The radio was blaring “Shorty George” and Aria took his hand. “Let’s dance.”
“Wait until something slower is on. I’m not good at this dancing.”
“Okay,” she said, turning back toward the hamburgers. “I’ll ask Mitch the next time I see him. He’s a great jitterbugger.”
J.T. grabbed her hand, spun her around, and began a wild jitterbug with her. He had been rowing since he was a boy and his arms were very strong. He tossed her over his head, slid her beneath his legs, then whirled her out at arm’s length.
She was breathless when the song finished.
“I told you I wasn’t any good,” he said smugly, making Aria laugh.
Companionably, they sat down to eat their lunch and J.T. watched Aria. Her hair in pin curls, her chewing gum stuck on the side of the plate, her fingers tapping to the music, eating a hamburger with her hands and drinking beer from a bottle, she was a different person from the princess on the island.
He began to realize that the general’s visit had upset him because it made him aware that soon he would have to return his borrowed princess.
Since the war, it seemed that every man he knew was getting married, but J.T. had thought he was too wise to get trapped by a woman. More than once, he had seen a man marry some beautiful dish then two weeks later she would look like Aria looked now. J.T. had been disgusted. He liked his women combed and powdered and perfumed. But right now, looking at Aria, he wouldn’t trade her for a beauty queen.
“Where did you get that shirt?” he asked over the radio, referring to the oversize, beat-up plaid she wore.
She gave him a level look over her beer. “From a box in your closet.”
“The box way in the back? The one that is—was—taped and tied and has ‘private’ written in three-inch-tall letters on all six sides?”
“That sounds like the one,” she said, watching him.
J.T. grunted and she smiled at him. He had always heard men complaining about the lack of privacy in marriage and he had always thought that if he had a wife she would never invade his privacy. But now he found it didn’t matter at all. In fact, he rather liked that she had been curious enough to search his belongings. It made it seem as if they really were married.
He looked back at her. He was going to have to turn her over to another man.
Right then he made a vow that he would be like a man falling off a horse—he would get right back on. As soon as he gave her to her short, old, effeminate count, he would get himself another wife. He liked having someone to come home to. He liked sitting in the backyard on a Saturday afternoon and eating hamburgers. He even liked the intimacy of rolling a woman’s hair.
Of course he wondered if he would be able to find another wife as interesting as Aria. He smiled at the memory of last night. Most young officers’ wives were terrified of any man with a star on his shoulder, but Aria hadn’t cared one way or the other. And maybe he had been a little overbearing about his mother’s visit—of course who knew that one’s mother would act as his had?
He leaned his chair back and turned down the radio. “Yesterday you said you were suffering from morning sickness. Was that true or did you just want to get rid of me?”
“It wasn’t true,” she answered.
“What would happen if you were going to have my kid? Would your blueblood count still accept you?”
“I would still be queen, and as he wants to marry a queen, I don’t believe it would interfere in any way.”
“And what about the kid?”
“If he were a boy, as the oldest, he’d someday be king. If the child were a girl and I had no male issue, she would become queen.”
J.T. took a deep drink of his beer. “I see. No objection from your short husband?”
Aria coughed to cover a laugh. “I will be queen and the decision about the child would be mine.”
“Ol’ Julian would be a father to someone else’s kid?”
“He wouldn’t be involved much in the upbringing even if the child were his. Royal children are reared by governesses and tutors. My father died when I was quite young and until I reached womanhood at fourteen, I only saw my mother from six to six-thirty each evening.”
“And that’s how your children would be raised?”
“I know of no other way.”
“In America we do things differently. If we had a kid right now, he’d be here with us. You’d be feeding him and I’d be tossing him a ball.”