The Frog Prince (20 page)

“You are Leigh Fromm?” she says in a thick German accent.

I nod, still working hard to keep the tears from rolling.

She smiles and gently shakes my hand. “I am Emalina Haas, the Austrian envoy to Sweden. This must be quite a shock to you, yes?”

“What happened? What’s going on?”

She chews her lip, probably wondering how much I already know. “Roman is …
Prätendent
. You know this, yes?”

This word is lost on me so she tries again.

“In English you say he is a…‘pretender?’”

I have no idea what a pretender is. As far as I know, Roman has never pretended to be anything. We haven’t even gotten to into role playing—yet. Even so, I nod stupidly like I know what she’s talking about.

“He will be the next King of Austria,” she says. “Our Parliament has passed the bill to reinstate the monarchy.”

My mouth drops open and know I must look like a fish on a dock. “But…but…” I sputter. “We’re on vacation!”

She shoots me a look of pity that says,
Well, maybe we’ll keep this one around as a royal concubine
.

“Come with me,” she says kindly, taking my arm.

“Where are we going? Where’s Roman?”

“Roman will go to his mother’s home outside Vienna. He did not wish for the media to find you.”

“He’s going to
Austria
and he’s leaving me in
Sweden
?” I say, incredulous.

“He has asked that I make arrangements for you to return to America immediately…tonight.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” I say, and stop walking. “I’m not leaving! We have a hotel room! All my stuff is there!”

She sighs. “You cannot go back to the hotel. The media has already surrounded it. They do not know about you…yet.” She shrugs. “They will find out before morning. Roman understands…he has dealt with the press before.”

“But—”

“Are
you
prepared for this?” she says. “They will go through your trash, they will–how do you say?–hack? Yes, they will hack your cell phone and record your phone calls. They will photograph you through the windows of your home. They will follow you to work. They will pursue your friends and your family.” She looks at me, gauging my reaction. “Please let us help you.”

I stand there with my arms crossed defiantly, suddenly angry. “Why would the press follow me?” I say. “I’m nobody.”

Emalina smiles. “Yesterday you were nobody. Today you are the girlfriend of the future King of Austria.”

When she puts it that way my heart starts to pound, and I feel a full-blown panic attack coming on. I see white dots in front of my eyes, like the stars I see when I stand up too fast, and I wonder if I’m going to faint.

“Are you okay?” asks Emalina, touching my arm.

“Roman knew this was going to happen,” I say, stunned, thinking of the secretive conversation with his mother before dinner, Patrick and Mary’s descriptions of his nervous behavior, the way his eyes scouted ahead of us everywhere we walked.

Emalina shrugs. “The vote was very close last year. He knew there was a very good possibility that it would finally pass this time.”

“Why didn’t he just tell me?” I say, more to myself than to her.

“Perhaps he thought you would not enjoy your time here if you knew.”

That was true. If I’d known that it was hanging over our heads I would have been a nervous wreck all week. Sort of like now.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit.

Emalina walks to the doors opening out to the street. There are still members of the press standing on the sidewalk, some of them interviewing people from the dance. I see Patrick and Mary standing next to a reporter, looking extremely uncooperative.

A guard steps inside. “The car is ready,” he says.

This must be our cue. Emalina puts her hand on my back. “Walk straight to the car and get inside. If any of the reporters try to stop you or talk to you, keep walking. Do not answer any questions.”

I nod and head through the open door, my head down.

As we pass Patrick I hear the reporter say to him, “Some people here say that Roman came here with his fiancée, an American. What can you tell us about that?” She turns the microphone to him.

I freeze, and look at Emalina in horror. She pushes me forward.

“I don’t know anything about that,” I hear Patrick say as we walk past. Neither he nor Mary even glance our way. “As far as I know Roman came here alone the way he has every year.”

I feel like turning back and hugging him, but Emalina keeps me on course. A guard holds the door of a limo open and I duck inside as quickly as I can. She gets in beside me and the car pulls from the curb before the door has closed all the way.

“I’m
not
his fiancée!” I say, indignant. “Why did that person just say we were engaged?”

“They are…” Emalina spins her hands around at the wrists, trying to think of the word. “…fishing,” she says finally.

She scrolls through pre-programmed numbers on her cell phone, chooses one and puts the phone to her ear. She turns the bottom of it away from her mouth and says, “It was only a matter of minutes before they found out about you. Your friends are kind to protect you, but by tomorrow they will have your name and address in America and they will be knocking on your door.”

“My name and address…” I say.

Emalina abruptly adjusts the phone back into business position. “
Dieses ist Emalina
,” she says. “
Ich bin mit
Leigh Fromm.” She suddenly switches to English. “Aberie is on his way to the hotel for her things. We will meet him at the airport.”

I watch as she listens to the other half of the conversation for about thirty seconds. “Léonie will know,” she responds. “Ask her to contact a public relations firm in New York. We’ll need someone to liaise with her immediately when she lands. She will need security for her home and her–”

Emalina pulls the phone away from her ear. “Where do you work?” she asks me.

“In an office building,” I say, not sure if she’s looking for the name of the company, the streets address or a description of my occupation. My answer seems to satisfy her.

“And her office,” she says into the phone. All of a sudden she straightens up like she’s been shocked. “Ms. Fromm is with me, Your Majesty.” A pause and then, “
Selbstverständlich
.”

She holds the phone out to me. At first her words don’t compute, but then I realize that Roman must be on the other end of the line. I snatch the phone out of her hands.

“Roman?”

“Leigh, are you okay?”

Just the sound of his voice floods my eyes with tears. “They’re taking me to the airport,” I say, fighting back a sob, “and a reporter asked Patrick and Mary if we were engaged, and Emalina says that I won’t be able to take out my garbage anymore!”

Even through my sniffles I hear Roman chuckling. “God, I miss you already,” he says.

“Why in the world didn’t you tell me” I say, my tears turning abruptly to anger.

Roman sighs. “I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know for sure if this would happen. There’ve been so many false alarms the last few years. Even my mother didn’t think it would pass this time. And then it did.”

“You’re going to Vienna.”
Without me
, I don’t add.

“To my mother’s. I’m giving an address to the nation tomorrow, I’ll probably be up all night preparing for it.”

“What are you going to say?” I ask. “Will you accept the…?” I don’t know what the right word is and just let my sentence trail off into nothing. The crown? The vote? The honor?

I can hear his smile in his response. “Well, technically all I can do at this point is abdicate.”

My knowledge of royal protocol is sketchy, but I barrel right ahead. “Don’t you have to be a king first before you can abdicate?”

Roman’s quiet for a moment. “
Technically
, I’m already King of Austria,” he says finally.

I’m stunned. “You are?”

“The coronation ceremonies are just a lot of pomp and show. I became king once the legislation passed.”

“Then why does everyone keep calling you ‘Crown Prince Roman?’”

“Ignorance mostly,” he says. “If my dad had been king, I would have been the crown prince until he died. The moment he passed away I would have been considered the king, even before the coronation.”

“Hey, will you get an actual crown?” I say, not bothering to segue. My curiosity about the crown is bordering on pathological.

“I told
you
before that I
have
a crown. I just wasn’t allowed to touch it–until now.”

“Can I put it on?” I say. It may be my only chance to do something like that and I don’t want to miss it.

“If I ever actually hold it then I promise that you can put it on,” he says with a laugh. “Listen, I have to go. There are about a hundred people here who all want to talk to me at the same time.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry about all of this, Leigh. I should have told you.”

“Yeah, you should have,” I agree.

“I didn’t want to worry you.” He pauses. “Am I forgiven?”

“You’re forgiven.”

“Thank you. I really
am
sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow. Watch for me on TV, let me know how I do.”

“I will.” The line falls silent. “Hey, Roman?”

“Yeah, babe,” he says, his voice low.

I want to say:
Don’t send me away
.
Let me come to Austria
.

I glance over at Emalina sitting a foot away from me, unsuccessfully pretending not to hear. I hear people on Roman’s end of the line talking quietly. We are surrounded.

“I thought you said you couldn’t speak German,” I say finally.

Roman laughs. I close my eyes and try to picture him.

“
Bei mir bist du schoen
,” he says, adding in a whisper, “
Ich liebe dich
.”

I hear the phone changing hands on his end so I give the phone back to Emalina. She speaks for a minute to someone in German while I dig a tissue out of my purse to blow my nose. Her conversation over, she stares straight ahead, holding the phone in her hand as if expecting another call any second.

“Emalina?” I say. “What does
ich liebe dich
mean?”

She looks so flustered and embarrassed that for one terrifying moment I think Roman must have said something like “I want to touch your lady garden.”

“It means ‘I love you,’” she says, turning away and pretending to look out the window.

I press myself back into the seat, make a mental note to buy a German-English dictionary, and give up the fight with my tears.

Chapter Eighteen

The eight hour flight to New York is a blur. Even in the comfortable first class seat I drift in and out of sleep. Emalina’s warnings have jangled my nerves so badly that I fully expect the flight attendants to rifle through my carry-on or take a picture of me while I’m snoozing.

A nondescript youngish guy, flanked by two guards who are the cookie-cutter doppelgangers of the ones back in the ballroom in Stockholm, step forward to greet me as I emerge from the jetway.

“Good morning, Ms. Fromm,” says the young guy, taking my carry-on right out of my hands without so much as a by-your-leave. “I’m Jerrod McAllister from Corland Communication here in New York City. Emalina Haan said you might be able to use our help. How was your flight?”

“It was fine, thanks,” I say, moving out of the way of people disembarking behind me.

One of the guards motions to him, and Jerrod starts walking. I scramble to follow his quick pace while the second guard walks ahead of us, the first bringing up the rear. Both of them ignore me completely. I can’t tell them apart so I mentally label them G1 and G2.

“We have a man at baggage claim to retrieve your bags,” he says.

“I can do that,” I say curtly. This sudden assumption that I can’t carry my own bags is rubbing me the wrong way.

Jerrod ignores me. “We’ve arranged for you to go through customs in a private area. You’ll take a charter flight to Denver.”

“A charter flight? Why?”

“So you can avoid the terminal,” he says.

“What’s wrong with the terminal?”

Jerrod sneaks a look at me as if assessing my mental state. “The press are there waiting for you.”

I stop in my tracks.

Behind us G2 says, “We should keep walking, ma’am.” I hear a whisper of a German accent, especially on his double-ues.

I force my feet to move. “Already?”

“The Austrian parliamentary vote is all over the American news,” says Jerrod. “You know how Americans love other people’s royalty.” As if to prove the point he gestures to one of the countless televisions affixed to the walls at each gate.

My heart jumps into my throat when I see Roman on the TV closest to us. The footage was taken the night before–I recognize his sports coat and jeans from the Snow Ball–showing him walking away from a private jet at an airport in Vienna. Even in the middle of the night a crowd of people has gathered, barely restrained behind a line of security personnel and barriers.

The camera pans across the crowd, which I can see is composed mostly of screaming teenage girls and women. My breath catches as the camera zooms in on Roman, who smiles and waves to the crowd. As we get closer I am able to catch the audio:

“The newly-designated Crown Prince Roman spent the night at his mother’s home in the Austrian countryside,” says the anchor. “He is expected to speak at five o’clock p.m. local time from the picturesque Schönbrunn Palace. That’s eleven o’clock Eastern Time here in the U.S. and we will be carrying that live right here.”

The network goes to commercial, which is perfect timing because we’ve left the screen behind us. G2 leads us expertly through the airport, and I finally get a break from walking when we get on the moving sidewalk running through the middle of the concourse. A series of televisions are mounted above it, providing me my second look at the fallout from last night’s parliamentary vote.

“Prince Roman joins a short list of eligible bachelor royalty,” says the talking head, “including, until very recently, Prince William of Great Britain. Women the world over are already infatuated with the handsome prince, all of them hoping they will be the lucky girl to win his heart. Our sources tell us that Prince Roman
was
dating Princess Isabella of Denmark, but that he broke off their relationship earlier this year, and has since been dating an American woman from Colorado, Leigh Fromm.”