Elizabeth Harbison - Annie And The Prince

“She said she has a ticket already,” the other man said, in a voice as rich and smooth as crème brûlée. His German was slightly accented, but Annie couldn’t tell what the inflection was.

“Policy, sir.” The little round face grew redder. “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the Adonis said. He hesitated for a moment, then reached for a small leather backpack at his feet. He nodded at Annie. “Please, allow me.” He pulled out several large-denomination bills.

“No, no, I can’t let you do that,” Annie objected, digging in her purse for the four hundred marks.

“But I insist.” Her unlikely hero gave a cold nod to the other man. “Please bring her bags in here.” He started to hand some bills to the man but Annie, who had been hurriedly counting out the four hundred, handed her money to him first. “Thank you anyway,” she said to the Adonis.

He held her eyes steadily, just a touch of a smile on his lips. “Certainly.”

The rail employee started to speak, but his mouth shut suddenly and he poked his head forward to study Annie’s knight more closely. “Wait a minute…Don’t tell me you’re—”

The man looked down suddenly, like a reflex. “Thank you so much for your help. That will be all.” With that dismissal, he looked away, heedless of the ticket collector’s stare.

The train worker left, scratching his head, and muttering, “Of course it’s not him, he wouldn’t be here,” without even a glance back at Annie.

Annie studied the man wondering who the conductor had thought her companion was. He kept his face slightly averted. Whoever it was that he looked like, he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Probably some obscure European movie star. He certainly had the looks for it. More to the point, he was turning her insides to melted butter, and she’d better stop gawking at him.

“Thank you for your offer of help,” she said, and began to back toward the door. “I apologize for this intrusion on your privacy.”

He gave a shrug. “It’s no problem. I’m only sorry that man was such an unpleasant ambassador to my country. You are American?”

She stopped and nodded, wondering if he expected her to stay.

“Please,” he said, answering her unasked question with a wave of his hand. “Have a seat. I’d welcome the company, unless you have someplace else you have to be.”

“N-no. Thank you.” She sat, mesmerized by him.

“I wouldn’t want you to take home the impression that Kublenstein is unfriendly to strangers,” he said, with a devastating smile.

“I won’t, I absolutely won’t,” she said. There was a moment’s silence, so she added, “I really do have a ticket, or at least I did…”

“I believe you.”

But she wasn’t sure if he really believed her or not. “My name is Annie, by the way.” He didn’t answer right away, so she prodded him, “And you are…?”

He watched her for a moment, wearing an expression she couldn’t quite read. “You don’t know?” he asked after a long minute.

A tickle ran over her skin, like a cool breeze. It was a feeling she’d had before, always when something big was about to happen. She had that sense now, that his question held more significance than it appeared to. “No,” she said simply. “Should I?”

He smiled. “No, of course not. I simply thought I’d—I’d already said.” He shrugged, but looked suspiciously like the cat that ate the canary. He extended his hand to her. “I am Hans.”

She took his hand, smiling at the warmth of his touch. Joy’s premonition of her meeting someone came to mind again and she nearly laughed. Well, in a way, Joy had been right. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He kept his grasp on her hand, seemingly distracted. “Believe me,” he said, his smile broadening. “The pleasure is all mine.”

Suddenly she was overwhelmed by his handsomeness and the intensity with which he leveled his gaze at her. She looked down and cleared her throat. “I have to say, I’m not normally so clumsy…or so careless as to lose my ticket. It must be jet lag or something. It’s my first time in Europe.”

“Really?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Your German is quite good.”

She felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “Thanks. My grandmother was German and she spoke it to me for the first five years of my life.” She was rambling. She always rambled when she was nervous. “I’ve wanted to come visit her homeland for as long as I can remember.”

“I see.” He nodded thoughtfully. “So why have you decided to visit now?”

“First, I finally had enough money saved up to come. I almost wasn’t able to do it at all, but then I got a job and…” She let her voice trail off, realizing she was starting to ramble again. “Anyway, here I am.”

“Here you are.” He continued to look at her in a way that made her squirm.

A short silence filled the car.

Annie had an inexplicable urge to fill it. “You know, I really don’t know how I lost my ticket. I put it with my passport in this secure zipper pouch right here—” she lifted her purse and unzipped the side “—so I could be very sure where they were. There must be a hole or something—oh.” She pulled the ticket out of the pocket and felt her face grow hot. “That’s strange. Why on earth wasn’t it there before?” Annie was seriously disconcerted. She’d searched the pocket thoroughly. It was almost like magic.

When she looked up, Hans was wearing a questioning expression.

“I know this looks strange, but I really didn’t do it on purpose.”

He looked amused. “I wouldn’t think so.”

An awkward silence stretched between them and after a few moments Annie asked, “So…are you stopping in Lassberg?”

“I am.” He nodded, eyeing her. His words sounded careful. “I live there.”

“How lucky for you. It’s a lovely countryside.”

“Yes, I agree.”

She looked out at a mountain ski run. “Do you do a lot of skiing, living here?”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t get out that much. My…work…prevents it.”

She looked at him and smiled. “You’re out now.”

“I am, but it’s for business. Every month or so I take a trip like this into the countryside for a few days, but even then I don’t take much time for recreation.”

Annie would have given anything for a job that involved such a lovely perk as train trips across the Alps. “What is it you do?”

He hesitated, then said, “I work for the civil service. It’s not very interesting. What about you?” It was a slightly abrupt change of subject. “Are you going to be vacationing in Lassberg?”

“Well, for a couple of days. After that…” Perhaps because of her fatigue, Annie found herself wishing he’d ask her out. She immediately brought her fantasy into check. She didn’t even know the man. He was a stranger on a train. With that in mind, she didn’t go on to tell him she’d be taking a job as a private English tutor in Lassberg in a few days.

“After that…?” he prompted.

She hesitated. “I’m just going to vacation here for a couple of days.” She shrugged. “Then it’s back to work.”

But as Annie settled back into her seat in the first-class compartment, and looked at the handsome stranger across from her, it wasn’t her new job that made her smile. Instead, it was the thought that maybe Joy’s prediction of finding her own Prince Charming just might turn out to be true.

Prince Ludwig Johann Ambrose George of Kublenstein, known to the public and the press as Prince Johann, and to a select few as Hans, leaned back against the stiff leather seat of the train to study the woman before him.