Royal Weddings. Joan Elliott Pickart

open. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was simply because, with Hauk shadowing her every move, it felt like the only option she had.

      She went to the spare room, where she kept her computer. Hauk sat at attention on her futon while she surfed the Net for a while and fiddled with e-mail. Then, for an hour or so, she made a valiant effort to get a little reading done.

      But it was no good. She kept feeling those cool, careful eyes on her. She couldn’t concentrate on a book.

      They had lunch at one. By then she was aching for a little ordinary conversation. Over BLTs she tried to engage him in a nice, friendly chat.

      He was the master of the one-line reply. He’d get it down to a single word if he could, or better still, a low, unpromising sound in his throat. She got a number of curt noes, a lonely little yes or two and a whole lot of gruff grunts.

      Finally, she asked him about his family. “Do you have brothers—or sisters?”

      “No.”

      “And your mother and father?”

      He just looked at her.

      “Your parents, are they still alive?”

      “No.”

      “Both gone?”

      “That’s correct.”

      Well, she couldn’t say she was surprised. It seemed hard to picture that he’d ever even had a father or a mother. With his huge, hard, smooth chest and his infomercial abs, his deadpan expression and his lightning-bolt tattoos, Hauk FitzWyborn seemed someone not quite mortal—someone who had never been something so vulnerable as a little boy with parents who loved him. He seemed more like a creature sprung from the Norse myths, like Odin, Vili and Ve, brought into being out of ice.

      “Um, your father? Tell me about him.”

      He gave her the lifted-eyebrow routine.

      She tried again. “What was your father like, Hauk?”

      “I told you. My father is dead.” He’d finished his sandwich. He stood, carried his plate and empty glass to the sink, rinsed them both and put them in the dishwasher.

      She refused to give up. “I’m sorry, Hauk—that he’s gone. Do you…miss him?”

      He reached for the towel, dried those big hands. “He’s been dead for almost a decade.”

      “But do you miss him?”

      He hung the towel on its little hook beneath the cabinets. “You behave like an American.” He made it sound like some crushing insult.

      She sat up straighter in her chair. “I am an American.”

      His sculpted mouth curved. Too bad it was more a sneer than a smile. “In Gullandria, the lowliest of the low will know which questions should never be asked. In Gullandria, we do not presume to ask after the dead loved ones of people we hardly know.”

      Wow. Two whole sentences. The man was a chatterbox, no doubt about it. And he also had a truckload and a half of nerve, to imply that she was presumptuous, when he wouldn’t let her make a call without listening in on her speakerphone.

      She kept after him. “So. You’re sensitive on the subject of your father. Why is that?”

      He stood there by the sink, big and broad and silent, looking at her. But she was becoming accustomed to his eagle-eyed stare. She stared right back. And she waited.

      At last, he shrugged. “My father was a Wyborn. My mother was not.”

      She was getting the picture. “They weren’t married when you were born?”

      “That’s right. They were never married. I am a fitz. For future reference, during your stay in Gullandria, when you hear that a man’s name begins with Fitz, you will know that man is a bastard. You might think twice before asking after his family.”

      “Thank you.” She gave him the most regal of nods. “I’ll remember that.”

      “The prefix Fitz,” he informed her in scholarly tones, “is one known to many lands. A child of King Henry the Eighth comes to mind. You’ve heard of Henry the Eighth, second of the Tudor kings of England?”

      “Yes, Hauk,” she said dryly. “Even rude Americans take history in school.”

      “A barmaid gave King Henry a son. The barmaid named the child for his father. Henry FitzRoy. The literal translation of Fitz is son of. Thus, Henry, son of—”

      “—the king,” she finished for him. Her mother had told her many things about her homeland. But not this painful little detail. “Is there some reason, now, in the twenty-first century, to…label a person that way?”

      “In Gullandria, we treasure the family. Life can be hard and short—not so much in recent decades, since we discovered we are rich in oil and have a valuable commodity to trade for the comforts of the modern world. But it was not always so.

      “Over the generations, we have learned to count on one another. Loyalty and honor always come first. Marriage is a sacred trust. Once his wife has given him children, a man cannot divorce. With so much value on the family, it is seen as an offense against the continued survival of our people to bring children into the world without the sacrament of marriage. Certain doors are always closed to bastard children.”

      “But why? It’s not the child’s fault that his parents weren’t married.”

      “It’s nothing to do with who is at fault. There’s an old saying. Don’t bicker over blame while the house burns.” He came toward her. “You have finished your meal?”

      She stared up at him, feeling, for the first time, a certain softening toward him. “What doors are closed to you, Hauk?”

      He asked again, “Have you finished?”

      She looked down at the bit of uneaten sandwich. “Sure, I’m finished. With lunch.”

      He took her plate and her glass to the sink, dumped the crust in and ran the disposal. Then he rinsed her dishes and put them in the dishwasher with his.

      “Hauk?”

      He turned to her and folded his huge arms over his chest. The early-afternoon sun slanting in the window made his hair shine as though it were spun from real gold.

      “What doors are closed to you?”

      Now, instead of staring her down, he seemed to be studying her. She knew a certain feeling of warmth inside as she saw that she had found it, the key to having an actual conversation with him. If they spoke of Gullandria, if he thought he might impart to her things she would need to know as the daughter of his king, he was willing to talk.

      He asked, “Do you understand the rules of Gullandrian succession?”

      “I think so.” She repeated what her mother had told her long ago. “All male jarl—” she pronounced it yarl, as her mother had taught her “—and jarl means noble, both singular and plural—are princes, technically eligible to claim the throne when the current king dies or is no longer capable of ruling. When that happens, the jarl convene in the capital city of Lysgard and each casts a vote. The winner is the new king. The vote itself—as well as the ceremony surrounding it—is called the kingmaking.”

      Hauk dropped his hands to his sides. She could have sworn he almost smiled. “Very good. You have it nearly right.”

      “Nearly?”

      “Not all male jarl are princes. Only all legitimate male jarl.”

      “You’re saying that you, Hauk FitzWyborn, could never be king.”

      “That’s correct. Not that I would get any real chance to be king—let alone even want to be king—were I legitimate in the first place.