“Oh, my God! That’s weird!”
Chiara shook her head. “Royals are traditional. Some see work as beneath them or humiliating, or at the very most something to do until they marry one of their own kind who has a sufficient income.”
Dree shook her head hard, her curls bouncing off her cheeks. “Max isn’t like that. He worked so hard while we were in Nepal.”
“I understand that is true. However, he is one of them, not one of us. You’re going to see more and more situations like that. It’s not your fault. You can’t hold onto him. It’s the way they are.”
Dree wanted to protest. She wanted to say no, Maxence wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t just use and discard people like Chiara was saying all royals did.
On her phone, Maxence was kissing the very pale blond woman.
And when Dree swiped to the next picture, a brunette had her arm linked with Max’s and was gazing adoringly up at him. His look down at her seemed to be more fondness than sexually charged.
She held up the phone toward Chiara. “Who’s this?”
“Princess Norberta of Liechtenstein. She goes by Nora. Her brother will inherit the throne. She’ll be given an adequate allowance if she stays in Liechtenstein and works for the royal family. She’d rather marry someone in another country than stay in Liechtenstein. She will become superfluous when her brother marries and produces issue.”
Producing issuesounded like something forbidden by the Old Testament. “It’s like the fifteen-hundreds around here.”
Chiara made a whispery sound that seemed to be a very small sigh. “The thing is, those other royals have heirs and spares.Wedon’t.Monacodoesn’t. Our prior sovereign prince had no children, so the crown was to be passed to his younger brother’s sons, Pierre and then Maxence. Now that Pierre is gone, Maxence is the only one left.”
Dree let her phone drop to her lap. “But there are lots of royals around. You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting Lord this or Lady that.”
Chiara’s brown eyes widened. “Why would you do that to a poor dead animal?”
Dree waved her hands. “It’s just a saying. Nobody swings dead cats. But my point is that this line of succession goes on forever. Isn’t, like,everyonein Monaco eventually in line for the throne?”
“No. The treaties with France are specific. Every schoolchild here knows that our nation is contingent onone bloodline.If a sovereign is not crowned, France has the legal right to take over this territory. We don’t want to be French. We’reMonegasques.”
Under her breath, Dree whispered, “Monagasquay.”
“Pardon me?”
Dree ignored it and barreled on. “You know Max is an ordained deacon in the Church, right?”
Chiara’s determined headshake must have rattled her brain. “That is a vile rumor. Prince Rainier IV would never have allowed it, and His Holiness would never have done that to us. Monaconeedshim. If you are close to Prince Maxence, you can see why he willhaveto take the crown and why he must marry one of these princesses, probably quite soon.”
The rope holding Dree together snapped and unraveled, the ends banging around inside her chest as her stupid dreams fell apart. “He does?”
Chiara nodded intently. “Monaco has gone through a terrible trauma. First, Prince Rainier IV suffered a horrible stroke and lingered on a ventilator for over a month. We prayed for him, but he died. Then, the heir who was supposed to lead us was abandoned by his wife and took his own life. Every time we feel we are on solid footing, the ground is knocked out from under us again. Monaco feels like it’s teetering and going to fall, either to France or into the Mediterranean Sea. We need somegood news.We need agoodman to be crowned prince, and we need him to secure the line of succession by marrying and fathering children.Royalchildren, forus.”
The air had turned to ice around Dree, impossible to breathe. “I see.”
“I’mnottelling you to give him up. I’m just telling you to guard your heart because he’s going to break it. Trust me,he’s going to break it.”
Tears trembled in Chiara’s brown eyes.
Dree said, “I’ll be careful. I know you’re right. I know I don’t have a chance with him. In the end, I’m just a sheep farmer from New Mexico, not a princess or whatever he’s looking for in his life.”
Chiara left Dree sitting in her dorm room clutching a cold cup of tea, thinking about the dead ends in her life.
There were a lot of dead ends to consider, and all of them were in the last couple of months.
She found a notepad and pen she’d inadvertently swiped from Maxence’s office and tried to journal or write some poetry, tactics that had clarified things for her when she was in college, but all that came out of the pen’s point was,I am stuck, I am stuck, I am stuck.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Good Sisters
