Page 16 of Royal Reluctance

“Yes, she is. Any child of mine is born royal. A princess. She’s—my god, she’s third in line to the throne.”

Hettie looks at me with a steady gaze. She knows this and still kept it from me. Kept it from my family.

I stand up. I need to move. I have to be away from Hettie even as everything in my heart wants,needsher close to me. I want to celebrate her stepping back into my life at the same time I’m shaking with anger and confusion.

Our child.

It’s been eight years.

I stare at the screen, not hearing what Hettie is trying to say to me. There’s no point listening to her excuses, because regardless of her reasons, it doesn’t change the fact that this little girl is mine.Ours.

“I need to meet her,” I insist, cutting off Hettie mid-excuse. “And we need to tell my father.”

She smells good.

Hettie smells good, and she looks great. She’s wearing a pair of those leggings that hug everywhere, and a white sweater that hits at the waist. Her hair is longer and her eyes seem bigger with dark circles of sleeplessness.

I wish I could focus on that instead of the other… stuff.

Divorce and other men and… a child. My daughter.

Our daughter.

It’s a lot.

I fell in love with Hettie Crow when I was fifteen. She sat in front of me in math class, which I almost failed because I kept staring at the back of her head, willing her to turn around and smile at me.

It took so long to get her to smile at me, and it finally happened in English class when I had the balls to stand in the front of the class and read a stupid poem aloud. Six months later, after I finally got to kiss her, I told her I wrote the poem about her.

I married her because after almost four years together, she still wouldn’t stop talking about how she didn’t deserve me. Her family… her family isn’t the best but I never cared. I only wanted Hettie. Marrying her was the only way I could think of showing her that her family didn’t matter to me. She mattered, and I loved her and I wanted to make hermine. I wanted us to be together forever.

I convinced her to marry me, forgetting for a few blissful days that I was also Prince Bowden of Laandia, with duties and responsibilities and a family who ruled a country.

It was good until it wasn’t.

An hour after telling me that I have a child, Hettie is back at the airport. But this time I’m with her.

I leave Kody with Jean and Buck and we take my plane back to Battle Harbour.

I don’t say much for the first half of the flight. Maybe she does, but I can’t comprehend what she’s saying. Something about reading and loving math and looking at the stars.

To be honest, I haven’t understood much after I heard “our daughter.” I saw the picture of her—Tema—saw her smile that is pure Lyra, and her eyes that are greener than Hettie’s hazel but still look exactly like Hettie’s sister Mabel’s in shape and size.

The realization that I have a daughter—and she’s in Battle Harbour, staying with Abigail and her family—is making me slightly nauseous. I keep taking deep breaths, which makes Hettie keep looking over, but I don’t meet her eyes because then she’ll start talking and then…

She didn’t tell me. Hettie found out she was pregnant after she left and never told me. She had a baby and didn’t think I deserved to know. That much I understand. She’s raised our child while I was here, completely ignorant of the fact that I had a daughter.

These things running through my mind are why I tune out Hettie. Because I want to knoweverything, but not yet.

Hettie must know I’m having trouble with this because she eventually falls quiet during the three-and-a-half-hour flight back to Battle Harbour.

I’ve made the trip so many times I practically do it on auto-pilot, but I still keep my focus on the controls and the sky around us so I don’t go completely ballistic on Hettie.

We have a daughter and she never told me.

It’s not until the familiar rocky hills come into view that my stomach calms and I realize that Hettie is shivering beside me. The cockpit of the Cessna is cold enough that I left my bulky jacket and toque on, but Hettie only has her thin coat to wear.

I pull off the hat and thrust it at her. “Here. You’re cold.”

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