LITMIR.BIZ

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They refused to even make eye contact with her. She tried to persuade one guard and then another to open the gates but each one stared straight ahead as if she wasn’t even there.

      Hannah gave up pleading and sat down on the palace’s front steps. It was a clear night, a cool night, and she was growing cold but she’d rather freeze to death on the steps than go back inside.

      She was beginning to think she’d freeze to death, too, when Zale’s very deep voice spoke on the top step behind her. “Hannah Smith, you have some explaining to do.”

      Her stomach plummeted. Goose bumps covered her arms. Slowly she rose knowing that this next conversation with Zale would be horrendous.

      She was right. He grilled her for hours, repeating the same questions over and over. It was three-thirty in the morning now and Zale was growing angrier by the minute.

      “It’s illegal what you’ve done,” he said harshly after she finally fell silent, worn-out from talking, exhausted from trying to make him understand. “You’ve broken too many laws to count. You didn’t just impersonate Princess Emmeline, you committed fraud as we well as perjury.”

      She stared at him dry-eyed, her body trembling from fatigue. “I am sorry.”

      “Not good enough.”

      “How can I make amends? I want to make amends.”

      “You can’t,” he answered brusquely. “And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I should have you arrested. Locked up. Let you sit in jail for a couple of years—”

       “Zale.”

      But he couldn’t be placated. “What sort of person are you? Who does what you did?”

      “I was never supposed to come here. I’d never agreed to come—”

      “But you did.”

      Hannah’s shoulders twisted helplessly. “I kept thinking that any moment Emmeline would show up. Any moment she’d return and we’d switch places again and that would be that.”

      “What you did was a crime! It’s a serious offense to enter the country under false pretenses, use a fake identity, interfere with state business. Any one of those would earn you a stiff prison sentence, but all three together?” He shook his head. “How could you do it?”

      “I don’t know.” Hannah felt horrible, beyond horrible. “And there isn’t a good excuse. I was stupid. Beyond stupid. And I knew I was in trouble once I got here but I didn’t know how to put a stop to it. I liked you immediately. Fell for you hard—”

      “Please don’t go there.”

      “It’s true. I fell for you at first sight. And I knew you weren’t mine. I knew you belonged to Emmeline but she wouldn’t come, and yet she wouldn’t let me leave.”

      “So you decided to just stay and play princess, thinking no one would ever find out the truth?”

      She bit her lip, unable to defend herself. Because yes, that’s what she’d naively hoped.

      Stupid, stupid, Hannah.

      The silence hung between them, tense, agonizing, and then Zale turned away, making a rough sound in his throat. “To think I nearly fell in love with you. A fake. An impostor! My God, I even took you to my bed—”

      “You can’t blame me for that. You wanted to sleep with me, too!”

      “Yes, because I thought you were mine. I thought you were to be my wife. I had no idea you were an American girl getting her thrills pretending to be my fiancée.”

      “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to betray you or Emmeline—”

      “But you did, and you did come to my bed, and you enjoyed it.” He went to her, tangled his hand in her hair and forced her face up to his. “Didn’t you?”

      Her jaw tightened and she stared up at him in mute fury. Zale saw the blaze of anger in her eyes and he welcomed it. Good, let her be angry. Let her hurt. Let her feel a tenth of his pain and shame.

      To be tricked like that.

      Played for a fool.

      He’d never forgive her. Never.

      Zale released her, disgusted with her, him, all of it. “So where is Emmeline now?” he demanded, taking a step away. “Why isn’t she here?”

      Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know. She never said.”

      He turned his back on her, walked across the room toward the windows. The drapes had not been drawn against the night and the lights of the walled city twinkled below. “I have to call her father. Tell him what’s happened. We’ll need to let our guests know the wedding is off.”

      She knotted and unknotted her hands. “Can I do something?”

      “Yes. You can go.” He spoke without turning around, keeping his back to her. “I want you gone first thing in the morning, and I never want to see you again.”

      Hannah left before daybreak. This time the palace guard allowed her to leave and she walked through the palace gates and out onto the cobbled streets, her footsteps unsteady.

      The worst had finally happened. Zale had found out the truth. He knew who she was now, knew Emmeline wasn’t coming, and now she was free to return to her own life, resume her work, see her friends.

      This is what she’d wanted. This is what her goal had been. And yes, she was sad now—shattered, actually—but eventually she’d be okay. Hannah knew she was tough. Resilient. And maybe one day if she was lucky, she’d fall in love again.

      Reaching the old city center, Hannah went to the train station to purchase a ticket and discovered she didn’t have enough money to get across Raguva much less out of the country as she’d left her credit cards in her hotel room in Palm Beach. She’d need her father to wire her money and get one of the secretaries at the office in Dallas to overnight her passport to her.

      Hannah reached into her coat pocket to call her dad but her phone was missing. She searched the rest of her pockets before opening her small suitcase to check there. But no, nothing, which meant she must have left the phone at the palace or dropped it while walking into the city center.

      Her heart fell as she imagined returning to the palace, only to be confronted by Zale.

      She couldn’t handle seeing him again. Couldn’t handle his disappointment and anger.

      Last night she’d felt like Cinderella at the ball—a beautiful princess dancing with the handsome king—and just like the fairy tale, today she was no one. She’d been tossed into the streets.

      Exhausted, Hannah closed her suitcase and got to her feet and stood in the middle of the train station, wishing she had a fairy godmother who could come wave a magic wand and make everything good again.

      But fairy godmothers didn’t exist, and real life women like Hannah Smith had to sort out their problems and mistakes on their own.

      Only her plight hadn’t gone unnoticed. An old gentleman working at the station ticket counter left his booth and approached her, speaking a mixture of broken English and Raguvian. “Do you need help?”

      She nodded, hating the lump in her throat. “I need to find a hotel, something cheap, for a night or two until my father can send money.”

      He pointed to a building across the street. “Nice and clean,” he said, with a sympathetic smile. “And not too much money. Tell them Alfred sent you.”

      She shot him a grateful smile. “I will, thank you.”

      He nodded and watched her hurry across the plaza to the small hotel tucked into the stone building on the other side of the cobbled street.

      The woman at the front desk seemed to be waiting for Hannah at the front door. She

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