"Your Excellency, I trust you will not find it necessary to use that word again. Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come back tonight, or indeed ever again."

The Duty to My Heart

Chapter One

By It's Hip to Be Hep

It had been weeks since those proud words had echoed from her lips, yet it seemed as though a lifetime had passed; a lifetime of loneliness and melancholy. From the balcony of her palace room, she could see the entire city, the lights reminding her of fireflies dancing without a care. Sometimes, she often wished to be a boundless firefly, able to shimmer and sparkle without worrying about a single thing. Instead, she was kept inside a glass jar for everyone to gaze in, the world only a distorted image through a glass pane. It seemed that only one person had ever seen her without the guise, a man that she had dreamt about every night since her stay in Rome: Joe Bradley.
"Ann, darling! It's quite cold out on that balcony. Come inside, dear. You'll catch your death!" Countess Vereberg's shrill voice called from within Ann's chambers. She was a kind woman, with Ann's best interest at heart, yet she never understood anything real. To her, Ann was still a young girl that needed a nurse maid to dote on her. Ann rolled her eyes, hoping as she ambled back into the palace, that the Countess was not expecting her to actually eat the crackers and milk she constantly brought her.

"Good evening, Countess." Ann greeted cordially as the older woman began to take Ann's fancy hairdo down and prepare her nightgown.

"Highness, you have a meeting with your parents tomorrow morning. I suggest your blue chiffon gown and white heels…" Ann nodded absentmindedly as the Countess rambled on about the following day. In reality, all she could think about was how different her lifestyle was to Joe's. She had a palace room and he had a minuscule apartment without a proper kitchen. She had a schedule that had her chained like a prisoner and he had a job that could take him to any part of the world. As Ann climbed into her enormous bed, she wondered what Joe was doing at that exact moment.

He carefully packed the very last thing left in his office, a small snippet of Princess Ann smiling confidently at the cameraman. He grinned, looking at her photo. It was a picture he had crumbled up several times already in frustration only to smooth it out again in regret. He placed the picture on his heart, trying to control the unbearable pain he had felt since the day she left Rome. He had hoped for a while that she would come back and that he would awake to the sound of her pounding on his apartment door in desperation. But as the weeks went by, he realized that he had let her go almost as if she were a kite and he had let the string loose.

"You have to move on, Joe. You look like crap." Irving had said one night when the bottle of wine he kept hidden in the bathroom cabinet was empty. Joe had nodded in a drunken stupor, knowing even then that he would never truly move on. He would always scour the newspaper for a new picture or article of her, always hear her voice sounding in his thoughts, and always hope to see her face appear among the thousands of strangers that shuffled the streets each day. It was the knowledge that he would always care for her that had driven him to accept the job offer. It wasn't a bad offer, actually much better than the post he had now at the American News Service. But it was in New York City, hundreds of miles away from a life he had built in Rome. A life where Ann would know where to find him when she came back. If she ever came back. It was the best thing for him, to leave all his dreams and hopes behind in Rome and join the rest of the world in leading a realistic life. A life without romance and princesses…a life without her.