The Unhandsome Prince Page 15

  She kissed it again. The frog obstinately remained a frog.

  From the corner she heard a snicker. She whirled around, quickly hiding the frog behind her. It was Prince Kenny, looking at her with amusement. She gave him a nervous smile and managed to curtsey while keeping her hands behind her back. “Good evening, Your Highness.”

  “And good evening to you, Miss Caroline. A lovely night to be outside, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. I was just—just—looking at the moon.” Since the moon was behind her, Caroline could only attempt to point to it by twisting her head awkwardly. She realized, correctly, that doing so made her look like an idiot.

  “I was looking for Hal. Have you seen him?”

  “Hal? Prince Hal?”

  “Yes. Prince Hal. My brother. Your fiancé.”

  “Oh, you mean Hal. No. No, I haven’t seen him. No. Not tonight. No.”

  Behind her the frog went, “Rrrrrrrbbb.”

  “Excuse me,” said Caroline. “It must have been something I ate. All that rich food.”

  “You get used to it after a while,” said Kenny. “So you haven’t seen Hal? I see his clothes are here.”

  Caroline looked down at the pile of clothing lying at her feet. “Yes, I noticed those, too. Very strange, isn’t it?”

  “It’s certainly not like Hal to undress out here . . . ah, I see.” Kenny gave Caroline a knowing smile. “I apologize if I interrupted a romantic moment.”

  “Interrupted what? Oh! No, nothing like that. We weren’t doing anything.”

  “Are you sure?” Kenny moved a bit closer. “I thought I heard kissing.”

  “Kissing? Ha-ha-ha. How absurd. Why, there’s no one else here. Who could I be kissing?”

  “A frog, perhaps.” Kenny reached behind Caroline and took the frog out of her hands. He held it up to his eyes and examined it critically. “Hmmm. Small, flaccid body. Soft, damp skin. Receding chin. Yes, the resemblance to Hal is unmistakable.”

  “Give him to me.” Caroline made a grab for the frog. Kenny held it out of her reach.

  “Oh, I think its served its purpose.” Casually, Kenny tossed the frog over the parapet.

  Caroline shrieked and ran to the wall. Kenny laughed. “Relax, my girl. It’s not Hal. It was a joke. Hal is fine. It’s just a frog I picked out of the grass this evening. Hal and Jeff are downstairs. I got some of his clothes from the laundress.”

  Caroline was leaning over the parapet. Down below, the frog lay spattered against the flagstones. Kenny continued. “It was just a gag. Although I must say, you’ve never looked lovelier than when you were kissing that—”

  WHAP.

  There is nothing quite like a lifetime of spinning for building up the wrist muscles. Caroline’s slap made Kenny see stars, and he held his jaw to make sure it had not been dislocated. With his other hand he grabbed her wrist in case she drew back for another round. “Now now,” he said. “Don’t get excited. That’s no way to treat your future husband.”

  “What? Yeah, you wish.” Caroline snatched her hand back.

  “Oh, I think so. You’ve made your desires pretty clear. You want to marry a handsome prince. And you want to be Queen someday, so you’ll have to marry the future king. And there’s only one man who qualifies on both counts.”

  “I don’t need you, Your Highness, to tell me my own mind, thank you very much. And anyway, I believe Prince Jeffrey has an equal chance of inheriting the throne.

  In fact, I’ve been told that the Council of Lords favors him.”

  “Very true. The Council does favor him, for now. But that’s because they think Jeff can keep the family out of bankruptcy and avert a financial scandal. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a plan to solve our crisis, as well as avert all that tedious thrift and responsible spending that Jeff keeps preaching.”

  “Oh really? Frankly, Your Highness, you haven’t struck me as being all that clever. No disrespect intended.”

  “I have hidden depths,” said Kenny. He smiled. “And I like a woman with spirit, as trite as that old line may seem. Sets a different tone from the girls that are always fawning over me.”

  “You should go back to your little fawns. Besides, I thought a prince of Melinower was sold to the woman with the highest dowry, sort of like a male prostitute, isn’t that correct?”

  “Careful,” said Kenny. “Now you’re getting nasty. Try to remember you’re still a commoner. I could have you flogged for a remark like that.”

  “I bet you’d enjoy it, too.”

  “Possibly I would. All the more reason to watch your place.”

  Caroline knew that Hal and Jeff would not allow Kenny to hurt her. Still, she was treading on dangerous ground. “Very well, Your Highness. I apologize.”

  “Accepted.”

  “In any case, I could not possibly come up with the dowry to marry you. And unless you marry a girl with an enormous dowry, you will not become king. And if you do marry a girl with an enormous dowry, then you cannot marry me. And that, Your Highness, is that.” Caroline turned and started for the stairs. “Good night.”

  “Not so fast.” Kenny grabbed her wrist again. Caroline pulled away. He held up his hands. “I’m still going to be king. And as the king, I can set the dowry requirements, or waive them completely. In fact, I’ve already told Jeff he could marry you, if you were willing.”

  “Really?” This was interesting. “Prince Jeffrey wants to marry me?”

  “If you want to marry him. But remember, Jeff will not be king. I will be king.”

  Prince Kenneth, thought Caroline, has taken too many jousting blows to the head. “And how, may I ask, do you intend to manage that?”

  “A simple redistribution of wealth. The worst of my father’s debts are owed to Jewish moneylenders. As the Jews have accumulated too much wealth and power in any case, it is high time they were relocated to some other kingdom.”

  “You’re going to expel them?”

  Kenny beamed. “Smart girl. Exactly. We’ll wait until after the tournaments are over, of course. So as not to hurt the tourist trade.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Oh, it won’t so bad. We’re just moving them. We won’t be hurting them. Unless they try to resist. I expect some will try to resist, and they’ll have to be injured, perhaps seriously. But I don’t expect any to actually die. Mostly they’ll just be roughed up a bit.”

  “You really have no idea what a tyrant you sound like, do you? Destroying people’s lives like that.”

  “We won’t be destroying their lives. The Jews have been wandering the Earth for two thousand years. This will be just one more wander for them.”

  “Leaving everything behind for you to loot.”

  “Of course not. They can take their possessions with them.”

  “Not everything. Not their homes.”

  “Oh well,” said Kenny. “Can’t be helped. The main point is to make it impossible for them to collect on the debts owed them. Think of it as a sort of mandatory re-financing.”

  “I can’t believe you can be so unjust. You’ll make a terrible king.”

  Kenny looked down at her with a fond smile, as though he was explaining something to a bright child. “Justice and honor are for knights to worry about. A king will have to put his name to far dirtier deeds than this before his reign is through. And,” he went on, “I’m glad to see you’re so upset with me. It shows you’ve been thinking of marrying me all along, haven’t you? If you weren’t, you’d just ignore me.”

  The fact that what he said was true made it all the more infuriating. “I wouldn’t marry you if . . . if . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Caroline took one more look over the parapet, at the smashed body of the frog lying below, and said, “I don’t know. But I won’t.” And she ran from the terrace.

  Hal exited the palace and started up the outside stairs that led to his rooms. It had been a long day and he was ready for bed. He planned to be up early tomorrow, practicing his guar
ds and parries with the magic sword. Tonight, after leaving Jeff and his mother, he had gone to Emily to return the philosopher’s stone. He had been glad to get rid of it. The stone was connected to the whole frog experience, and that was something Hal was trying to push out of his mind. Seven weeks of water and clammy mud, hunted by snakes and owls, the taste of insects—most of it was just a blur now, but not yet blurry enough. He woke each day from uneasy sleep, knowing that he’d had a nightmare, thankful that he couldn’t remember it.

  Still, it was never far from his mind that, frog-wise, he was still in hot water. The spell obligated him to marry Caroline unless she married someone else, and Hal couldn’t help feeling that she was setting her standards a bit too high. Of course every girl wanted to marry a handsome prince, but the dowry issue seemed pretty much insurmountable. There was a whole city of wealthy merchants and nobles out there. Surely Caroline could find a young man to make her happy if she was willing to make the effort.

  You wouldn’t, Hal considered, find Emily getting hung up over whether she could marry a prince. Girls like her were too sensible.

  In the end, the whole thing came back to the magic sword. If Hal won the tournament, the family debt would be eliminated. Jeff would become king, cancel the expulsion, marry Caroline, and Hal would be off the hook. All he had to do was win one tournament.

  Talk about pressure.

  Not that Hal was going to try to coerce her. It was up to Jeff to win her over. Caroline was very obviously a girl who made up her own mind, and if she needed advice, she asked for it. Trying to push her toward any particular man might just make her dig in her heels. Hal knew that women were inherently unpredictable. The only thing he was sure of was that Caroline definitely wasn’t going to marry him.

  At which point his reverie was interrupted by the sight of Caroline flying down the stairs. She flung her arms around him, kissed him on the lips, and said, “I’ll marry you, Hal.”

  Well, Hal told himself, I’ve been wrong before.

  Aloud he said, “That’s great, Caroline. Why did you change your mind? I thought you wanted to marry—have you been crying?”

  Caroline’s face was wet. She had started crying when she saw Hal, and now she began to hiccup. Hal patted her on the back, then led her up the stairs to the next landing and sat her down on the wall. “What’s wrong?”

  Caroline hiccuped one more time, then said, “I saw a frog.”

  “Ah.”

  “I thought it was you. I thought you had turned back into a frog, and it was all my fault.”

  “I’m fine. I’m not a frog. Nothing’s your fault.”

  She buried her face in his neck. “I don’t want you to turn into a frog.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I know I’ve been selfish. I didn’t want to marry you. I wanted to marry someone who was tall, and broad-shouldered, and good-looking, and you’re none of those things, but still . . .”

  “Okay,” snapped Hal, “Don’t do me any favors. I can take care of myself.”

  Caroline pulled her head away from his shoulder and gave him a narrow look. “Do you want to revert to a frog?”

  “Um,” said Hal. “Maybe just this one favor.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  “Okay,” said Hal, wondering if he should get down on one knee. But Caroline was over her tears and had gone from sad to visibly depressed. “I know you’d rather marry Jeff.”

  Caroline hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. But it just isn’t going to happen. By marrying you, at least I’ll get into the royal family. I’ll never be the queen, but I will be a princess.”

  “And you’ll have ladies-in-waiting.”

  “Oh yes, I can’t forget the ladies-in-waiting. Also, Hal, I kind of feel responsible for you. Since I was the one who got you out of the swamp, I can’t help but think that I should see the whole thing through.”

  “Mmmm,” said Hal, a bit distractedly. Now that the emotional crisis was over, another factor had come into play, specifically adolescent male hormones. Caroline was still in Hal’s arms and there was no ignoring the fact that this was a beautiful girl. A really beautiful girl. His arms were around her slim waist, her firm breasts were pressed against his chest, and her soft pink lips were only inches from his face. As far as young men go, Hal was a pretty self-controlled sort, but there are limits to what any teenage boy can stand. He cleared his throat. “Um, as long as we’re engaged now we might as well—ah—see if we’re physically compatible.”

  Caroline shrugged. Her response was meant to indicate casual disinterest, but since the movement caused her breasts to shift against him, the actual effect was quite the opposite from what she intended. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I just thought . . .” But before he could finish the sentence Caroline had kissed him again. It was a short kiss, but she let it linger just enough to give a hint of future possibilities.

  “Was that what you had in mind?”

  “Yes,” said Hal. He let a moment of silence fill the space, then said, “Well, how was it?”

  “Kissing you? Not that great, actually.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean it wasn’t bad. I’m sorry, Hal. You’re kind of cute in that harmless sort of way—I can understand why Emily is attracted to you—but you just don’t do much for me.”

  “Emily is attracted to me?”

  “Of course. It’s obvious. What did you think of my kiss?”

  “Hmmm?” said Hal, who seemed to be lost in thought.

  “I asked you what you thought of my kiss.”

  “Oh. Well, like you said, it wasn’t that great for me either.”

  There was another moment of silence. “Oh really?” said Caroline.

  “It was okay, though. Did Emily say anything else about me?”

  “What’s wrong with the way I kiss?”

  “Nothing. It was fine. I mean, did you actually hear her say she liked me?”

  “Fine as in really good, or fine as in just okay?”

  “Um, really good. It was terrific.”

  Caroline stood up and faced him, hands on hips. “A moment ago you said my kisses weren’t that great.”

  “ ‘Great’ is a relative term. Under certain circumstances, a kiss might not be that great and still be excellent.”

  “Don’t play word games with me, Hal! Just what makes you such an expert that you can critique a girl’s kisses? Don’t forget it was my kiss that saved your little froggy butt. You weren’t nearly so picky about who kissed you when you were sitting on a lily pad.”

  “Not bad,” said Hal. “We’ve been engaged a whole five minutes, and we’re having our first fight.”

  Caroline sat down again. “Well, you started it.” She let him put his arm around her waist. “Bridesmaids. Six will do, I think.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Caroline. You don’t have to marry me. I’m going to win enough money in the tournaments for you to marry Jeff or anyone you want.”

  Caroline blinked several times. “Is that a joke?”

  “No.”

  “I have a hard time believing you can win big in the tournaments. Unless you’re betting on the other guy.”

  “Of course not. I’m entered in the swordfighting competition.”

  Caroline blinked. “Satin pumps.”

  “What?”

  “Satin pumps. For the bridesmaids. They can dye them to match their dresses. With all due respect, my prince, I’ve seen you swordfight. I think your technique needs a little work.”

  “This will be different. I’ve got a magic sword.”

  “I’ve seen your magic sword, too, remember? I can’t think that it will be much use in a tournament, unless they give you a really big, big letter to open.” Caroline brightened. “Bring it to the wedding. We can use it to cut the cake.”

  “No, really. Jeff and I have a way to beat the odds.”

  “I’m going to bed,” said Caroline. She stood up again.

  “Yo
ur mother is right. There’s a lot of planning to do. Here.” She leaned over. “Here’s a good-night kiss. And I better not hear any complaints.”

  “No complaints,” said Hal.

  It was only a short kiss, but it lasted long enough that neither of them saw Emily approach from the shadows, observe them for a split second, then discreetly turn away.

  Emily went back to her room, latched the door, and threw herself facedown on the bed. She pulled the pillow over her head. That went pretty well, she thought. Caroline took my advice after all. Tomorrow I can tell Bungee that I can accept his apprenticeship. Everything is working out for the best and I’m not unhappy.

  Really, she told herself, I’m not.

  “No!” said Queen Helen. “Absolutely not! I forbid it!”

  “Mom,” said Jeff, “I don’t think you can forbid it. In fact, I don’t think you can forbid Hal to do anything, anymore.”

  The Queen was sitting in her favorite chair, which was upholstered in burgundy damask and had elaborately carved mahogany arms. Right now her arms were folded against her chest, and she was sitting up very straight. In the candlelight it was difficult to make out her expression, but her voice was firm and authoritative. “Hal in the tournaments? How absurd. I will have a word with the registration clerks. How could they possibly put him on the lists? He’s just a little boy.”

  “He’s only a year younger than me. Kenny and I have been entering for years.”

  “Well, I don’t like you and Kenny entering tournaments either. Swordfighting! It’s dangerous. Even with armor. Why with one of those things you could . . .”

  “Put your eye out,” Jeff finished for her. He was leaning back into his armchair, trying to be casual, with his thumbs tucked into the pockets of a kerseymere waistcoat. “You used to tell me the same thing. Mom, Hal has already been in real street fights. The tournaments are just games.”

  “Oh yes, that’s what you boys always say. Fighting with swords. Jousting with sticks. Don’t worry, it’s all just fun and games, until—”