Katy jumped up from her bed and ran to her clutch, carelessly tossed onto the nightstand. She stuffed her phone inside of it.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about talking to her cousin at the moment. Cassie had completely overstepped her boundaries in the hallway earlier. How dare she interrupt a private moment before even asking Katy if she needed the help?
Because I didn’t!
“Hold on!” she called out, trying not to sound as angry as she felt. It wasn’t worth getting into yet; her first priority was still finding David. Still, she knew Cassie well enough not to expect her cousin to just give up and let her have the space she needed.
Katy was still in her long, rain-soaked party gown, barely having had time to change after Oliver dropped her off, sadly and quietly, at her stateroom. On the way to the door she almost tripped over her train, now waterlogged and dirty from being dragged out the palace gates.
She opened it flustered, feeling heat in her cheeks. “What is it?”
Cassie furrowed her brow. “Hey. Um. Are you okay? You sound . . . angry.”
Katy shook her head, noticing for the first time that her blonde updo had fallen half-down when her tresses flopped against her head. “Just need some time to myself right now, Cass.”
“And I’m totally willing to give it to you,” her cousin said with a compassionate smile. “But, for just a minute, can I come in?”
Ugh. Knowing Cassie, I can let her in or stand and argue about letting her in for the next five minutes.
Katy opened the door wide and moved out of the way. Cassie was still in her party dress as well—though hers hadn’t suffered the effects of the weather—and their beautiful clothes were a strange reminder of their interrupted evening.
Cassie strolled in slowly, looking around Katy’s room, probably struggling to find the words to begin the conversation.
At least, that was definitely how Katy felt. What was she supposed to say? Thanks for rescuing me from a situation I actually wanted to be in? Thanks for treating me like a wounded bird just like everyone else?
But when Cassie did start talking, Katy was surprised by what she had to say.
“I should’ve seen that coming.”
Cassie still had her back turned to Katy as she went over and closed her stateroom door. Then, slowly, her cousin turned around to face her.
“David being in London, I mean. I should’ve known this is where he’d end up. Since it’s probably the only real home he’s ever had.”
Katy was quiet, unsure how to respond. There were things that she wanted to say, but, in truth, she was afraid how Cassie would respond. So, to begin, she just waited.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to protect you from that, Katy.”
And there it is. Katy sighed and looked away.
She tried to fight off her irritation. She knew that Cassie meant well, and she knew that her cousin had always been the protective type, but she was sick of being treated like a child or a damsel in distress. She was a grown woman with a brain!
She took a deep breath, this time trying not to sound as bothered as she felt. “Cass. I love you. But you shouldn’t have gotten involved earlier. I don’t need constant protection.”
Cassie nodded understandingly. “Of course not, hon. I didn’t mean it like that. But, well . . . you have a soft spot for certain things. Certain men. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Katy raised her eyebrows. What does that mean?
Cassie went on. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Katy. We’ve all been there. I was crazy over Dominic for a long time. You had this same problem with Alexei. But David? He’s just the worst.”
Katy’s heart clenched. She didn’t want to get into this discussion, especially not now. She didn’t want to hear another lecture about how terrible David was and how she had just been a poor, clueless innocent in his evil master plan.
But she also didn’t want Cassie to know that she was planning to go find David as soon as she could get away. She felt stuck.
“He’s manipulating you. Just like always. He sank his claws into your heart six years ago, and I thought that you were finally about to be rid of him. He must’ve seen the engagement news and decided that if he couldn’t have you, no one could. Don’t you see, Katy?”
Katy tried to keep her voice level. “Cass, I know how you feel. I get it. I know you’re just looking out for me. But you don’t know him like I do.” She looked intently at her cousin as she spoke, hoping to convey that she wasn’t making decisions or judgments out of emotion. She was speaking logically.
“Do you know him better than a judge or lawyer, Katy? Do you know him like you knew Al?” Cassie replied, her voice high-pitched. She shook her head. “Hon, I’m not trying to be mean here, but come on.”
Katy breathed out and really contemplated her cousin’s words. It made sense, in a way that Katy was used to hearing. She had definitely been wrong before, after all. And David had been tried and convicted in an unbiased court of law. What if Cassie was right? What if David was every terrible thing that people claimed, and he was just showing up now to ruin things for Katy?
But what is there to ruin, really? A loveless engagement? A hopeless future? Seeing David again, with his new facial hair and his glasses and his tall, sexy figure, had felt like waking up out of a bad dream that had lasted five long years. First she hadn’t believed it was real. And then, slowly, she’d seen a chance to really find out for herself what had happened with him. And it had seemed he wanted the same thing.
Katy just couldn’t resign herself to accepting that he was the person everyone claimed he was. It didn’t feel right to her. With Al, she’d finally seen the light. She’d been able to look back at how flippant he’d been, how he’d always talked down to her and tried to push past her boundaries, and see how he’d been playing with her heart. She’d seen reasons that she had been willing to accept his behavior at the time, young as she had been. She’d been able to accept that she had been wrong about him. But if David was just like Alexei, then where was the evidence? Why had she never come to that same conclusion?
Why did she still have so many feelings for him?
Katy simply couldn’t shake the feeling that her cousin had it all wrong.
When Katy didn’t respond to her accusation, Cassie stepped forward and took one of her hands. Perhaps Cassie took her silence as agreement. And for the moment, Katy was okay with that.
“You have a good thing going,” Cassie said. “Oliver loves you. He has waited years just to be with you. And he’d wait a lifetime more if you needed it.”
“I know,” Katy replied honestly. She didn’t, couldn’t say that she knew all too well. It was a horribly painful subject. If Cassie was trying to make her feel better, she was managing the opposite.
“His parents are wonderful. And your parents love him. He’ll make an amazing king, and you’ll be right there beside him as a beautiful, benevolent queen.”
Cassie paused to squeeze her cousin’s hand. But Katy was already bracing herself for what she knew was coming next.
“You just have to finally cast David off, hon. You have to do it for everyone, from your parents to your people.”
Katy took a deep breath. She’d heard that a million times. It may have been true, for all Katy knew, but it was certainly an overused argument, and she was tired of hearing it repeated by people who never seemed to want to listen to her side of the discussion.
“Mostly, though,” Cassie began again. But rather than finishing what she had to say, she paused.
In the silence, Katy looked up and over at her cousin. Cassie gave her hand another tight, supportive squeeze, and then she went on.
“Mostly you need to do it for yourself. So you can find true love, Katy.”
Katy squeezed her cousin’s hand in return. She appreciated the concern. But this time, she hadn’t been swayed. She still felt every bit as resolved to hear David’s side of the story, now that she finally had a chance.
Sh
e just needed to get away from everyone who was trying to protect her, and find him.
23
David
The rush of adrenaline immediately after the engagement party had prevented David from fully feeling the range of his injuries. But by the next morning, the pain had fully set in.
David awoke with a groan and rolled over delicately to prevent putting pressure on his bruised ribs. His lip was crusted over with dried blood. The tux, which he had slept in, was in absolute tatters. One of his eyes felt hot and swollen from his encounter with the palace floor, though luckily it hadn’t closed up entirely. And as David slowly sat up, he realized that his ankle was still terribly tender. He thought about wrapping it, but when he tested it against the cardboard floor of his shelter, he was relieved to find that it could now support at least some weight.
For what it was worth.
David’s back hurt, too. But he didn’t think that was because of the altercation at the palace.
Sleep on a plush mattress for just a few nights and suddenly I can’t handle the asphalt any longer.
David tried to push himself up to a squatting position, his normal contorted method of getting out of his shelter, but a nerve in his ankle shot pain up his leg to his hip. He decided not to push it too far. And so, without even an ounce of embarrassment, he rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled out of his pathetic home into the overcast morning.
“There’s our little streetfighter!” Mick announced immediately. He was clutching a rust-colored mug in his hand and drinking something that looked like coffee but was undoubtedly infused with something more suited for evenings.
“Have you been waiting for me out here?” David asked, pressing his hands against the asphalt and pushing. He tried to stand on his own but groaned in pain, sending Mick over quickly to assist.
“Not just waiting!” his friend said with his normal excessive cheer. “I been checking on ya through the night, too. Make sure you ain’t swallow your tongue after that beating you got.”
“Wouldn’t call it a beating as much of a piling and then a tossing, but sure,” David grumbled as Mick took his shoulder and helped him up. He tested his sore ankle again. So far, so good. Maybe he’d be limping, but he’d be able to walk on his own today.
But where do you plan on walking to, mate?
“Has Mia been around the camp at all?” David asked. It was hard to feel too hopeful after the events from the night before, and Mia hadn’t sounded too enthusiastic about their prospects after David got kicked out of his hotel room. Still, he was determined.
Mick shook his head, leaning back against David’s unstable shelter. The waterlogged cardboard buckled under his weight. “Nah, ain’t seen ‘er. But I did see you this morning.”
“Yeah, didn’t swallow my tongue due to your medically trained eye through the night,” David replied sarcastically. “Appreciate it.” And he really did.
“Not what I meant, lad.”
David sent Mick a look of equal parts confusion and worry, but his fears were soon confirmed as Tina sauntered up to join them.
“Oh, David! Saw that walloping on the telly in the coffee joint. You all right?”
She wasn’t alone, either. “Yeah, we heard your name about a hundred times on the walk back to camp. You’se a straight celebrity now,” fidgety Charles added, scratching at the back of his neck.
Oh, no.
David shot back into his shelter, accidentally putting too much strain on his ankle. He winced but kept moving. He needed to get out of his ripped and dirt-streaked tuxedo and into some of his street clothes. He moved frantically, knocking against the ceiling and sides of his refrigerator box.
Much as he didn’t want to, he had to get to a place with a television or a computer and find out the damage.
Mick seemed to catch on to the plan from outside David’s shaking cardboard home.
“Don’t do that to yourself, David. You know the kind of gossip and ‘earsay. Not even real journalism, it ain’t!”
But Mick didn’t get it. Whatever David was about to see was what Katy was currently looking at, too. It was the propaganda that Cassie and Katy’s parents were definitely using against him.
He needed to be informed.
David half-tied his brown Oxfords and shot back out of the shanty home in a rush. He jogged with a limp away from Mick and the rest of the gang, with only his phone and a few dollars for coffee in his pocket. But he made sure to grab a hat and sunglasses, just in case.
* * *
“. . . interrupted the royal engagement party and was promptly removed by security. It appears that he was able to fool a catering company with falsified documents. Scotland Yard is now investigating . . .”
David was suddenly very glad about his cheap disguise. There was a small crowd of people in the coffee shop he frequented, gathered around the television, watching a news story about him.
And it wasn’t exactly flattering.
David took his coffee from the counter and went to stand in a corner and peer at the screen through his dark sunglasses. He probably looked ridiculous, but he didn’t care—at least being amongst the crowd he was less likely to stand out. Watching the grainy footage and the photographs people had snapped on their phones and sent to the news, he realized that the trim beard he’d developed for Calder Rhines was now an identifying characteristic. He’d probably need to shave again.
Going to shave with a rusty trashcan razor, are we? All the money’s gone! And how could he ask Mia for more when he had no plans? He’d felt bad enough about taking her money before, when he’d been actively helping her get justice, not just for him and Katy, but for herself. Even if he couldn’t pay her back anytime soon, he’d at least felt that he was assisting her in some way.
David took a nervous sip from his coffee cup without taking his eyes off the screen. The reporter was now discussing the claims of an anonymous witness: a young man on the palace staff.
“Our source says that he believes David Rosen may have been intoxicated. He ambushed and cornered Princess Katerina de Courtes of Lorria when she was alone and vulnerable. Our source claims that his demeanor was menacing, and it looked like he was trying to intimidate the princess.”
David felt his blood run cold, then a familiar anger from his prison days slowly burning in his stomach at the injustice of it all.
Sure sounds like this “palace staffer” is on Cassie’s payroll. None of the things he was claiming were true. They couldn’t be further from the truth! David could never even bring himself to raise his voice to Katy, much less attempt to menace her.
He just wanted her to know the truth. And now he was going to be lambasted all over again for it.
“. . . the palace had this to say about the security breach: ‘We are taking the utmost caution moving forward by implementing new security measures and assigning personal guards to the Lorrellian princess. We commend our palace security guards for their quick thinking and bravery . . .’”
David choked down the rest of the hot coffee. He couldn’t be in the shop and hear the mostly false news about him any longer. And now that he knew about Katy’s new personal guard (which, if he knew Katy at all, she already hated), he had a lot of planning to do anyway.
He wasn’t giving up.
He ducked out of the coffee shop with his head down and managed to avoid any confrontation or recognition. But for how long? Everyone in the camp knew his real name and his story. Someone, not one of his close friends, but one of the seedier faces in the old car park, would eventually sell him out to get enough money for some creature comforts. Knowing what he knew about homeless life, David couldn’t even blame them. But it was definitely going to make life harder for a while.
On the way back to camp, David’s phone began to buzz. It was Mia. He quickly answered.
“Mia, I . . .”
“Señor. Let me speak, por favor.”
David shut up immediately. He hadn’t even been sure what to say to beg
in with, but Mia obviously had something important to impart.
“I need to return home. The princess won’t be telling anyone of my involvement. But Cassandra has figured it out, and I need to leave before she retaliates.”
David hung silently on Mia’s words, fearing the worst.
“I can leave you with some money to get you through the next few months, but that’s it for now.”
“Months? Mia.” David’s shoulders sank, his walk from the coffee shop slowing to a crawl. “Are you saying we’re done here? That’s it? How can . . .”
Mia interrupted again, her voice urgent but still slightly comforting. “I’m not saying that, Señor. What I am saying is that we need to lay low for a while. Our false documents are a criminal liability. You could be arrested, David. And you’re being publicly vilified, so security measures will be tighter. It’s not a good time to continue. I have no doubt in my mind that this is mostly Cassandra’s doing.”
“But, wait. About the documents and the police. How do you know Katy won’t talk?”
It seemed that, with whatever dirt Cassie had on her, Mia would be just as much on the hook as David was, if and when Katy mentioned to someone that Mia had coordinated the meeting in the palace.
“I spoke to Katerina, Señor.”
David’s eyes widened. “And?”
“And,” Mia said softly, slowly, “I’ve done all I could do. I admitted that I think she needs to talk to you personally. That you have some things to tell her.”
“But why didn’t you just tell her yourself? You had her on the phone!”
Even as the words left his mouth, David immediately regretted them. I was right in front of her, and I couldn’t just shout out, “Hey, your parents and cousin are evil,” so how can I hold anything against Mia?
But Mia didn’t sound offended.
“I have every reason to believe that Katerina’s communications are being overheard. I would risk my career and even my personal safety by doing anything more than I have already done.”
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