§ § § - August 8, 1991

Leslie was convinced her head was going to crack wide open. After delivering the pass to the courier, who had then left with the next charter flight, she'd searched the library in Amberville and managed to find fully a dozen rather thick books about Arcolos and its history. Since then both she and Roarke had been poring over them at great length, taking a break only long enough to have their evening meal and then returning to their research. By now it was approaching eleven o'clock.

What she had learned about Arcolos in the course of the last six or seven hours was nearly enough to constitute a college course. Among many other things, she had discovered that Arcolos had in its past been fought over countless times by France and Italy, with Spain and a couple of northern African countries occasionally joining in, before the descendants of the original French and Italian settlers had finally declared their independence and anointed the mayor of the largest town, Santi Arcuros—now the national capital—as their new king. In those days the Divine Right of Kings had been exercised by all the world's monarchs, and the new Arcolosian monarch was no exception. Meantime, the culture had already been well established; the language resembled its current form, and the rainbow gems were discovered within five years of the islanders declaring independence. Once mining operations got underway, it didn't take long before the Arcolosians realized they had an unsurpassable bargaining chip in these rare gems. For several centuries, all it had taken was a threat to remove the rainbow gems from the world market, and other countries had capitulated to Arcolos' demands without further protest.

When Leslie had read that aloud, she'd looked at Roarke and found him looking right back at her with an ironic cast to his expression. "There lies the path to arrogance," he observed dryly, and she'd burst out laughing.

"And it's obviously stuck with them to this very day," she agreed, shaking her head. "I bet that's why they still practice the Divine Right of Kings. That arrogance must've given rise to the idea that they were invincible, and thus entitled to take what they wanted, when they wanted it."

"So it would appear," Roarke concurred. "Very good reasoning. Continue on—you never know what may turn out to be useful."

After that they had read out snippets of information to each other now and then. "All Arcolosian law turns out to be based on tradition," Roarke remarked in surprise at one point. "Whatever traditions were already in place at the time the country declared its independence were written into law. That explains a number of quite peculiar laws I have seen enumerated in this book."

"Such as what, for example?" Leslie asked, looking for an excuse to take a break.

Roarke glanced back over a couple of pages and smiled. "A few cats that came with the first settlers happened to be tailless, like the Manx breed," he said. "For some reason there were none with tails. It grew into a strange tradition that all cats on the island should be tailless, and eventually this was written into law. To this day, cats with tails are not allowed into the country."

"You're right," Leslie said. "Peculiar is the word." They laughed and returned to their research, and silence fell for some time.

Now, just short of eleven o'clock, Roarke suddenly said, "Aha…" and Leslie looked up. "Perhaps this will be significant. According to this anecdote, you are not the first woman in Arcolosian history to successfully refuse the hand of its monarch. In the nineteenth century, King Paolono the Third proposed to the daughter of the monarch of a tiny Scandinavian island country some distance northeast of the Shetland Islands, called Lilla Jordsö by the Swedes who settled it late in the eleventh century."

"Little Earth Island," Leslie translated and grinned. "I did a report on it in ninth grade. I also remember mormor telling me she visited there once as a little girl."

"Indeed," said Roarke and smiled. "At any rate, the king arrived on the island announcing his intent to marry Princess Kristina of Lilla Jordsö; but he had made his plans without doing much, if any, research into the matter. It turned out that the princess was her father's only child; were she to be taken away to become queen of Arcolos, there would be no one to succeed King Johan the Fifth when he passed on."

Leslie thought that over. "Very interesting," she mused, intrigued. "Sounds like a very progressive country for the times, too—putting the princess in line to inherit the throne. In the other Scandinavian countries, succession was always through the male line. So I admit to being impressed."

Roarke didn't reply; his dark eyes had gone unfocused, and he was staring into space. Leslie looked up when the silence stretched and started to speak, but something in his expression stopped her. She waited, wondering, until at last he murmured, "That may be the answer we are seeking."

"I don't understand," Leslie ventured questioningly.

Roarke came back to the here-and-now and said, "I believe we may be onto something here." He set aside the book he had been reading and picked up a thick tome with an aging leather binding; opening this, he checked the contents page and then thumbed carefully through the book till he found what he wanted. Leslie craned her neck and tipped her head almost to one shoulder, trying to read the title on the cover. At last she had to resort to asking Roarke what he was reading.

"Ah, I apologize," he said, glancing up with a quick smile. "This is a bound copy of the constitution of Arcolos. One moment, child, I am acting on a hunch." She brightened with hope at that and set aside her own book, leaning forward and resting her folded arms on the desk, watching avidly and occasionally reading passages upside down.

She had just finished hiding a yawn behind one hand when Roarke nodded. "There is precedent for it," he said. "Stated here, in the very constitution itself, is this passage. 'The monarch of Arcolos may not take to husband or wife the only surviving child of the ruler of another country.' Should that happen, there would be no one of the ruler's line remaining to take the throne, and it would be necessary to undergo tremendous effort toward choosing a successor. Thus Princess Kristina could turn down King Paolono because she was the only surviving child of King Johan."

"Nice of them to have consideration for someone else," Leslie said with some sarcasm.

Roarke chuckled. "I suspect the Arcolosians themselves probably had the experience and felt it wise to add this provision to their constitution. At any rate, Leslie, we may be able to use it in your case."

She sat back and stared at him in perplexity; then, as she processed the idea, her eyes grew wide. "What you're saying, then, is that because I'm your only child, and the sole inheritor of Fantasy Island—which is sovereign in and of itself—Prince Errico might be forbidden to marry me?"

"Exactly," said Roarke, nodding approval.

"There's just one little problem," she pointed out. "You're not King Roarke and I'm not Princess Leslie. Since we aren't royalty, would that law still apply to us?"

"You have a point," Roarke said, considering this, "but it might not present as much of an obstacle as it would seem. The law does not state monarch as such—it merely says ruler. Though we may be stretching the definition slightly, the fact remains that I am owner, lord mayor, and highest authority on the island. That, in effect, would make me the 'ruler' of Fantasy Island: and, as my only surviving child, you would be forbidden to the prince and he would be forced to look elsewhere."

She clasped her hands together, interlacing her fingers, and tucked them under her chin, her eyes bright with hope. "Oh, please, let this work," she breathed.

"We'll find out in the morning," Roarke told her. "I'll send for the prince, and we will present the situation to him. As a member of the royal family, he should be more familiar than most Arcolosians with the laws of his country; so his reaction will tell us all we need to know. Now why don't you go and get some sleep, and we'll face this again tomorrow."