The Spare and the Heir

by Carol Moncado

  She wasn’t certain, and Gabe didn’t seem inclined to say it himself. “You can keep your questions appropriate and relevant, or you can lose your access to any event with any member of the royal family present. Your choice.”

  He glanced at the phone streaming another event, and his eyes narrowed. “Your mother just collapsed.”

  Esme was certain her heart stopped. “What?”

  “The queen just collapsed while giving a speech. Do you have any comment?”

  Gabe’s strong arm wrapped around her shoulders and turned her away, putting himself between her and the reporter. “She has no comment at this time.”

  Before he could say anything else, the security teams descended, grabbing both of them by the arms and pulling them away from each other.

  They were run through the pathways they’d just walked down and practically thrown into an SUV a split-second after it came to a stop.

  “What’s going on?” Gabe asked for both of them as he took her hand. “Is the queen all right?”

  The security team member in the passenger seat shook his head, and Esme’s stomach dropped. “We have no word on the queen yet. We don’t know why she collapsed. We don’t know if it was a health issue or some sort of foul play. That’s why you’re being taken to a secure location.”

  Esme didn’t know if that answer relieved her or not.

  Rather than trying to analyze it, she clung to Gabe’s hand like a lifeline. However long it would take to find out that her mother was all right was too long.

  She needed to know now.

  The security detail members were on their phones even as they used lights and sirens to cut through the traffic.

  Worst-case scenario after worst-case scenario floated through Esme’s head, no matter how much she tried to push them away. Her heart cried a prayer, but she wasn’t certain she was coherent enough it would make sense, even to God.

  They were taken to the beach house which meant the distance to a private location inside was much shorter. Once there, Esme collapsed into Gabe’s arms and cried.

  * * *

  They sat on the couch in the sitting room. Gabe kept his arm around Esme’s shoulders as the head of their joint security walked in.

  “What’s the news?” he asked before Esme could.

  “The queen is resting at the palace. We’ll be leaving momentarily to go back there. That’s all the news I have at the moment.”

  Gabe wasn’t sure he believed that. More like all the news he was willing to share.

  “We’ll be brought in the back, won’t we?” Esme asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. There shouldn’t be any photos.”

  “Thank you.”

  It took them half an hour to get to the palace. They were ushered into the hospital section where her mother’s doctor waited.

  “You can go in,” he told them. “She’s resting. She can talk with you for a few minutes, but she’ll wear out quickly so don’t stay long.”

  Gabe stayed behind Esme as she went into the room. He’d seen Carlotta the day before and thought she looked tired, but nothing like she looked at the moment.

  “Mama!” Esme rushed to her side. “What happened?”

  Carlotta gave her a weak smile. “You were right when you said I looked tired. I’m not well.”

  “I can tell.” Esme brushed her mother’s hair back off her face. “What’s going on, Mother?”

  The queen sighed. “I have cancer. I found out the day before the hostage situation began. I’ll spare you the details, but we caught it too late. My doctor’s been keeping me going, but we knew it wouldn’t be much longer before it caught up to me.”

  “Too late?” Esme’s voice cracked. “What do you mean too late?”

  Gabe’s heart broke for Esme. He knew what the queen meant. Esme probably did too, but her mind wouldn’t let her accept it.

  Carlotta rested a hand on the side of Esme’s face. “It means you’ll be queen in a few weeks, darling. I know you don’t think you’re ready, but you are. You’re more than ready.”

  “Mama...” Esme started to collapse. Gabe caught her and hooked a chair with his foot for her to land in near the bed. She rested her head on her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t leave me, Mama. I don’t want to be queen. I want you.”

  “I know, love. But God’s plan is greater than ours. There’s so much I wish was different in this life, but it is what it is. We have a few weeks left. I’ll help you however I can, but it’s time for you to start taking over. You won’t have access to everything until I’m gone, but you can start on some of it already.”

  “I don’t want to.” Esme’s voice was muffled.

  Carlotta started to answer, but instead her head dropped some, and she motioned weakly to Gabe.

  He wrapped an arm around Esme and put a hand under her elbow. “We need to let your mother rest. We’ll come back later.”

  The queen mouthed a thank you.

  Esme could only move at Gabe’s urging. In the hallway, he lifted her into his arms, carrying her to their apartment and settling into the chair with her cradled against him.

  “She’s dying, Gabe.” Her voice cracked. “I’m not ready for this.”

  “I know.” There wasn’t much he could do but hold her and pray for peace.

  The next two weeks passed in a blur. Carlotta declined steadily. Esme wasn’t seen in public, though Gabe attended a couple of events in her stead. The public sent flowers, cards, and well-wishes to both the queen and the queen-to-be.

  When she was able, Carlotta finalized details for her funeral. Most had been handled years earlier.

  Esme’s father showed up twice, spent a few minutes with Carlotta then left again. Her brother attended university in Europe. He came home on the weekends, but Carlotta insisted he focus on his studies. Esme talked to him every day, keeping him up-to-date. He didn’t go back to school the second weekend.

  Carlotta’s moments of lucidity were few and far between. Gabe spent some of them discussing her late teen years and how she sometimes did crazy things to keep the attention from her sister, who hadn’t wanted to marry Eugene in the first place. Just once Clarice decided to keep up with Carlotta - and ended up in the accident that took her life.

  Carlotta had married Eugene instead but had never forgiven herself for Clarice’s death. She believed she’d inadvertently goaded her sister into taking chances she never would have otherwise.

  Esme had lost weight from lack of eating and stress.

  On Tuesday evening, Carlotta asked to speak with Esme alone for a few minutes.

  Gabe sat in one of the chairs outside the room. Esme’s brother had gone for a walk. Shortly after seven, Esme walked out of the room, her shoulders slumped.

  He jumped up and pulled her into his arms.

  “She’s gone,” Esme whispered between sobs.

  Duty and tradition warred with compassion. One simply didn’t hold a queen like this. He should have bowed when she walked out of the room. One treated a queen differently than one treated the Crown Princess.

  But he was her husband.

  Charged by God to take care of her, to protect her.

  He moved her out of the way as medical personnel quietly entered the room.

  Craig, the head of security, appeared holding a briefcase.

  Gabe glared at him. He glared back.

  “Give her some time.” Gabe’s quiet words carried through the hall.

  “I can’t, sir. Queen Esmeralda has some paperwork that needs to be taken care of immediately.”

  Queen Esmeralda.

  That made Gabe the Prince Consort.

  Esme straightened. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Gabe wanted to walk next to her, to support her with an arm around her waist, but he couldn’t.

  Protocol had changed.

  He and the head of security fell in a step behind her. She started to turn toward her office, hesitated, then changed direction to her mother’s office.

 
Her office.

  Rather than going to the desk, Esme went to the conference table. “Let’s get this over with,” she repeated.

  The head of security turned. “My apologies, sir, but this paperwork is classified. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Gabe wanted to protest but knew it would do no good.

  Instead, he left and went to his office. Feelings of rejection, of being second best, never being quite good enough, struggled to surface, but he tried to force them back down.

  It wasn’t Esme’s fault. It was no one’s fault.

  It was a by-product of birth order.

  Most phone calls would need to be made by Esme, but Gabe could handle a few of them himself. They’d discussed it over the last few weeks. He picked up the phone to get to work.

  He couldn’t be there for Esme in person, but he could lighten her load in other ways. He just needed to keep his eyes open for how.

  18

  Walking back to her apartment took too much energy. Esme finally collapsed on the sofa in her mother’s office.

  Her office.

  She’d been in there for hours, signing paperwork, officially retaining employees of her mother’s, at least for the time being. She could always replace them later, but for the moment, she didn’t want to make drastic changes. Judy would begin working with her mother’s assistant, Jared, during the transition. In a couple of months, she’d decide how it would work long term.

  As she curled under a throw her mother had picked up overseas, Esme felt more like a little girl than a queen.

  A queen.

  Before she emerged from her mother’s room, before she collapsed against Gabe, Esme had become queen.

  Queen Esmeralda the First of Islas del Sargasso.

  She stared at her mother’s chair sitting behind the desk. Esme would never be able to fill it the way her mother had.

  At least she’d been able to whisper a secret to her mother in those last moments. Though she hadn’t spoken, the smile crossing her mother’s face told Esme she’d heard the news.

  The next generation was on the way.

  In eight months, more or less, Esme would be a mother.

  She hadn’t told Gabe yet, and, really, wasn’t entirely certain it was true. Her cycle was two days late, but that could be attributed to stress as well.

  But the celebration of Gabe’s birthday, begun with his favorite dinner, appeared to have resulted in a new life.

  She hadn’t planned to be a new mother and a new queen at the same time.

  As she lay there, she realized she hadn’t yet talked to her brother. They’d never been close, but he should have heard it from her rather than his assistant or someone else.

  Eventually, Esme dozed into a fitful night’s sleep. She woke anything but rested.

  Her assistant already buzzed quietly around the office.

  “Why don’t you go back to your apartment and take a shower, ma’am?” Judy suggested as she curtsied, more deeply than she had the day before. “I’ll have Karen meet you there to help you get ready for the day.”

  Of course. She couldn’t take the week, or even the day, off to grieve. The public learned the news the night before when the flag had been lowered to half-staff, but an official press release would be signed by Esme and sent out this morning. She’d gone over it with the press secretary several days earlier. Only the particulars would need to be filled in.

  Esme straightened her hair and clothes then went to the apartment.

  Gabe sat on one of the sofas, but he stood as soon as she entered.

  Then he bowed.

  Deeply from the waist.

  “Good morning, Your Majesty.”

  The title stopped her in her tracks. “Don’t.” Her voice cracked. “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t call me that, not here.”

  He bowed his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her already broken heart cracked further. She couldn’t deal with this. Didn’t he know her better by now?

  In the shower, hot tears mingled with hot water.

  She couldn’t do this.

  It was too much.

  Too overwhelming.

  Her hand covered her stomach, below her belly button. Stress could have caused her cycle to be late, but it could also cause a miscarriage. She needed to remember that.

  Once Esme finally convinced herself to leave the sanctuary of the hot water, she sat numbly in her chair in the dressing room and let Karen do whatever she wanted. It would be appropriate.

  Her hair was dried and rolled into a low chignon. Make up covered the circles under her eyes and made her look a little less tired but remained subtle. A black, knee-length dress with black stockings and heels completed the outfit.

  When she emerged into the sitting room, Gabe was gone.

  “Your things are being moved today, ma’am.”

  Esme turned, shocked. “What things?”

  “All of your things. Your office is being moved to the monarch’s as well as your belongings from here. They’re being moved to the monarch’s quarters.”

  Esme shook her head. “Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Judy’s voice was gentle, but insistent. “Your mother’s staff feels this is one last service they can give her. They’ve been working all night to pack her things and make room for her successor. To tell them their labor of love has been in vain...”

  Esme wanted to let her shoulders slump. She wanted to sink into a chair and not get up.

  Instead, she nodded and stood tall. “Very well.”

  She much preferred how Mevendia did things. They had two identical apartments, one for the monarch and one for the heir. When the heir became monarch, they didn’t have to move.

  Maybe she should consider renovations, making this apartment a secondary monarch’s apartment. Her hand brushed over her stomach, but she didn’t let it rest there. No one needed to know, not until she was certain. But this little one shouldn’t be forced to move into her quarters the moment she died.

  And what about Gabe?

  If he outlived Esme, surely he would still be living in the apartment. To ask him to leave their home of the last several decades, or even longer, the day after his wife died was too much.

  It didn’t matter with Esme’s father. He hadn’t stayed in the palace in years.

  In fact, she’d received word the night before that his yacht had already departed for the Mediterranean.

  He hadn’t even stuck around for his wife’s service.

  Hadn’t sent his condolences to his children.

  Hadn’t said goodbye.

  Good riddance.

  For most of her life, Esme had wished for her father’s approval, but in the last several years, she’d learned it was far better not to expect it, to regard him as nothing more than a genetic donor.

  He wasn’t a father.

  He never had been.

  At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that with Gabe.

  Gabe would love their children with every fiber of his being. Esme had no doubt of that.

  “Ma’am, the Chairman Franklin is here to see you. He’s waiting outside your office.” Judy interrupted her train of thought.

  “Thank you.”

  As she left the apartment, Esme had to remind herself that her office was no longer her office. Her mother’s office no longer belonged to her mother.

  Esme was the queen now.

  It was time to act like it.

  Head held high, she strode purposely toward the monarch’s office. Projecting confidence she didn’t truly feel was the only way the Chairman wouldn’t walk all over her.

  She forced a smile onto her face as she walked into the outer office. “Good morning, Chairman.”

  He stood but barely tilted his head her direction. “Good morning.”

  The greeting stood in stark contrast to the one from the other man she’d seen this morning. Gabe treated her
with the utmost respect and deference due a monarch, though Esme had a difficult time accepting it. This one greeted her far more as she wished Gabe had, though with a different tone in his voice.

  She turned her back on the chairman and started for her office door. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  If he didn’t start behaving more appropriately, she’d have to do something about it.

  If only she could find the courage.

  * * *

  Hanging up the phone in his office, Gabe leaned back in his chair. That was the last of the official calls he had to make, though he’d been accepting them off and on as well.

  He hadn’t seen his wife except for the moment in their sitting room when she’d clearly been offended that he treated her like a monarch.

  She was the monarch.

  He had to treat her that way.

  It was part of life in a monarchy.

  Wasn’t it?

  Had his grandmother curtsied to his grandfather every morning? It didn’t sound like something she’d put up with.

  Did his mother now curtsy to his father when she woke up? It sounded like something his father might require.

  Had either one of them called to offer their condolences? Gabe hadn’t heard from any of them since he’d gone back for the coronation.

  Esme likely would have told him if she had, at least before last night.

  For two countries that enjoyed a fairly close relationship, whose families were now closely related, there sure wasn’t much communication between the royal families.

  His phone rang, and he leaned forward, reaching for it as he did. “Gabriel.”

  “Hey, Gabe. It’s Jonathan Langley-Cranston.”

  “Good morning. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing in particular. I wanted to give you an update. We’re working through the list.”

  It was a very long list.

  “Nothing’s popped up yet, but it’ll probably be at least another month before we’ve tracked everyone down.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  “And Kenzie and I wanted to offer our condolences to both of you. Please pass that along to the queen?”