Ivy Secrets (32 page)

“Is that why you tried to kill yourself?” Marina asked.

Tess shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it was that. And other stuff.”

“Well, I am not going to kill myself,” Marina said. “I do not know what I am going to do, but I am not going to kill myself.”

Tess’s jaw twitched. “Look, Marina, I’m only trying to help. You’re too far along for a legal abortion. But maybe I can convince Dell to do one. She must know how. Why the hell did you wait so long to do anything about it?”

Marina looked up at the sky, then back to Tess. “You do not understand. This is not an ordinary baby. This is an heir to the throne.”

Big fucking deal, Tess wanted to scream. She wanted to shout that just because Marina was a fucking princess didn’t give her the right to have a baby when Tess hadn’t been able to.
It isn’t fair!
her racing thoughts cried.
It just isn’t fair!
She stepped forward, ignored Charlie’s warning look, and moved close to the princess. “What will your fellow Novokians think of your bastard heir?”

Charlie groaned. “Tess. Please …”

Marina shook her head. “It’s all right, Charlie. Tess is
right. If I don’t have an abortion, I will have to give my baby up for adoption.”

“Everyone would still find out,” Tess said.

“Maybe not.”

Tess laughed. “Look around, Princess. You’re followed by that man practically twenty-four hours a day. He probably reports back to your father every night.”

“Nicholas might keep my secret.”

“Once you’ve told one person something,” Tess said, “it’s no longer a secret. Besides, you’re supposed to go home in May. When’s the baby due?”

“August.”

“Maybe you could stay here,” Charlie said. “Maybe you could say you failed a class and have to make it up in summer school or something.”

Tess held up her hand. “First, we’ll see if Dell will do an abortion. We might not have to worry about any of this.”

“We?” Marina asked.

“Yeah,” Tess said, “
we.
You guys may not realize it, but whether we like it or not, you’re the closest thing to family that I have.”

    Dell wouldn’t perform the abortion. And though it seemed pretty weird to Tess, Marina didn’t seem disappointed. She said it had something to do with the “heir to the throne” thing, which didn’t make sense, because the princess was adamant about no one finding out, that she would give the baby up for adoption and relinquish her ties. None of it made any sense, Tess thought now as she walked along Main toward South Street. If Marina’s life was so bad, you’d think the last thing she’d do would be to get pregnant and pass along the stigma to the next generation.

Tess turned onto South Street and tried to quiet the excitement growing inside her. Stigma or not, Marina’s decision could possibly be the answer to Tess’s problems. It was too soon to tell anyone, too soon to let on, but Tess had a plan. A plan that would help Marina and, most of all, help herself.

She looked up at the red-and-white shingle that hung in front of a yellow colonial house. “Smith Real Estate,” the sign read. Tess smiled and headed up the walk.

“I must have a separate building for a studio,” Tess said to the middle-aged woman as they leafed through pages of multiple listings. “And it must be in town.”

“Are you an artist?” the woman asked.

A gentle warmth flowed into her … her special dot of light aglow once more. “I am a glassblower,” she said with sudden conviction. It was all part of her plan: she would buy a piece of property in Northampton, complete with a studio, in which she would craft what would become world-renowned works of glass art, and a comfortable house—small enough to be cozy, yet big enough to raise a child. Marina’s child. Tess would have her own family—she wouldn’t need parents or Peter Hobart or Giorgini or anyone. She would have her glass and have a child and have a reason to care about the future. Marina’s child would become the child she’d killed, the family she’d lost. And she’d be a wonderful mother. She’d love the child and provide for the child and never, ever, try to turn the child into becoming something it wasn’t. She would never do to a child all those things her own mother had done to her.

“Here’s a lovely place on Round Hill,” the agent said. “There’s a small barn in the back that could be converted.”

Tess studied the picture. It was perfect. Round Hill Road was just up the street from Smith, not far from Dell’s. “I want to see it today.”

“We can go now if you’d like. I have the keys.”

Tess stood quickly and realized her knees were weak. She leaned against the chintz-papered wall and caught her breath.

“There could be one problem, though,” the agent said. “Zoning.”

Zoning?

“I don’t know what kind of equipment you use for glassblowing, but you might need a variance to set up your studio here. Of course, we have other nice properties outside the city limits …”

“How do you get a variance?” Tess asked.

“The city must approve it. Do you know anyone who works for the city?”

Tess smiled. She thought of Dell, and Dell’s nephew, the redheaded conservative cop who had just made sergeant. “I
don’t think a variance will be a problem,” she said with confidence.

    Marina waited until the end of April to tell Nicholas. Despite the facts that she had begun borrowing large shirts from Tess and now wore stretchy knit pants instead of zip-front jeans, she knew that soon her “secret” wouldn’t be a secret to the man who followed her around every minute of every day. And though Tess and Charlie were constantly on her case, Marina was careful not to overeat. If she watched her diet, there was a chance no one at Smith would notice she would be six months pregnant at graduation.

All in all, Marina thought as she went downstairs to meet Nicholas for breakfast, being pregnant wasn’t so bad. She’d had little morning sickness, and that was so long ago she’d nearly forgotten what it felt like. And recently, she’d begun to feel the baby move inside her. For some strange reason, that sensation made her feel as though she actually had power over her own life, that by giving life, she was somehow a real person, a real woman, not just a fairy princess, a titled possession of the people.

The only time Marina felt sad was when she spotted Edward James on campus. He always smiled a warm, special smile, then continued on his way. She wondered if his heart fluttered at those chance meetings the way hers did; she wondered if he would ever know how grateful she was to him for showing her love. Even though it had been at the cost of what faced her now.

She opened the door to Morris House as Nicholas mounted the stairs.

“Good morning, Princess,” the trusted friend said.

A small catch came into her throat.
Please, God
, Marina begged,
don’t let him give me a hard time.

“Good morning,” she answered. “I feel like a walk before breakfast.”

Nicholas nodded and fell in behind her as Marina walked down the stairs. When she reached the sidewalk, Marina stopped. “I want you to walk beside me, Nicholas,” she said, as she had planned. “I want to talk with you.”

He moved beside her and they began walking toward Paradise Pond. They passed by the Berenson dance studio in
silence, then Sage Hall. “I want to go down to the red bridge,” Marina said. Nicholas didn’t protest as they went down the hill. He wouldn’t protest, couldn’t protest. Her wish, after all, was supposed to be his command.

At the small footbridge, Marina stopped. She leaned against the red iron railing and looked into the glistening spring water of Mill River as it splayed over rocks and moved forward, always forward, never turning back. No turning back, as with her pregnancy, as with this baby inside her, as with what she now had to tell Nicholas.

“Nicholas,” she said slowly as she continued to watch the water. “You have been my father’s friend for as long as I can remember.”

“Yes,” he answered.

“He trusts you with everything.” She smiled. “He even trusts you with my life.”

The water trickled under the bridge.

“What is it, Princess? What is on your mind?”

Marina took a last look at the water and took a deep breath. “I need your help, Nicholas.”

“Of course. I will help you with anything, you know that.”

“Even if it means going against the king?”

Nicholas frowned. His thick, now white eyebrows moved together. “Against your father? Perhaps you had better be more specific.”

She turned back to the water, looking for strength. This was more difficult than she’d expected. “I want to stay in Northampton for the summer,” she said. “I want my father to think I have to attend summer school.”

“I don’t understand. Are you telling me you are planing to lie to the king?”

“Yes.” She wanted to say that it was only a small lie, a white lie, one that would hurt no one. But Marina knew that any lie—small or otherwise—would not be looked upon favorably by her bodyguard.

“Why do you want to lie? If you ask the king to allow you to stay here through the summer, he might agree.”

“And he might not. I cannot take that chance. I need to lie.”

Nicholas walked to the railing and leaned against it beside
Marina. “It is not my place to ask such things, but if you are planning to lie, you are asking me to also lie.”

Marina walked a few feet down the bridge. Suddenly everything seemed clouded, suddenly she was ashamed. A fat robin landed on a wood slat of the bridge. He hopped a few inches, then flew off, secure with his freedom, unbridled in his flight. Marina would never have such freedom. Once she returned to Novokia, her life, and her body, would no longer be hers. But for now, she could live free; and she could give this baby inside her the rights she had never known, or would never possess.

The thought filled her with a renewed sense of strength. The reason she had become pregnant, the reason she had waited too long to have an abortion, had now become clear: She was going to give life—and freedom—to one child, a legacy she would never again be able to give to any other children who might follow.

She cleared her throat and turned back to Nicholas.

“Nicholas,” she said in a steady voice, “I am going to have a baby.”

His head snapped around. He stared at her. “You are what?”

Marina dropped her gaze. “I am pregnant, Nicholas. I am going to have a baby.”

“No. It is not possible. I have been with you …”

“Not all the time, Nicholas. I am afraid I snuck out on you once or twice.”

He shook his head. “No. This cannot happen.”

“It can happen. It is happening.” Marina smoothed the big shirt over her rounded stomach. “There is a baby inside me and it is very much alive.”

“Who has done this to you?” Nicholas demanded angrily.

Marina shook her head. “It does not matter. I am pregnant. I am going to have the baby in August and give it up for adoption. I am going to give it freedom.”

“The king must be told.”

Marina shook her head. “No.”

“This child will be—”

“Next in line to the throne?” Marina asked. “I know that, Nicholas. But it is a curse I am going to spare it.”

“You cannot do this, Princess.”

“I can and I will,” she said. “I would like your support. But make no doubt about it, if you tell the king or if you try to stop me, I will run away. Then Novokia will not only be without the firstborn to the princess, it will be without the princess as well. And when my father passes on, Alexis will become queen.”

A stricken looked passed across the man’s face. “
Alexis.
No, Princess—that would be devastating for Novokia. She would be no match for all the problems we face bringing the country into the twenty-first century, for people like Viktor Coe who would like to overthrow the monarchy—”

Marina winced at the sound of Viktor’s name. If only he had loved her, this baby might have been theirs. If only he had loved her, if only he had not betrayed her. “I will regret any problems that come to my country. But if my father—or Alexis—cannot handle them, then perhaps the monarchy should be overthrown.”

As she began to walk away, Nicholas put out his arm and stopped her. “Princesca. People will find out. Where are you planning to stay? You will have to be in the hospital. It will turn into a media circus.”

Marina shook her head, aware that this was the one solution that she was not pleased with, yet there was no other option. “I will stay with Tess. She has bought a home here in town. I will stay out of sight, and when the baby comes, her friend Dell Brooks will attend to the birth. No one else will know.”

“And you feel you can trust these people more than your own?”

“I feel I have to,” she answered. “Will you stand by me?”

In the silence that followed, Marina could feel her heart beat softly. If Nicholas didn’t agree to her plan, she did not know if she really had the strength to run away and give up everything she’d ever known.

Finally he answered her. “I think that you have given me no choice.”

There was a way that Charlie could help Marina. She might destroy herself in the process, but she was determined to do it for the princess.