“Wasn’t this a convent as well?” I asked, trying to remember the history of the place as I followed Thea through the corridors. “Like Grandmama’s?”
Thea laughed. It bounced in between the walls but if I wasn’t mistaken, she also seemed…happier? Lighter? Here on this rock? Strange. “Yes, now that I think about it. So many convents around Europe, hundreds of years ago. All built in order to give women some meaning to their life.”
“And to lock them away, control their sexuality and force them into unpaid labor for the rest of their lives.”
Thea paused and gave me a wry look over her shoulder. “That hits a bit close to home, mmm?”
Mmph. Was the best response I could come up with. I had never drawn those connections before, between modern palaces and medieval cloisters, but Thea was right. It was a bit close to home. Too close.
“Anyway, welcome to Perpetua,” she said sunnily as she punched a code into a security box by a reinforced steel door. “The new and improved twenty-first-century version.” The door swung open and we stepped into what seemed like a large glass box. Sleek aluminum bars and ancient weathered beams framed skylights and a panoramic view of the dark, cold ocean. But what had just minutes before seemed gloomy and threatening from the helicopter now seemed exciting and mysterious. The clouds of anthracite and silver swirled, blanketing inky, restless waves. In the far distance one could just make out the skeletal silhouettes of oil platforms and ships skating across the horizon.
Once I tore my eyes away from the spectacular oceanscape I started noticing that things were, indeed, very different from the last time I had been sentenced to Perpetua. Several people sat around at desks, quietly doing…desk-type things on computers. What they would be doing here, I had no idea. Two men with more military bearing stood in a corner. One was the blond buzz-cut type I regularly associated with Driedish police or military, but the other man was dark and scowling, with a face that looked like it had gone a round or two in a dark alley filled with pissed-off wolverines. And I didn’t doubt that this man had left them all in his dust.
He looked up, over at us, and his posture subtly changed. His shoulders went back, his chin lowered in acknowledgment of my sister. And my sister…oh. Wow.
She absolutely transformed. More than lighting up, she seemed to blossom with a sensuous, powerful energy that made me want to look away.
Because ew. That was my sister.
And that man was clearly her lover.
The man murmured something to the officer he was talking to and quickly made his way over to us. They didn’t touch. They didn’t need to. Even I could feel the magnet that drew them together, something stronger than any brush of skin or mere handshake.
“Caroline, I’m pleased to introduce you to Nicholas,” Thea said.
“So proper,” he said, with an accent that I didn’t immediately place, but it made Thea blush.
“Nick,” she amended. “And Nick, this is my sister. Caroline.”
“Pleased to meet you, Caroline. Thea speaks of you often.” He extended a hand to me and of course I shook it, even as my latent princess brain was noting the lack of formality in this exchange. There was no “Your Highness.” He didn’t even bow his head—at me or my sister. And he called her Thea, something that only her closest friends and family did.
And then, only after my brain had finished categorizing all the evidence that this man was clearly intimate with my sister, did I realize something else vitally important.
“You’re Scottish?”
“I am,” Nick answered shortly, but there was a very slight wary energy that popped up in both his and Thea’s expressions.
“Interesting,” I said. “Seems like your compatriots are taking over the world. Everywhere I go, I run into a Scotsman.”
Thea and Nick now exchanged a meaning-filled glance. “I haven’t told her,” Thea replied to his unsaid question.
“Would you like me to?” Nick asked.
“Tell me what?” I let out a half-laugh. “This sounds so dire. Are we at war with Scotland suddenly?” It was a joke, but neither Thea nor Nick laughed along with me.
“War is a very interesting way of putting it,” came a familiar voice behind me.
I jumped, spun and snapped at Hugh, “Would you stop sneaking up on me?”
Thea, ever the proper one, was the one who suggested we retire to a conference room, which seemed like it had been decorated by newlyweds, each intent on bringing their own hobbies and interests to their first home.
A framed football poster squared off with a signed treaty from some Driedish war (a reproduction, possibly, or not, knowing the way my sister could sweet-talk the old timers at the national archives). Black leather couches were in a circle around a flatscreen TV at one end of the room and a mahogany dining table surrounded by six Lucite chairs was at the other end.
But it wasn’t the decor that surprised me, it was that, once again, none of this had been on Perpetua the last time I’d been here.
“What is going on here?” I asked Thea, aware that she’d not only allowed Hugh and this Nick person to enter the room with us but that they seemed completely at home here.
“I don’t know where to start.” She frowned at a small pad of paper on the table. Moved it three inches. “You heard about Christian’s suicide.”
Hugh met my eyes across the room. His brows lifted in a silent question. Somehow, I knew what he was thinking. Time to tell your sister about Christian?
“Yes,” I told Thea. “I was devastated to hear the news.”
Nick coughed, a dry, harmless sound, but by the way Thea looked at him I suddenly felt like the two of them also had their own secret language. Hugh looking at me. Me looking at him. Thea and Nick practically blinking in Morse code…
“This is ridiculous,” I broke out. “We’re in some sort of secure room, I think we can all stop speaking in code and say what needs to be said.”
Nick barked a laugh and Thea broke into a relieved smile. “There you are. My blunt sister. Always trying to fix things for people.”
“You think I’m blunt?”
“Straightforward,” Hugh interjected. Thea turned and gave him an appraising glance.
“Exactly so, Hugh.”
“Well, let’s be straightforward, then,” I said, wondering whether being blunt, or straightforward, was a character asset or defect. I turned to Nick. “Who are you, and what are you to my sister?”
Nick’s warm eyes didn’t seek out my sister’s this time. “My name is Nicholas Fraser-Campbell. And I’m the man who’s devoted to your sister.”
At that declaration, my heart melted like a chocolate ice cream on a July afternoon. And then I realized…“Your name. You aren’t…”
Nick’s lip curled. “Yes. He’s my younger brother.”
“Your—” I broke off as I considered all the consequences. “Well, that will make it awkward at your next wedding.”
This time it was Hugh who laughed inappropriately, while Thea and Nick had the grace to blush and stammer. “I guess you two haven’t quite made it that far,” I said, trying to salvage the moment.
“I suppose from that statement that you know that Christian isn’t dead?” Thea asked delicately.
“She knows,” Hugh said. “Because he showed up on her doorstep. In Varenna.”
“The fuck?” Nick growled, taking a step forward—to where, I had no idea. Thea put a hand on his arm.
“Why didn’t you immediately let me know?” she asked Hugh.
He crossed his arms. “I was busy.”
“Since you don’t have him on a rope behind you, I guess you couldn’t get your hands on him.”
Hugh let Nick’s insinuations roll off without a reaction.
“It was because of me,” I said. “Hugh didn’t capture Christian because of me.”
&nb
sp; Hugh’s head was already shaking vehemently. “No—”
But my sister had already turned her attention to me. “Did he hurt you? What happened?” She had her hands on my shoulders, her eyes roaming over me, looking for some kind of injury.
“I’m fine. It’s my house that got firebombed.”
Thea gasped. “My God. Before or after Hugh was shot?”
“What the hell happened in Italy?” Nick asked.
“It’s a long story,” I began. “But I had the most perfect view of Lake Como from my veranda.”
The story started and ended with a Scotsman.
“What about this Sergei fellow?”
Nick looked over at Hugh. “Have we checked with the local authorities? Did they pick him up when they were alerted to the fire at the villa?”
This was new. I hadn’t even thought about whether Sergei was in custody somewhere in a small Tuscan village.
Hugh shook his head. “They didn’t find him. Either he slipped my knots or he got out with help.”
“Maybe it was Christian,” I said. “Maybe he’d been close all along.”
Thea frowned at me. “What makes you think that?”
I fumbled. I hadn’t told anyone about the cell phone Sergei had given me, and I certainly didn’t plan to. Not yet.
“His emails. I’ll give them to you. He made it sound like he was going to meet us at Mother’s house.”
Thea looked at Nick then. “We should talk to Sybil about the Italian police records.”
Oh, no. “Sybil?” I asked warily. “Not…our Sybil?”
Hugh frowned, and Nick looked amused. “Let me guess. You have a complicated relationship with the fortune teller.”
“She’s not—” Thea started to say, but I interrupted her.
As a matter of fact, I had a very complicated relationship with the psychic/tarot reader who used to serve all of the ladies in the court, but I didn’t want to get into those details right now. Besides, it was ancient history. And private. But still I had to make sure. “That Sybil? She’s here?” My voice raised. “What the hell kind of place are you running here, Thea?”
“She knows more about this country than anyone,” Thea informed me. I noticed that she sidestepped answering my question directly. “And she, like everyone else, is a valuable part of this team. Right?”
“Fine,” Nick said reluctantly.
“Sure.” Hugh grunted.
“See? Everyone is going to work together,” Thea said pointedly to the men. She picked up a phone on the conference table, punched a few keys and gave an order to someone. After she had hung up, she told Hugh and Nick that they were expected in the lab. “They have the Italian inspector’s number as well. You’ll be able to speak with him directly.”
Nick nodded, and his hand and Thea’s brushed as he walked to the door. Hugh stopped and spoke to me before he left. “You’re okay here?” he asked me.
“For heaven’s sake,” Thea sighed. “She’s with me. Behind a security system you designed. On an island!”
Hugh didn’t respond, but the heat behind his hazel eyes made me think that there was nowhere that I would be safe from him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
One of Thea’s upgrades to the facilities on Perpetua had been a steam room, powered by the thermal springs that bubbled up in a cavern under the island.
We were sitting there, enjoying the heat and smell of menthol and eucalyptus, as she described how she had discovered the cavern. “I found it when I was running on the beach. The tide was low, and there was this opening between the rocks. It’s really amazing down there. A hundred feet high, all carved out rock and mineral water.”
I blotted my face with a cool towel that smelled of peppermint and faced my older sister. “Thea, that’s fascinating, but what the actual fuck is going on here?” I asked in the most reasonable tone I could muster.
“What do you mean?” She tried to avoid my eyes, but I knew her better than almost anyone.
“The upgrades to the island, the fact that you and Nick seem to live here at least half of the time, and that the dining room feels like a mess hall and you’re talking about police and technology like you’re running Interpol from your bedroom.”
She bowed her head and took a moment. Finally, she spoke with confidence. “I’m going to be Queen.”
“Oh, okay. Is this a newsflash to you?” After all, she was the eldest child of the eldest child of the Queen. This wasn’t exactly a complicated math problem.
“This year, I’ll be Queen,” she replied.
Now that did throw me. “What do you mean? This year? Is Gran sick?” Of course, my brain immediately jumped to the death of my grandmother. That’s how sick this monarchy business could make you. One only gets a promotion if someone dies. It’s like something out of a dystopian young-adult novel.
“No,” she reassured me. “And it’s quite a long story but, due to some political pressures, Gran has decided to step down and name me the heir.”
“Skipping Father?” Our sweet but absent father was never cut out to be king. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be ignored, I didn’t think.
“It’s for the best.”
Her confidence in that fact was surprising. Not that Thea was an unconfident person. She was a self-assured, intelligent woman. But she also took the monarchy very seriously, always had. Perhaps long stories and political pressures had convinced her the line of succession needed to be altered, but I didn’t need to be convinced. After all, I wasn’t a part of the family anymore, which is what I said, in the most factual and diplomatic of ways. That she could assure me so resolutely that a sudden shift in monarch was in the best interests of the country said a lot about whatever “political pressures” our country had faced in the last year.
Political pressures that were so intense no whiff of them made the newspapers that I regularly reviewed.
Obviously, something had gone down behind the scenes, which pushed all my native curiosity buttons. My fingers actually moved, like they wanted to type. I wanted to know, but Thea wasn’t being forthcoming.
Just like me.
“And do the rest of our family know about your imminent rise to the throne?” I asked lightly, as if the answer didn’t matter to me.
As if the answer wouldn’t hurt when I found out that I was the only person in the family who hadn’t been told this important news.
Thea shook her head, though. “Gran and I will make the announcement soon—to family first, then the government. It’s perfect, actually,” she said, brightening. “Now that you’re back. We’ll all be together again, a united family.”
A mix of emotions rumbled through me. A selfish pleasure that I knew this secret before my brother and sister. A concern for my father. And yes, that dingy, damp hurt from being excluded from the family in the first place.
“I’m not sure ‘united’ is quite the word to use,” I said, as diplomatically as possible, referencing my removal from the family line of succession.
But apparently, not diplomatically enough. Thea made a noise of frustration and reached down for her own cool towel. “It’s unacceptable,” she declared, sounding pretty queenly already. “I’ll have you know that I intend to find a way to undo Gran’s disinheritance of you as soon as I am crowned.”
Hearing those words made me uncomfortable, like I’d eaten a bad bowl of mussels. “It’s fine. I knew the consequences when I ran off to Monaco with Stavros.”
“One should never have to choose between family and love,” Thea said vehemently. “This is the twenty-first century. Love is love is love is love.”
I had never heard my sister defend love so vigorously. Even when she was engaged to Christian, she mostly spoke of duty and lineage and “making good choices.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with a certain battle-scarred and
grumpy almost-brother-in-law does it?”
“Hugh?”
I coughed. “No. Nick!”
Even through the steam I could see her resolute expression. “I won’t give him up. Even when I’m Queen. People will just have to get used to the way I lead my life. And you, as well.”
“What do I have to do with you and Nick?”
She gave me an enigmatic smile. “You’ll be another new type of royal the country will have to become accustomed to.”
“A new type of royal?” I echoed. “A disgraced former royal living in exile, you mean? I’m sure we’ve had a few of those in Drieden before.”
This being Thea, and given her love of history, I was mostly expecting her to pick up that line of thought by expounding on various members of the family tree who had, indeed, been disgraced and exiled to Italy or Ireland or India.
But no. She went in a different direction. “You, my darling Caroline, will be the undisgraced, re-titled royal, picking up exactly where you left off—and where you belong.”
There was the curdled mussel stew stirring in my stomach again. Hearing her say these words should have empowered me, delighted me. At the very least, I should have felt vindication.
“I don’t think we can do that,” I said instead. “I’m not an ingénue.”
“Boring!”
“There will be so much gossip about Stavros, about his death and where I’ve been.”
“So?”
“So, you’ll be a new queen, with all the politics and pressures that will entail. You don’t need to kick off your reign with something controversial and lurid headlines in all the tabloids.”
“The people will be behind me,” Thea said confidently, and when Thea spoke like this, who could argue with her? “Especially if we get started now.”
Oh, no. That didn’t sound good. “We?” I echoed. “Pray tell, what do we need to start?”
“You’re back in Drieden and I need help with some things.”
“Thea, I don’t think—”
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