Chapter One
Princess in the Glass Tower
Princess Marisol Annette Maria Victoria Alonda Duvaingnon of Dalyasia spent her early morning preparing for the state dinner held tonight in her father’s honor in her suite at the Grand Wedgwood Hotel. The venerable establishment was one of the oldest and ritziest Manhattan residences that housed a wealthy international clientele.
She didn’t have all the details of tonight’s event. Her father was extremely busy on this rare trip to New York City and didn’t brief her on the particulars. Her social secretary, Countess Guerin, was similarly thin on details, but Marisol was prepared to represent her country as was expected of her.
This trip to New York was an unexpected treat. Marisol was rarely allowed out of Europe. Her father was even reluctant to let her visit the British Isles for some reason that wasn’t explained, but as part of the trip, Marisol was given a brand new wardrobe of couture clothes from various and pricey French designers.
Maria, her maid, held up the custom made Guo Pei dress modeled on his latest Spring Fashion week haute couture design. It was hand-made to Marisol’s generous proportions. Her mother may have had a dancer’s body, but Marisol evidently took her genes from an older and more voluptuous version of her maternal line. The dress was ankle length which accentuated length over width, and a hearty mustard-gold, a color most women couldn’t wear, but Marisol’s dark skin color looked luminous in it. The dark yellow-gold along with the silver and black of the embroidery were also the colors in the Dalyasian flag. She especially liked the extra-long draped sleeves that looked like folded angel wings and the elaborate embroidery down the front and the arms in motifs of Dalyasia’s royal crest.
The shoes were handmade in the same color as the dress. The heels were three-inch spikes, which added lengthening to Marisol’s ample figure. Her makeup was would be done by a makeup artist hired for tonight’s occasion and as part of the treatment, gold shimmer would be applied to her neck and face and ankles.
“Oh, my princess, you will look absolutely gorgeous.” Maria was usually over enthusiastic, but today she was nearly rabid. “What wig shall you wear tonight?”
This was precisely what Marisol considered. Her natural hair was kinky, thin, and all together unsuitable for public display. Maria had pulled out a half-dozen hand-made human hair wigs and displayed them on the highboy in Marisol’s bedroom. The princess looked over the different styles. There were several styled in elaborate updos, one bob, and two long styles. One was shoulder-length. The other would hang to her shoulder blades.
“The very long one, Maria.”
“Are you sure. It’s a dinner party and—”
“Are you second guessing me, Marie?”
“No, your Grace. Sorry, your Grace.”
“Fine, then put all this away for tonight.”
“Yes, your Grace.”
At that moment, Marisol’s cell phone rung, and seeing it was her friend Antoinette, she answered.
“I’m so very jealous of you right now,” said Antoinette. “Not only are you in fabulous New York City, but your father announced your engagement. How dare you not tell me? Was it a state secret?”
“Excuse me?” said Marisol, thinking she’d misheard something.
“Are you not excited? Tristan Vattakov! He is so very handsome. So sexy. Every girl wants him.”
Tristan Vattakov? Marisol knew her father was in negotiations with Tristan’s father, King Stepan Vattakov. Both Vattakov men had reputations as womanizers. She had no interest in the prince.
“Not me.”
“Why ever not? He’s a royal plum waiting to be plucked. You’re so lucky. Can I be your maid-of-honor? It must be me. I’ll die if you won’t let me.”
“Where did you hear this?” Marisol was sure her ditzy friend must have misinterpreted some bit of gossip and blew it out of proportion.
“It’s in all the news, silly. It came out in today’s reports.”
“Guerin,” Marisol snapped to her secretary in the next room. “Get me a copy of the newspapers. All of them!”
Antoinette prattled on until Marisol told her she had to go. Guerin handed her several copies of today’s news, and she tore through the papers until she found two news items.
One in the business section, with a picture of her father and King Stepan Vattakov shaking hands and smiling, announced the end of her country’s economic problems. This was to be done with the influx of money from Dalyasia’s new business parter, the Republic of Kreigov, a former satellite of the defunct USSR.
The name was deceiving. It wasn’t a republic at all but a representative monarchy. Marisol was educated to know these fine differences. She was, after all, a king’s daughter. No, the will of the people didn’t rule Kreigov, but the power and influence of one man, King Vattakov, did. As the Soviet Union crumbled, the region of Kreigov stabilized with the return of the long-exiled royal family. In the twenty-five years since Vattakov took over the reigns of government he transformed a small, poverty-ridden state into one of the wealthiest nations in the region.
He did it with two things—oil and a ruthless approach to business.
The second article was on the Society page. Marisol shook with inchoate rage as she stared at a state publicity photo of herself and a similar photo of Prince Tristan Vattakov, heir to the throne of Kreigov. The announcement said they would be married in a month in the palace gardens of Dalyasia.
; No wonder the King was having the gardens overhauled. She’d thought it a terrible expense for a country struggling to survive, but her father insisted it needed to be done. Now she understood. He had this, the trip, the new clothes—obviously a wedding trousseau—and the redo of the palace garden planned in advance. No doubt there was a wedding planner in the wings waiting to fawn over Marisol. Hell, her wedding dress was probably being worked on now.
My father didn’t even tell me.
She’d never met Prince Tristan and had no urge to do so. The prince was almost a public joke with his unending string of lovers, elaborate, glitzy parties, gambling, and incessant jet setting. If his father didn’t have a stranglehold on the oil production in his corner of the world, Tristan would be politely ignored. Instead he was feted and lionized as the wealthy oil baron his father was.
She stared down to the street watching the movement of ordinary people trying to gain a measure of calm, but her contemplations did her little good on this day when the world shifted and tilted under her feet.
Instead she stood her staring out of this window, gazing at people she would never know, doing things that she would never be allowed to experience.
Married. Now she could expect no freedom of movement at all.
“Is she?” said a familiar voice said from the drawing room of her suite.
“Yes, Highness,” replied Countess Guerin.
Did she imagine her father’s knock at her bedroom door apologetic? No. The monarch never apologized for anything.
“Yes,” she said.
“Good morning, Marisol. I have something to speak, ah. You’ve seen the news.”
“Yes, Father,” she said coldly.
“You’ll not take that tone with me Marisol Annette Victoria Alonda Duvaingnon. Sometimes a monarch has to make some difficult choices.”
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Like marrying off his only daughter to a famous womanizer.”
“I hardly think the prince is that bad. Besides, his father assures me that Tristan is ready to settle down and is looking forward to marriage.”
Marisol spun toward her father. “He is nearly twice my age. He’s almost old enough to be my father.”
“Thirty-eight isn’t old, Marisol, and there was a similar age difference between your mother and me.”
Yes, thought Marisol, but Mother married for love. She didn’t dare take the argument further. It was clear the king had spoken, and Princess Marisol was to follow his commands. Again.
You’ll attend secondary school in Switzerland, not America.
You’ll take an extra language, not art.
You’ll go to the Sorbonne, not Trinity University.
You’ll vacation in the Riviera, not the Seychelles.
The list of what Marisol could and couldn’t do stretched back to her childhood, far before her mother died when she was twelve. It didn’t matter that her father acted in what he thought was her best interests. It was intolerable.
She turned, biting her lip, and looked down at the bustling New York City Street.
My mother came from these streets, she thought. I have family here somewhere.
The thought was tantalizing. In her own country, despite the fact she was its crown princess, her dark coloring, courtesy of her mother, set her apart. There was no face she could look at and say, “Yes, I’m part of these people.”
In this town were people that shared her blood. True, they were people her mother forsook when she married the exotic prince from a nation on the southwestern side of France, tucked between the famous Riviera and Spain, but they were hers and she felt that if anyone understood her, it would be them.
Her father stepped across the room and put his hands on her shoulders. She saw the reflection of his handsome face in the large window pane. He was a regal man, with strong broad shoulders, and salt-and-pepper hair on an angular face that held an aristocratic nose and a strong jaw.
King Francois Duvaingnon could have had any woman on the strength of his looks alone, but he chose Alonda Morrison, a dancer from New York City. It was a scandal from which his monarchy barely recovered. She was a commoner and in the theater. People thought she was after him for his money, but Alonda was a singular woman and won over the people of Dalaysia with her devotion to the plight of those who struggled in the microstate. The sick, the aged, the homeless, and any other disadvantaged group were all special causes of the Queen. And they loved her for it.
Marisol admitted to herself that she wasn’t as noble in spirit as her mother. Right now as her father kissed her neck she wanted to turn and strike him.
How dare he? How dare he sell me off to the highest bidder?
These bitter thoughts fueled the rage that burned in her gut.
“I know you’re upset, mon petit,” he said in his French accent. “I intended to talk to you before you saw the papers, but business held me up.”
“What about discussing this with me before you made the deal?”
He sighed. “My daughter. You’re a royal princess and are as responsible to the people as much as I am. Perhaps I have indulged you too much. You think that all your clothes, wigs, expensive schools, and the luxury you live in doesn’t come without a price?”
“And the bill has come due. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No. That isn’t what I meant at all. What you have received is the price the people have paid for you to act in their best interests. Now is the time for you to step up and be the woman your mother would have wanted you to be, to be Dalyasia’s princess and seal this deal that will help all of us.”
Marisol closed her eyes, tears forming under her long eyelashes.
“At least spend some time with Tristan tonight. You might find you like him, yes? And the rest will come with time.”
A single tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly, willing the rest to remain at bay. What else was she going to do? She was raised to be a princess. Marisol didn’t know how to be anything else.
“I will spend time with Tristan, Father, if that is what you wish.”
He squeezed her shoulders. “Good girl,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight at the dinner.”
Chapter Two
Gifts
Her father was waiting for her in her drawing room.
“You look beautiful,” he said. “You remind me so much of your mother.”
Her gaze settled on him, her heart breaking a little bit. Marisol had no doubt he loved her mother very much and suffered each day without her by his side. He never took another wife, though it would be politic to do so. Unmarried Royals and socialites from all over the world vied for his attention when he appeared at public events, but, as he told her, he couldn’t bear the thought of marriage to another.
So, I’m to the be the sacrificial lamb.
Marisol jammed away the unkind thought. An arranged marriage would have happened eventually. She wasn’t a Prince William who could choose among the lower classes. No, her father destroyed that chance when he nearly lost his crown by marrying her mother. A second such error would never be allowed.
Marisol did love her father. And in the same way they were both victims of their position. She decided to forgive him. A little.
“I thought we were meeting at the reception.”
“I have something for you,” he said. “Well, several things.” He drew out a long slim box from his inner jacket and held it out.
Marisol wondered what bauble was this and instantly her angered flared again. The man persisted in thinking he could buy her off.
“But first this one,” he said as he took a ring box out of his pocket.
Marisol took the box and opened it to find a single 3 karat topaz surrounded by diamonds.
“Prince Vattakov asks that you wear this tonight. He honors you by giving you the stone that represents our royal house.”
She arched an eyebrow. “He asked you to present my engagement ring to me? Why did he not do that himself?”
&nbs
p; Her father looked away. “His plane is delayed. Tristan will be arriving late to the dinner.”
“Delayed,” said Marisol slowly. “He expects me to wait for him to show up at our reception at his convenience?”
“Please, Marisol. It couldn’t be helped.”
“And you said he was looking forward to marriage.”
“His father assures me sure things will be different once you’re married.”
“And until then he’ll disrespect me in public?”
“Ssh, daughter. I have every faith that you’ll tame the young lion.”
“He’s not that young.”
“Marisol!”
She sighed took the second, larger box he offered. Inside were a pair topaz drop earrings surrounded by small diamonds, and a topaz necklaces of the same design.
Marisol decided to be gracious. With these gifts, the ring wasn’t so obviously an engagement ring.
“These are lovely,” she murmured.
“Fitting for the princess of Dalyasia.”
“Yes, but the necklace will get lost in the dress. Marie! Bring some hairpins.”
“What are you doing?” asked the king.
Marie rushed into the drawing room carrying a box of hairpins.
“Help me with this. I want to fix the necklace to my hair.”
Her maid helped to place the necklace so that the large arrangement of topaz jewels fell on her forehead. After that was fixed so it won’t move, Marie helped with the earrings. Her father smiled in approval.
“Now,” he said. “You look like a queen.”
“Not yet,” she said with a frown. “But one day, but that would be an unhappy day for me, because that would mean that I had lost you, father.”
“Tristan is a lucky man.”
“Not yet,” she said. “But one day. Marie, my gloves.”
***
Every royal who stood in a reception line was grateful for a good pair of silk gloves. Greeting many people who one didn’t know and having to touch their hands was never a pleasant prospect. Marisol was grateful of her gloves this day, as the reception line stretched interminably with all the guests that were invited. There were dignitaries from every country. Of course the United Nations was headquartered in New York along with embassies of many nations so there was no lack of diplomats in the city that never sleeps.