The royal family, Anne realized with a burst of excitement, were all blond. In fact, except for Lois and Gladys and Anne herself, everyone was blond. It was a country of Betty Grables and Errol Flynns! (Er, wait, wasn’t Flynn a brunette? Oh, never mind.) Yes, a country of blonds…except for the dark travelers, of course. But this wasn’t really their land, was it? No brunettes allowed.
They looked human, too, she realized as the man in front opened his mouth to speak. If I was riding the bus on the base and these fellas got on, I wouldn’t give any of them a second look.
She supposed that was part of the problem. In a land of godlike creatures, the dark travelers had committed the sin of being ordinary.
“Glzpllk sltsl dkst,” the man in front said, and he interspersed the small pause between consonant clusters with a glottal click.
“I’m sorry, we don’t understand you,” Anne said, hoping he would reply.
“Sltsl gdpsll wjjkswwkkt?”
“It’s gibberish,” the king sniffed. “In a moment they will begin to quarrel and fight us.”
“It’s not gibberish,” she corrected him, almost sharply. “It sounds harsh to our ears because they don’t use vowels.”
“Sltsl gdpsll wjjkswwkkt?”
“Do…not…fight…else…shalt…be…defeated,” the king said slowly and loudly.
“Sltsl…gdpsll…wjjkswwkkt?”
“DO…NOT…FIGHT! ELSE…SHALT…BE…DEFEATED!”
“SLTSL…GDSPLL…WJJKSWWKKT!”
“Okay, that’s enough of that right now,” Anne said. “For heaven’s sake. It doesn’t matter how loud you are, or how slow, if neither of you understands a word.”
“We did warn you,” Damon said mildly.
She ignored that. “It’s obviously a standard greeting; note how they’re repeating the same consonant set. It’s not gibberish, it’s definitely a language.” She clicked her tongue at the man in the lead, and though he did not smile, the frown wrinkles in his forehead smoothed out. “It’ll be hard to learn…God, it’ll be hard! Worse than Mandarin. But I think it can be done.”
“How…how do you know these things?” Maltese asked in amazement.
“I’m studying dialects at the base,” she replied. “I was supposed to be sent overseas to—well, we were still working on that while I was in training.” At their looks of confusion (the ones who didn’t speak her language seemed to be following it better), she elaborated. “I’m…when you sign up to fight, you have to take a lot of tests, and all my tests showed that I have a knack for languages…do you know ‘knack’? Yes? One time we had a guy from Paris—I mean he was originally from Paris, but he’d been living in America for years and years—he was on the farm for a couple of months helping my dad with the spring planting, and he taught me French. I was pretty fluent in time for the Fourth of July picnic.”
“Are you telling us you can speak their tongue?”
“Give me a couple of months first.”
Maltese smiled at her, and she couldn’t help smiling back. When he looked at her like that, his whole face lit up and it was nearly impossible to resist.
“You are wonderful,” he said.
Chapter 14
“Sir, I’ll have to meet with them daily. And I’ll need lots of paper and pencils—you have writing materials? Frequent, short sessions or we’ll all burn out. And I’ll need an assistant, someone to bounce ideas off of and help me get it all down. Can we barrack them close by?”
“It will all be as you wish, Anne,” the king assured her. “But I must warn you, the minute they turn warlike, they will be dealt with.”
“Sir, be serious. They’re just happy to be included. Look at them.”
The dark travelers were following behind the four of them, and Anne kept glancing back to make sure they were still there. None of them had smiled yet, but they had chattered excitedly to each other and followed her willingly enough.
“And they will be guarded,” Sekal added.
“I understand, but please try not to be too obvious, all right? They haven’t done anything wrong. And we invited them back to our home.” She corrected herself. “Your home.”
“Because of you,” Maltese reminded her.
No, she thought. Because your father loves you and wants you to be happy, so he’s going along with this in order to make me happy and therefore you happy. So now a pack of dark travelers are staying in the palace for the first time in the history of Sekal’s reign. Because of me. So I’d damned well better learn that language in the next five months.
Or else…what?
Chapter 15
“You mean there wasn’t a fight? You brought ’em back here and we’re having a slumber party or whatever? Well, shit, that’s great!” Lois did something to her handgun, and the clip slid out and slapped into her palm. They didn’t have guns like that in the service, so small and sleek and black, and Anne was longing to get a closer look at it. Well, maybe when she knew Lois better. “I can’t believe it! Where’s Damon, I gotta go give him a big hug.”
“They’re getting the dark tra—” Anne shook her head. Part of the problem was that ridiculous name. “They’re making our guests comfortable. I guess the king didn’t want to leave it to the servants.”
“Huh. Okay. So, what were they like?”
“Mild and unwarlike,” she replied. “I think they’re just tired. They’ve probably been roaming the desert for decades.”
“Like Moses,” Lois said brightly.
“Stop saying that, it’s annoying. Maybe they got tired of it and a new leader tried to take things by force once or twice. It would never work, of course, so they were stuck being nomads. You should have seen them when we motioned for them to come with us. They were so surprised. And grateful. Now I’ve just got to learn the language and we can really make some progress.”
“Wait, wait, I missed a memo or something. You’re staying? To learn their language? Cripes, I miss out on one afternoon jaunt and everything changes.”
“I have to. The king needs me.” She heard herself saying that and straightened with pride. The king needs me. Oh, boy, did that feel good. Not “ride your bike to the vet and tell him the cow’s having trouble bulling” good. “Report to Special Language and Tactics at 0800” good. “It’s no wonder everyone here thought they were animals.”
“Yeah, I have to admit, it’s the first evidence of prejudice I’ve seen,” Lois said. “I was kind of shocked. I guess I’ve only noticed Damon’s good side. I mean, once I got over being massively pissed at him. He’s so gonzo, I guess I overlooked that prejudice.”
Anne guessed what “gonzo” meant based on context. “Yes, he certainly is. Well, everybody has hidden dark corners, I guess. Otherwise there would never be wars.”
“That might be oversimplifying a little, doncha think? I mean, there’s gotta be more to it than—”
“Speaking of wars,” she continued, “did I hear you say a while back that we won World War Two?”
“Yup. We completely kicked their asses. But later we made nice with Japan, you know, after massively obliterating them, and now we—”
“We made friends with them?” Anne was shocked, thinking of the dead at Pearl Harbor. “After what they did?”
“Well, uh, we sort of got even with a vengeance. Do you know what Fat Man and Little Boy are?”
“I guess the important thing is we won,” Anne said, not really listening. “I’ll be sorry I couldn’t do my part, but maybe after I learn the language of the dar—of our guests, I can work on a way to go b—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”
“Where I’m from,” Anne said evenly, “ladies don’t speak in such a way.”
“Well, wake up and smell the fucking roses, sunshine. You aren’t where you’re from. You’re here. You were bitching and moaning because you finally had a purpose back home and got taken away from it. Well, shit! You’ve got a purpose here, too, one a lot more important than being a cog in the war machine back
home, I might add. You stopped a war, for crying out loud!”
“A skirmish,” Anne couldn’t help correcting.
“And now it turns out you’re this humongous language expert and we’re massively dependent on you to talk to them, and you practically negotiated a peace treaty just by talking the king into giving them a chance, and who knows where this is gonna lead, but ohhhhhh noooooo, poor Lieutenant Anne, trapped in the SandLands with no purpose.” Lois’s voice was dripping scorn, and Anne squashed the urge to smack the princess between the eyes. “Don’t you get it? People don’t end up here by accident. This was meant to be! Will you quit crying about it and accept your destiny already? All this bitching about not being in training is getting real old. Will you just please suck it up?”
“Excuse me, Princess,” Anne replied, her scorn equal to Lois’s. “I’ve been here, at my count, less than seventy-two hours. I beg your pardon for not acclimating quicker. How dare you lecture me, Princess? You have no idea of the realities of being a woman in 1945. You weren’t even born while I was struggling to make something of my life. How can you know what it’s like?”
“I ought to by now,” Lois snapped back, “after all the whining I’ve had to put up with.”
“Then you’ve got an idea how trapped a person can feel, a person with few choices and fewer opportunities. Then you get a chance…and you’re free. But not for long.”
“No, then you get a new job, a very important job, and a prince thinks you walk on water and does everything he can to make you feel better, plus, hello, could he be more great looking?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“But noooo, that’s not good enough for you, you have to get back to the precious base—”
“I would think,” Anne said quietly, “that as someone who killed herself rather than face life without her job, you might be a little more understanding. I can’t do mine and you have the gall to tell me to ‘suck it up,’ whatever the hell that means? How did you do it, Lois? Did you shoot yourself with that nifty little gun? Did you jump off a building? However you did it, you most certainly did not suck it up.”
That got her, Anne saw at once. Lois’s mouth had dropped open but she made no response, because there was none.
“So in the future,” Anne finished, “if you would keep your unsolicited opinions to yourself, I would be grateful.” She turned and left the small sitting room, passing a slack-jawed Damon on the way out. Lois was right about one thing at least: this place absolutely needed doors. “Don’t say a damned word,” she told him. “Dammit!”
Maybe ladies didn’t use vulgar language, but it was an interesting (and refreshing!) way to express oneself, for certain.
Chapter 16
Maltese had brought her lots of thick paper, so heavy it was almost like cloth, and pots of a thick, viscous substance which looked like tar but wrote like ink, and shiny sticks to dip into the pots. She tried to make notes about the afternoon, but the argument with Lois kept breaking her concentration.
True, the woman had overstepped her bounds, princess or not, but she had certainly given Anne something to think about. Was there meaning to all of this? She had almost convinced herself ending up in that sweet-smelling pool had been an accident, a divine joke, but now she was wondering. Because she certainly had a job here, had purpose, and couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave until their guests had secured a place on the planet. It was as much their home as the royal family’s—but persuading Sekal of that might take some doing. She would stay until it was done.
As for the war back home, she already knew how it ended. And she sincerely doubted that the contributions of Lieutenant Anne Sanger would have much of an effect on the outcome. Certainly the farm didn’t need her—her father had replaced her with a hired hand the week she had taken the oath. And her mother, of course, had escaped into death years ago.
She stuck the stick into the pot, determined to make a record of the day’s progress, no matter wh—
“Is there still danger, Loo?”
She looked up. Maltese had pulled the heavy curtain aside and was standing in the doorway.
“Pardon?”
“I was only wondering if it was dangerous to speak to you.” He grinned. “Certainly Lois thinks so.”
“Oh, her.” Anne put the stick down on a different sheet of paper, mindful of the stains. “She picked a fight and I decided not to roll over, that’s all.”
He made a noncommittal noise and approached her. “What is it you are doing?”
“Making notes about today. Trying anyway.” She stared at her hands for a moment, then looked up into his beautiful face. Of course, his looks were irrelevant. But they certainly didn’t hurt matters. “Maltese, do you think all this was meant to be? That I was supposed to come here?”
He knelt beside her chair then picked up one of her hands, turned it over, and kissed the palm. “Loo, I thought that before you helped us make a home for the lost ones.”
“The what?”
“It is a small improvement over dark travelers,” he said, “and the king has bent an attentive ear to you in this matter, as in many others.” Smiling: “I think he has too much fear not to obey you.”
“Oh. You’re right, that is better.” She was mildly amazed that her smallest suggestions were being taken so seriously—definitely a novel experience. “So that’s what you think? That I’m supposed to be here?”
He paused, as if he were trying to find a way to speak his mind without scaring her, and finally said, “I think if it was not meant to be, you never would have come. And if your coming was a mistake, you would have been able to go back.”
She looked at him steadily, this good man, this prince, who had never bossed her and had never made her feel rotten for being born a girl. “Can I stay here?”
“Of course.”
“With you?”
“Of course.”
“Forever?”
He kissed her for a lovely long time. “Of course.”
Chapter 17
Lois pressed her lips together so tightly they went white, then turned and glared at Damon when he prodded her.
“I guess maybe I was out of line,” she said to Anne, still staring daggers at Damon.
“And.”
“And I shouldn’t have given you all that shit.”
“And.”
“And it wasn’t for me to tell you to suck it up.”
“And.”
“And I’d better not push my fucking luck unless I want to sleep on the couch for the rest of the week.”
“What is a couch?” Maltese asked.
“It is a thing where you cannot mate,” Damon explained. “It is a terrible, terrible place.”
“I appreciate that,” Anne said quickly, biting her tongue so she wouldn’t laugh. Lois looked so annoyed; Damon, so earnest. “I said some things, too. Things I regret.” Not the whole truth, but her brand-new sister-in-law was obviously trying to make up for bad behavior; it wouldn’t hurt to meet her halfway.
At least, she thought Lois was her new sister-in-law. Or sibling-by-mating, as Maltese called it. There hadn’t been a priest, or even a justice of the peace. Instead, the king had pronounced them mated, then gone looking for Gladys. It was a bewildering, abrupt end to a dizzying week.
And she didn’t regret it in the least. The moment she had stopped fighting her destiny, as Lois had called it, a feeling of incredible goodwill—dare she call it inner peace, if there was such a thing?—had come over her. Suddenly the SandLands had seemed especially beautiful, the people around her especially kind, the castle especially opulent. And to think it was now partly hers! As a member of the royal family, she was entitled to a share of…well, everything.
And she knew exactly what she would do with her newfound influence. What she had been doing all week…being an advocate for the lost ones. She doubted it would be her life’s work—she had many helpers willing to learn the language as quickly as she could trans
late it, and two years from now, communication should be reasonably simple. But there would be other things to occupy her time. Her duties as a princess royal, and perhaps later…children.
Odd, how something she had never given much thought to was now on her mind all the time. Well. Not children, exactly. But the making of them. Which, judging from the way Maltese had been looking at her all evening, would commence as soon as they had some privacy.
“I have to tell you something,” she said nervously. They were alone, finally, sitting on Maltese’s silk-covered plain of a bed, and he was kissing her between her neck and shoulder, causing delicious shivers to race up and down her spine. “I should have told you earlier. But in my defense, there wasn’t time.”
“I did not wish to give you time,” he whispered, nibbling on her ear. “I feared you would change your mind and run away with a lost one.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “That was pretty unlikely.” She leaned away from him. “I’m serious, I have something important to tell you.”
“Can you tell me from beneath the bedclothes?”
“No.” She slapped his hands away. “Listen, I’m happy to be here and I think we’ll have a wonderful life together, but I have to tell you, this isn’t my first time.”
“First time? Yes, you’re new here.”
“No, I mean I’m not a virgin.”
His brow furrowed. “You mean…you have mated before?”
“Not been married before, but I’ve—you know. You remember the man who taught me French that spring? Well…” She paused. “I was curious. And that accent was really wonderful.”
“Loo, I do not care.”
“Well, you say that now, but I know men usually do care about that sort of thing. And I didn’t want to have this discussion after and have you think you were tricked. It’s silly, but—”
Really Unusual Bad Boys Page 10
