ROYAL ROMANCE_A Royal Renewal

by Victoria Hart

  I was suddenly very glad of the morning wine at the brunch table.

  I decided I was going to try and figure out the situation with Vince before I did anything stupid, and before I had to deal with any questions about it. He was not an easy person to find, however. I didn’t know the schedule for the security people, and I wasn’t about to ask. I needed to handle this quietly. Preferably, I’d have it handled without Vince even knowing what the hell I was really doing, because it was more than a little bit embarrassing.

  I took to walking around that afternoon. I wandered around the palace, pretending that I wanted to stretch my legs in between writing essays and reading while I was not in school. I walked down to the kitchen for tea, or down to the garden and pretend to take in the sight of the flowers for a while, when it was clear Vince was not there. It was hard to track these men down.

  That was the point, I supposed. They were meant to be shadows on the wall, in the background. They happened to be there, but they weren’t meant to be seen or heard from. They were silent guardians so it only figured that I would have a time and a half trying to cleave off one from the pack – and even harder that I’d be trying to do it without anyone knowing what I was up to.

  I paced around the palace so much I must have known it better than my aunt did by the end of the day. I’d seen virtually every room and every garden area and every place we went to socialize – everywhere he could be hiding, except for the security office itself. He could be off for the day; I couldn’t know without asking. By dinner I had to give it up, realizing the cameras would have had me on screen all day, looking lost.

  But surreptitiously, I spent the weekend looking for him. I didn’t want to admit it even to myself, (pathetic!) but that’s what I was doing. I woke up and made myself more presentable than I usually did for breakfast. I walked with extra grace down the stairs, padding lightly, into the salon where we usually took our breakfast. On the way there my head was on a swivel, looking for him everywhere, trying to see his tall, broad-shouldered form.

  I had no such luck; Saturday passed. Maybe he was on vacation, maybe he was sick. A fearful part of me thought he might have been found out by his officers and been let go or reassigned. I feared not being able to see him again, for all the little that I knew of him.

  “You’ve certainly taken to wandering around the palace,” Antonio said that Sunday over breakfast. My aunt had taken breakfast with the prime minister to discuss a budget or something.

  Antonio had joked she should put arsenic in the food and Aunt Sonia slapped him hard on the arm.

  “Just bored,” I shrugged. “I haven’t been able to go to school in three days.”

  “Fair answer,” he said. “Almost believable if it weren’t for the way your eyes just scan all over the place when you’re out there, wandering around. Looking for something?”

  “No, just looking around. I never really took in the palace before.”

  “Your excuses are getting thin here, kid.”

  Antonio was that type of person. If something was amiss, my aunt sent him to suss it out. She was too proper, too well behaved, too concerned with propriety to pry for information. Antonio was good at it. I think it was because he was always our friend, our playful uncle who would make jokes and be ready to get us into trouble or let us do things we wanted to do, at least when no one was looking.

  We let him in naturally and he got the information he was sent to get. But I was older; I knew everyone was talking about me. I wasn’t in the mood to share.

  “Just bored and curious, really,” I said. “Besides, what would I be looking for?”

  “Who knows? Your aunt wanted me to check up on you and here I am,” he said. “Everything okay in there, though?”

  To punctuate “in there” he delivered a light tap to my head with his knuckles and I rolled my eyes and shoved his hand away.

  I was in a strange mood; that much was clear to everyone, I think. And why shouldn’t I be? My only friend had turned out to be a terrorist bent on taking my crown away from me – how was I supposed to react to that? I thought I was handling it quite well, really.

  Antonio was persistent, though. He followed me the rest of the day. It wasn’t obvious. He wasn’t peeking around corners and waiting for me with narrowed eyes and binoculars. But somehow he was everywhere I was. I went to the library and he was waiting, as if he’d been there for hours, and we just happened to cross paths.

  “I think I finally want to learn all that stuff your aunt is always going on and on about,” he said, picking at the spines along the shelves.

  “You mean books?”

  “Yes. There seems to be plenty of them here, not sure where to start.”

  I tried not to snort. He wasn’t very good at the clandestine stuff or keeping a secret. He was actually, for lack of a better term, a pretty big dork. I mostly found myself able to ignore him. I’d gone into the library to look for a book I’d seen on the history of the mining business in Heledia. I had to write a paper on it. I didn’t even know the country had a mining industry, so I was learning something, at least.

  I pulled it out. I had originally planned to settle myself at one of the tables in the corner, even though they were mostly decorative, there was something special about working in a library on research. But with Antonio right there, I decided to take the book out of the library and into one of the salons. The bright side was that I could order some tea. Food wasn’t allowed in the library.

  Of course things would have been a lot less strange if Antonio hadn’t shown up with the tray in his hands, the tea steaming and smelling like flowers.

  “I figured I’d bring it,” he said. “They’re kind of jammed up in the kitchen getting things ready for the state dinner tonight with the PM.”

  I only half believed that. It was true enough that the palace was slowly turning into a madhouse around me as the staff got ready for the prime minister’s dinner, but kitchen boys were always on hand. Antonio was good about putting just enough truth in his lies to get you thinking.

  “Right, well, thank you,” I said, taking the tray and setting it down on the ottoman. Of course it was set for two people, because Antonio was always so subtle.

  He sat down across from me. “I’ve been kicked out of the east wing while they talk politics and other important things,” he said. “So I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

  Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. He was a man on his own mission now. Whatever information my aunt told him to get, he was going to get tenfold. He was committed, ready to take on the challenge of mining me for information. He wanted it now, as much for himself as for her. That meant he was much more likely to get it.

  “What have you been up to today?” he asked, pouring the ribbon of hot water down and over the tea leaves settled in the metal net over each cup.

  “Schoolwork,” I said. It was a brief and honest answer. That was the best way to avoid him catching me in a lie: don’t really lie at all.

  “How has that been going?” he asked, dropping a small spoonful of honey in the amber liquid in his own cup.

  “Challenging,” I said. “But I’m learning. I didn’t know there was a mining boom here in the 19th century. Looking for copper. No one knew it was here for centuries and then, suddenly, everyone wanted to bleed every vein of ore they could find.”

  “That sounds about right,” he said. “My great great grandfather came to this country in the hopes of getting in on that mining boom, striking it rich. You’ve heard stories of the people in the American west becoming millionaires overnight when they struck gold. Copper wasn’t worth nearly as much, not at face value, but it’s valuable to everyone else willing to pay up front for pure ore instead of having to go through a large company.”

  My brow furrowed, I quickly scribbled down what he said. “Can I use that for my paper?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did your grandfather find anything?”

  “If he had, would I have been l
iving in my one-bedroom flat and paying my way through school?” he laughed.

  I smiled. He had a point. “But he never found anything? He uprooted his life and moved out here and devoted himself to mining and never found anything?”

  “He found some things,” Antonio said. “He might not have struck the money he was looking for in those hills. But he met a woman and he fell in love, and they had five children and he died old and happy in their living room. Those five children had children, and eventually I showed up in that line. He didn’t find what he was looking for, but he found several things he needed.”

  My pencil had stilled. I thought about that. I felt like I had found myself in the opposite situation, coming here to this country. For me, the riches came without effort. Love, connection, and friendship were what I was searching for, and I was alone.

  I was staring off into space when Antonio finally said something. “You okay there, kid?”

  “Yeah, just thinking, sorry.”

  “What has your brain ticking? I can practically see the smoke coming out of your ears,” he said.

  “Just thinking about how I’m going to get this paper done. It needs like three more pages to meet the requirement.”

  “I never understood the traditional college stuff,” he said, sitting back. “Your aunt and uncle talked all the time about the stuff they did in school and what they learned. I got a practical education. I’m not saying one is better than the other, but I was never forced to write stupid papers of a specific length.”

  “They just want to see if we can follow instructions.”

  “Seems like a trap.”

  I smiled and tried not to laugh. I was a little bit offended by the whole conversation, but more than anything else I liked talking with Antonio. I liked his irreverent attitude toward the world he’d been forced into when he decided on falling in love with my aunt. He was very much the black sheep of the family, and he was loud and proud about it. He took pride in being a peasant. I liked that about him.

  “Listen, Cassie,” he said. “You know you can talk to me. I know you think it’s going to get back to your aunt, but there are some things I’m willing to keep to myself if I have to. So if you need to share something, feel free.”

  I almost did. I almost opened my mouth and poured out all my fears. I almost freed myself of all that had been weighing me down. Antonio was ready to listen, ready to give advice. I could see his anticipation; we were finally going to communicate.

  But the universe didn’t allow me the chance to do that, because one of the objects of my issues, Vince himself, walked into the room unannounced. He looked very grim indeed.

  Chapter 12

  “Tell him absolutely not,” my aunt said. “I know what game he’s playing, and it won’t happen. If he doesn’t want to talk, there are plenty of other ways to get him to open his mouth.”

  Aunt Sonia was in a bit of a rage. She was pacing back and forth, waving her hands around. Her voice was louder than usual, much less composed. I couldn’t blame her, but I also wished she’d take a minute and sit down before she popped a blood vessel and passed out or forgot to breathe.

  “I apologize for the duress ma’am,” said Vince. Now he was flanked by several other security team members. I wasn’t sure if they were his backup, or if they’d simply heard the commotion and thought to check out the issue.

  Vince had come with news from Carlo’s jail cell. They had him locked up and were attempting to extract information from him before the sentencing and trial for treason. They wanted to know who else was involved, what else was planned. Who was going to carry it out. They had a lot of questions.

  And he was refusing to talk to anyone but me.

  “It’s been going on for a few days,” Vince said. “We’ve tried several ways, most of them humane, to get him to talk.”

  “What does that mean?” I cut in. “‘Most of them humane’?”

  “Hush, Cassandra,” my aunt said.

  I imagined a torture chamber but I bit my lip. Aunt Sonia was angry. In this mood, I wouldn’t put it past her to have them stick blades in his fingernails, or keep him awake for days. Would they start hurting him if I didn’t show up? Would he actually talk to me, or was it a trick?

  I didn’t want to believe what everyone was saying, that he’d used me, that he’d got close to me so he could help them hurt me. There was a fleeting feeling in the pit of my stomach that said maybe – maybe he was just so good at his job that I believed in his good intentions. By why then had he asked me to dinner?

  “He claims to know several names and the details about planned operations,” said Benecio, standing next to Vince. “We’d really like to have that information.”

  “By using your future queen as the information pump? By endangering her?”

  “This is a much more controlled situation than before,” Benecio said with a strange edge in his tone. It sounded to me like it might be blame, but no one was going to dare bring it up. “She’ll be on camera. Prison staff will be watching and listening in on the room. We’ll be only feet away. He’ll be handcuffed.”

  “Cassandra is already far too deep into this situation,” my aunt retorted.

  “Then maybe just let her keep digging until she reaches the other side,” Antonio spoke up. “If she’s in so deep, it’ll be easier to just see where this path leads instead of trying to drag ourselves up and out. She’ll be safer – safer than she was when we tried this the first time. If we can get information, then it’s worth it.”

  “And what about the media?” she asked, without missing a beat. “What happens when they see that she went into that prison, that she talked to him? What are they going to say?”

  “To hell with them,” he said. “You’ve never cared what they’ve had to say before.”

  “About me. But they’re hounding my niece now, and the last thing I want is for them to crucify her in the papers.”

  There was more to that sentence but we were not going to bring up. I’d been duped into fraternizing with the enemy. Now I was visiting him in jail? It would look awful. People wouldn’t care that I was there to find out information on the terrorists, to possibly save lives with that information. That didn’t matter. All they would see was that I was going to see a man in jail who was charged with treason and terrorism and had used me.

  I’d managed to step back from Carlo – to create a distance between us. It cushioned me from the feelings I’d been having, but at the thought of seeing him again I could feel them coming back. I didn’t like it.

  “Can I have time to think about this?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. “I’m not saying no. But there are a lot of things to consider. It’s not just about information; my aunt’s right.”

  “We’re on no time table,” Benecio said. “You have time to make a decision.”

  “Excellent,” my aunt said, getting up and walking over to the door. “You can await our answer elsewhere.”

  She was irritated. She was snippy and I didn’t blame her. Normally she was very polite to everyone but this afternoon was a stressful exception. She shut the door behind them, leaving the three of us alone to deal with all the leftover tension. My aunt went over and collapsed into the loveseat, letting out a long exhale. She rubbed her temples. Antonio sat beside her and gathered her close to him, pressing a kiss on her headache.

  I knew they loved each other, that my aunt had defied years of tradition to be with him. But I didn’t often get to see visible signs of their affection. There was something magical about it, something so peacefully domestic. It was odd to see my aunt in such a vulnerable situation when she was often so strong and so commanding. She let herself be that young girl who had wandered into a bar and met a young man.

  “This whole thing is like a never-ending nightmare,” she said. “It’s going to follow you around forever, even after he’s locked up for good.”

  She didn’t say it like it was my fault; she said it like she felt bad for me. Her situation wasn’t so
far removed from my own. She had taken over as queen when my father abdicated and no one thought she was ready. They didn’t think she could do it. But they didn’t know her like my father did, like my grandparents did. Maybe the doubt of others was something we all had to overcome. The media, the public, they were all going to see us the way they would see us.

  I could say ‘to hell with them,’ but the fact remained that I needed their support if I was going to be a queen at all.

  The choice I had, that we all had, was whether or not we were going to care. Could I afford not to care? I thought about high school, and the way I was largely ignored – the resident princess – or else people stammered, not sure how to address me. I’d protected myself from that disconnection by learning not to care.

  Now we were here again. I wasn’t popular, but people knew who I was. Their heads turned when they saw me on the street, and they were out there judging me. I had the choice to care about that or not. I could choose whether or not I was going to let it affect me.

  “If we can get the information we need out of Carlo, I think we need to do it,” I said. “I don’t really want to see him, and I don’t want to stoke any more fires, but I do want to know. I want to know just how much he betrayed me, how far he was willing to go to hurt me.”

  Antonio nodded, letting out a long breath. My aunt’s face was stony but I could see from her rapid blinking that she was thinking hard. She’d heard what I said; she was considering it. In this I would not disobey her; I would do what she asked. I’d put her through so much so far, with the cost to her reputation and her mental well-being. Whatever she decided, I would honor it.

  “This situation is not your fault,” my aunt finally said, looking up at me. “People are going to want to make you think it is. But this has nothing to do with anything you did or didn’t do. This has been brewing forever, and what that boy did was not your fault either.”

  I felt something unlatch in my chest, like a door opening or a lock clicking fee. I didn’t realize I was carrying that guilt around until suddenly, she absolved me of it. I nodded and let out a breath.