The Christmas Princess (14 page)

It had a trio of angled mirrors in each corner, plus two mirrors spaced out on each wall, even the back of the now closed door held a mirror. Between the mirrors narrow closets alternated with shelving that held bolts of fabric. Hunter had taken a chair in front of shelves toward the left rear and Tonya stood at the ready with an empty padded clothes hanger.

“Now, let us see what we have,” Maurice said, circling April. “Take off that jacket.”

Oh, no, nothing intimidating about this.
But, having weathered Etienne, she was better prepared for Maurice. She took off her jacket and handed it to Tonya.

“Shoes off. Let us see your true inches.”

She toed off her shoes. They were flats, so not much difference there.

“Now the sweater.”

She hesitated an instant then grabbed the hem of the v-neck pullover and doggedly dragged it over her head, while keeping the hem of the cotton turtleneck underneath from riding up.

She barely had her head free when Maurice complained, “What? Another layer?”

“It’s cold out,” she defended herself, trying to shake her hair into order.

“There are ways to stay warm other than wrapping yourself like a mummy. Take it off.”

April concentrated all her willpower on not looking toward Hunter. “No.”

“I must see what I dress! I cannot guess at the form under all this. This is impossible!”

“Maurice,” murmured Tonya, taking his arm and continuing her comments in his ear. His eyes shifted from her to Hunter’s corner.

“Yes, all right, all right,” he said after a moment. “Go with Tonya.”

April gladly followed the other woman to a mirrorless cubicle. Tonya had her strip to her underwear then pull on a pale t-shirt and matching leggings. In no time, Tonya ushered her back to the room.

April took two steps toward the center of the room where Maurice waited. The mirrors threw her reflection back at her and she halted.

Surrounded by herself, she tried not to look anywhere. It was impossible. Everywhere she saw reflections of herself, the thin layers of form-fitting cotton offering no more protection that her underwear would have. Worse, every other reflection provided a new angle of Hunter sitting in his chair, his fingers steepled, his face so impassive it appeared rigid.

And damn, damn, damn, that internal defibrillator was going nuts again.

“What possesses you to wear those — those wraps to your chin? You have beautiful lines. Everywhere, beautiful lines, but the most beautiful, yes, definitely is here—.” Maurice’s hand sketched an arc without touching her. “Chin, throat, chest, to your bosom. Yes, you have a fine, high bosom, and we shall show that off.”

“No.”

Hunter’s voice was low and sounded strangled. Everyone stared at him. April felt both shivers and heat from the depths of her
fine high bosom
to her hairline.

“Pah! The jealousy of men who want to hide a woman from everyone but themselves.”

“That’s not the situation, and you know it.” Stern and unmoved, Hunter sounded like himself again.

April wondered if Maurice de Chartier had ever had a customer sink to the floor in a Wicked Witch of the West puddle — without Dorothy, Toto, the bucket of water or being a witch.

“Conservative, Maurice,” Hunter warned.

Maurice spun on him. “Do I tell you how to guard a diplomat? Do I tell you where to look for dangers? No! Because I respect that you know your business. As I, Maurice, know the business of dressing women for this city. You think I would put this one in spangles and glitter? No!”

Hunter raised his hands in a gesture of half surrender. It didn’t stop Maurice.

“I tell you, you are to sit silent in that corner. This one is to stand here in the center. And I shall work magic.”

She sank against the car seat, more mentally tired than she would have believed she could be. But if she didn’t take advantage of this opportunity with Hunter alone, there might not be another time. “I have to ask. How do you know Maurice? Etienne
and
Maurice? Do you only have friends with single names?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled, then returned to neutral. “They’re not friends. Not the way you’re thinking. Not watching a football game and having a beer friends.”

“What kind of friends are they then?”

“Left over from when we were kids.”

Kids
. The way he said it brought a sudden, vivid memory of a sail Grady had taken her on one early morning on Lake Michigan. She could smell the sun-warmed breeze skimming across night-cooled water, feel the rocking of the small boat, and the smooth firmness of its side when she grabbed it after that rocking. She’d been so unhappy. So lonely. So armored against anyone — especially any adult — poking beneath her crust of sneering cool.

“Kids,” she repeated slowly. “Being a kid’s not always the easiest time.”

He didn’t respond.

“I hit a real rough spot at thirteen. Don’t know if that’s in your reports?”

“Your great-grandmother and your mother’s cousin became your guardians when you were thirteen,” he said, not answering her question.

She could have left it there. That would be easier.

Then she thought of Grady.

Not taking her on that sail would have been easier for him. But he had.

“That was the beginning of things getting better,” she said. “Before that was … the worst. Maybe it was my not-yet-formed brain, but I seriously thought suicide might be a good option.”

Grady had known.

He hadn’t asked questions. Not to start. Instead, he’d talked about his own childhood. And how he’d taken a sailboat out alone one night.

She’d been the one to ask the first question:
Why’d you come back, when nobody’d missed you
?

I would have missed me. … You know, though, about the time I decided all this, the wind kicked up and I had to fight like hell to stay afloat. It was almost as if the lake was telling me deciding’s not enough. You’ve got to work at it.

“We met at a kind of boarding school,” Hunter said abruptly.

From the corner of her eye, she knew he was staring out the darkened window. She didn’t look at him, didn’t turn toward him. She waited, quiet and patient. The way Grady had that morning on Lake Michigan.

“Not the kind where rich families send their sons. More of a place to put kids who didn’t fit anywhere else. Guess we were lucky it wasn’t a reform school.”

The tilt of his mouth carried little humor.

“None were criminals — yet — but definitely misfits. The three of us were misfits among the misfits. Maurice was already showing his talents. Sketching and sewing didn’t go over big with the other boys. Neither did Etienne. Gay and a foreigner. Me, I was just a foreigner. Maybe they’d have overlooked that.” One shoulder twitched in a brief shrug. “Preferred being alone, mostly. I encouraged the others to leave Maurice and Etienne alone.”

He was silent so long that she ventured, “You’ve stayed in touch with them ever since?”

“Not really. Run across each other now and then.”

“But if they’re a couple—”

He turned toward her, suddenly grinning. “Maurice and Etienne? No way. Maurice likes women. A lot of women. He adopted Etienne’s accent and some of his mannerisms for business. The mystique, he calls it. Etienne calls Maurice a heathen with an inexplicable talent. Told you, we’re not really friends.” The grin faded. “We just know each other from way back. We’ve done each other favors now and then.”

She wondered if the favors Etienne and Maurice had performed on her behalf were partial repayment for Hunter “encouraging” others to leave them alone as kids.

The car slowed to enter the embassy gates, then slid to a stop with her side closer to the building. “Wait for me to come around to your door.”

“Hunter.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “I want you to know. I won’t say anything about what you’ve told me.”

Something that might have been surprise came into his eyes. Then the grin returned briefly. “In that case, I can also tell you that Maurice’s real name is Marvin.”

He held her arm.

Not the way he usually did, since they were inside the gates. Instead of her being behind him, he’d brought her to his side. Sure, he was still scanning the area, his head away from her now.

But it was almost the way a man would escort a woman with the paved surface they were crossing made slippery by rain now freezing as it hit the ground.

“Getting icy,” she said, turning to him.

He’d turned to her, too.

Their eyes met. Both went still for this moment. Inches apart. A stream of his breath, then hers in the cold air. Forming a cloud between them, around them. Was it obscuring them from each other, or shutting out anything beyond the two of them?

Streams of breath, each separate and alone, coming together, mixing and melding until it was impossible to tell what came from him, what came from her.

“Inside,” he said, his voice harsh.

Ahead of him, Hunter watched the king open the door into the library.

With workers putting up decorations inside and out, April had spent most of Thursday here, coming out only for lunch.

“Come, come, April,” the king said. “We shall all go to see the embassy’s Christmas tree now that it is completed.”

April and Rufus were considerably more cheerful about heeding the order than he — or, he suspected, Madame — had been.

Together they all left the private quarters and emerged into the main reception room of the public area.

April’s face went blank.

Hunter stepped to the side, letting the king’s bulk block most of his view of April while giving him a clear view of the official tree. He knew nothing of Christmas trees, but he could swear he could feel the temperature drop near this creation. Weren’t Christmas trees supposed to remind you of family, hearth, and home? He didn’t know anything about those either, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t how they felt.

Sure didn’t look like the things April had put around the hotel suite.

The tree was tall and rather narrow, which allowed it to fit in a space encircled by the bottom of the curved staircase. The lights were white, but tinged with blue, giving them an icy glow. The ornaments were the same color and all the same; round saucer-sized medallions with the royal crest of Bariavak on one side and a bas relief of the embassy on the other. A narrow silver garland wound around the tree, and some sort of silvery-blue tinsel hung from the branches.

“What do you think, April?” King Jozef asked.

Madame’s erect posture went so stiff she might have been a specimen scientists found in a glacier.

April shot a look toward the king that Hunter didn’t quit catch. But he saw the king incline his head slightly, perhaps in an encouraging — or commanding — nod.

“It’s … very dignified.”

Madame’s shoulders relaxed, but Hunter saw the king give April a close look.

“You don’t like it.”

Her voice was careful. “Your Majesty, that’s not for—.”

“You don’t like it,” King Jozef insisted.

Madame had returned to her personal ice age.

“It wasn’t put up for my pleasure, was it, sir,” she said with straight-forward logic. “This tree is meant to formally welcome visitors to the embassy and to mark the season with dignity and decorum, befitting official functions. Madame has produced a tree that does those things perfectly.”

That would have been that … if she hadn’t drawn a breath and kept going.

“I do prefer more relaxed, informal decorations, as I’m sure we’ll have in the living quarters.”

The silence that followed shouted as loudly as any words.

“That is, if you want decorations. Not everyone does, of course,” she said quickly. Her gaze flicked toward him. The king’s followed.

King Jozef then turned to Madame. “I shall want decorations in the living quarters after all, Madame.”

“Please don’t change your plans for me. I —”

“You are my plans, April.” He took her hand in both of his. In these few days the king’s manner to her had unbent to an ease she returned. “And I am delighted to have you change them from nothing to something.”

“But to add more work for Madame. I can’t—”

The king quashed April’s protest. “You are right, my dear. So, I ask that you take charge of this project.”

April shot a look toward the older woman, whose posture and straight-ahead stare would have suited a man about to be shot.

“Will you do that for me, April?” King Jozef asked.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Yes, sir.”

Madame wasn’t as easy for the royal bulldozer to flatten.

“There are no decorations to use in the living quarters.”

King Jozef turned to her, still holding April’s hand. “Come now, I can’t believe the Ambassador and his wife have not decorated in the years they have remained in Washington for the holidays. I know Gregor and Lilette and they have always enjoyed such things.”

“They do decorate,” Madame conceded, then added with relish, “With personal items. Family heirlooms of great sentimental and personal meaning.”

“Oh, no, we couldn’t use their personal things,” April said immediately.

Hunter doubted they’d heard her. The king and Madame were locked on each other.

“It does you credit to consider the feelings of the Gregor and Lilette,” the king said.

She returned his look without blinking. “Thank you, sir. I try to be conscious of their comfort as part of my duties.”

“As you have been — and will continue to be, I’m sure — conscious of my comfort.”

Score one for the king.

“Of course, sir,” Madame said through lips that barely moved.

“And since it will add to my comfort to decorate for Christmas, I am certain you will see to it.”

“Very well.” There was a glint in her voice like light off of a polished sword. “I shall have the cartons with spare materials from this tree brought up once more from the basement, and erect a tree in—”

April made a quickly cut-off sound at the reference to
spare materials from this tree.
The king had heard it.