“No, it is not all right,” Lady Werta sniffed. “You cannot be seen with him. You are going to make people suspicious and then we will never get the real princess back. We will never see her again.”
Aria started to pat Lady Werta’s hand but J.T. shook his head. “What do you want?” she asked angrily, playing Kathy Montgomery, but it wasn’t easy for her. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
“Yeah, well, the old king hired me to protect the princess and I can’t do that if you’re out in the middle of all these people.”
“She must do her duties,” Lady Werta said haughtily.
J.T. started to say more but he stopped. Didn’t any of these people have a bit of sense? They adored their princess, but if they didn’t protect her she wasn’t going to exist anymore.
It was only with reluctance that J.T. left Aria once they were back at the palace. His rooms were far away from hers and he knew he couldn’t get to her quickly enough should she need help.
There was a small man wearing what seemed to be the household colors of gray and gold standing in his room.
“What are you doing here?” J.T. asked suspiciously.
“His Majesty has asked that I take care of you during your stay in Lanconia. My name is Walters and I will dress you, deliver messages, whatever you need. His Majesty has instructed me to be perfectly discreet. Your bath is waiting and your dress uniform is pressed.”
“I don’t need anyone,” J.T. began, but then he thought that perhaps Walters might be useful.
“Here is a letter from His Majesty,” Walters said.
The letter, on thick cream-colored paper and sealed with red wax impressed with a coat of arms, told J.T. that he might trust Walters with his life, that he had been told everything, and that he was excellent at hearing things.
J.T. began to undress, brushing Walters’s hands away when the older man started to unbutton his uniform shirt.
“Did you hear what happened today?” he asked Walters.
“It was put about that Her Highness had an accident.”
J.
T. gave Walters a sharp look. “Was that all you heard?”
“Count Julian said she’d lost her way, but I managed to overhear him telling Lady Bradley that someone shot at her. The count seemed to think it was a hunting accident.” Walters turned his head away as J.T. finished undressing and stepped into the bathtub.
“What do you think?” J.T. asked.
“I buried her little dog, sir. Someone killed it with a knife, but it had been cut open from neck to tail then put under her bed while she slept. She saw its tail sticking out between her slippers. She called me to take it away before anyone else saw it.”
J.T. leaned back in the old-fashioned, short, deep, recessed tub. All the bathrooms in the palace had been added about the turn of the century and were sumptuously done in squares of marble, with heavy porcelain fixtures and taps in the shapes of swans or porpoises. There was hot water but it took an eternity to get it up from the bowels of the palace. J.T. remembered Aria saying she had told no one of her “accidents,” yet this servant, Walters, had taken her murdered dog away. How many other “no ones” knew nothing of what was happening?
“Walters,” J.T. said, “tell me who lives in this place.”
Walters recited a list of people and their lineages and titles that sounded like something from a fairy tale. There were three young princes, all direct descendants from a male monarch. There was Aria’s Aunt Bradley, the Duchess of Daren, a woman who was directly related to nearly every royal house in the world. “Except the Asians, of course,” Walters added. Her Royal Highness Sophie was the king’s sister, and Barbara—“a mere child,” Walters said—who was Aria’s deceased father’s deceased brother’s only child.
“How did Aria’s parents die?” J.T. asked suspiciously.
“Her father caught a cold but would not postpone or cancel a scheduled three-day trip to the southern part of the country. It rained and he stood in the rain to take the bows and curtsies of his subjects. He died two weeks later of pneumonia.”
“And her mother?”
“Cancer. It might have been operable but Her Royal Highness told no one until she could no longer stand.”
J.T. digested the information. No wonder Aria was the way she was. It was bred in her.
After he was shaved and dressed, J.T. followed Walters down to the Green Dining Room. This was supposed to be the dining room for intimate dinners but it was larger than a basketball court.
Walters pulled his watch from his vest. “We are a little early, sir. Royalty is always punctual. One could set one’s watch by royalty.”