Once Upon A Tiara. Carrie Alexander
showing a good portion of a rounded, wriggling, panty-clad backside. One foot was trapped in a swivel-lid trash can, which lay on its side, a number of crumpled tissues spewing from its maw.
“Shall I call an ambulance?” Wilhelm said.
“Heavens, no!” Lili stopped wriggling and lifted her head and shoulders off the floor, her hands splayed on the tiles. She looked up at them with big, dark, glistening eyes, like an innocent baby seal. “Nothing’s broken. Just help me pull my leg out of here, for pity’s sake.”
Mrs. Grundy knelt awkwardly and tugged Lili’s skirt down a few inches. “However did you…?”
“It was an accident.”
Wilhelm crouched, his big hands outspread, hesitating to place them on the exposed royal thigh. He went for the trash can instead, giving it a wrench. Lili winced, twisting partway onto her side. “Ooh! Ouch! Wait!” Her gaze rose to beseech Simon. “Would you? Please? The lid is pinching the back of my thigh.”
“All right,” he said, kneeling beside her. He examined the…uh, situation. Grundy huffed at the insult, hurriedly unbuttoning her jacket. She threw it across Lili’s lower half.
Simon put his hand on her leg—on top of the scratchy tweed covering. Somehow, the princess had managed to insert her leg all the way down inside the can, but they should be able to maneuver it out easily enough. “Another fine predicament you’ve gotten us into,” he murmured to distract them all as he slid his hand beneath the jacket. Lili tensed as he reached around her warm thigh, his fingers gently probing. He pushed his flattened hand between her thigh and the lid, easing its bite on her tender flesh.
She sighed with relief. “That’s better.”
He smiled at her. “Mrs. Grundy? Could you reach in here and push the lid down to make more room? I’m sure I’ll be able to help Lili pull her leg free if we have another inch of space.”
Grundy pinched her lips tight and reached down. While the bodyguard held the can steady, Simon gripped Lili’s leg and slowly eased it out, trying not to look as she parted her thighs even wider to squirm free.
Grundy let go and the lid snapped back in place. She and the bodyguard were immediately at the princess’s side, helping her to her feet. Simon saw that Lili had lost both shoes, so he set the can on end and fished inside. No shoes.
He spotted them on a ledge by the sink. Odd. He retrieved them, wondering why she’d taken them off in the first place. “Your slippers, Cinderella.”
Grundy snatched the shoes away. “Let me help you into them, Princess.” She knelt.
Lili murmured her thanks, balancing herself with one hand on Wilhelm’s arm as she lifted her feet for Grundy. She looked at Simon. She was blushing. “I apologize, Mr. Tremayne. I didn’t intend to destroy your washroom. I was—” Her eyes flitted. “Well, you see, I was…”
“No explanations necessary,” Simon put in. He’d seen the open window, high up on the wall. “My museum is your museum.”
“You’re very understanding.”
“I make special allowances for royalty.”
She had the grace to look abashed. “It seems that I demand plenty. I will try to be on my best behavior tomorrow.”
He inclined his head. “We’re happy to have you on any behavior, Your Serene Highness.”
Her eyes rolled. “Oh, please. We’re definitely past that stuck-up claptrap. If you can’t remember to call me Lili, I won’t be able to eat hot dogs with you.”
“Then it’s a date?” he said quickly, refraining from adding an “Again?”
Lili tilted her tousled head. “Why not?”
Grundy cleared her throat as she stood. “What about the schedule?”
“The shedjul will survive, Amelia.” Lili stamped her newly shod feet, intercepting Simon’s amused glance. “You may be a prince of a guy, Mr. Tremayne, but I’m not allowed to surrender my feet to just anyone.”
He chuckled. A prince? Impossible. He’d always been the frog.
Mrs. Grundy took Lili’s arm, not unlike the way Henry Russell had taken Jana Vargas’s. “Enough of that, Princess. We really must be on our way.”
“Yes, we must.” Lili cast a lingering parting glance at Simon. “See you soon?”
He swallowed. “Indubitably.”
She stopped, pulling the key from an inside pocket of her short pink jacket. “I almost forgot.”
He took it, surprised that she still possessed it. Maybe his suspicions were wrong?
Had she fallen into the trash on her way out the window, or on the way in? Either way, he’d better go and find the chief. Henry should be told immediately that it was very possible the princess of Grunberg had been conspiring with a pickpocketing suspect. Simon could think of no other reason for Lili to have deliberately taken her shoes off and climbed through the window. Since she still had the key, she must not have been able to successfully pass it to Jana Vargas, in the snack shop next door.
THE LIMO AWAITED.
Lili stopped short, preventing Wilhelm from opening the door for her. “I wonder if you’d mind…” This was going to be delicate. “It’s been such an eventful day. I’d like a few moments of…quiet time.” She smiled hopefully at Mrs. Grundy, cutting her eyes in the direction of the front seat.
The older woman maintained a stony face. “As you wish, Princess Lili.”
Lili knew she wasn’t fooling Amelia for a second. But that didn’t matter, as long as she wasn’t betrayed to the authorities. For all of the former nanny’s lectures and reprimands, Amelia put the princesses’ desires above any other concern. She could be trusted with the most precious of secrets.
“You can scold me later,” Lili said, as Amelia joined the driver in the front seat. Wilhelm insisted on opening the door, but Lili stepped inside quickly so he wouldn’t see much of the interior. Fortunately, the limo was commodious enough to hold a marching band.
Wilhelm and the driver boarded the vehicle, shutting the doors behind them. Thunk. Thunk. The solid black privacy panel was in place, giving Lili complete solitude.
The car pulled away from the museum, moving slowly past the disordered remains of the reception. As they rounded the bend, Lili turned to watch through the back window. Simon Tremayne was loping down the steps in his gangly, loose-limbed way, his ridiculous Egyptian tie flapping in the breeze.
Lili knew he’d figured it out. And that he would tell. But that was okay. He was too late for the police chief to stop their getaway.
“Well,” she said to her passenger as she settled in. “You made it.”
Considering that she was a fugitive taking a limo ride in the company of a princess, Jana Vargas looked remarkably at ease. “Yes,” she said. “Nothing to it.”
4
LILI AGREED. She’d done the most difficult part—hoisting herself up and stepping along the brick ledge between the windows. A crazy impulse. When she’d realized that the key to the ladies’ room could set Jana free, she hadn’t been able to resist offering the Romany woman a chance to get away from the handsome, but awfully stern, police chief. So she’d gone out the window, sidled along the ledge to the next window and passed the key to Jana in the snack shop, who’d unlocked her door and then given the key back.
Stepping into the trash can had worked marvelously as a distraction, although Lili certainly hadn’t planned it that way.
“How did you manage to get into the limo without my driver noticing?” she asked Jana.
The