AllFreeNovel
Share Us
People who were not hers.
She tried, very hard, to be fair.
But she also had to bear in mindthat she was not movinghouse, as regular people did all the time, or so she was informed. She was taking what was reasonably hers—and what the Queen, through surrogates, wished to bestow upon her—and shipping it off to a storage facility outside Paris. Becauseoutside Parisseemed as good a center of operation as any, because wasn’t that what people needed?A home base of some kind? Having never thought beyond Ile d’Montagne, she hardly knew how she was expected to figure outwhere she ought to live.
Much less how.
Amalia felt certain that she could learn how to do all those things that were considered normal. Like pay bills. Or...have bills in the first place. And a place for those bills to find her. One thing she had gathered from watching television over the years was that most people were preoccupied with bills. She imagined that she would be too, then.
But she was going to have to figure that out on her own. It was that or have someone teach her, and how could she tell if such a person would have her best interests at heart? She was a suddenly ex-princess with zero street smarts. No one had to tell her that she was ripe for the picking. She imagined there would be all sorts of people lining up to take advantage of her.
Anyway, she found herself less than sympathetic to the notion that the palace staff might have found any of this as difficult as she did.
If I’m understanding you correctly,she’d said dryly,the concern is that I will fling myself into the sort of antics that I was always expressly forbidden. And in so doing, bring shame upon the House of Montaigne. The only concern of the Queen, as I think we both know.
That you are not the blood relation of Her Majesty may be well known,the minister had replied.But I think you know that doesn’t matter. You will be scrutinized for the rest of your life. You will be compared to the new Crown Princess. And then, one day, to the new Queen. That may not be fair, but it is reality. There is no virtue in pretending otherwise.
Wonderful,Amalia had said, with her practiced smile.At least all these years of training won’t be entirely useless. I’ll be able to act as appropriately as ever, forever in service to this country which, it turns out, has nothing to do with me at all.
The minister had surprised her then. He had looked at her with what she very much thought was genuine compassion.
You have always impressed us all with your grace and character,he said quietly, knocking her smile off her face.I have every reason to believe that no matter what you do, you’ll never change such an essential part of who you are. If I were you, my lady, I would look at this not as a punishment at all. But as freedom.
That was the word that echoed inside of Amalia tonight.Freedom.
Whatever that was.
She nodded at the aide beside her when she was finally given the go-ahead. She smiled the way she always had, serene and easy—a smile she’d practiced for years in the mirror. Then she walked out of the palace and climbed into the waiting car that would sneak her away from everything she knew, down to the docks where a boat waited to take her off of this island and far from Ile d’Montagne. Likely forever.
Amalia couldn’t think of a single reason she would ever return. Not when she could only be a sad shadow lurking about the island she had loved, a reminder of so many years of unwitting deception.
But that was all right, she told herself stoutly as she boarded the small yacht that waited for her, far from the royal docks and staffed with the most trustworthy of the Queen’s men. Because she was setting sail forfreedom.
Not that she’d had a great lot of experience with the concept.Freedom, her tutors had told her sternly when she was growing up and needed to be more like a queen and less like the bored child she was,is for others, far less privileged. It is not for you.
And aside from one golden summer, that had been true.
Amalia didn’t stand out on the yacht’s deck. She didn’t want to be seen—it would disappoint the Queen and she still cared about that. More than she should. And besides, she didn’t want to look back at the island. At the life that had never been hers.
At everything she was losing tonight.
She curled herself up in her stateroom and settled in for the night. Because there, in private, she could indulge herself the way she’d tried so hard not to all these years.
Oh, how she’d tried—and failed.
But tonight there was no one to scold her. No one to remind her of her duty—because she had no more duties. She had the Queen’s request to avoid scandals that might reflect badly on Ile d’Montagne, though she was no longer required to honor the Queen’s request. She wasn’t the Queen’s subject. Oh, and she had freedom, whatever that was.
What was that song that suggested it was nothing more than nothing left to lose?
So—for once without the usual guilt—Amalia thought about that summer.
And better yet, him.
Joaquin Vargas.
Even his name made her shiver, across space and time.
She had been twenty and sheltered. Guarded her whole life.
