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Playing Dirty(136)

By:Avery Wilde


When I thought the whole thing out like that, I realized that my life had really started to sound like a soap opera.

“Do you think I am blind?” she replied.

It was swiftly becoming clear to me that the Princess hadn’t been looking for a maid to help her find her room or bring her a late night cup of cocoa. She’d been looking for me specifically, and clearly for some personal reason.

“Your Highness?” Although I had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was going, I decided that being dumb was probably the best way to play this, for the moment at least.

“I’m sorry, perhaps it is my English. I said; do you think I am blind?” Princess Alexandra enunciated the words with efficient threat.

“No, your Highness,” I said, still sticking to deferential servant with a side-order of dumb. “And your English is excellent.”

“How kind of you,” she replied with a smile that was anything but friendly. “But since you do not think that I am blind, I must ask another question: did you think that I would not notice what is going on between you and Prince Andrew?”

My mind raced. Even though I could’ve guessed that this was coming, I hadn’t figured out how to deal with it and was now left floundering between honesty, which was bound to make the Princess angry, and lying, which she probably wouldn’t believe. Neither way looked good to me.

Perhaps saying nothing was an option?

“Don’t bother denying it!” Alexandra said. “I saw the way he was looking at you and the way you were looking at him. Do you think I’m blind?”

“No,” I replied; my answer to that question had already been established.

“You are having an affair with him, yes?”

“No!” I blurted out. Panic seemed to have made the decision for me. “No. I’m just a maid.”

Alexandra snorted derisively. “As if that matters. We’ve all done it. There is a footman back in Stockholm who I....and a maid as well, actually. And a stable boy—my goodness, that stable boy! Put him and the horse side by side and you’d barely see a difference in the size of…but that’s not important. Stop trying to sidetrack me!”

“I’m not. And there’s nothing between me and Andrew.” I knew it was an error as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

“Ha!” The Princess sprang on the mistake. “You called him Andrew! Servants do not speak of royalty in such a fashion. None of my servants would even dream of calling me Alexandra. They call me Princess Alexandra or your Highness. Even the stable boy calls me ‘your Highness’ while we fuck, it’s a bit of a turn-on actually.”

Even through my fear and uncertainty, I couldn’t help wondering at the workings of Alexandra’s mind; it must’ve been like a roller coaster in there.

“We knew each other before I came to work here,” I said, deftly weaving fact into fiction in the hope of coming up with something halfway believable. “We met in New York. We were friends before I worked for him. So yes, sometimes I forget myself and slip into old habits. And maybe that’s why you misinterpreted any looks that might have passed between us. I wasn’t aware of any, but we’re such good friends I guess it might have happened.”

For a moment Princess Alexandra was silent, and I believed that I might’ve got away with it, but this was merely the calm before the storm.

“Liar!” The word echoed and re-echoed about the empty gallery.

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are!” Suddenly the Princess’s mood seemed to change again. “Something is strange about this.”

“That’s because it’s not…”

“Quiet!” She might’ve been a little unhinged, but Princess Alexandra really had the sense of royal authority figured out. “I came here because I thought you were Andrew’s—how do you English say it…crumpet?”

“I don’t know about the English but that’s definitely not how we Americans say it.”

“I thought that you were his sex toy,” she said, finding a less ambiguous term than ‘crumpet’. “I do not want any husband of mine with a toy. All the sex is for me! But now I find that you call him by his first name, and you lie to defend him. You love him.”

I didn’t answer, and I knew my defense was becoming less and less convincing.

“And perhaps he loves you too,” Alexandra mused, pursing her lips in distaste. “Yes. I thought he was looking at you with lust but I now see the truth.” She turned to look me in the face and, to my immense surprise, she laughed. “Now I feel better.”