Princess In Denim (14 page)

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 head 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 to
Your 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?''

For some reason, she couldn't stare him down and lie at the same time, so she resumed her path to her room. "I'm a bit rusty with the language."

"Well, I shall fill in what you missed, then. As you well know, there has never been a queen of Ennsway."

She mumbled something that she hoped sounded like agreement if he was right, and scathing if not.

"That is why your father said you were making history today." He grasped her arm and spun her around. "Moira, must I remind you? Throughout history, if the eldest child of an Ennsway king was a daughter, she never survived him."

He wouldn't make that up, would he?

"You are in great danger."

* * *

Until Emma arrived, Chloe paced the hardwood floor in her sitting room. Was she in danger? Had those mishaps really been accidents? Was this why Moira's father had never brought her home until he had a prospective husband—William—in the bag? The truth about Ennsway princesses never living to become queens should have made her nervous; instead, it burned her britches.

A knock at the door received her sharp, "Come in."

"Your Majesty," Emma said.

"Close the door," Chloe ordered.

"Yes, ma'am."

Chloe had snapped at Louis. She'd been prepared to have the men-at-arms throw William out if he'd laid a hand on her, though she would have enjoyed a little wrestling match with him first. But she'd never thought, when she'd agreed to this charade, that she'd ever have words with Emma.

"You're angry, Your Majesty?"

"You could say that."

"Why? As queen of Ennsway, you'll have much more power than you would as princess."