“On leave?” I clarified. “From palace security? Since when? You didn’t tell me this before.”
He shrugged. “You’re not the only one who can keep secrets.”
I put my fingers on the window as the fields and houses of Drieden flashed by. How long had it been since I’d seen my native land? The last time I’d driven this route I was on my way out of the country, catching a plane to meet Stavros, tears streaming down my face.
“I don’t have so many secrets,” I sighed. “All I did was fail to give the world a change of address card after Stavros died.” And a few other things. But really, in the grand scheme of things, my secrets were few. Ish.
When Hugh didn’t reply, I turned to him. “But you found me. In Varenna. I wasn’t such a good secret-keeper after all.”
His face was still and serious. “I didn’t find you.”
“Right.” I leaned back into the seat, closed my eyes, embarrassed again that I had inferred that Hugh had cared for me at all, or had bothered himself with a search for me. “That’s right. You were just following Christian, who supposedly stumbled into my path.”
Hugh’s eyes flicked toward the soundproof glass between us and the driver then back at me. “I still don’t feel like you are taking this seriously.”
If he only knew.
Hugh’s jaw flinched. “I tried to find you.”
I felt frozen. “When?”
“A few weeks after the funeral, when no one had seen or heard from you.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Whatever accounts you set up, your holding corporations, they worked. I couldn’t get through. I couldn’t trace your steps.”
A lovely liquid warmth starting melting my ice. He had looked for me.
“So when I tell you again that Christian had the ability to find you and I did not, please get it into your head that this means that Christian Fraser-Campbell has the contacts and a network to uncover more than I, a member of the Driedish national police with the full authority of the Royal family, do.”
My lovely warmth curdled in my stomach. “Oh.”
“He has friends in high places. If he found you in Varenna, he can certainly find you at the Hotel Ilysium.”
“Fine,” I said dismissively, because wasn’t that the whole point of me coming back here? To lure Christian in? To find who his friends in high places were? “If he finds me in my suite, it’ll make it that much easier for you catch him. You could always stay with me.” I smiled guilelessly. “Unless you don’t think you’re up for the job.”
A glint of gold flashed in his eyes. “I think I could handle the challenge, my lady.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hugh disappeared almost as soon as I had dropped my few belongings in my suite. The hotel was used to royal and celebrity visitors and I had forgotten that there was a central location where security personnel could monitor the comings and goings of their clients without being too intrusive in their rooms.
So that was how it was going to be, then. He was going to stay close enough to keep an eye on me but not close enough to hold a conversation or do anything else.
I still wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do with the man. Hitting him and throwing him out of my life still seemed a viable option. But then I would remember the sparks we made on that burgundy couch in Switzerland and I would shiver.
Go.
Yeah.
Remember what happened last time.
I fell into a mad, passionate affair with Stavros, and that had ended in literal flames. No mere man could survive my reputation at this point. Hell, the best way for me to punish Christian would probably be to start a relationship with him. Right in public, where everyone could see. Then he would…
No, I’d learned my lesson. Any relationships from this point on would be strictly physical, with firm rules and guidelines. Nothing passionate. Certainly nothing public.
And…?
I pushed the thought away as the hotel manager greeted me. He was glad to have another member of the royal family staying with them, he told me.
After I made a quick call to my former personal shopper in the city (I was getting tired of the same jeans and sweater) I made a call on the other relative on the top floor of the Hotel Ilysium.
“Hello, Mother.”
She hadn’t aged a day in the last fifteen years, thanks to the best surgeons and dermatologists in the world. Her blonde curls framed her face in an artfully youthful way, her clothes were feminine and sporty. My mother, Felice, the Duchess of Montaget, everyone.
She lit up. But she always lit up. “Indefatigably perky,” a news reporter once called her. “Caroline! My angel!” She reached for me, pulled me into her thin embrace. “My doll, just look at you.” Her fingers smushed my cheeks. “You’ve gained…no. Lost weight. No.” She cocked her head. “Have you stayed the same? After all the soap opera of the past year?” She tutted. “To stay in such control, in the face of heartache and drama! Oh, don’t tell me, are you your father’s daughter after all?” Her laugh tinkled through the air like the chinking of champagne flutes. The idea clearly seemed ridiculous, that I might exhibit characteristics of my paternal DNA, rather than my maternal genes.
“How are you, Mother?” I asked, partially to distract her, partially because I truly wanted to know. We hadn’t seen each other since Thea’s aborted wedding weekend and we all knew how insane that had been, trying to put the right faces on in the middle of a royal crisis.
Felice rolled her eyes. “Wonderful, naturally. Everything is simply divine. I was at the Beyoncé concert in The Hague last week.”
“You were?” I asked politely, even though of course she was.
Her fingers brushed my arm. “Backstage with old Tommy. You know what fun that can be.”
I had no idea who old Tommy was.
“And then the afterparty.” Her tinkling laugh again. “You’ll never guess who we ran into.”
“Beyoncé?” I asked.
“No.”
“Elton John?”
“My God, no. Caroline, do be serious. Why on earth would I tell you a story about Sir Elton in the Hague?”
Right. Silly, silly me. “Who did you run into?” I asked patiently.
“Henry!” She half screamed with delight. “Didn’t you know?” I shook my head. I hadn’t spoken to my twin brother since my elopement, either. He had offered to fly to Monaco and walk me down the aisle. I declined because I hadn’t wanted him to also incur the wrath of our Queen. One of us was enough.
Felice continued, “Oh my, I had never felt so old. My own son, at the Beyoncé afterparty, with a pretty little thing on his arm. A barely dressed American actress, I believe, but is there any other kind? I swear, they’re crossing the Atlantic in droves, all of them, hunting for a prince to marry. He looked dashing, of course, my sweet boy, and no one could believe I was his mother.” She lifted a self-conscious hand to her right cheek, as if testing its youthful elasticity.
“And now here we are,” she said as she grabbed my hands again. “Both shacked up in the Ilysium, royal outcasts like us. Two single, gorgeous women who know a thing or two, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know about that…” I murmured. Outcast? Check. Single? Check. Gorgeous? I held my own, that was for sure. But a woman who knew a thing or two? I was currently feeling quite hopeless in that arena.
“Champagne!” My mother exclaimed as she picked up a leather-bound folder from the nearby desk and extracted the room service menu. “Why don’t we have champagne? Darling, where is that assistant of yours? We must have champagne and something else…what decadence are you craving for our reunion?”
“I’m fine, really. And I don’t have an assistant.”
Felice’s head snapped my way. “Caroline, what happened? Did she try to steal your jewelry?”
“Oh God.” The room service menu fluttered to the floor, as elegant and dramatic as my exhaustingly sophisticated mother. “My dove! I had forgotten you were still mourning your husband.” She placed a hand to her breast. I counted an at least five-carat gemstone twinkling on every finger. “Your poor, sweet broken heart. Oh, how I understood you. It was truly inspiring to see how you disappeared, only to remerge when you were ready to take on the world again. Like a gilded rainbow butterfly.” She nodded wisely. “I did the same thing after I left your father.”
“You ran off with your horse trainer, Mother.”
“Exactly. I needed to find myself. Rediscover who I was as a woman, if you know what I mean.”
I bit my lip and looked up at the ceiling. It was at times like this that I felt a bit more religious than usual, praying for intercession or a timely strike of lightning to save me from further parental awkwardness.
“But you have it so much better,” Felice assured me. “You’re still young, you’ll be able to start over, unfettered by children.”
Ouch. Either Mother noticed the look on my face or realized the carelessness of her words. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t,” I said quickly, before she stuck her foot any deeper in her mouth. “It’s fine. I mean, the children, they weren’t meant to be.”
“Caroline.”
I recognized that tone. My mother might play the part of aristocratic showgirl to perfection, but she was quite capable of being solemn and businesslike if she wanted. “Are you quite all right? Medically speaking?”
Felice looked serious, which was really saying something. “I had a few…complications after you and Henry were born.” She let out a small, bitter laugh. “Consider yourself lucky. When you’re bearing possible future heirs to the throne, they examine every square inch of you to determine if you’re fit to bear another child. Ridiculous. Like they think they own your uterus.”
The idea of it made me sad for my mother. No woman should be treated like a broodmare. “But you had Sophie,” I pointed out, and I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of how adorable my little red-headed sister had been as a child.
“Yes. Sophia. My baby. My little miracle.” My mother lit up again, as bright as the fireworks on Queen Elsa-Marie’s birthday night. Whatever her faults as a mother, I had never doubted that she adored all of us. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to be faithful to our father, maybe she hadn’t wanted to attend school functions and spend week nights with us, but she loved us in her quintessential Felice way.
She reached down for the room service menu. “Now. Champagne. Two bottles, I think, because I have so much to tell you about. Old Tommy had the most interesting gossip about a certain Singaporean country club and one so-called Manhattan billionaire—you’ll die when you hear it.”
I returned to my suite several hours later, exhausted but also, somehow, rejuvenated. Being around my mother had that strange effect on me, as I could see the parts of her that I wanted to emulate…and the parts that I wanted to ensure I never did.
The lights came on automatically, at a low level, which was a nice touch at a hotel of this caliber. Therefore, I wasn’t completely terrified when I saw a woman sitting in the middle of my king-sized bed.
She looked at her watch. “Where have you been?” my elder sister asked.
I looked around for something to throw. “I am getting really sick of people letting themselves into my rooms!”
“Who else comes into your rooms?” Thea asked, understandably concerned.
I sighed loudly, also understandably. “How did you get in here? Five-star hotel penthouses should be difficult to get access to,” I grumbled.
Thea gave me an arch look. “I’m Princess Theodora. You’re family.” She shrugged, as if it was a foregone conclusion.
Of course. “Here in Drieden City you can probably leave and enter every building at your whim. You have a whole country at your disposal,” I said, only slightly sarcastically. This was the twenty-first century. Princesses didn’t automatically get everything they wanted, after all.
I was proof of that.
“Where were you?” Thea asked again.
I decided that I might as well tell her. Or else she’d dangle a hundred euros at a hotel clerk to have him access security footage for her. “I was in Mother’s room.”
I’m not going to lie, it felt good to tell something Thea that she didn’t know. “Mother is here? Our mother? The Felice?”
“Her Grace Felice Sevine-Laurent, the Duchess of Montaget and formerly Her Royal Highness Princess Felice,” I replied, letting all those titles and noble names roll of my tongue as easily as a strand of pearls slipping through my fingers.
Thea still looked alarmed. “Why is she here?”
Now I shrugged. “You’re the royal with unlimited access to information. Why don’t you tell me?”
She slipped a very modern-looking cell phone out of the pocket of her trousers and looked at it thoughtfully before putting it back. “I came here to talk to you,” she said bluntly. “I’ll deal with Mother later.”
“You came down from the palace to talk to a commoner in a hotel room?” I feigned an expression of shock. “You do remember your position, right? A princess does not go to the people, the people go to you.”
Thea’s shoulders sagged and she looked at me as if she’d had about enough of my attitude. “Is that what this is all about? Your title?”
“My what? No!” I objected automatically but couldn’t help but notice the unease that had crept into my stomach. It was the same feeling I had experienced at Grandmama’s convent in Switzerland. I was inexplicably angry at Thea. I was inexplicably uncomfortable with her, as well.
She swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood, hands on her hips. “You can have it back. I’ll make you a princess again.”
“Ha!” The nerve of her! “You? You’re not Queen yet, Thea.” I held up my hands. “Oh, sorry. Your Royal Highness. No, I took all the same regal lessons as you, and I certainly remember that you’ve got a queen and a crown prince to go through before you have the power to reinstate my titles again.” The spiky prickles of anger rose up my spine, across my shoulders. Anger that came out of nowhere.
Right?
“You’re mad at me,” Thea said.
“No.” LIAR.
“You should be mad,” she said evenly. “You were treated horribly.”
“It’s fine.” LIAR.
“Gran shouldn’t have disowned you. You were just trying to find happiness.” She stopped, stilted; tears shone in her eyes. “I wanted you to find that. Even if it meant that you left all of this—all of us—behind.” She shook her head. “It’s all so fucking sick and stupid. But please, Caroline, you were happy, right?”
I paused. “Yes.” Mostly. But I would never admit to being otherwise. Because then, what was it all for?
Thea must have suspected the truth. Because while she smiled slightly, a polite princess smile, her eyes stayed sad and cautious. A bubble of silence grew between us until she finally pricked it like the well-mannered royal she was.
“A lot has happened since my wedding day.” She seemed to pick her words as carefully as plucking a needle through a piece of linen. “There’s a lot that you probably need to know.”
“I don’t want to know,” I said automatically, raising my hands. “And technically, I’m not even part of the family anymore. Perhaps I don’t have the clearance to know.”
Thea gave me an oh-please look. “You’ll always be part of the family.”
“Not according to Big Gran,” I couldn’t help but point out. “You can minimize it all you want, but we both know that my lack of a title remains a Big Fuckin
g Deal.”
“That’s part of what we need to talk about. A lot of things that were a BFD are not anymore. A lot has changed in the past year. For me, for Big Gran…and I suspect for you, too.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, alarmed at what she might suspect. There was no way she could know what I was planning…was there?
She nodded a little at something behind me then met my eyes with a gotcha sisterly stare. I knew what the issue was before I turned around.
I just didn’t expect Hugh to be dangling my hotel room key from his finger quite so distractingly.
But she recovered with the grace that only a princess could demonstrate. “Good. Now I can invite you both.”
“Where?”
“To Perpetua.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Perpetua? I shivered. “Why in the world would you have to go back there? Did you do something wrong?”
Thea gave me a quizzical smile. “Sort of. Maybe.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Come with me,” she said suddenly, clutching my hand. “We have so much to catch up on. And there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“On Perpetua? The drafty royal residence on an island in the North Sea that we’re only sent to when Big Gran wants to get us away from civilized society?”
Thea nodded.
“Anyone you want me to meet on Perpetua is probably a hundred years old or the biggest son of a bitch Drieden has ever seen.”
“You’re half right,” she said, with another mysterious smile.
As the helicopter landed on the island, I could tell there had been recent activity on the grounds. The lawn looked a tad less windswept and barren and perhaps a coat of paint had been applied. It was hard to say for sure when everything was a bleak granite color, even the sky. And the water. And the freezing sheet of rain that pelted us as we ran toward the door.
When we were inside the old building, I shivered and pulled my down jacket around me. It had been cold in Drieden City—it was February, so of course it was cold. But here, with no trees or wind breaks or sunshine, it was devastatingly frigid.
The Royal Bodyguard Page 15