Asteria In Love with the Prince (25 page)

My fear lasted until I felt his lips on mine, and then as my eyes closed, the sound of the crowd seemed to die away and there was only Jagor, our lips moving slowly, his arms sliding around my waist and pulling me in. When we surfaced, the crowd were roaring. I waved again, dazed, and we were walking away.

Was that it?
I wondered,
did they stand in line and wait for hours just to see that?
I felt like a cheat.

***

Afterwards, the King insisted that we spend a moment with him. I don’t know if he’d guessed how the Queen had treated me or if he was just being friendly, but I welcomed it either way. The Queen excused herself, leaving the three of us to wander through the palace.

“I must am being apologetic but my sound of American is not Jagor’s,” he garbled, looking quite pleased with himself.

“Let’s speak in Asterian, Your Majesty,” I said smoothly.

He nodded. “I’m glad we can finally talk, Exkella. Last time you were here, the idiots had me laid out flat on my back.”

Jagor looked troubled. “I hope they really are just idiots.”

“Pfft. Just hooligans and criminals with ideas above their station. It’s over: your crash team is a waste, you know.”

Jagor looked unconvinced, and I remembered our conversation with Sarik, last time I was in Asteria. “Let’s be cautious, father. It can’t hurt to have a few soldiers around: just in case.”

The King sighed. “As you wish. It gives them something to do, at least. The army can earn their pay, for a change.” We wandered into the press office and saw that the staff had gathered around a TV. “What’s this?”

Ismelda turned and blanched as she saw us. I recognized the woman on the screen: Calara, sitting in a TV studio in a cozy one-on-one interview.

“I thought our future lay together,” she was saying. “But he’s chosen an outsider, a woman from America who barely understands—”

Ismelda stabbed a button on the remote and the screen went blank. “Sorry, Exkella,” she said to me, and sighed. “I should have predicted she’d do this today.”

Jagor looked around. The whole press office looked not just glum, but guilty: they’d been out-maneuvered. “It’s not your fault. She was going to do this at some point. Maybe it’s better that it happens now.”

I stared at the blank screen with a stab of guilt. Was it my fault Calara’s life had been wrecked? I glanced at Jagor and he got the message. He looked at his father, trying to hint that we needed some time alone.

The King just stared blankly at him. For some reason it made me smile. Compared to the Queen, compared to Jagor, even, he was socially inept: refreshingly straightforward and honest next to the Queen’s icy scheming.

“I should probably talk to the Exkella alone,” Jagor said gently.

“Yes,” said the King, nodding thoughtfully. Then: “Oh! Of course. Please.” He stepped back out of the way, giving us permission to leave. As I curtsied and backed out of the room, he gave me an encouraging smile. I really liked him: he was like the innocent parts of Jagor, without his mother’s cold anger.

In a quiet corridor, Jagor put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “I didn’t love her,” he reassured me. “It would have been a classic royal marriage: polite and outwardly happy, with nothing between us.”

I rested my head on his chest. “Is that how it is with your parents?”

He laughed suddenly. “Actually, I think theirs is one of the few where love is involved, in their own way.” He kissed me again. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Have we really destroyed Calara’s life?”

“She’ll be alright. But unless she can find someone suitably powerful to marry, she certainly won’t have the life she expected.”

The guilt settled into me, heavy and cold. I’d have to live with it forever...or find some way to fix things.

***

That evening, Ismelda was pleased. “The initial figures look good, Your Highness,” she told Jagor. “Even with Calara’s interview, comments on you are seventy percent positive. Exkella, your hair style is trending.”

“My what is
what
-ing?”

Ismelda wasn’t listening. “I think in the long term we were right: ratings are up for the two of you together.”

That didn’t sound right. “Ratings are
up?”

Ismelda stopped suddenly, as if she’d said too much. I remembered the brief looks of guilt I’d seen when we’d discussed how the public would react to me. I rewound our conversations.

“Jagor,” I said cautiously, “Before I came along...the public did
like
you...didn’t they?”

Of course they did, I told myself. He was Jagor: what wasn’t to like? But the silence grew longer and longer.

“I should go, Your Highness,” Ismelda said, already turning to leave.

“No,” Jagor told her. “Please. Stay.” He sighed, his hands clenching into fists as he tried to explain. “My popularity with the public has...not been good,” he said at last. “My father was a military hero: I never served. He has a way with the people: they respond to him. I don’t have that. He is a leader, I’m....” his voice grew bitter. “A playboy.”

“You do yourself a disservice, Your Highness,” Ismelda said loyally.

“No. It’s true. They don’t
like
me the way they like him. Before I can rule, we need to change that.”

“And your engagement to Calara was meant to make you more likeable.” I felt cold and numb. “Was that why you were marrying her?” My stomach lurched. “Is that why you’re marrying
me?”

“No!” Jagor almost shouted, and he pulled me close. “No, of course not. Lucy, my marriage to Calara was arranged many years ago. Yes, we hoped the public would like the idea but it would have gone ahead anyway. And it wasn’t the reason I proposed to you. If anything, you’ll be—” He broke off, but it was too late.

“A millstone around your neck?” I finished for him. I could feel Ismelda’s embarrassment at having to listen, but we were in too deep to stop now.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—”

“I know what you meant.” I walked out, trying to remember my way through the maze of corridors to our private suite. It didn’t help that my eyes were blurry with tears.

***

He found me an hour later. The sun had gone down and I was sitting in the darkness in our bedroom. The tears had almost dried but the deep ache inside remained.

“I’m sorry,” he told me in English. Hearing him mangle the pronunciation coaxed a laugh from me, even though I didn’t feel it. He kissed the back of my neck and then slowly worked around to the front, kissing away the last of my tears. “I should have better explained.” I winced at his English. “I did not want to load you with weight.”

“You didn’t want to burden me,” I corrected, and switched to Asterian. “I know.”

“Let me make it up to you,” he told me. He passed something around my head: silk, probably one of his ties. He was tying it like a blindfold.

“Wait,” I told him. I wasn’t in the mood: not so soon after we’d argued.

“It’s not sex. Come with me.”

He made me walk with him, hand-in-hand, and it was doubly disconcerting because I didn’t know the palace well enough to visualize where we were. Eventually, we stopped and I smelled flowers. He took off the blindfold.

We were in the palace gardens; an area I’d never seen before. Ancient stone pillars and low walls divided the garden into a thousand secret spaces. In front of us, a tree-lined path led to a clearing, lit by hundreds of candles in tiny tin lanterns. I could see a picnic blanket there, and a hamper. Music was coming from another clearing off to the side and as I took another step, I could just glimpse a string quartet playing there: close enough to the picnic that we’d be able to hear them, far enough away to prevent them spying.

“You did all this in an hour?” I asked weakly.

“I had a little help.”

***

The hamper contained bread, cheeses from around the world, succulent grapes, cold meats and salads, olives, several Asterian finger foods I couldn’t identify and a selection of cakes. There were two bottles of wine – just to give us a choice.

Jagor sat, leaning against a tree, and I nestled between his legs, my back against his chest. “Will we be able to do things like this?” I asked. “When we’re married?”

“Of course.” He stroked my cheek.

I was silent for a moment. “I don’t know if I can be who you need me to be.”

“Can you be yourself?”

“A librarian? I can be a librarian. Do you need a librarian?”

“A librarian is who I fell in love with. And you’re not really a librarian. You only look like one.” He paused. “Sometimes, you don’t even look like one.” I knew he was thinking of me in the corset, or in nothing at all.

“Calara would know what to say to people: how to act. She was bred for this life.”

He shrugged. “Maybe that’s a bad thing.
I
was bred for this life and they hate me.”

There was something in his voice: he was half-joking, but he couldn’t stop the note of pain creeping in. I turned to look at him: he’d heard it too, and was covering his embarrassment by sipping his wine. This man who’s going to rule one day is just like everyone else, I realized. However formal and strong he had to be in public, on some level, he still needed what we all needed: to be liked, trusted and respected. And just like the rest of us, it killed him inside when he didn’t have it.

How much of this was because of his brother? His parents had never intended Jagor to take the throne: From birth, Vinko had been the one who would lead. How much had that shaped Jagor’s childhood: being told he was to be the playboy prince; the one who’d never ascend? And when Vinko died, what awful damage had that done to Jagor? Did he feel responsible, because Vinko had been captured trying to save him? Had he always felt like he was second choice: second best?

I knew he was in there: the Jagor I loved, the one the public didn’t see. Gentle but strong, caring but decisive. If he kept living like this, isolated from his people, trapped by his past, what would he eventually turn into?

The Queen?

Had she been just like Jagor, when she’d married the King? Had the isolation poisoned her, and made her demand fearful respect in place of the love she longed for?

“I’ll do it,” I said out loud.

He turned and looked at me, startled. “What?”

“Help you.” I was determined now. I was going to be the best damn exkella there’d ever been, and together we’d get the public on our side. Jagor would get the love he needed, from me
and
his people. I had the retinue to help me: all I had to do was not screw up.

Chapter Sixteen

We were eating breakfast on the terrace with the Queen when it happened. Unlike all those meals in Monaco, I could at least sit next to Jagor now, even if the cold gaze of the Queen meant that it was difficult to feel playfully romantic at the table. She was attacking some sort of Asterian smoked fish with a viciously sharp knife when Ismelda appeared. “Your Majesty,” she said tightly, “Exkella?”

There was something about her mood that chilled me. Bad news. Very bad news. “What? What is it?”

Ismelda had a tablet clutched to her chest; as if what was on the screen was so bad, she had to block it from oozing out. “A French magazine....” She bit her lip. “They’ve published a picture.”

I’d never heard the word “picture” sound like that. I realized that the word had a different meaning to PR people. When a “picture” exists, it’s rarely good.

“Let me see,” the Queen ordered. Credit to her: Ismelda actually hesitated, her eyes flicking to Jagor and me first. But the Queen wasn’t someone you could resist. Ismelda passed her the tablet.

The Queen stared at the screen. Then she looked at me.

Oh God, it’s something about me.
What had I done? “What is it, Your Majesty?” I asked.

But she just passed the tablet to Jagor. He turned his body so that I couldn’t see it – trying to protect me, I suppose. I actually saw his body respond, his shoulders rising and his back tensing in rage.

“
What?”
I demanded. “What is it?”

At last, he passed the tablet to me.

The photo had been taken from above and slightly to the side. I was lying on a sun lounger, wearing just the bottom half of a bright scarlet bikini: above that, I was naked, my breasts gleaming with oil.

My jaw dropped open.

“Did it not occur to you, Exkella,” the Queen asked, “that exposing yourself in public might be inappropriate?”

I was having trouble breathing. “I—But there was no one there!”

The Queen arched an eyebrow at me. “The photo is a fraud, then? Because the woman with her breasts on display does look an awful lot like you.”

“It’s my fault.” Jagor had his fists bunched. “I should have warned you to stay indoors, or to think about what you did—”

“I hardly think she should need to be told not to parade herself half-naked—” said the Queen.

“
Mother!
Please!”

The Queen sighed and sliced off a chunk of fish, sawing as if she wished I were on her plate.

“But…there was no one there! There weren’t even any buildings overlooking us!” I didn’t understand: the photo was as close up as if the photographer had been in the garden with me. You could see every detail, every freckle.

“They were probably in a helicopter,” Ismelda explained. “With a long lens.”

Jagor’s huge fist thumped the table. “This is unacceptable,” he growled. “Ismelda, come with me: we’ll discuss our response. Lucy, you stay here.”

I felt the Queen’s gaze boring into me from across the table. “But—”

“Please, Lucy, stay here!” he snapped, and marched off, Ismelda hurrying along behind him.

“Well,” said the Queen. “You’ve made quite the first impression.”