rejection was not long in coming.

  "No, that one would never do." She bolted to her feet. "Excuse me, please. My father is expecting me this morning."

  And he knew her reply had been delayed because that was the gown she would have wanted, had she been allowed to choose her husband.

  Humming softly, William left her apartment and handed the folder to Leonard. "The one on top. Have the designer begin immediately."

  "They will need to measure Her Highness. And I am not certain her secretary would keep your secret."

  "Send someone to her maid, then. Tell her it is to update her wardrobe."

  Leonard bowed slightly. "Ingenious, Your Majesty. She does not want to see more sketches from this designer?"

  "No, she appeared to like that particular gown very much."

  As did he. Better yet, he was going to like her in it.

  * * *

  If the wedding dress turned out half as pretty as the sketch, Chloe knew it would be exquisite.

  On someone else.

  It was only a small drawing, and on it she couldn't tell embroidery from pearls, but the offset shoulders, narrow bodice, full skirt and long train were enough to make a gal want to marry the first king who proposed.

  Trouble was, William was the only king she was ever likely to be interested in, he hadn't proposed, and she had her own archaic notions about marrying for love.

  "The chauffeur has brought the car around, Your Highness."

  "Thank you, Humphrey."

  As a private secretary, Humphrey, the man hired by Prince Louis and formerly bumped down to Emma's assistant, was efficient. He'd stepped into Emma's job the morning following her disappearance. Her on-the-surface job, that is, not the position of constant support and bottomless well of information that Chloe truly needed.

  "That's all for now, Humphrey."

  "As you wish." He disappeared as silently as he'd arrived.

  Chloe, on today's trek through Baesland Castle, only had to stop twice to ask servants for directions before she found the entry hall. As she entered it from the north, William strolled in from the south. She got the distinct impression he'd been waiting for her, and it gave her heart a little flip-flop.

  "Ah, there you are, Your Highness." He'd been very diligent in not using her name. Moira's name. "I did not hear your music this morning."

  "Did you miss it, Your Majesty?" She missed hearing his name on her lips, but she'd started this and she was going to see it through until she was a free woman again.

  After she had time to calm down and think rationally, she'd realized that all she had to do to prevent the wedding was to announce her true identity. She wasn't the owner of the name on the contract. She wasn't the princess William had bargained for. She wasn't the daughter Albert had signed away. But she truly wanted to stay a princess, and there was only one way to do that and avoid getting sold up the river, and that was to stick to her plan and get William to send her packing.

  "Because if you missed it, I'll be certain to play it soon."

  Not that it would do any good. No matter how loudly she played it the past three mornings, endangering her own hearing in the process, he hadn't complained. She doubted much noise had actually penetrated the thick stone walls between her apartment and his.

  Pity.

  She made a beeline for the stained-glass door. "My father is waiting." Maybe she could talk him into voiding his part of the contract first.

  "Your Highness, may I have a moment of your time? I shall see that you are not very late." He waited only a moment before adding, "In the small drawing room? Please, it is very important."

  Perhaps he'd already rethought the whole issue. Maybe her music had reached his apartment after all and driven him out of it. Curious, she followed him through a corner of the great room and into the drawing room, which might have been small by castle standards, but was still far from cozy.

  "I have a question about the ceremony."

  So much for his rethinking skills. "I hope you're not talking about a wedding ceremony."

  "But of course."

  She fisted her hands on her hips. "Yours and whose?"

  She'd done everything she could think of to wear him down. She'd blasted the stereo at odd hours, perpetually arrived late for meals, refused to pick a dress designer, turned down his invitations to go riding. That last one had been difficult, but fighting for one's independence required tough measures.

  Not only had William not worn down, he still had that darned twinkle in his eyes. Though he was careful to mask it just enough that she couldn't call him on it.

  "Yours and mine, Moira."

  Her name on his lips sounded just as sweet as it had when she first gave him permission to use it. "I told you—"

  "Ah, here she is!"

  Chloe followed his gaze, turned toward the door and saw Emma, smiling as if she'd missed her. "Emma!"

  "Your Highness."

  Relieved to see her again, Chloe threw her arms around the older woman's neck and hugged her close.

  My ally. My faithful friend, who will stand by me and tell everyone that I was raised in the United States, and it's unfair to force me to marry.

  "Please, Your Highness," Emma whispered urgently in her ear. "This is not proper."

  "I don't care, Emma. I don't care." Chloe gave her another squeeze, then held her at arm's length for a close look. "What happened? Where have you been? Who dismissed you?"

  Emma glanced nervously at William.

  "He sent you away?"

  "No! I . . . I thought His Majesty did, at first." Emma offered him an apologetic smile. "I thought he was afraid of my influence over you."

  Chloe thought William tried to sound innocent when he said, "Influence? I should be so lucky," but he failed miserably.

  "Emma, ride with me to see my father. We need to talk. You wouldn't believe what's happened since you left."

  Emma slipped out of Chloe's grasp, and paced the width of the rug. "Your marriage contract is common knowledge. As is the attempt on your life in your bedchamber. Gossip has it that His Majesty brought you here to keep you safe."

  "Did gossip tell you that I've been socializing with a prime minister for three days?"

  Emma's eyebrows arched, though Chloe couldn't tell whether it was in admiration for getting through it or worry over whether she'd been successful.

  "Now that you're here, would you kindly tell His Majesty that I'm a princess, and I don't have to marry him just because he says so?"

  "That's true, Your Highness—"

  Chloe gloated. "Tell him."

  Emma continued to address Chloe. "But you do have to marry him because your father says so."

  * * *

  King Albert's starched nurse hovered beside his bed, eyeing Chloe covertly. As if his pallor were the result of Chloe's disobedience. As if his trembling lips were due to her independent streak. As if she might do him harm.

  All she wanted to do was make the old king feel better. And if he felt better today, she wanted to convince
him to void the marriage agreement.

  She eased into the chair beside his bed and covered his hand, which was lying on top of the blanket, with her own. His skin was paper-thin and dry. "I'm here, Father."

  Albert's eyelids fluttered. The nurse, on the other side of the bed, squinted her eyes and looked down her nose. William stood behind Chloe, his hand on her shoulder, his closeness both reassuring and distracting.

  Louis sat in a chair by the window, at first physically removed from them all, until he jumped up and stalked over to the foot of the bed. "He is worse, I tell you."

  His scowl was cold enough to freeze a hot ember in Hades. Chloe leaned backward, instinctively seeking William's warmth.

  Louis snapped at the nurse, "Do something!"

  Slowly, Albert opened his eyes halfway. His heavy-lidded gaze wavered from one face to another, around his bed, then settled on Chloe. A warm, soft smile stretched his gray lips ever so slightly. "My daughter, you are here."

  "Yes, Father, I'm here." When his eyelids shuttered again, she patted his hand soothingly. "I'll just sit here awhile. You go ahead and sleep if you want to."

  But Albert didn't. He opened his eyes again, wider and more focused this time, and spoke to her in a language she'd heard Moira cuss in a time or two.

  Chloe needed an interpreter. "Emma—"

  William leaned down by her ear. "What is wrong?"

  "It . . . it's been too long. I can't make out everything." Chloe trusted that Emma, nearby, overheard and understood that she really meant, What the hell is he saying?

  "Your mother," Albert wheezed in English, "was right."

  If she could get him to stick to her language, she'd be okay. Emma wouldn't have to interpret. There would be less chance that someone thought Princess Moira had forgotten too much.

  Chloe leaned toward the bed. "Right about what Father?"

  "She was right . . . to send you . . . to the United States."

  "I enjoyed it there very much."

  Off he went into his own language again.

  Chloe tried to draw him back. "I enjoyed going to school there. They have wonderful colleges, Father."

  "You were safe there."

  "Yes, I had a fine staff who took very good care of me."

  "Not like here."

  Chloe frowned. "They take good care of me here, Father. Except I want to live here in Ennsway Castle with you."

  "Not here."

  "But I belong with you, Father."

  He rambled on in his own language again. From his intense concentration and tone, Chloe sensed that whatever he was telling her was quite important. At least to lim.

  He closed his eyes. She patted the back of his hand gently, figuring he'd worn himself out and would sleep for hours now.

  The nurse rounded the bed to Chloe's side and pushed her out of the way. In America, she might have expected such treatment in a crowd. She might have pushed back. In Ennsway, she'd already begun to get used to being treated like a princess, and getting shoved shocked her.

  Out of her chair now, standing between William and the bed, Chloe looked up to see whether he was breathing fire on her behalf and fixin' to have the woman beheaded. He watched the nurse intently, his stance rigid, grasping Chloe's elbow firmly.

  The nurse held Albert's wrist, then laid her fingers along the artery in his neck.

  "Is he—" William asked.

  She nodded. "He is gone."

  Gone?

  "Do something!" Louis shouted.

  Chloe nodded vigorously in agreement.

  Moira's father just died. How could Chloe find her to notify her?

  More important to Chloe, one of the partners to the marriage contract was now dead. It was pretty obvious that he could no longer change his mind. Louis would be king now. He would inherit the obligation to enforce the contract. He would also have the power to void it if she could manage to find some way to annoy William enough to make it unanimous.

  The other day, Louis had supported her. He'd agreed that she shouldn't be made to marry William. He'd help her.

  Albert's secretary rushed into the room, saw for himself that His Majesty was dead. He was followed by half a dozen other men in conservative suits, one of whom placed a stethoscope to Albert's chest and listened.

  Chloe finally realized no one was doing anything. "Aren't you going to help him?"

  "His Majesty left orders not to resuscitate," Albert's secretary explained.

  The doctor looked at him and nodded.

  Albert's secretary, in his navy suit and striped tie, took a deep breath, pulled himself up to his full height and addressed them all, but Chloe in particular. "The King is dead. God save the Queen."

  Queen? Chloe knew Moira's mother was dead. King Albert had never remarried.

  The doctor and every other nonroyal male in the room bowed in Chloe's direction. The nurse curtsied.

  Emma said to Chloe, "Your Royal Majesty—"

  Majesty?

  "—if you would like to spend a short time alone with your father for a private farewell, I will clear the room."

  Chapter Eight

  I'm queen?

  "Your Majesty?"

  Of Ennsway?

  "Your Majesty."

  Of an entire country? It's mine?

  "Your Majesty!"

  The last voice got her attention only because it was deep and tender and right above her ear. William.

  "Uh, yes, please, I'd like a moment."

  Everyone except Louis and William left the recently departed King Albert's bedchamber. Louis—she'd assumed he would be king someday, when she'd bothered to think about it at all. Moira had never told Chloe she'd inherit the throne. Surely Moira had known she was next in line. No matter that she thought it might not happen for thirty or forty years, she should have passed that tidbit of information on.

  Emma would have known, too.

  Everyone except Chloe, apparently. But she was apposed to be Princess Moira. She was supposed to know. She couldn't let on that she was as shocked as any American woman would be to find herself suddenly queen of an entire foreign country. Hiding her astonishment from Louis was going to be difficult if he continued glaring at her as if he wanted her to vaporize.

  "Alone," she snapped at him.

  Louis paced agitatedly across the hand-sculpted carpet. He kicked a chair, sent it crashing into the wall with a splintering of dry wood. Then he left.

  "Would you like me to leave, too?" William asked.

  His breath teased her ear, and she couldn't think rationally. She nodded, felt his warmth withdraw and almost called him back, but she had a big problem to work through and little time in which to do it. The door shut softly behind him.

  For the briefest of moments, she perched on the suede bench at the foot of the bed. She jumped to her feet, paced to the window, stared out and saw nothing, then retraced her steps and perched on the bench again.

  Would Moira return to Ennsway as soon as she heard about her father's death? Was he the reason she'd dreaded coming home in the first place? Would she feel free now to expose Chloe as the impostor she really was?

  The concern was fleeting; Moira wasn't the kind of person who would betray a friend. But if the king's death precipitated any trouble, Chloe wanted to be in her own castle.

  Her castle? Hey, everyone else thought it was hers, so it must be. Why she wanted to be there, she wasn't certain; she just knew it would make her feel better.

  It was time to move home.

  William would want her to return to Baesland with him, of course. She didn't know whether he really believed someone had actually tried to kill her, or whether he'd just used that as a convenient excuse to get her to Baesland where he could sway her into marrying him.

  The idea of marrying him wasn't repugnant. William vas a very desirable man; kind, caring, responsible, handsome, charming. She could have gone on and on. But she didn't want to marry without love.

  Opening the door just far enough for his hea
d and one shoulder, William leaned into the room. "Moira?"

  At the sound of his voice, she added "tender" to the list of his good qualities.

  "Would you send in Emma, please?" she asked.

  Emma appeared, alone, almost instantly. "Just so you know, Your Majesty, there are others out there who think I'm not qualified to remain as your secretary because I've been out of the country too long."

  "Tell them to go jump."

  Emma grinned with obvious relief that Chloe wouldn't be intimidated by King Albert's incumbent staff. "I heard that you snapped at your brother and ordered him out of the room."

  "Yes," Chloe said smugly. "I guess I'm learning, aren't I?"

  "Indeed."

  "Hang on to your necklace, though. Never know when you'll have to save me from a blunder, especially now that I'm queen."

  "Yes, ma'am." Emma patted her hair, too, and Chloe knew their signals were still in place, just in case.

  "I guess it would be polite of me to let Louis back in now, wouldn't it?"

  "It would."

  "Tell him, then, and please meet me in my room in a few minutes."

  "Yes, Your Majesty."

  Chloe had gotten used to being called Your Highness. She didn't think she'd adjust quite so quickly toYour Majesty.

  William fell into step beside her in the passageway. "We can leave for Baesland whenever you are ready."

  "Ennsway is my home. I'm staying here."

  "Your father would not like—"

  "My father is dead."

  "You are coming back with me if I have to drag you kicking and screaming the entire way."

  She wheeled on him, fisted her hands on her hips and stretched up to her full height, which was a head shorter than his. "I'll have my men-at-arms throw you out if you so much as touch me."

  She said a silent thank-you for having been raised with an assortment of foster brothers; they'd given her lots of practice with the peculiarities of the male of the species and how to stand up to him.

  "They would not dare."

  "They are my men-at-arms now."

  "But it is not safe for you here. Did you not hear what your father said?''