Desperately Ever After: Book One: Desperately Ever After Trilogy Read online

  DESPERATELY

  EVER

  AFTER

  Book One:

  Desperately Ever After series

  Laura Kenyon

  Desperately Ever After

  Copyright © 2014 by Laura Kenyon

  http://www.laurakenyon.com

  This eBook is licensed for personal use only. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All fairy tale references are based on works that exist in the public domain.

  To my parents,

  for encouraging my dreams as a child;

  and to Chris,

  for allowing me to never fully grow up.

  “Life itself is the

  most wonderful fairy tale.”

  — Hans Christian Andersen

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map of Marestam

  Mirror Column #1

  Chapter 1: Belle

  Chapter 2: Cinderella

  Chapter 3: Rapunzel

  Chapter 4: Belle

  Mirror Column #2

  Chapter 5: Penelopea

  Chapter 6: Belle

  Chapter 7: Cinderella

  Mirror Column #3

  Chapter 8: Belle

  Chapter 9: Rapunzel

  Mirror Opinion Pages

  Chapter 10: Belle

  Mirror Column #4

  Chapter 11: Cinderella

  Chapter 12: Belle

  Mirror Column #5

  Chapter 13: Cinderella

  Chapter 14: Rapunzel

  Chapter 15: Belle

  Mirror Column #6

  Chapter 16: Penelopea

  Chapter 17: Belle

  Mirror Column #7

  Chapter 18: Penelopea

  Mirror Column #8

  Chapter 19: Belle

  Chapter 20: Cinderella

  Chapter 21: Rapunzel

  Mirror Column #9

  Chapter 22: Rapunzel

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Preview of Damsels in Distress

  THE MARESTAM MIRROR

  Editor’s note: One year ago today, Perrin Hildebrand redefined the meaning of gossip with his inaugural “Diamond Ropes and Velvet Cake” column, serving up an unprecedented buffet of secrets plucked from the crème de la crème of Marestam. Today, the wily and fiendishly gifted eavesdropper (even his employer isn’t privy to his true identity) renews his vow to leave no rumor untapped—friendship or kinship be damned. “It is my continued goal, as the Mirror’s prized gossip guru, to pass down every blip of blue-blooded hearsay that causes so much as a flick of my eyelash. As I’ve said before: Loyal readers of the realm, keep watch. Royal leaders … watch out!”

  Diamond Ropes and Velvet Cake

  By Perrin Hildebrand, King of Gossip*

  WHAT better way to start my anniversary column than with the man whose very existence promises I’ll never retire for lack of material?

  History tells us that King Donner’s “beast” curse broke four years ago, when his then-prisoner Belle poured her heart out seconds before he bit the dust. You know the story: The skies opened. His fur molted. They kissed. He swiped her chains for a ring. They professed undying love and fidelity. Blah blah blah.

  But guess what? The ladies who know better (and there are plenty) are laughing hysterically as they read this. Cursed or not, there’s still plenty of WOLF left in the Braddax leader—and it’s been devouring the menus at Marestam’s raciest nightclubs, greasing palms in exchange for silence, and slinking through back doors with harems as large and sparkly as the jewels in his wife’s tiara. (A tiara that, need I spell out, has remained in the clouds with its dewy-eyed owner this entire time.)

  This week, Yours Truly witnessed the debauchery firsthand in the VIP room at Club Dahlia. Says the royal mouthpiece: “Despite battling a serious cold, His Majesty was keeping his promise to show a group of foreign ambassadors around the realm. Any allegations that King Donner was out of line come from blathering carousers unable to tell the difference between cough syrup grogginess and inebriation.”

  Cough syrup? Ambassadors? Okay. And that ear-splitting rendition of “Mustang Sally” was just practice for his next State of the Kingdom address?

  MEANWHILE, just a few miles south in Carpale, King Aaron is working hard enough for Donner and all the other crown-wearing figureheads of our beloved United Kingdoms. Just yesterday, in fact, our skeletal Prime Minister was overheard ordering him to take a vacation. “Every other monarch in the realm fulfills their duties by cutting ribbons and throwing parties,” says PM Angus Kane. “So it baffles me why Aaron spends more time analyzing parliamentary law than the blokes who actually need votes to stay in power. Mark my words. If he doesn’t step away and bring Cinderella to a tropical island soon, I’ll take her and he can manage all five kingdoms from my seat.”

  I don’t know which is more scandalous: Kane’s proposition or my suspicion that Cinderella might actually take him up on it. Everyone knows the servant-girl-turned-queen didn’t intend to get knocked up at the very start of her honeymoon ten years ago. Nor did she expect her in-laws to retire the moment they heard, shackling her and “Prince Charming” to the throne before she was ready.

  In truth, Cinderella has been a remarkable sport about it—piling her days with charity luncheons, popping out a kid every two years, and beaming as gracefully as the day she walked into Aaron’s find-me-a-wife ball. But inside sources tell me the Queen is having quite a tough time dealing with her looming thirtieth birthday. Aaron would best remember that even the most treasured marriage can shatter. And by my calculations, he still owes her eleven months of world-romping honeymoon bliss.

  I SEE no more appropriate way of concluding my anniversary column than with a lesson gleaned from Rapunzel Delmonico—publicist extraordinaire, feminist hero, and the diamond-crusted dagger no man can resist plunging into his heart.

  The voice of the unfettered woman, Rapunzel has no royal title, no ring on that finger, and no designs on ever getting either. (In fact, she’s refused numerous honorary titles and has often said she’d rather leap from the Prince Williams Bridge than jump the broom into royalty.) But does she ever look unhappy? Ever? Nah-ah.

  In her continued quest to make up for twenty years locked in a tower with no male companionship, Rapunzel was spotted this week canoodling with three acclaimed entertainers, Playdame’s Mr. November, the heir to the Carbury Diamonds fortune, and the surprisingly handsome son of our hook-nosed PM (good looks must have skipped his generation). Total net worth of this week’s conquests: $87 billion. Not bad for a woman whose parents sold her to a witch so they could feed their addiction to rampion.

  Keep it up, gorgeous. I’ll be here when you’re done playing around.

  *Official title pending

  Chapter One

  BELLE

  The girl with the puffy cheeks cupped her hands under the metal spout, pinched her eyes in concentration, and watched the stream of oats dump safely into her palms. Sealing her fingers tight, she spun around and flashed a jumpy grin toward her audience. From the bench, Belle curled her lips up and nodded. She’d read somewhere that smiling could trick the brain into believing everything was wonderful. F
rom where she sat—alone by the petting zoo at Braddax Wildlife Park, blocking a bin of discarded headlines from her view—it seemed like a bunch of hooey.

  Too pure to see the difference or too young to care, the girl beamed back anyway. Heaving up her sausage-link knees, she toddled toward the fence and scrunched her nose at the goats. They stared back and smacked their chops, but she wasn’t ready yet. Rather than open her fists, the little dervish laughed and twirled in wide, tangerine circles. The animals nudged forward. The king billy whined but dared not look away. Clearly, she knew how to keep a guy interested. Belle could learn a thing or two.

  Taking mental notes, she watched the child squat towards the asphalt, take a sharp, dramatic breath, and finally pop to her feet. Two arms flew up. Her fists opened. The oats rocketed into the sky and plopped at the grateful animals’ hooves. Belle looked away for one second to watch the frenzy when—

  “Mommy!”

  She swung back. A crumpled sundress hugged the ground, its owner sobbing and pawing at the air. Belle’s heart flew halfway up her throat. She jerked forward, needing to scoop her up, to dry her tears, to beg forgiveness and promise to never look away again. But her feet remained planted. The girl’s mother was already there, followed by a balding man in lime green shorts and a fanny pack. They immediately set upon kissing every scrape, linking fingers and foreheads, and locking their daughter in a human cocoon. Belle felt a warmth and a sting. She wanted to share in this forever, to imagine how it felt to be any one of them. But the moment was already tarnished. Donner could do that from miles away.

  In her head, Belle could hear her husband’s disdain for the father’s outfit and the way he scampered behind his wife. She could sense him, with his black-on-black ensemble and petroleum hair, poking fun at the entire scene. Clothes aren’t supposed to be blinding, he’d say. Family zoo day is so plebian. That child is a little prima donna and if the parents come running every time she cries, she’ll lord over them forever.

  Belle liked to blame Donner’s attitude on jealousy, on a defense mechanism that ridiculed what he wanted but couldn’t seem to get. She believed that’s how it started, anyway. But years of failure might have made it permanent. The brain was a phenomenal liar, after all. But it was also a total sucker.

  Belle turned away and brushed a layer of cherry blossoms off her book. She scanned the same paragraph a dozen times until the family moved on, bubbling over with plans to feed the giraffes next, or see the penguins, or share a grape snow cone by the elephant pen. She sat there for another hour, piggybacking off other people’s memories until the clouds made her sunglasses suspicious and her blonde wig began to overheat.

  Belle didn’t need the disguise for personal safety. The biggest threat to a queen of Marestam was paparazzi, and they never seemed too interested in her. She didn’t need the chauffeur waiting in the parking lot either, but public transportation just wasn’t in the cards today. In a constitutional polymonarchy, Belle believed a queen’s preeminent duty was to give the people hope. She hid because, lately, hope was a long shot.

  “Did you enjoy the animals, Your Majesty?” the driver asked as she climbed into the limo and released her long brown locks.

  “Please, Nick. You can call me Belle when my husband’s not around.” Her voice was frail beneath the whoosh of the parkway and the monkey sounds pumping over the PA. “And yes, they were adorable.”

  “Adorable?” Nick laughed. “You must’ve skipped the Reptile House then. Went there with my niece once and they scared the stuffing out of me. All those gangly lizards with their buggy eyes. I swear one was the spitting image of Angus Kane. Definitely not what I call adorable.”

  Belle watched him shiver as he circled the car and hopped into the front seat. Nick didn’t need to know why she really came to the zoo, though she suspected he already did. She suspected the entire castle did.

  “You know my niece’s favorite part?” he continued from behind the wheel. “Feeding the goats. You believe that? Here you’ve got the greatest collection of animals in the world, and she goes for goats.”

  Belle gave a small smile and looked out the window. The girl with the chubby cheeks still sat in the front of her mind. If that had been her daughter, would she have caught her before she fell? Taken note of her energetic leap and anticipated the stumble? Was maternal instinct something that kicked in as soon as the baby got kicked out, she wondered, or could a person be pre-programmed for negligence? Maybe that’s why her body was taking so long. The universe knew she wasn’t fit to start a family.

  No. Belle shook the thought away. She was not her mother. If anything, she would be overly doting—suffocating, perhaps, but never callous. Never gone. It had to happen soon. Queens always had babies. That’s just how it worked. Cinderella got pregnant mere weeks into her honeymoon. Dawn had barely woken up from her sleeping curse before she was expecting twins. Snow was probably waiting for the stars to align in the shape of a heart or the cosmos to sit in perfect celestial harmony before she started; but then she’d surely pop out six kids in one sitting. Belle was just taking a bit longer.

  Nick’s voice pulled her from her wallowing. “Homeward?” Judging from his tone and the way he’d twisted all the way around to look at her, he’d asked at least once already.

  Belle leaned forward and palmed his headrest. She hated sitting in the back, like some sort of demigod, when it was just the two of them. But Donner had read her the riot act the first time he saw her in the front seat. Social supremacy was all the monarchies had left, he’d said (evidently discounting the riches and forgetting that he hated politics anyway). There was no need to blur the lines with affection.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Got lost in a daydream. Have you heard from Donner?” Nick’s eyes shifted to the left, but he didn’t answer. Donner had no day job, no philanthropic interests, and no family in Marestam save for her. But making sense of his schedule—sometimes nipping at her heels all day, other times as elusive as the wind—was impossible. “I was just wondering if he’s home yet.”

  Nick shook his head. “Last I heard, His Majesty took the roadster over to Regian. He’s probably with a foursome right now, trying to whiff his way out of jail.”

  Belle pushed off the seat. Her eyes flew wide. “He’s what?”

  Nick laughed. “You’re right. The King deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he found the sweet spot today.” Belle’s forehead ignited. “But from what I hear, he ain’t exactly master of the links.”

  The links. The term skidded to a halt in Belle’s head and she exhaled. Nick was talking about golf. A golf foursome. “Jail” meant the trees, or a sand pit, or some other superfluous, manmade obstacle. As if life wasn’t already hard enough.

  “Should I call the clubhouse?” Nick asked. “Maybe you’d like to meet him there for a drink.”

  Belle shivered at the thought. Five years ago, Donner would have relished this surprise and praised her to all his colleagues as “the one woman in the world virtuous enough to make me human again.” Now, he would probably just berate her for checking up on him—and doing it unfashionably, to boot.

  “That’s all right.” She stretched her lips into a smile and held it for as long as she could. Besides, today was pee-on-a-stick day again, and she preferred fielding the bad news alone. “Home we go.”

  * * *

  The first thing Belle noticed when the timer went off was that the hem on her dress was beginning to fray. She’d just slipped out of her cotton ensemble and wriggled into a floor length gown with lace appliqué and dainty cap sleeves. It was her standard house outfit—a head-to-toe costume that assured the world (and her) she wasn’t making this whole royalty thing up.

  The next thing she noticed, while hovering over the gold leaf sink in the master bathroom, caused both her knees to buckle: The window was blue.

  Blue.

  The tiny plastic window on the tiny plastic stick was blue.

  Belle blinked a dozen times and leaned into the
velvet wallpaper for support. She checked the box again to make sure, but there was no question. Pregnant. Blue meant pregnant. Yes, pregnant, blue. Trembling, she exhaled for the first time in half a decade and pulled the test to her chest. Then she realized she was hugging a stick sopped with urine. It fell into the sink with a clatter, flipped over a few times and swirled around the basin before finally coming to rest, window side up. Belle peered at it with fading disbelief, as if leaning over a casket of someone she wasn’t aware had died. Then her lips catapulted into an ear-to-ear smile.

  Pacing along the hand-tufted rug Donner had paid a fortune to import, Belle didn’t know what to do first. Should she call him now? Unveil it slowly the way she’d been planning since their wedding night? Verify it with the doctor first?

  Right. She stopped. At-home tests could be wrong. She marched toward the door, then stopped again. Dr. Frolick would be leaving the hospital any minute, and midtown Carpale would be a traffic nightmare. But holding back her secret until an official medical exam? Impossible. Donner had waited years for this news and she’d been waiting ages to tell it. Finally, he would need her again … for much more than the one-and-done snapping of a curse. Finally, they would have their glue. But she had to be sure.

  The solution was sitting in the back of her closet—stashed behind the lingerie but not so far back as the baby clothes piled neatly in airtight bins. With one big heave, she dragged out a cardboard box filled to the brim with shiny pink and blue packets. The box was dated four years earlier, back when she was testing her hormones three times a day, tracking her temperature every morning, banishing alcohol entirely, and making sure Donner had every opportunity to put his little guys to work. After a year of disappointment, she’d plucked out a handful and shoved the rest out of sight. Today, she needed them all.

  Using her gown as a basket, Belle scooped out as many packets as she could and hauled them into the bathroom. Ten cups of water later, she sat on the cold marble floor, her dress puffed out like lemon meringue, in a daze. The space around her twinkled with scraps of pink foil and the edge of the Jacuzzi shone silver beneath two dozen sticks with little plastic windows. All of them were blue.