“He did what?”
“He said that each monarch inherited these maps at the reading of the will but he thought this was a time for extreme measures. Here we are,” he said, looking at one of the maps. “This room is called the State Bedroom, right? I knew he had a reason for putting me in this room. He seemed to think it was special.” He began running his hands along the oak paneling. “Here it is.” He pushed a button but nothing moved. “I imagine the door needs oiling.” There was a letter opener on the desk and he pried open the door until he could get his fingers into the opening then pulled the door open. A musty smell filled the room and they could hear the movement of wings.
“If you think I’m going down that, you are wrong,” Aria said.
J.T. got a flashlight from his duffel bag. “If you leave this room dressed like that, you will have the whole place gossiping. Your Count Julian won’t marry you because your reputation will be ruined and they’ll probably hang me, a commoner, for daring to look upon the royal nightgown. Come on. How bad can it be?”
It was awful. It looked like no one had been inside the passage for centuries and cobwebs and bat droppings covered the damp stone steps that led downward. It was very dark and her slippered feet kept sliding.
“Why do I not know of this place?” she whispered.
“It seems that one of your past kings had everyone who knew about the tunnels put to death. He wanted only the king himself to know of them.”
Aria put up her hand to protect herself from a hanging web. Her slippers were so filthy they would have to be discarded. “That would have been Hager the Hated in the fourteenth century. He used any excuse to put people to death.”
“Fine relative to claim. Who built this place?”
“Rowan,” Aria said, and something in the way she said it made him look at her.
“I take it he was a good guy.”
“The best. Where does this lead?”
“Here,” J.T. said, stopping at a rusty, iron-clad door. “Let’s just hope we can get it open.” He handed her the flashlight.
“Where does that lead?” she asked, pointing the light toward a corridor heading toward the left.
“Down to your dungeons then underground to somewhere in the town. Your grandfather said the way out was probably blocked now since a house was built over the old exit. I got it open! Turn off the light.”
Aria looked at the cylinder. “How?”
He took the flashlight from her and turned it off. “According to the map we’re at the north end of the King’s Garden. Do you know where that is and how to get back to your room?”
“Of course.” She walked out into the cool night air.
“Wait a minute, Princess, you haven’t told me where you’ll be in the morning. I don’t plan to let you out of my sight.”
Aria wasn’t about to tell him she was riding with Count Julian in the morning. “My calendar has my first engagement for nine A.M.,” she said truthfully. “I will go riding.”
“Stay in your room, I’ll meet you.”
“But I’m not supposed to know you. We’ll have to arrange a formal introduction first.”
“You can say your grandfather telephoned you—if this falling-down pile of stones has telephones.”
“We are more modern than you believe,” she said, her chin up. “Good night, Lieutenant Montgomery.” She turned away.
“Wait,” he said, putting his hand on her arm. He looked at her in the moonlight for a long moment. “Go on, get out of here.”
She nearly ran from him, hurrying down the paths she knew so well, then through a servant’s door, up the stairs, and into the newer wing where her rooms were.
“I am going to love Julian,” she whispered to herself. She was going to compel herself to love Julian and she was going to forget about the crude, insolent American who was temporarily her husband. He had told her that he thought she was cool and remote, not quite human. She was going to show him how haughty a royal princess could be. No matter how much time they spent together, she was going to treat him as the lowliest commoner.
There was no one in the hallway except for the guard who stood outside her door. She had to get past the man and into her room and be there when her dressers arrived in the morning. If there was gossip that she had left her room wearing her bedclothes late at night, her dressers would say it was impossible since she was there in the morning and no one had seen her reenter.
American movies had taught her a great deal. She picked up a valuable egg-shaped piece of malachite from its stand on a table and sent it rolling down the hall at the feet of the guard. He watched it for a moment, then, as she had hoped, he went after it. Aria slipped into her room as fast as possible. Her heart was pounding as she leaned against the closed door.
Of course, she had to change her clothes and she was glad she knew how to dress herself. She was also glad she knew how to take a sponge and get most of the cobwebs from her dressing gown. The slippers were beyond hope, so, to keep her dressers from finding them, she stuffed each into a sleeve of a ceremonial gown.