Aria’s dressers were horrified when she insisted on wearing a simple wool challis skirt and blouse and heavy-soled, short-heeled walking shoes when she planned to leave the palace grounds.
“But, Your Highness, please think of your responsibility to the people. They will expect to see a princess.”
“And they’ll see a human,” Aria snapped. Lady Werta looked as if she were about to faint. “No, I don’t want gloves and I’m going to let my hair hang.” Aria swept from the room before they made her feel too guilty and so change her mind.
J.T. was outside her bedroom talking to one of the guardsmen, but he turned toward her when her door was opened. “You look great,” he said, grinning, and Aria felt as if she had lost twenty pounds; her feet didn’t quite touch the ground.
He led her down the stairs, quite improperly holding her arm, but she didn’t reprimand him, not even after Aunt Bradley saw them and lifted her eyebrows. She led him to the garages at the back of the west wing and stood back and looked at the mountains while J.T. argued with a chauffeur about who was going to drive one of the cars. Just as she knew he would, J.T. won.
He backed out of the garage driving a cream-colored front-wheel-drive Cord, a low, sexy, gorgeous vehicle. “This is Aunt Bradley’s car,” Aria breathed, feeling very risqué as J.T. leaned across the seat and pushed the passenger door open to her. She could feel her chauffeur’s horror at the gesture.
Aria rolled down the window and let her hair get mussed. She felt extraordinarily free and happy. She had a day of no duties, she was alone in a car with a handsome, sexy man, and she had left her heavy corset at home.
J.T. kept glancing at her until he could stand it no more. In a practiced American gesture, he put out his right hand, caught her by the back of the head, and pulled her over to kiss him while keeping his eyes on the road. “Good to see you again, baby,” he said, releasing her.
She settled back in her seat, smiling. “Where are you taking me?”
“First we’re going to your Royal Guard’s training grounds. Ever been there?”
Aria laughed. “When I was fifteen I sneaked away one afternoon and hid in the bushes and watched the men train. They are all quite beautiful.”
J.T. laughed. “They’ll take away your princess badge if they find out.”
She laughed again, feeling very unprincesslike.
The guards’ training ground was nearly a mile from the palace on a broad plain that had always been free of trees and was traditionally used as the site of tournaments and trials by combat. Around the edge of the two-acre plain was a long, low open-front stone building.
When they were within sight of the men, J.T. stopped the car and looked. There were about a hundred and fifty men, all rather eerily the same size, all of them wearing nothing but a white garment that could only be described as a loincloth. Their nearly nude bodies rippled with muscles under sun-bronzed skin covered with sweat. They were involved in a great variety of sports: wrestling, archery, fighting with long thick sticks, sword fights with broadswords, hand-to-hand combat. Here and there was a gray-haired man wearing a red armband who now and then shouted at the combatants. Their gray hair did not lessen the magnificence of their bodies.
J.T. felt as if he had stepped into a time warp. This scene, these men with their old-fashioned weapons, their primitive garments, the stone shed in back, was something from long ago. “Straight out of your thirteenth-century Rowan, isn’t it?” J.T. said softly, his voice filled with awe. Suddenly he realized he would like to train with these men. If there had to be fighting between men, it should be like this, not the dropping of bombs on anonymous thousands.
“Uh-oh, they’ve seen us,” Aria said.
A moment later, one of the gray-haired men blew a whistle and the guardsmen disappeared from the field, returning in seconds wearing long gray robes and standing at attention in a perfect line. They were an impressive sight.
J.T. eased the car forward.
“They won’t like that I’m here,” Aria said.
“You’re their princess, don’t forget that.”
“But they are very private people. Grans says—”
“Stick by me, honey, I’ll protect you.”
“Ha! They are my guard, my men, my…” She trailed off and smiled as the gray-haired man, now wearing a long, black robe, came forward to open her door.
“Your Highness,” he said formally, “welcome.”
J.T. and the captain of the guard looked one another over and judged each other quickly. “I need your help,” J.T. said.
“You have it,” the captain answered without question.
Medieval-looking wooden chairs were brought and J.T. and the captain were seated under one end of the stone building while Aria was given a chair several feet away. Contrary to Aria’s belief that she would not be welcomed by the men, they made her a little too welcome for J.T.’s taste. One man brought out a fat-bellied guitar that J.T. supposed was a lute and began to strum it, another man offered her cakes from a plate, two other men held out silver goblets of drink. And whatever they were saying was putting an enormous smile on Aria’s face. She looked like a princess of old surrounded by her handsome courtiers whose heavy, muscular legs stuck out bare beneath their scanty clothes.
The captain looked from Aria to J.T.’s frowning face and smiled. “We do not get many visitors to our training ground and our princess has never been here.” He chuckled. “Except once when we were not supposed to know she was here.”
J.T. smiled. “How much do you know about what is going on?”