Chapter 16Marco
Chapter 16
Marco
Princess Amelia, it turns out, is about as subtle as a cannonball in a swimming pool. It’s so obvious she’s decided I’m her sister’s soulmate with this whole plan of hers. Could she be any less obvious? I mean, turning up in the library—not looking for a book—and telling Sofia and me about where we can find someone to translate old Ledonian when we don’t have any call for it, is either incredibly odd or, if my theory is correct, whatever we find next will be written in old Ledonian. And in need of a professor to translate it for us, too.
Like I said, a cannonball into a swimming pool.
We left the library behind, and have been walking these palace hallways for some time. The soaring ceilings, gilded details, and lush patterned carpet feel appropriately opulent, with majestic columns framing staircases, and sunlight pouring through large windows. This might be Sofia’s every day journey through her home, but for me it’s like being transported to another world. Another life.
“You could get fit jogging between appointments in this place,” I say as we begin to climb a wide staircase.
“These are the formal, public parts of the palace. We live in the other wing, where the library is,” she replies.
“So, when people do palace tours, they don’t see your private rooms?”
“Heavens, no. We need to have some separation between our public and private lives, otherwise we’d get no space for ourselves.”
“That makes sense. Do you spend much time in this public wing?”
“Not really. The ballroom is down there,” she says, pointing down a corridor to our right, and my mind turns to the ball where we first met.
How differently I see Sofia now.
“I’ve spent some time there recently,” I reply and win a smile flashed my way.
I glance at her beside me. She’s got a determined look on her face, her stride fast and purposeful. Sofia might look like the haughty, serious person she first appears, even today wearing a dress with puff short sleeves and a full skirt and a pair of pumps on her feet, but I know there’s a beating heart beneath that tightly buttoned blouse, a heart that has a depth to it you don’t first see .
Still water runs deep , isn’t that the saying? People who appear to be tightly controlled, with a calm, reserved exterior have hidden complexity, an intensity not immediately apparent? Yeah, that’s Sofia all right. A still water that runs deep, very unlike her cannonball of a sister.
“Here we are,” she says in a quiet tone as we come to a stop outside grand gilded double doors, so tall a giant could pass through without having to duck his head.
She signals for her dogs to sit, who have clearly decided to accompany us on this adventure, and then leans her ear up against the door to listen.
“Can we go in?” I whisper.
“I can’t hear anything,” she replies. “I’ll pull the door open a crack.”
I wait as she peers inside. She looks back at me, her face lit up in a smile, her eyes sparkling and bright, and it strikes me afresh how utterly beautiful this woman is.
The media may have declared her uninteresting because she doesn’t go in for silly antics, but to me Sofia is a stunningly gorgeous and sexy woman with a mind of her own and determination I can’t help but admire. And more than that, she’s kind and sincere and fun. That’s right, Princess Sofia is fun. I can safely say that’s not something I ever expected to think about the uptight, prim and proper princess I’ve seen grow up in the public eye.
It just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover.
We enter the vast room with plush red carpet leading to two opulent thrones elevated on a platform. Gilded chairs line the walls, awaiting dignitaries, and elegant chandeliers hang from the intricately carved ceiling. Rich red curtains frame tall windows, and portraits hang along the walls, the atmosphere is thick with history and power, and I can’t help but feel small and unimportant against its grandeur, despite the fact I’ve been in this room before .
Sofia, on the other hand, strides inside, flanked by her dogs, a queen leading her army to battle, as though it’s really no big deal—and I guess to her, it isn’t. This is all part of her world, part of the life she leads. She would never throw on a pair of rubber boots, caked in mud, working the soil to accommodate plants that could help feed a community, even though I bet she’d support the cause. Sofia is all about elegance and refinement, her life so far removed from my reality she may as well be another species.
“Read me the new riddle again,” she instructs, and I pull the piece of paper from the book in my hand.
“In the grand and gilded throne hall” I begin.
“Find the painting on the wall.
Press the gem with a gentle hand,
A hidden door will then expand.”
I look around at the walls. Imposing portraits of kings and queens gaze down at us, their severe expressions showing their power and prestige. There have got to be at least twenty portraits in the room, and I blow out of breath at the enormity of our task.
“Which one of these has a gem?” Sofia asks, studying the walls.
A cursory glance gives me the answer. “All of them?” I reply with a chortle.
“I’m not sure we’re meant to touch the paintings. Some of them are very old, you know.”
I unfurl my rolled-up sleeve. “Do it this way,” I suggest, pulling the cotton over my fingers.
“Good idea for you. I don’t have long sleeves.”
I chew on my lip, formulating a plan. “I know what to do.” Quickly, I unbutton my shirt, pulling it over my head and handing it to her.
She regards me through wide eyes that slide down my torso before pinging back up to meet mine.
“Use that to press any gems you find in the pictures.”
“What will you use?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost mouse-like, and I wonder whether I’m being totally inappropriate, pulling my shirt off not only in the nation’s throne room, but in front of her.
I glance down at my snug-fitting white tank top, glad I threw one on when I got dressed this morning. “I’ll use this.”
She swallows, and now I know I’ve overstepped the mark. “How, exactly?”
I’m about to make a joke, telling her I’ll press my pecs against every gem I find, but then think better of it. She’s looking really quite bewildered, and my bet is a comment like that could send her running from the room.
“I’ll find a way,” I assure her with a wink. “Let’s get moving, shall we?”
“Absolutely. We need to be systematic about this. We don’t know how much time we have before someone will turn up here to find you looking like… well, like that.”
I stifle a smile. Me pulling my shirt off has rattled her usually poised exterior.
I’ve got to say, I’m enjoying it.
“How about you start at that end, and I’ll start here?” I point at the thrones before I gesture with my thumb to the other end of the room, and she nods before she turns on a heel and heads to her end.
I make my way back to the doors, which I close after a surreptitious sweep of the hallway. All clear.
The first painting is of an old king, probably from five hundred or so years ago, and I spot jewels on his feet, on his crown, and dotted right across the full breadth of his jacket.
That’s a lot of jewels .
I reach up inside my singlet and stretch the material to press against each of the gems on his feet, then try to reach up to his chest, but there’s only so much stretch in a tank top. It dawns on me what I’ve got to do.
I glance back at Sofia. She’s concentrating on pressing my shirt against a portrait of a king and queen, immersed in her task. Without second-guessing myself, I pull my tank top over my head, ball it up in my hands, and begin to use it to press against the painting.
And yes, I know that means I’m shirtless in the nation’s throne room, but needs must, and right now I need the cloth from my back. Literally.
There are at least seventy-five gems on this painting alone, and as I work away I begin to wonder whether this is a fool’s errand, after all.
I move to the next painting. This one has only a collection of jewels in the kings crown and sceptre and orb. I work quickly, pressing each and every one of the gems, but come up with nothing as I move onto the next painting and then the next.
As I’m reaching up to press a gem in a crown atop a queen’s head, Sofia clears her throat, and I look over at her. She’s got her hands on her hips, giving me an odd look.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re shirtless,” she pronounces.
I lower my gaze to my bare chest and then back up at her. “I needed my tank top to press against the pictures.” I jab my tank top-covered fingers against the painting to demonstrate why.
Her gaze lingers on me for a moment too long, and I swear I see her cheeks reddening before she lifts her chin in what I’m fast learning is one of her characteristic moves. “ Let’s hope no one walks in on us here, with you looking like that.”
“Probably best if they don’t,” I reply with a smile, enjoying her awkwardness. I might never have graced the cover of a magazine in my shirtless state, but I’m aware that with my physical work I could hold my own against those guys.
She returns her attention to her work, which is exactly what I do, making my way around the room, pressing my vest up against every gem I spot.
As I approach the far end near the two thrones, I spot a large ruby, the color of Ledonian royalty in an odd place on a more modern painting. It shows the current king and queen, sitting on a couple of oversized red velvet cushions with gold tassels, smiling at one another as they hold hands under a large tree. Judging by the way they look, the painting must only be a handful of years old. I press my vest-clad fingers against it and, to my surprise, a concealed door in the wallpapered wall pops open a couple of inches.
“Sofia! I found it!” I call, and she dashes across the room, clutching my shirt in her hands.
We both stare at the door that has suddenly appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
“Two hidden doors in one day,” I say, shaking my head. “Who’d have thought? The palace is a veritable Narnia.”
“Well, go on, open it,” she says, and I reach around the edge of the door and pull it open. We’re met with a narrow passageway, with rough, old stone walls and a set of stairs that descend steeply. The ceiling arches low, covered in patches of old brickwork. There’s a rusty iron railing that runs along one side.
Sofia gasps .
“What the—” I turn to her. “Did you know this existed?”
She shakes her head, her eyes the size of golf balls. “I’d heard about secret passageways under the palace but assumed it was just a myth.”
“They don’t look that mythical to me. Do you think these stairs lead to the dungeons?”
“The dungeons are on the other side of the palace, near the stables.”
“Do you want to go down to see what we can find?”
I know what I want her answer to be—a resounding heck, yes.
“It’s awfully dark.”
“Nothing a flashlight app can’t fix.” I pull my phone from the pocket of my jeans and illuminate the first few steps.
We share an unspoken agreement to proceed, and step into the narrow passageway, our breaths echoing off the stone walls. My heart races with excitement and trepidation, and instinctively, I reach for Sofia’s hand. She grips mine tightly, and I lead the way downwards, my phone illuminating a handful of steps at a time before we reach a wooden door with crisscrossed strips of wrought iron.
I try the door. Locked.
“What? Surely it will open. Try again,” she instructs.
I turn the doorknob once more. “Wait. Didn’t the riddle say something about a key?”
“Of course! We need the key. Where’s the book with the riddle?”
“I left it on the floor up there when we started looking for the gem, but I remember it said to step inside to get the key.” I look back up the stairwell to the light coming from the throne room above.
Again, without saying a word, we climb back up the stairs and begin to feel the cold stone walls, searching for a key.
“Found it!”
I turn to see Sofia holding a large, old-fashioned iron key, the kind they used to use to lock prisoners in the dungeon—and in this case, that might literally have been the case.
“Let’s go see if it works,” she says with a grin.
“The riddle said to turn it twice.”
We clamber back down the stairs, this time with less trepidation and a whole lot more excitement. I watch as Sofia slips the key into the keyhole, turns it once, twice, and pushes the door open.
Predictably, there’s no light in the room, so I shine my phone around the cavernous room.
“Does this remind you of that book about Sammy the squirrel finding a key?” I ask in the dank room, my voice echoing around us.
“You know that story?”
“Who doesn’t know that story? It’s a Ledonian classic.”
My light illuminates a box, resting on the floor in the far corner of the room. “That’s got to be it.”
Sofia bends down and picks the box up. It’s wooden, with a brass royal crest. She glances at me briefly before she opens it up, the lid creaking with age. Inside the box lies a solitary scroll, tied in tattered string.
“Marco!” she says, her eyes wide.
“Pull it out. Let’s look at what it says.”
Carefully, she removes the scroll and unties the string, dropping it to the stone floor. She unrolls it and I hold up my phone to illuminate the words, leaning close to her, so close we could touch.
“It’s not in Ledonian,” she exclaims .
“You’re right.” I read a couple of lines, recognizing one of the words from the royal crest. “That’s old Ledonian, isn’t it?”
“Oh, my gosh, Marco. You’re right!”
Princess Amelia’s suggestion of a professor who can translate old Ledonian suddenly makes sense. Cannonball in a swimming pool, remember?
What do you think it says?” She tilts her head to look up at me. Bathed as she is in the glowing light from my phone, standing so very close to me, I have the sudden urge to reach out and trail my fingers across the soft, warm skin of her exposed neck, to pull her to me and finally get to taste her sweet, plump lips as I?—
Wait. Back up the dang bus a minute.
I can’t go having thoughts like that about this woman! Not only is she a princess, and consequently so out of my league I need binoculars just to catch a glimpse of her, but she’s not for me. She wants to be with my brother.
My.
Brother.
This woman, who smells like spring, whose lips I’m hankering to kiss, has a spreadsheet that tells her I’m not the man for her.
No matter how much I want to be.
And oh, how I want to be.
Everyone told me she was a straitlaced, cantankerous type of person who rubbed people up the wrong way, lacking in the famous royal family charisma of her brothers and sister. But it’s as clear to me as a cloudless day that she’s been misjudged. She is no more the Pitiful Princess than I am a neuroscientist.
Her smile lights up the room, her brown eyes with attractive gold flecks sparkling with warmth and kindness. Every time she looks my way, I can’t help but feel a flutter in my chest, a connection that’s impossible to ignore. No matter how much I know I should.