She cut me off with a hand. “We’ll start with something small, something discreet. Nothing official, just you behind the scenes, doing important work on my behalf with my blessing.”
Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright. She loved me enough to brave the wrath of our grandmother and the machinery of the national press. How could I say no to her?
I sighed. “Fine. We can try something behind the scenes. Something short-term. Temporary.”
But I could tell from her expression that wasn’t good enough. She wanted something more.
“Was there something else?” I asked, dreading whatever she was about to suggest.
“You know I love you.”
“And?”
“I’m only saying this because I’m your sister.”
“Okay…”
“And I know how irritated I would be if someone said this to me—”
“Spit it out!”
She grimaced. “Your hair. It’s horrible.”
I started to giggle. She joined me.
It was like we were girls again. If only it could stay like that forever.
Chapter Twenty-Six
With a name like Karl Sylvain von Falkenburg, I didn’t know what to expect. Knowing he was supposedly a billionaire didn’t help either. In my experience, billionaires were extremely underwhelming people. They often drove very old cars, had terrible taste in pleated pants and were quite dreary conversation partners at dinner parties.
I couldn’t quite place the nationality of this Herr? Monsieur? Mr.? Von Falkenburg. On first blush it seemed that he was probably one of those trans-Euro new-money mutts, but the Von Falkenburg name was also a very old aristocratic one. Or at least, it probably was. I wasn’t an expert in the genealogies of Europe, like my Aunt Beatrice.
But Thea had asked me to take this meeting with the biotech billionaire whom she had met in Davos at their panel on science and engineering education, and as it was supposed to be private, I didn’t mind. Too much.
During the hair appointment with Thea’s personal stylist, who had come straight to my hotel suite (it was divine; thanks, sis!), I reviewed what material I could find on Mr. Karl Sylvain von Falkenburg. According to several magazine articles online, he had inherited a smaller set of corporations and turned them into a vast conglomerate that had its fingers in every facet of health technology available.
Thea told me she wanted to see where there were opportunities for partnership in education projects or research initiatives. I was no expert in these areas, but I felt reasonably confident in my abilities to ask and take notes. No one expected more of me, anyway.
Through a series of assistants and phone calls, Karl was scheduled to meet me in my suite, in the breakfast nook. Both this and the adjoining bedroom faced the north of the city and had a particularly lovely view of the Comtesse, the major river that sliced through Drieden City and connected the fertile plains to the North Sea. Today was a dreary February Driedish day and I grew a bit homesick, thinking of my picturesque Lake Como view, which led me to wonder where Elena and Signore Rossi were.
Whether they were safe from Christian Fraser-Campbell.
Whether I had done the right thing by coming back to Drieden.
Whether I should return to my original plan of completely opting out of royal life.
Whether I should even speak to this Von Falkenburg person.
But the door opened and it was too late for any second-guessing.
Hugh, who had emerged from his closet when he heard I had an appointment, showed him in and Mr. Von Falkenburg was…nothing like I would have ever expected.
He was tall. Extremely tall. Taller than one expects from a vaguely aristocratic European of undefined nationality.
Younger than a billionaire had any right to be.
And…well, I’m not blind. Dead sexier than the name Karl Sylvain von Falkenburg suggested. If this was a movie, he would have been named “Thor” or “Blade” or another one-syllable word that evoked dangerous masculinity.
His head shot down instantly, a sign of extremely good manners, no matter how rich or how entitled one was. “Lady Caroline.” It was a permissible—and politic—form of address. It showed the man had done some homework. To call me “princess” was likely to offend. To call me Mrs. Di Bernardo was also risky. Lady Caroline straddled the lines, as it were.
I envied people who found a middle ground so easily.
“Mr. Von Falkenburg. Thank you meeting me. My sister sends her apologies. An urgent matter has prevented her from being here.”
“It is my pleasure. To get to meet not one but two of the Laurent sisters in one month is something that has all the eligible men in Europe seething with jealousy.”
His flattery was delivered with such a friendly, frank manner that I liked him instantly. Those words could have been too flirty or too oily but, once again, I had the distinct feeling that von Falkenburg strived to be just right.
Like me.
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked. “Some tea or coffee?”
He declined, as I suspected he would, and I asked him to tell me more about the subject matter that he and Thea had discussed in Davos. Twenty minutes later, I knew more about the low availability of women graduates with STEM university courses than I ever thought I would.
It was fascinating. More importantly, it was something that I could change. If I returned to Drieden permanently and worked with my sister on projects like this.
Which I wasn’t. Was I?
“Can I tell you something? Something I don’t tell every princess I meet?”
That made me laugh, even though I was sure that a man who ran in his circles had ample opportunities to meet princesses. There were more of us than people usually thought.
“I think we could be very good friends, Caroline Laurent.”
That threw me for a moment. I replied honestly, though. “Friends. Princesses don’t have many friends. Let alone good friends, Karl von Falkenburg.”
“I would like to invite you on an outing.” He stood, checking his watch—it was a very expensive watch, I noticed, but then again, Karl Sylvain von Falkenburg was a billionaire. “Would you be available tomorrow evening?”
Wait. “An outing?” I had to ask. “Is that like a date?”
Karl smiled charmingly. “If you wish. We could also call it a field trip. An excursion. A business meeting in an alternative location.”
He must have sensed that I was about to turn him down. “I apologize. I was under the impression that you had a bit more freedom than your sisters.”
Freedom. It was precisely the only thing I had that my sisters did not. Why not enjoy that? Exercise the privileges that came with my non-nobility?
I lifted my chin, letting any shame or embarrassment drop off my shoulders to the floor, like a sodden coat. “I would quite enjoy an outing with you.”
“Excellent.”
“But we must go today.” Before anyone tells me no.
I halfway expected Karl to say no. After all, he was a busy man. Billionaires didn’t become billionaires by taking afternoons off to escort princesses around the city.
But if he had any scheduling conflicts, he was too much of a gentleman—too sincere a new friend—to let me know. In five minutes, we had ridden down in the elevators to the underground parking garage and were in the backseat of a large black Mercedes SUV with the windows tinted darker than midnight.
My pulse raced. This was not what I had expected when I woke up this morning. Eaten my eggs and toast, read my newspapers, dutifully dressed in a new businessy outfit of pants and blouse and a Hermès scarf that I had borrowed from Mother’s suite.
“Are you cold?” Karl asked as he reached to adjust the seat warmers. Such a gentleman.
We talked of simple things: the weather in Drieden, his house
on the coast of Spain, how he planned to travel to London next month to see his friend Harry from Eton. He’d grown up there, in England. His mother’s family was English and, to prove it, he switched back into a flawless English accent, which amused me.
Before I knew it, we were on the western outskirts of the city, a suburb that had once been a village and, before that, a wilderness on the edge of the marshland. “Where are you taking me?” I asked, and for the first time I wondered if perhaps I had jumped into this so-called outing a tad too quickly with a man I had just met.
The SUV pulled into a commercial district—a high street, Karl’s English side would call it—and then we pulled up to a city park next to a grocery store.
“Here we are,” the driver said.
Karl looked excited to show me what I saw now was a construction site in the park. “What is this place?”
“The Battlefield of Langůs,” Karl said, as if I should know what he meant.
“You have the wrong sister,” I told Karl. “Once again, I apologize that she’s not here to geek out with you about…that.” I waved at the construction in the park and the grocery store car park, which seemed to have been torn up with jackhammers, and a nearby temporary building.
“The Battle of Langůs was the definitive battle that gave your ancestor—I believe it was Fredrik II—the Driedish crown. Didn’t you have to study this in your special school for princesses?”
It was, in fact, all coming back to me, if a bit slowly. Like I always said, I was not the historian in the family.
“Let’s get out and look,” Karl said. “You’ll see the important bit next.”
We left the warm confines of the SUV, and the wet Driedish winter wind whipped through my bones. I had not put on a decent coat when we’d swept directly from the Hotel Ilysium’s underground parking garage into the waiting car. It was perhaps naive of me, but I had not expected an “outing” with Karl would entail being, well, out in the weather.
Once again, he was attentive, and noticed my shivers at we walked closer to the dirt piles between the park and the store. He offered me his jacket, which I accepted, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I had just met him, and this would have been extremely forward coming from anyone else…if I were still a princess. But I wasn’t. So I had the freedom to accept this man’s gift of warmth and chivalry.
What I had immediately thought was a construction site I saw now was more an excavation. Flags and ropes and other markers circled the entire area in intricate patterns that would require a key to understand. Then, in a flash, I remembered that I did know something else about this place.
“I read about this. In the newspapers. They were building a monument for my grandmother’s Jubilee and they found an archeological site.” I looked at Karl. “Is this it? They were building it here, at the Langůs battlefield?”
He nodded enthusiastically, clearly someone who enjoyed his Driedish history. “I believe it was to celebrate not only your grandmother’s reign but the uninterrupted bloodline. Five hundred years since old man Fredrik died there.” He pointed at the park, which had presumably been dedicated to the ancient battle. “But they found this when they were digging for the sewer.” His finger pointed at the excavation site.
It was so very cold and windy, so that was one reason why I was starting to lose interest. I thought of the blissful heated seats in the car and the privacy that those dark windows afforded…and I had an idea.
But I needed to get back to the car first. “It’s so very inconvenient, I suppose,” I said, as I observed the piles of dirt and rock that looked like they had been carefully separated through a sieve. What an awful job, I thought. Sorting pebbles during a Driedish winter. “And this is your…hobby?” I finished, not finding a better word to call his interest in history. “Do you go to many battlefields?” I had heard of men who dressed up and re-enacted key historical military turning points. Perhaps that’s what billionaires did in their spare time (which only reinforced my opinion of the vast majority of billionaires, to be honest.)
“No…not my hobby.” Karl looked intently down at me. “My business.”
“You’re in construction?” That made sense. Men also often took a surprising amount of interest in big trucks and tall cranes.
He shook his head. “One of my companies is a genetic testing enterprise. We’re bidding on the bones that were found down there.”
I remembered the news articles about the discovery of my ancestor there and grimaced at the hole in the ground he was pointing to. “Who would be interested in a pile of dusty, dried bones?”
“Only every genetic lab in Europe. And them, of course.” He nodded toward the temporary trailer parked next to the site and the group of people coming out of it. Half of them carried recording equipment—I could spot a boom mic and a camera a mile away. One of them was the journalist Chantal Louis.
“Why are they here?” I asked as a strong tremble made my legs and spine shake. It wasn’t just the cold, I knew. I was caught. In the open. In the daylight. The prey in front of the predators.
Karl chuckled. “I think the press is interested in any royal story these days, even the almost forgotten ones.” He looked across the pit. Smiled politely. Said blandly, “Oh, they’re looking over here. Do you think they’ll take our photograph?”
And that was how the press caught me. The last time they saw me I was standing in a mourning veil at Stavros’s graveside. This time, I was standing at another grave with one of Europe’s most eligible bachelors by my side.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Like a cornered mouse in the middle of the night, I turned my head into Karl’s shoulder. A natural, understandable impulse.
Go.
The next impulse. To run from the cameras. Give them the chase they wanted.
It was what Stavros would have done, grabbing my hand, or my head, forcing it down under a coat.
Thrilling. Awful.
My heart started to race, anticipating the adrenaline rush. But then I realized, this was not as awful as it seemed.
I whispered Karl’s name. “Do you mind terribly if I go back to the car?” I smiled a little, hating that it would be analyzed and discussed all over the internet shortly. “That will give you a little more time to look around without all the fuss.”
Karl glanced at the photographers, massing at the side of his beloved dirt pile, and promptly said, “Whatever makes you comfortable. I won’t be long.”
“Take as long as you need,” I murmured.
The backseat was warm and as private as I was going to get these days. I wasted no time, reaching into my handbag and taking out the cell phone that Sergei had given me in Tuscany. Miraculously, it still had a good battery charge. I hit a button and returned a call.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Hello.”
Scottish-accented English.
“This is Caroline. How are you feeling?”
“Much better, thank you.”
I kept an eye out of the car window. Karl was walking around the archeological site and heading toward Chantal Louis. Free publicity. I hoped he appreciated my gift.
“I’ve been worried about you,” I told Christian.
“You’ve always been so kind to me,” he said.
“I’m in Drieden now,” I explained.
“I know.”
I shivered, despite the heated seats. “About your proposition…”
“You’re still considering it?”
“Of course. It’s the story of the century and I need a gig.”
He chuckled. “Don’t we all.”
“How are we going to do this?” It was an aggressive tactic, but intuitively I felt that Christian would appreciate that. One disgraced person to another. “I’ll need to interview you thoroughly.”
“You
can do it now. Over the phone.”
Astrid and I had discussed this. “No,” I replied easily. “No newspaper or magazine will take a print interview like this without photo proof that you’re alive. They’ll consider it a hoax. If you really want Clémence Diederich to broadcast your story, you’ll have to meet with me and we’ll take a photo.” I drew a deep breath. “Together.”
That kind of publicity would be irresistible. At least, that’s what Astrid and I were counting on.
“I’m talking to other reporters, you know.”
“I doubt that anyone is taking you seriously. You’re dead, Christian. And if you want anyone to believe otherwise, you need a reputable journalist and photographic evidence.”
There was a long pause. I saw Karl had finished his conversation with the bunch of reporters and was walking back toward the car. My phone call would have to wrap up soon.
“You really want this?” Christian said, with a hefty dose of suspicion in his voice.
“I don’t have a life anymore. What else do I have to look forward to?” I asked.
“Meetings with billionaires?” he suggested. I gasped. How did he know? “I won’t be double-crossed,” he warned. “Remember, I can send proof of your columns about Thea and Felice and Albert out at any time. Your family does not handle betrayal well. You’ll be back out on the street if they find out what you’ve done.”
My gut twisted at the truth of his words and a wash of doubt poured over me. What was I doing, consorting with the enemy this way? Risking everything?
But then I remembered that I really had no choice. If Christian truly had this information about me, then he could release it whether I played this game or not. I might as well do it for a good reason. Karl was six feet away from the SUV. My time was up.
“I’ll call you back with a place to meet,” I told Christian. “But I won’t keep chasing you. That’s not the way this is going to work.”
Then I hung up to the sound of my heart racing as fast as a Formula One car in the final lap of the Monaco Grand Prix. There were only two options for me at this point: crashing—or winning.
The Royal Bodyguard Page 17