The Other Princess

  Cowboy Fairytales: The Next Generation

  Lacy Williams

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  The Prince’s Matchmaker sneak peek

  Also by Lacy Williams

  Never miss a new release…

  Prologue

  "You're too nice."

  Maggie Hale groaned and dropped her head into her hands. "Not this again."

  She was seated across the nook table from her cousin Scarlett in the original Triple H ranch house, where Scarlett and her husband Miles lived. The remnants of breakfast—biscuit crumbs, the empty gravy bowl, a few scrambled egg curds, and a plate with a lone piece of bacon—were spread out between them.

  Maggie needed more coffee if her cousin was going to keep spouting nonsense.

  Scarlett pointed her fork. "Everyone knows the ranch house is the best place to live, but you and Uncle Gideon built that bungalow down by the stock pond. Nice."

  "You were here first." Maggie stood and went to the coffeepot. Thankfully, Scarlett made industrial-strength French Roast. Outside the window, dawn was lighting the sky with streaks of silver.

  Maggie liked the bungalow. It was small. Cozy.

  "Miles and I were here first,” Scarlett said, “but you're royalty. You could've kicked us out."

  As if Maggie needed to be reminded that she couldn’t be just plain old Maggie. She was Princess Margaret, fifth in line for the throne of Glorvaird.

  She would never think to kick Scarlett and Miles out of their home. An exclamation stating just that was on the tip of Maggie's tongue, but if she uttered it, she'd just prove her cousin was right. Scarlett and Miles and their toddler daughter Richelle lived in the ranch house with Scarlett's mom, Maggie’s Aunt Carrie, and her stepdad Trey. It was a multi-generational household that worked for them.

  Scarlett swiped the last piece of bacon as Maggie approached the table warily. She pointed it at Maggie. "Too nice." And crunched into the crispy goodness.

  "Hey!" Maggie’s protest was halfhearted. She knew better than to try and keep food from a pregnant woman. Scarlett's baby bump—this was her second child—was barely noticeable, and they hadn't announced anything yet, but Maggie had been around for Scarlett's first pregnancy and knew the signs. Frequent irritability, food cravings, know-it-all-ness. That one was pure Scarlett, though, pregnant or not.

  "I am nice," Maggie admitted, because Scarlett was partly right. She was nice, but she wasn't too nice. "But that has nothing to do with getting the charity board to fund this riding program."

  The therapeutic riding program was Maggie's heart-project. Getting it off the ground was the one thing she wanted to accomplish before she turned thirty in five years.

  Horses had been her refuge when she'd needed one the most. And there were so many kids out there dealing with anxiety, abandonment, being bullied.

  Her program could help.

  She just needed the other board members to buy in.

  "You need to throw your weight around,” Scarlett said. “Wear your tiara to the next board meeting and remind those old geezers who you are. You started the foundation."

  Technically, Maggie's dad had started it when she'd been nineteen. He'd told her he wanted her to run it. And since he rarely asked her for anything, she'd agreed.

  It had been her first time into Dallas since—

  In the other room, the back door opened and closed. Probably one of the hands stomping into the mudroom to report to Scarlett, who acted as foreman for the cattle operation.

  But it wasn't a cowboy who appeared.

  It was Maggie's mirror-image. Her twin, who hadn't visited the Triple H Ranch in at least five years.

  "Tirith. What are you doing here?"

  1

  This was never going to work.

  Maggie wobbled across the carpeted expanse of her sister's living room, tilting and twisting on heels that felt like stilts. The palace walls were thick stone and would muffle any sounds she made.

  She was no rodeo clown, but she'd probably get some laughs if she tried to wear these heels and pitched hiney over teakettle in front of the photographers who followed her family around any time they stepped foot out of the royal palace.

  Muttering words that were certainly not suitable for her station, Maggie peeled off one torture device and then the other—otherwise known as Louboutins.

  She retraced her steps back to her sister’s bedroom. Before yesterday, she’d never been in this suite. It’d been well over a decade since she’d stepped foot on Glorvaird soil. Even the suite they’d shared as children would’ve felt foreign.

  This morning, Tirith's personal assistant Elizabeth had laid out the plum-colored pantsuit, white silk blouse, and offending shoes while Maggie had been showering.

  The clothes whispered along her skin, the softness almost as foreign as having someone choose her outfit, down to the diamond cuff bracelet that felt like a shackle around her wrist.

  And that was a drop in the bucket of discomfort after Maggie had been subjected to nearly an hour in a chair getting her hair, makeup and manicure done before she'd been allowed to dress.

  The stylist had been aghast at the state of her hair. She hadn't had the heart to tell him that the highlights he was griping about were natural from being out in the sun all day. At least the manicurist had been silent in her judgment of Maggie's farm-girl hands.

  Had they already figured it out? Would they go to the press?

  Maybe she wouldn't even last the first morning of this charade.

  She stomped back to the bedroom, shoes in hand. The crowd of helpers—more like handlers—had made themselves scarce after she'd been adequately groomed, and she now had the suite to herself.

  She'd spent close to an hour last night practicing in the mirror, trying to get Tirith down. They might be twins, but Tirith was practically a stranger to her. How she stood, how she walked... if Maggie messed it up, this crazy plan would be over. She'd had deportment lessons from an instructor her mother had sent to the Triple H when Maggie was thirteen. That was twelve years ago, and she'd never had an occasion to use what she’d begrudgingly learned. She'd skipped senior prom in favor of going camping with her dad.

  Now she went straight to the walk-in closet—bigger than her room back at home—and stepped inside. Flats. She just needed a pair of flats that matched this suit.

  She blinked at the array of clothes in every color, each one with a designer label. Nothing like what filled her closet back home.

  Even blinking felt wrong. Her eyelashes were Tirith's, not hers. Curled with a wicked-looking silver tool, painted with mascara and lined with a pencil.

  She should have probably been thankful the stylist hadn't given her false eyelashes.

  Being Tirith was the whole point.

  She sighed as she left the heels right in the middle of the closet floor and went to the set of shelves built into the very back of the space.

  There. The ballet flats were plain black, and Maggie knew she could make it through the day without falling on her face if she wore them. She quickly slipped them on.

  "Just be Tirith," she said under her breath as she went back through the bedroom and into the living area.

  It was easier said than done. Her sister didn't even have a television, only bookshelves that lined one entire wall.

  Maggie enjoyed curling up with a good book as much as anybody, but come on. Sometimes a girl needed a few hours of college football to unwind. There was something therapeutic about booing the referee when he made a terrible call. Dad kept several of last year's best games on the DVR for when they needed a fix during the off season.

  The sleek orange cat tiptoed out of Tirith's bedroom door and into the bathroom. The second sighting Maggie had had of it. It must've slept under the bed. Or in the closet. Probably waiting to pounce.

  Of course Tirith had a cat.

  Maggie was a dog person.

  She gritted her teeth.

  She'd make do. It was only for two weeks.

  She grimaced, then caught a glimpse of her face in the wall-mounted mirror across the room.

  When was the last time Tirith had asked her for anything?

  Never.

  Not since they’d been taken—

  Maggie couldn't let herself go there. Not when she was this close. There was a reason she'd stayed in Texas for so long.

  But her twin needed her. And Tirith never needed anything. She was strong. So much stronger than Maggie.

  The fact that Tirith had asked for help now meant she needed it desperately. How could Maggie say no?

  She left the suite, forcing herself to walk with the same forbidding posture Tirith used. She wanted to run her fingers along the stone walls, remember their texture. Something else she'd forgotten in her long absence. She wanted to wander over to what had been the nursery when she and Tirith had been infants. Surely the cribs they’d slept in were gone by now. Or maybe not. The crown prince would be expected to produce an heir sometime in the future.

  But there was no time for reminiscing. And she didn’t want to make anyone suspicious.

  Tirith's assistant had gone down a list of today's appearances while Maggie had been in the chair of doom, getting her makeup done.

  Firs

t up, breakfast with Mother. Oh, sure. Run the gauntlet before the first cup of coffee.

  Then again, if she could fool Mother, she could fool anybody.

  As identical twins, Maggie and Tirith had switched places occasionally as children. But never for this long. And never when the stakes were this high.

  For Tirith. It would be Maggie's mantra as she counted down the hours until she could return to Texas, where she belonged.

  It had been more than a decade, but she still remembered the twisting path to the blue parlor, where Mother preferred to eat family meals.

  Family.

  They hadn’t been a family since that terrible day.

  Maggie breezed into the room. There was no room for emotion in a breakfast with Mother. Not if she wanted to pull this off.

  Mother was already seated at the square table near the window that overlooked a spit of sand that jutted out into the ocean.

  There was a time when Maggie had been content to sit near that window for hours, watching the waves beat against the shore.

  "Good morning, Mother," she murmured.

  Alessandra reached out her hand, and Maggie squeezed it.

  There were no bear hugs here, not like the kind Tirith would get from Dad two thousand miles away from here.

  "You look tired, dear."

  Maggie had to stifle a hysterical giggle as she sat on the opposite side of the table. Had it really only been yesterday morning that she'd sat across from Scarlett, arguing over whether she was too nice?

  This breakfast was as different from that one as a Brahma bull was from a pasture of Holstein milk cows.

  Fine white linen covered the table and fell halfway to the floor. Exquisite china and real silver tableware were a reminder that she had to be careful. Always be careful.

  The staff hovered about, moving silently and efficiently. A young man in the dove-gray palace uniform put a plate of sliced fruit and baked ham and an egg over-easy on the table in front of Maggie.

  A young woman poured tea into Mother's cup first, then Maggie's. Tea? Not coffee?

  She might only be here for fourteen days, but she might die without her daily coffee fix.

  Remembering Mother's comment, she made her lips form a serene smile. Tirith was always serene, wasn't she? "I'm fine."

  Mother's eyes were on the spoon she was slowly stirring her tea with. "Your father called."

  Maggie's stomach lurched as it had when she was fifteen and had climbed on the back of a steer to feel what it was like to ride a bull. Serenity was hard to fake. "Oh?"

  She hadn’t thought Gideon and Alessandra still spoke. Everything between them was amicable and mostly handled through Mother's personal assistant.

  But the divide was there, an impassable rift wider than the ocean between them. Maggie's fault.

  She swallowed hard, but Mother didn't look up to see the emotion she couldn't quite hide.

  "He wanted to know if he should come."

  Mother's quiet words froze Maggie with that dang teacup at her lips.

  But she didn't have time to freeze.

  Her teacup rattled in its saucer as she set it down. She folded her hands in her lap, mind racing. Her first instinct had been a sharp no! but that would be a Maggie response, not a Tirith one.

  She forced out a silent exhale. Tried for a smile, and, since they were talking about Tirith and what had happened two days ago, it was okay that her smile trembled.

  "I hope you told him to stay in Texas."

  Sorry, Daddy.

  Mother's gaze flicked up and then back down. She set her spoon on the edge of the saucer. "That's what I told him."

  Maggie was glad Mother wasn't looking at her too closely. She'd borne the guilt for so long that sometimes it lost its sharpness.

  Until moments like just now, when she realized how much she'd cost her family. Once upon a time, Alessandra and Gideon had been passionately in love. And once upon another time, Gideon had chosen Texas, and Maggie, over staying in Glorvaird with his wife and two other daughters.

  Although they remained married on paper, they hadn't seen each other in years.

  Maggie didn't think she could stomach breakfast after all.

  She was about to excuse herself when the door opened and a brunette peeked her head inside.

  And then Maggie’s baby sister Beatrix was ducking through the doorway.

  "Good morning, Mother. Good morning, Tirith."

  Bea. If Maggie had been free to do so, she'd have jumped up and embraced her sister. Bea was two years younger. They spoke on the phone weekly, sometimes more, and Bea had come to Texas for a visit during the summer.

  Maggie missed her baby sister like a mama cow separated from its calf.

  But Tirith saw Beatrix often. Jumping out of her chair like Maggie wanted to would be out of character.

  So Maggie sat, even though she ached for that hug.

  Her younger sister went to Mother first and got the same hand squeeze Maggie-as-Tirith had.

  Maggie waited for the same treatment, but Bea leaned over and hugged her shoulders.

  It brought hot moisture to Maggie's eyes, which she quickly blinked away.

  "How are you holding up?" Bea asked.

  That hysterical giggle bubbled up again, and again Maggie choked it down. "I'm…" She shrugged and then winced internally. Tirith probably didn't shrug.

  Bea swiped a triangle of toast off her plate. "Do you want me to go to the ribbon cutting with you this morning? Or maybe you can get out of it...?"

  "Not necessary," Maggie murmured coolly. "It won't take long, and I've got my army in place."

  Tirith had promised that her personal assistant Elizabeth wouldn't question the request for a second bodyguard in addition to the one that usually followed Tirith around when she was out and about in the kingdom. Maggie wasn't sure she could function with just one. Another sign of Tirith's courage and Maggie's cowardice.

  Maggie pushed back her chair from the table. "I should be going."

  If she stayed much longer under Mother's watchful eyes, the game would be up.

  But Bea followed her out into the corridor, linking their arms as Elizabeth fell in step two paces behind.

  Mild panic coursed through Maggie. Did her sister know?

  Before either woman could speak, a tall figure strode from a side hallway and toward them like some kind of heat-seeking missile.

  "There you are. I'm glad I caught you."

  Valentin!

  Her cousin, the crown prince, swept both sisters into a hug that rivaled Dad's. And Maggie felt the hot prick of tears again.

  Seriously? What was wrong with her?

  Being back after all this time was making her off-kilter and over-emotional.

  Or maybe it was that she'd always imagined Tirith an ice princess, shut off from real affection and warmth in the family castle.

  But that didn't seem to be true. Bea had hugged her. And now Valentin, who walked beside them as they made their way toward the lower level of the castle and the garage, Maggie's destination.

  "Annika is attending the naval base celebration with me," he said.

  Annika. Annika. Maggie had to rack her brain before she remembered Annika was his current girlfriend. They must be serious if she was attending a royal event at his side.

  Or maybe they'd been serious for a while and Maggie hadn’t known it.

  Tirith was also supposed to attend the recognition ceremony for a general who'd served in the Glorvaird service for three decades.

  "She's a little nervous,” Valentin said, “so I thought maybe you'd ride in the limo with us and... talk to her." He gave a shrug that Maggie had seen before when Miles was talking about Scarlett. The one that meant women stuff, as if he were baffled.

  Bea still had her arm tucked through Maggie's and gave her side an unobtrusive nudge. Was that meant to be a tee-hee or a warning?

  Maggie had to fight off that hysterical giggle again. Tirith would likely be great at dispensing advice about handling royal events. She participated often enough.

  Maggie was hanging on to the distraction her cousin and sister presented. Every time she thought about this stupid ribbon cutting, she wanted to throw up. What was she going to tell Valetin's girlfriend that would ease her nerves?

 

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