“Or, I can tell you about my uncle, Prince Jules the Malicious of Monagasquay.”
Dree snuggled farther down into her sleeping bag in the dark because cold air leaked down her neck. As they had been ascending in elevation to more distant villages, the temperature had dropped, especially at night. “Do you really call him that?”
“We will as soon as I get back to a cellular signal and can text people. I have some cousins that are going tolovethat. No, Prince Jules the Malicious is the fourth son of my grandfather, Prince Rainier III. The current prince is his oldest son, Rainier IV, but he didn’t father any legitimate children. Thus, the next person in line would’ve been my father, but he died when my brother and I were teenagers. So after that, it’s my older brother Pierre, then me, then two of my cousins, and then Prince Jules.”
Dree said, “Wait, I thought there was that Council of Nobles thing, and there was an election that isn’t an election and stuff.”
“Excellent memory, but previously, the Council has always offered the throne to the next person in the theoretical line of succession. That could change, of course, and my brother worried that it might. Like I said, he’s definitely a psychopath, though he would have ordered the assassination of any psychologist who’d made that diagnosis. Finally, somehow, he figured out that he had screwed over enough people on the Council that they might want revenge. The last few years, he’s been engaging in damage control, so I think they’re going to give it to him. But if he hadn’t done that, or if something had happened to Pierre, me, and my two cousins, Jules would have been the next person in line. The Council probably would’ve offered it to him, even though he’s more psychopathic and delights even more in cruelty and evil than my brother. He is, however, better at politics with the other nobles than Pierre is.”
“Well, if Pierre is going to be the prince, at least you know Prince Jules the Malicious is never going to get the throne.”
“I hope not. It would be bad for theworldif he did, not just Monagasquay. He’s a racist. I would call him a fascist, except that the principality is essentially a fascist dictatorship, in that all power does rest with the sovereign prince. Monagasquay is barely a constitutional monarchy. For the last couple of centuries, the princes who have ruled have been relatively benevolent, so no one has made an effort to change the fact that a hereditary sovereign rules with an iron hand. Plus, everyone likes the lack of income tax.”
“No income tax?” Dree asked as her body relaxed in the warmth of her mummy bag. “How the heck do y’all get away with that?”
“That casino that I mentioned brings in all the country’s revenue. Monegasque citizens are not allowed to go in and gamble. We only take money from other people because the house always wins. Wealthy Monegasques are expected to contribute in significant ways, such as sponsoring the ballet or Grand Prix race. Plus, there’s tourism and investments.”
Dree laughed. “So, tell me the story about Prince Jules the Malicious.”
“Prince Jules the Malicious is so awful that he got fired from one of the government ministry positions in Monagasquay. It’s difficult to get fired from whatever government job you want if you’re in the royal family. It was thought to be impossible before Jules managed it.”
Dree listened from her warm spot, snuggled in her sleeping bag. “What did he do?”
Her voice sounded a little too gleeful, even in her own ears. But hey, if Maxence was spinning these stories and talking to her, she’d go with it. It was kind of like being read a bedtime story and kind of like flirting with a scorching guy who was nearly naked and only inches away.
Maxence said, “Jules started revoking citizenships for people who had been naturalized as Monegasque citizens unless they were billionaires. He threw dozens of people who owned small restaurants and shops or worked in the casino or hotels out of the country, the ones who keep Monagasquay going. There are fewer than forty thousand Monegasque citizens, so when you throw out a couple hundred people, that’s a lot of people we lost within two years. And the worst thing is that there definitely was a racial component. Jules was throwing out people who had immigrated to Monagasquay and worked hard to become citizens and build a life there, and he just stamped some paperwork and destroyed their lives.”
“That’s reprehensible,” Dree said.
“It’s malicious. He blackmailed the billionaires who had immigrated and been naturalized as citizens. He forced them to pay him exorbitant bribes or else he would revoke their citizenship, which would have meant that they would have had to go back to their previous countries and pay all those years of income tax in arrears, plus penalties. It would have financially devastated them, and they knew it. Andheknew it. Thus, he demanded bribes, and they paid. Eventually, a few years ago, he tried to blackmail a French woman who was the head of a Paris fashion house, but she had been good friends with Prince Rainier the Third’s wife before she passed away. She told him and brought him proof of what Jules had been doing. Prince Rainier wasfurious.I mean, his rage against Prince Jules has become a legend in our family. Nobody is exactly sure what happened in the throne room that day, but there was blood on the floor, and Prince Jules needed minor reconstructive surgery afterward.”
Dree couldn’t help herself and giggled at the thought of royal princes duking it out in a playground scrap. She clapped her hand over her mouth, lest Father Booker and the other guys outside hear her and think that something was going on that wasn’t.
Not that she didn’t want it to, buthehad madevows.
She said, “It’s ridiculous how much I love these stories about Monagasquay that you come up with.”
Maxence’s baritone chuckle in the dark sounded too much like any one of the times when he’d taken her to the panting edge of an orgasm and then deliberately stopped, which was infuriating and sexy as hell at the same time. It had been like he was so secure in his ability to make her come that he could waste all the opportunities he wanted to.
It was a good thing her ex-boyfriend had never tried something like that. He’d maybe had a five percent success rate, and if he’d have wasted any of those, she might’ve slugged him.
Maxence, though, was a different story. His confidence in his prowess was deserved, which made the revelation that he wanted to be a priest all the more unbelievable.
Absolutely unbelievable.
Just as she was working up the courage to ask Max again why he wanted to devote himself so completely to the Church that he would try to give up something he was obviously incapable of letting go, his breathing smoothed to the deep, even rhythm of sleep.
Well, Dree would just have to ask him the next time she got her courage up.
Which meant never.
Chapter Nine
The Importance of Milk
Maxence
Maxence sat on a rough-hewn kitchen table in a house in a hill village of Nepal, holding a small child in his arms while Dree examined the child’s teeth. She was frowning slightly, just a tightening of the smooth skin between her blond eyebrows, as she peered into the boy’s mouth.
