Читать книгу Plain-Jane Princess - Karen Templeton - Страница 8

“Please, Princess Sophie—just one more?”

“Oh, yes! Please…please…please…?” went up a chorus of soft voices from a sea of wide, eager, predominantly dark eyes.

“Oh, darlings, I’m so sorry…” Princess Sophie hugged the tiny chestnut-haired girl who’d sat on her lap while she’d read to the children, then set her gently on the playroom’s carpeted floor, laughing when the mite knocked her glasses askew. Since it was early evening, some of the younger ones were already in their pajamas, ready for bed. “I’d love to stay, I truly would. But my Baba would scold if I got home late tonight.”

She stood, only to immediately bend down, arms held wide, her heart both swelling and breaking as most of the children swarmed into her embrace.

“I have to use the toilet,” a tiny blond girl announced, holding out her hand expectantly, and Sophie laughed.

“Well, come on, then, Tiana—”

“Oh, no, Your Highness,” one of the staff intervened, snatching the child’s hand from Sophie’s. “You needn’t bother yourself with that.”

“It’s no bother, really….”

But off child and caregiver went, the little girl waving shyly to Sophie over her shoulder.

Ah, well…her grandmother would scold, indeed. Sophie said her goodbyes to a staff she’d more or less handpicked ever since the palace had set up the Children’s Home ten years ago. No one country—and certainly not one as tiny as Carpathia—could possibly see to the needs of the hundreds of children in the area orphaned each year due to the seemingly impossible-to-heal friction between various ethnic groups that regularly tangled just beyond Carpathia’s borders, but one did what one could. And she was proud, she thought as she mounted her bicycle for the ten-minute ride through the village’s narrow winding streets, then up the hill to the palace, of how many adoptions, both local and abroad, she’d been able to arrange as a result of her work on the children’s behalf.

And for those children not fortunate enough to find temporary refuge here, she spearheaded a half-dozen worldwide campaigns, through an equal number of charities, to secure their safety and happiness.

A never-ending and often thankless task, to be sure. And one, she now feared, that was finally taking its toll on her personal life.

Such as it was.

Dusk had a firm grip on the countryside when Sophie let the bicycle drop by the gate to the kitchen garden, then ran around to the side entrance, bounding up the granite steps two at a time, much as she’d done as a child. Servants curtsied or bowed as she raced through a succession of sparkling, lavishly appointed rooms, until, panting, her chignon disintegrating into a tangled, thumping loop against her back, she tore into her ivory-and-gold bedroom. Ripping off her jacket and blouse, she dived into her room-size closet.

“Sophie!”

“I know, I know,” she called out to her grandmother, Princess Ivana, Carpathia’s ruling monarch for the last forty-odd years. “I’m sorry!” Ignoring the array of glittering gowns in their plastic shrouds behind her, Sophie chose instead a simple, long-sleeved, dove-gray silk. Now overheated, she dashed across the Aubusson carpet, tossing the dress onto the bed’s ivory satin comforter. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie took in her petite grandmother’s heavily beaded gown, the understated diamond tiara sparkling in a cloud of pearlescent white hair.

The exasperated set to the elder princess’s mouth.

“The only good thing about being eighty years old is that I can no longer say my grandchildren are driving me to an early grave. The guests have been here for nearly a half hour!”

Sophie avoided the pair of astute black eyes trained on her. “I’m sorry, Baba,” she repeated, carefully, dutifully, her loose hair hindering her movements as she wriggled into a pair of sheer tights, then a floor-length silk half slip. “The children all had something to show or tell me, it seemed. I just didn’t have the heart to disappoint them. Especially as I won’t be there again for some time.”

She slipped the dress over her head, reaching around to do up the short zipper on her own as she slipped on a pair of matching silk pumps. A moment later she plunked down at her dressing table, where she glowered at her reflection.

“All your mother’s beautiful gowns at your disposal,” Princess Ivana said softly behind her, “and still you dress like a little mouse.”

Concern, more than censure, colored her grandmother’s words, but Sophie still bristled. After all, the elder princess was still a beauty. As had been Sophie’s mother, Princess Ekaterina. And big brother Alek was no slouch, either. On him, the square jaw, the clefted chin, made sense. On her…well, it was hard not to wonder why, considering the genetic odds of her turning out at least reasonably attractive, she should now be facing great-uncle Heinrick’s reflection.

Sophie took a brush to her dust-colored hair, her overlarge mouth pulled into a grimace underneath a pair of unremarkable gray eyes—not even silver, like Alek’s—half-hidden behind a pair of round, tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

At least the children didn’t care what she looked like.

The silver-backed brush clattered to the table as Sophie gathered up her hair, deftly twisted it into a coil at the nape of her neck. “My wearing one of my mother’s gowns,” she said, “would be like putting weeds in a crystal vase.”

“Oh, honestly, child!” Her grandmother’s vexation crackled more than the flames in the marble fireplace across the room. Though the calendar said late May, evenings tended to be chilly in the mountains of Central Europe. “I do not understand why you put yourself down so! If only you’d wear a little makeup, your contact lenses…”

There was little point in commenting, so Sophie didn’t. A brittle moment or two passed before Ivana said, “Jason Broadhurst called for you this afternoon, so I invited him to join us, as well.”

“Jason? What on earth is he doing here?” Sophie inserted a pair of natural pearl studs in her earlobes. “I thought he was in Atlanta, seeing to the new store’s opening.”

“That was last month.”

Two princesses watched each other in the mirror for a long moment.

“He seems very fond of you, my dear.”

“We’re friends,” Sophie said, slicking a clear gloss—her only concession to makeup—over her lips. “Nothing more.”

“Since he’s asked you to marry him, one would assume his feelings have…changed.”

“He only wants a mother for Andy, Baba.”

“And many a marriage of convenience has led to a love affair.”

Sophie stared at her reflection, her mouth set, ignoring the burning sensation at the backs of her eyes as she yanked open her jewelry case, grabbed a string of pearls. “And beggars can’t be choosers?”

“Oh, don’t be perverse! That’s not what I meant!”

Sophie struggled with the necklace’s clasp for a moment, finally ramming it home. “In any case, marrying Jason would put a severe crimp in my work.”

“And working for the benefit of everyone else’s children is more important than having children of your own?”

Every muscle in Sophie’s back clenched. “No,” she said softly after a moment. “Not more important. But you know as well as I do how many of those children have no one else to champion them.”

And her charity work was the only aspect of her life over which she had at least some control, some choice, where she was respected for her drive, her efficiency, her brain, more than her position. Where her appearance didn’t matter. Once she married, however, she would be expected to not only continue fulfilling her royal obligations, which were onerous enough, but take on the social duties of a wife as well. And for what? A loveless marriage? Jason’s family business interests, including a chain of internationally renowned department stores, would naturally require a wife who was both viable and visible. For heaven’s sake—she barely had any life of her own as it was. Yes, marriage to the handsome widower would give her a child to love and help raise—though the prospect of giving Andy any siblings was apparently a slim one, since Jason had made it quite clear he did not wish a bedmate—but as much as she yearned for motherhood, this was one sacrifice she was loathe to make.

Sophie suddenly realized her grandmother had come up behind her to lay her almost weightless hands on her shoulders. She very nearly jumped: while she’d never doubted her grandmother’s affection for her or her brother, Alek, the elder princess was not known for her demonstrativeness. “You are very precious to me. You know that, yes?”

Startled, Sophie could only gawk at their reflections in the mirror. “Of course, Baba—”

“So it pains me, when you are unhappy.”

“I’m not—”

“You are. You and Alek both. You think I do not recognize the signs, that I cannot tell? First Alek, with his gallivanting hither and yon and his women and his race cars…” She sucked in a sharp, worried breath, shook her head. “And you.” Another head shake. “Yes, you do the monarchy proud, with your work. But I am also worried that you are perhaps…hiding behind your speaking engagements and conference calls and committee meetings?”

Knowing a con job when she heard one, Sophie eyed her grandmother again in the mirror. “And you think my marrying Jason would be a solution?”

“I think…sometimes you see only problems, instead of opportunities. Love can grow, child. If you give it a chance.”

“Grandmother—”

But the princess patted her shoulders, twice, an enormous pear-shaped diamond ring flashing in the light from the small Baccarat lamp on Sophie’s dressing table, then moved away. “We must go down.”

Despite a heavy weariness that seemed to rob her of even an interest in breathing, Sophie managed to rise from the bench, glared at her mirrored twin one last time, then followed her grandmother down the stairs, to once again do her duty, be where she was supposed to be, make sure she did nothing to upset the apple cart.

Perhaps her brother’s rebelliousness had been partially to blame for propelling her into her role as the “good” one. Or perhaps wanting to please, to do what was expected of her, was simply part and parcel of her nature, she couldn’t tell. The problem was, the older she got, the more those expectations seemed to be increasing. And whereas at one time she lived for the approval her obedience garnered, now she felt suffocated by it.

In other words, she didn’t want to play anymore.

“The World Relief Fund conference in the States,” Princess Ivana said. “That’s next week, isn’t it?”

They approached the drawing room where the guests were no doubt waiting. A pair of servants opened the carved double doors; one announced their presence:

“Their Highnesses, Princess Ivana and Princess Sophie.”

Dread coiled in the pit of Sophie’s stomach like a nasty, filthy beastie as she waited out the wave of helpless irony that washed over her, through her. That other little girls would wish to be princesses had always seemed so alien to the plain little princess who, even at the height of her approval-seeking mode, only ever wanted to be as ordinary as she looked, to have at least some say over her life. Her heart. How many times throughout her life had she been compelled to sacrifice her own desires for her position?

“Yes, Grandmother. Next week. And did I tell you—I’m on the short list for Director when Manuela de Santiago retires next month?”

And how many times would she be compelled to in the future?

“Oh? And…is this something you want to do?”

Sophie plastered a smile to her face as both the Italian ambassador and Jason swept across the room toward her like a pair of trout after the same fly.

“Yes, Baba,” she whispered. “I truly think I would. Certainly a bloody sight more than I want to be here right now.”

“Now, child,” her grandmother whispered back, “as the Americans would say, make nice.”

And the beastie shouted, Run!

Of course, she didn’t. Not then, at least. Being her stolid, staunch little self, Princess Sophie would no more have shirked her responsibilities than she would have danced naked in the palace fountain. In February. Except that, over the next several days, the beastie inside grew larger and nastier and hairier until she finally realized, two days into the conference in Detroit, that if she didn’t take some sort of drastic action to get her head screwed on straight again, said head was likely to explode.

So now, seated in the taxi with her bodyguard Gyula, on their way to the airport for the return trip to Carpathia, Sophie pressed one hand to her roiling stomach as she craned her neck to glower at the equally roiling clouds visible through the taxi’s smeared windows. Oh, she’d come up with a plan, all right. Now all she had to do was pull it off. Without throwing up. Sane people simply did not do things like she was about to do.

Which is precisely what everyone would say: Whatever had possessed that quiet, dependable young women to do something so…so…impulsive? And even now, as her heart jack-hammered underneath her serviceable taupe raincoat, she’d left little to chance. Except, perhaps, for opportunity, which not even she could control.

Her heartrate kicked up another notch as she lifted a leather-gloved hand and yanked down the end of the muted paisley silk scarf she’d turbaned around her head. Should anyone ask, she hadn’t had time to wash her hair. Thus far, no one had.

“You are well, Your Highness?”

Though spoken softly, the words ripped through the taxi’s muggy interior, prickling the skin at the back of Sophie’s neck.

“Yes, yes, Gyula—I’m fine,” she said in their native language over the whine and thunk of the taxi’s windshield wipers. Although her bodyguard spoke English, after a fashion, she could tell the effort strained him. “The rain is making me irritable, that’s all.”

Gyula nodded toward the large Macy’s bag at her feet. “You did some shopping this time, I see.”

“I couldn’t very well come to the States and not pick up a few things, now could I?”

She thought she saw a trace of bewilderment flutter across the bodyguard’s features. Not that it was any of his business if she chose to go on a shopping spree. It was just that she never had before. In fact, it was almost a joke among the other European royals not only how much the Carpathian princess loathed to shop, but how hopelessly unfashionable she was. Not that it was likely, considering her recent purchases, that opinion would change.

They reached the airport a few minutes later, after which Sophie stood huddled underneath her raincoat while Gyula paid the driver and checked through their minimal luggage, wishing like bloody hell her stomach would stop its incessant torquing. The bodyguard then reached for both the shopping bag and her oversize canvas tote.

She clutched them to her, almost too late remembering not to let her eyes widen behind her glasses. “No, no—I’ve got them.” Then, silently, she and Gyula trooped through a sea of damp, harried bodies to the gate, only to discover their flight had been temporarily grounded due to the weather.

And if that wasn’t fate giving her the nod, she didn’t know what was.

“Shall I hold your coat, Miss?” Gyula asked after they wriggled through a horde of passengers to the waiting area. “We may be here for a while—”

“No!” She swallowed. Smiled. “No, thank you, Gyula. I’m fine, really. Except…” She scanned the waiting area, her stomach taking another tumble when her gaze lit on the international ladies’ room symbol across the way.

Blood whooshed in her ears. “I just need to…” She nodded in the direction of the rest rooms.

Gyula nodded in reply.

Sophie’s legs shook so badly as she crossed the crowded floor she could barely feel her feet. Once inside the ladies’, she ducked into a far stall, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that there were at least twenty other women in the rest room, which lessened the likelihood of any one of them noticing that the woman who’d gone into the stall wasn’t the same person who’d be coming out.

Her breath coming in short, fevered pants, she peeled off two layers of clothes to uncover a cropped, beaded sweater and a pair of scandalously tight Capri pants. From the depths of the tote bag, she retrieved a pair of black platform wedgies which would add a good five inches to her five-foot-four, a small makeup bag, and another tote, larger than the first and a different color, folded into quarters, into which she transferred…everything. Somehow.

Dodging a boisterous toddler streaking away from his mother, Sophie tottered across the rest room to a sink where she shakily managed to put in a pair of dark blue contact lenses, then applied the makeup she’d practiced putting on for two hours last night. Nothing remarkable about any of it, she told herself as she spritzed styling gel into what was left of her hair, willing it into spikes. Just an ordinary airline passenger freshening up after her journey.

Then the contacts settled in enough for her to get a really good look at herself.

Oh, my.

She’d seen Mardi Gras floats less gaudy than this. Her startled gaze darted from the daffodil-yellow sweater that seemed to be taking inordinate delight in clinging to her breasts, to her sparkling, ruby nails, her crimson mouth, her smoky-teal eyelids, her…hair. Only the truly desperate—or the truly mad—would have butchered it like that. And then bleach the remnants Barbie blond.

Unfortunately, now she looked like great-uncle Heinrich in drag.

She twisted slightly to get a look at her profile in the tight pants and let out a soft gasp at the rather pert little backside winking back at her.

Goodness—where had that come from?

Well, never mind. While it may have seemed more sensible to become as inconspicuous as possible, in this case she had thought it far more prudent to divert attention away from her angular, and possibly familiar, face to other, not quite as well known, parts of her anatomy. So men would leer and women would roll their eyes and point out how tacky she looked to their daughters, but what was a little indignity compared with losing one’s grip?

Ferris-wheel size earrings, sunglasses, perfume—she told herself it was strictly coincidence that the women on either side of her simultaneously left the rest room—a stick of chewing gum…and she was ready.

Stomach quivering, legs quavering, Princess Sophie Elzbieta Vlastos of Carpathia—aka Lisa Stone, Bimbette Extraordinaire—made her unsteady way out of the rest room and right past Gyula, who was alternately frowning at the rest room and his watch. Oh, but it was everything she could do not to break into a run—except she would have surely done herself a mischief in these shoes!—but she knew her only chance in pulling this off lay in her ability to feign nonchalance. And so, chomping her gum and feigning her little heart out, she strolled through the terminal, stopping at a newsstand just long enough to collect several paperbacks and at least one leer, and out to the taxi queue.

She sucked in the damp, heavy air like a newly freed prisoner.

Oh, she’d undoubtedly be tracked down, eventually—any first-year detective could follow her Visa card’s glowing trail—but it would still take a while to find her. Undoubtedly, the palace would assume she’d gone much farther than a Michigan township barely sixty miles away.

If she ever got there, that is, since none of the first half dozen or so drivers she queried had the slightest notion where Spruce Lake was. As the minutes ticked by, the nerves she’d managed to quell long enough to get to this point renewed their assault, blasting her nonchalance—timorous to begin with—to smithereens. Her mouth dry as dust, she darted a furtive glance over her shoulder as she approached the next taxi. By now, surely Gyula would realize she’d gone missing—

“Excuse me?” She bent over to speak to the driver, swiping a collapsed spike of hair out of her eyes. “Do you know how to get to Spruce Lake?”

The driver, the human equivalent of a bulldog, eyed her for a moment, obviously taking in her lack of luggage, her jitters, her getup. Her accent, which, due to a number of factors, was more English than Prince Charles’s.

“You from Australia or somethin’?”

“Or something. Well?”

“Yeah, I know Spruce Lake,” the driver said. “Had a cousin lived out that way some years ago.” He adjusted his ample form in the seat, scratched his chin. “Takes close to an hour to get out there, though. And then there’s my time gettin’ back…I dunno…”

“Name your price.”

He squinted at her. “A hundred bucks.”

“Done.” She yanked open the door and scrambled into the back. Even Sophie knew a gouge when she heard one, but haggling could wait until the other end of the journey.

Where she’d be free.

Steve Koleski could feel the music teacher’s worried gaze through the back of his denim shirt. “It’s okay, Mr. L.,” he said, frowning himself at the tangle of wires that had vomited forth the instant he’d removed the plastic cover from the outlet behind the refrigerator. Whoever had done this job—he used the term loosely—should be shot. “It looks worse than it is.”

“I may be old, Steffan, but I am not blind. That is too many wires for such a small area, yes?”

“Shoot, Mr. L.—this is too many wires for Detroit. Damn good thing that outlet sparked on you when it did.” Steve pulled out the mass, which reminded him uncomfortably of his brain that morning, began untangling it. “Coulda been a lot worse.” A shaft of sunlight sliced across the all-white room, warming a shoulder stiff from far too much yard work the day before, as low music with a lot of violins trickled in from the living room. At his feet, one of a trio of fat, black cocker spaniels whined for attention.

Mr. L. snapped his fingers. “Susie, come over here and stop bothering the man.” Then to Steve, “Could I get you a cup of tea while you work? It’s a good forty-five minutes before my next student.”

Steve stopped the grimace just in time. “Yeah. Sure. That’d be great.”

As the old man shuffled to the other side of the kitchen, Steve pulled his wire cutters from his belt, then set to work sorting out the mess as his thoughts drifted, for the hundredth time that morning, to the near blowup he’d had with his housekeeper before he’d left. No matter how many times he explained that things in aquariums go hand in hand with fourteen-year-old boys, Mac’s latest acquisition had nearly sent Mrs. Hadley off the deep end. Nor did he suppose Rosie’s penchant for falling asleep in strange places was sitting any too well, either. The poor woman nearly had apoplexy when she’d turned on the basement light and seen the three-year-old curled up at the foot of the stairs, fast asleep. Of course, she’d assumed she’d taken a tumble and that it would be all her fault and she just couldn’t take that kind of pressure at her age….

So why’d you take the job? Steve had wanted to ask the pinch-faced woman. But he didn’t dare. He needed Mrs. Hadley, even if he—or the kids—didn’t exactly get all warm and fluttery thinking about her. She was the fourth housekeeper they’d had in eight months at a time when the kids desperately needed stability. Something was going to have to give, and soon.

Steve frowned at the wire cutters in his hand. Trying to make everybody happy was a real bitch, you know?

He swiped his forearm across his eyes to sop up a bead of sweat: the instant the rain had stopped, the temperature had begun to climb. “You want a regular two-gang outlet, or four?”

“Four, I think,” he heard over the sound of water thrumming into a teakettle. “A kitchen can’t have too many places to plug things in.” The pipes groaned when Mr. L. turned off the water. “Plumbing’s next, I suppose,” he said on a sigh. The old man’s boiled wool slippers scuffed across worn linoleum; the kettle clanked onto the old gas stove. Then he made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a wheeze. “This house and I, we’re a lot alike, you know? Keep patching things up, get another couple years out of us. Speaking of which…after you finish in here, would you mind taking a look at the ceiling fixture in the guest bedroom? I think it’s coming loose.” The kettle’s shrill whistle was cut off nearly before it began. “You like sugar?”

“No. Thanks,” Steve said, taking the mug of steaming tea from the prim little man in his gray slacks, white shirt and brightly patterned bow tie quivering at the base of a chicken-skin chin. “The guest room, huh?” He took a sip of the tea, just to be polite. “You got a taker?”

The old man laughed. For fun, he’d registered his spare room with the local bed and breakfast association last year, although, since tourism wasn’t exactly Spruce Lake’s claim to fame, he rarely had guests. Every once in a while, though, somebody’s cousin needed a place to stay while in town for a wedding, or some family would find his listing on the association’s Web site on the Internet and spend a night in town on the way from somewhere to somewhere else. “Yes, Steffan, I got a ‘taker,’ as you put it. A nice young woman who called yesterday, said she needed someplace quiet for a few days, maybe longer.”

A mild tremor of curiosity moseyed on through but didn’t stop. “It will be nice,” the old man continued, “having a little company, especially at night. During the day, I have my students, I can go out…but at night…” He shook his head. “The nights are hard.”

Refusing to believe that sharp right hook to his midsection was some sort of agreement—it wasn’t as if he was ever alone at night—Steve looked down to discover he’d finished off his tea. So he walked over and rinsed out his mug.

“This young lady,” Mr. L. went on. “She sounded maybe…a little lonely?”

Steve shook his head, swallowing down a weary laugh. Honest to Pete—one drawback to living in a small town was that everyone knew your business. Ever since the divorce, no less than a half-dozen people had tried to steer him in the direction of assorted cousins, unmarried daughters, and best friends’ sisters. A half grin tugging at his mouth, he turned around, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Mr. L.? Just for the record? If things get so bad I’m reduced to being fixed up with a total stranger, just shoot me, okay?” Over the old man’s chuckle, he added, “And how the devil does someone sound lonely?”

A pair of exuberantly bushy brows lifted over the tops of Mr. L.’s glasses. “Just listen to yourself, Steffan. Then you’d know.”

Steve went rigid for a moment there, then traipsed back across the kitchen to the nest of wires jeering at him from the wall, yanked out a pair to tape them off, crammed them back in, then slapped the outlet plate into place and screwed that sucker back on so hard, he cracked the plastic and had to go get a new one from his truck.

“Something the matter, Steffan?” Mr. L. asked when Steve returned.

“Not a blessed thing,” Steve grumbled, screwing on the new plate. Then, scowling, he gathered his toolbox and headed up the stairs, fighting off a herd of wriggling cocker spaniels…and even the slightest suggestion that the old man was right.

Like he didn’t have enough stress in his life, what with worrying about the kids, trying to figure out how to balance a million and one obligations. The last thing he needed was some woman who wanted him to make her happy, too. And no, he didn’t feel this way just because love had dragged him into a back alley and left him for dead. He was over Francine. Had been for some time. It was just…well, he just didn’t have time for lonely.

Let alone the aggravation that invariably accompanied the opposite.

“Steffan?” wafted up the stairwell a few minutes later, “I need to run to the store. I should be back in plenty of time for my student, but if I’m not, would you mind letting her in?”

“No problem,” Steve called back, watching out the window a minute later as, like an overfed hamster, the old brown Datsun stuttered out of Mr. Liebowicz’s driveway and crept down the street.

He’d just finished changing out the fixture when the doorbell’s chime made him jump. Before he could move, though, it rang again, accompanied by a faint, frantic, “Hello? Mr. Liebowicz? It’s Lisa Stone!” followed by the bell being leaned on until Steve thought his head would explode.

He barreled down the stairs and jerked open the door, only to be nearly knocked over by a streak of overly perfumed blonde shrieking “Bathroom!” on her way past.

“Straight back, first door to the—”

“Found it!”

The bathroom door slammed hard enough to shake the whole house.