Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(2)

Eddie frowned. “Well, yeah, I guess. But I wasn’t ready for it.”

Jessica shook her head. “Sorry. Should have thought of that. We don’t experience that with the other amputees.”

“Why?”

“Well, they’re either recent amputees, so they never adjusted to a regular peg leg. Or they come here because someone has told them that up-timers at Leahy Medical Center make the best prosthetics, ones with springs in them. So naturally, the first thing we have to do is sit them down and explain every detail, including the phases they’re going to go through in getting accustomed to using the new limb. Sorry; I should have observed the same protocol with you, should have warned you.”

Eddie grinned and shrugged off her apology, then took a few more steps. Now that he knew to expect that little boost from the prosthetic’s heel, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, Jessica was right: this was more like real walking, not the flat footed limp-and-waddle he managed with the peg leg and a cane. With this, he could feel the potential for walking like a whole person again, like his old self. He could even imagine how he might be able to work in a little swagger, something to show off to Anne Cathrine . . .

“Eddie, I’m guessing that smug smile means that the prosthetic is a success?”

“Uh, yeah. Thank you, Jessica.”

“Not at all. But tell me something, Eddie.”

“Sure.” He considered sitting, found he was still comfortable standing, something that rarely happened when he had been wearing the peg. “What do you want to know?”

“Well . . . why did you stay in Denmark once you were no longer being held as Christian IV’s own, personal prisoner of war last year? I mean, I know there was the wedding with his daughter, but—”

Eddie nodded. And reflected that in the past, he might have grinned while he explained. But in the past year, life itself had acquired a new gravity that made him less ready to grin and shrug his way through the living or recounting of it. His high school days, not quite four years behind him, now seemed a lifetime away, a collection of memories that rightly belonged to someone else. “Mostly, I stayed up in Denmark because of love, Jessica.”

“You mean the princess didn’t want to come down here?”

“Oh, no, she was extremely eager to see Grantville.” Like pretty much every other down-timer who had the means to do so, the number one locale on Anne Cathrine’s list of “places to visit” was the town of miracles that had fallen out of the future into Germany.

“So why not bring the princess back home, Eddie? You get tired of us?”

“Jessica, first of all, Anne Cathrine is not a ‘princess.’ She’s a ‘king’s daughter.’”

“And the difference is—?”

“The difference is huge. Her mom—her dad’s second wife—was nobility, but not high enough for anyone to consider her kids potential inheritors of the throne. It’s called a morganatic marriage.”

“Thank you, I still read trashy historical romances, so I’m familiar with the term.”

“Oh. Sorry. But princess or not, she’s one of the brightest apples of her father’s eye. He loves all his kids—he’s a really good guy, that way—but he’s especially fond of Anne Cathrine and her younger sister, Leonora.”

“Another blond, buxom beauty, I’m assuming?”

Eddie decided not to point out that Anne Cathrine’s hair was decidedly red-blond. “Uh, no, not at all. Leonora is a brunette. And . . . well, she’ll probably be a pretty attractive woman. But she’s already sharp as a tack. Not pushy, but has a real sense of her self, of what’s right. And doesn’t like having her dad determine her future.”

One of Jessica’s eyebrows elevated slightly. “She sounds like a handful for King Daddy. Good for her. And good for the Princess Anne Cathrine that she chose you.”

Eddie shrugged. No reason to add the somewhat embarrassing footnote that Anne Cathrine and he had been surreptitiously “pushed together” by King Daddy, who despite some of his lunatic schemes, understood full well just how advantageous it was to have his daughter married to one of the up-time wizards who had been instrumental in shattering his naval attack on Wismar last year. Happily, Anne Cathrine’s heart had already been moving precipitously in Eddie’s direction, so King Daddy’s stratagems had been, practically speaking, more of an emphatic imprimatur than an imperial order.

Jessica leaned back, arms crossed. “So if she wanted to stay in Grantville for a few weeks or months, instead of three days last fall, why shouldn’t you and she have done so?”