Carrie Alexander - Once Upon A Tiara

“WOULD YOU LIKE to see the tiara?” Simon asked, after she’d dried her blouse and jacket and he’d met her outside his jumble of an office. They were returning to the outdoors reception. The museum was spacious and silent. Their footsteps echoed as they descended a wide stone staircase to the double-height first-floor entrance hall. Large arched openings on either side led to the exhibition rooms. Everything but the exhibits themselves was new and clean and shining. Lili was accustomed to old and crumbling and venerable.

Worrying the tip of her sore tongue against her teeth, she stopped in the center of a design inlaid on the marble floor. She’d said or done the wrong thing, back in the office. Suddenly Simon had lost his irreverence. He was being stiff and formal with her, like all the rest.

Certainly, they’d been too familiar. If she’d seen what had happened, Mrs. Grundy would have gone into a stuffy British form of apoplexy and probably have put Lili on the next plane home. But Lili hadn’t come to America to play it safe. She’d come for an adventure.

She tossed her head at Simon. “Why not?”

“This way, Princess,” he said, his fingers nearly, but not quite, touching her elbow.

She practiced her royally reserved face as they walked through a room lined with glass cases. Placed on velvet and satin backdrops, lit by subtle spotlights, all the finest pieces from the royal jewels of the Brunner monarchy were on display. Despite her position, Lili seldom had the opportunity to examine the jewels. On formal occasions, the three sisters might be allowed to wear one of the valuable pieces, but that was rare. She wasn’t particularly interested, either. Who wanted to be draped in history so valuable and weighty you had to be escorted by six guards and armed with an emergency panic button?

“It’s in here,” Simon said, exchanging a word with a uniformed security guard before entering a second, smaller room. A case with a glass dome had been set up in the center of the room to capitalize on the “Ah!” factor.

Despite her training, Lili wasn’t very skilled at curtailing her natural reactions. When she saw the famous tiara, nestled on a hillock of watered blue satin, she stopped and gave the obligatory exclamation.

Simon shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. He looked pleased with himself. “It’s something, isn’t it?”

Lili was in awe, as well as ah. “Yes, it’s something.”

“Have a closer look.”

She approached slowly. She’d seen the bridal tiara only twice before, at similar exhibitions in London and Spitzenstein, their capital city. Both times, she’d been a child, enchanted by the story of the long-ago prince who had so loved his betrothed, he’d commissioned the greatest jeweler in all the land to create a bridal tiara with the Vargas diamond, a gem of somewhat mysterious origins, as its centerpiece. Ever since, the tiara was only worn at royal weddings. Each new Brunner bride was given the honor, including Lili’s American grandmother, Adelaide, a simple country girl from Blue Cloud, Pennsylvania, who had married the crown prince of Grunberg exactly fifty years ago.

“It’s beautiful.” A delicately wrought construction of platinum and many tiny diamonds in addition to the spectacular center gem, the tiara was truly a work of art. Lili walked slowly around the case, looking at the piece from all angles. There was a thick velvet rope set up to keep onlookers out of touching distance, but that was mainly a psychological barrier.

She gave a little laugh. “How’s security?”

Simon’s face grew even more serious. He motioned around the dimly lit room. Lili realized that there were two more security guards, positioned in shadowed niches. “The case is alarmed, as well,” he explained. “Breathe upon the glass—it’s shatterproof, of course—and the entire museum will go into lockdown mode, alarms blaring.”

“I see how you were able to persuade my father to let the royal jewels out of the country for their first American exhibition.”

“Our museum is state of the art,” Simon said with pride.

“It’s new?”

“Brand-new. Cornelia Applewhite’s family provided a large portion of the funding, hence the unwieldy name.”

“I wonder what my grandmother would have thought about being celebrated in such a way.” Oversized blowup portraits of Princess Adelaide had been placed here and there as decoration. She’d been a beautiful, kind and graceful woman, but not one who’d enjoyed the spotlight, a vestige of her humble Pennsylvania origins. She had passed away from illness at sixty-one, when Lili was only six, followed in death three years later by her daughter-in-law, who’d perished in the skiing-vacation tragedy. All of Grunberg had mourned the losses.

“Blue Cloud is very proud of Princess Adelaide,” Simon said. “She’s their one claim to fame. The town officials are hoping that a museum dedicated to her memory will pull in the tourists.”

Lili understood. Her country was in much the same position. Her father’s advisors had even mentioned how beneficial a royal wedding would be to the economy. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“How did you come to be the curator? Are you a scholar of royalty?”

“Not in particular. My field of specialty was—is—Egyptology.”

Simon had put on a second pair of wire-framed glasses, but they did not disguise the evasive shift of his eyes. Lili grew more curious. “Then why are you here in Blue Cloud…?”

“It’s a fine job.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and tucked in the gaudy gold-and-blue King Tut tie. “Should we return to the reception?”

“There are many things we should do,” she answered in all solemnity. “Are you an eat-all-your-vegetables kind of guy?”

“No, I’m a burrito-takeout kind of guy.”

“When was the last time you had hot dogs?”

“Wednesday.”

“Is this evening too soon to have them again?”

“Tonight? Are princesses allowed to run away from their responsibilities on a whim? Don’t you have a shedjul to keep?”

“Mrs. Grundy has one. I don’t.”

“And the responsibilities?”

Lili sighed. “You are an eat-all-your-vegetables kind of guy.”

“I can’t be responsible for—”

She cocked her head. “I’m responsible for myself!”

“Then why do you have a bodyguard and a—What is Mrs. Grundy? Your baby-sitter?”

“Close,” Lili said, feeling a tiny bit snippety. “She’s my nanny.”

Simon put out his hands, as if he’d been knocked off balance. The velvet rope swung. “Your nanny?”

“She was my nanny. Now she’s my traveling companion.”

“You have a nanny.”

“No. She’s my social secretary.”

“A nanny.”

Lili narrowed her eyes. Had she thought Simon was amusing? He wasn’t. He was irritating. “My lady-in-waiting.”

“Jeez,” he said, running a hand through his mouse-colored hair. It was too short to stand up on end, except for the strands of the cowlick where his part ended in a swirl that showed a little too much scalp. “You live in a fairy tale.”

“I am a princess. I have a certain duty to my homeland. An image to maintain.” Regardless of her yearnings to be free.

“It’s difficult for Americans to conceive of such a thing. We’re an independent, egalitarian society.”

“I know. That’s why I was so excited to come here. There’s so much I want to see and do and taste and touch—” She stopped suddenly. If that was so, why she was wasting time with a self-described museum wonk? The adventure of her lifetime wasn’t in here, among the static displays. Artifacts might satisfy Simon Tremayne, but they’d never be enough for her.

“Don’t bother yourself about the hot dogs,” she said, giving him a brisk pat on the arm as she moved past him. “I’ll find my own way to them.” Her heels tap-tap-tapped across the polished floors as she hurried away.