The Inherited Series Book 2: The Claimant

by Lily Burlington

  I quickly and quietly explained my phone call with Hector to M. Arsnault. He took my phone, flipping through the files of statues, paintings, weapons, and jewelry that Hector had sent. I figured it would be best for him to see them, so that he would have a better idea of the kind of things we were looking for.

  "So we are going on a treasure hunt?" he asked, glancing down at me. I could have sworn I saw a flash of excitement in his eyes. I supposed hunting for stolen objects was more exciting than babysitting me.

  "Seems like it," I agreed. I looked across the mezzanine and then down at the lobby below. There wasn't anyone in sight, just dozens of doors. "Pick one."

  M. Arsnault shrugged, pointing towards the double doors in the center of the back wall. They were open, revealing yet another hallway into which morning light poured. As we approached the first opening, I realized with surprise that there was a piece of plastic in front of the doorway, screwed into its frame, preventing us from going inside. I put a hand on the warm plastic, looking into the room on the other side. It was a library with big mahogany shelves, tables, and chairs. Thick bound volumes were lined up perfectly on the shelves, a few of them left open on side tables and desks next to jewel-encrusted oil lamps.

  "It must be used for the tours," noted M. Arsnault. He pointed to the next doorway. It also led to the library, but it was not blocked off. Instead, thick red ropes sectioned off about a ten foot squared section of the room in which the floor had been covered with thick, durable carpet. It was like a viewing station, so that the guests on the tours could enter a small part of the library.

  "So we are in the part that is used as a museum," I said.

  M. Arsnault nodded. "Sinclair Palace has been mostly untouched since it was abandoned by the French elite. It is more of an historical monument than a functional building, unlike DuMont Castle, which has been constantly updated with modern conveniences."

  "But my room has electricity," I said, remembering seeing the switches on the wall.

  "I imagine that the parts of the palace used for public functions and government meetings have been updated. Your palace is enormous, though, Mademoiselle. I doubt the government could see the reason in outfitting the entire building with air conditioning and wifi when the majority of the rooms are hardly ever used."

  I thought of the dining room earlier. The entire room had been set up for a black tie, full course dinner. There were light bulbs in the chandeliers though. It must be one of the rooms used for functions and tours, always kept ready to impress. I closed my eyes, trying to orient myself within the castle based on the blueprints I had been forced to study. We were on the second floor near the royal library. Below and to my left was the dining room. The ballroom then had to be below us on the right. Across from the library was a salon and smoking room and at the end of the hall was the king's bedroom. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, the room at the end of the hall was open. I went to it, not surprised this time when there was a plastic obstruction in my way. The entire room was gold: the walls, the curtains, and the furniture. The bed was raised up on series of step-like platforms, facing a huge fireplace. Gold window frames stretched from the floor to the ceiling, looking out onto the square gardens below. It was nothing less than a bedroom fit for a king. I could think of no better place to hide a fancy object than in the king's bedroom. I craned my neck, trying to see the whole room, but it was no use. Standing in the doorway, I could only see so much. There were three other doors, presumably leading to the other rooms in the king's suite. I looked right to one of the closed doors. I mean, there were limited options so I thought I’d try them all. When I pulled on the handle, I found it to be locked. I crossed the hall, choosing another closed door. It was locked too. In fact, every other door in the hallway that wasn't barricaded was locked.

  I turned to M. Arsnault. "What do you think? Are they locking us out or locking us in?"

  Chapter Nine

  Nothing changed that whole week. All day I was confined to my rooms. Every morning Mme. Fraise woke me up and shuffled me into the sitting room to eat lukewarm porridge and drink cold coffee. Afterwards, M. Arsnault and I spent the day playing cards, reading, or playing on the Internet. I reviewed the documents I had brought with me from Solis and the files of stolen items. Governor Richard and Antoine had not been available to see me since my arrival, and my schedule had remained empty. Tours came in and out of the castle all day, making it impossible for me to go and explore anything outside of my suite. Plainly, I was bored and frustrated. By Thursday I didn't even bother to change out of my pajamas.

  There were only two things that broke up the monotony. The first were the calls from my friends and family. None of them could offer much advice as to how to improve my current situation, but they at least helped to keep my mind off of it. There was still no news from the hospital; nothing had changed.

  The second distraction was my nightly unauthorized excursions with M. Arsnault. Every night, after all the tours had ended and Mme. Fraise had done her final round for the evening, my guard and I would go exploring. Some nights we just walked the halls, stretching our legs, while other nights we spent hours hunting for any of Hector's items. We would go into one of the few rooms we had access to and search through all the ornate trinkets and decorations for anything that looked important. So far, we had come up with nothing.

  Between the inactivity all day, the late night treasure hunts, and the constant worry about Leopold that gripped my mind whenever I wasn't distracted, I found myself plagued with insomnia. It felt like as soon as I finally did fall asleep Mme Fraise was waking me up only five minutes later. By Friday morning, it had gotten to the point that I was also awake even before Mme Fraise had come for me. I lay on my back, staring up at the stupid carvings on the ceiling, trying to decide whether to look at trading documents, to practice French verbs, or to download a Meg Cabot novel. The options were riveting. The tours would end early today, though, and the Addams Family's shifts were shorter over the weekend. That meant that M. Arsnault and I could stay out longer tonight. I wondered vaguely what time it was. I had no idea what time Mme Fraise normally came in, but judging by the consistently lukewarm temperature of my breakfast, I'd have to guess that she waited a while before she woke me up. I would be sure to make a note of the time she came today.

  I rolled onto my stomach, reaching for my laptop that I kept in the drawer of the bedside table. I could read the news, check the time, and keep myself occupied until something happened. I'd just pulled on the drawer handle when I heard a door open behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see Mme Fraise emerging from my closet. She startled when she saw me staring at her.

  "Oh, Princess, I did not realize you were awake," she croaked, still halfway inside the closet, her boney hands like claws on its frame.

  I stared at her bewildered. How long had she been in my closet? I had to have been lying awake in bed for at least a half hour. "What were you doing in there?" I asked before I could think about whether or not I should.

  Pursing her wrinkled lips and stepping fully into my room, she finally stated, "Putting your clothes away." I didn't buy it, but I didn't have any other reasonable explanation to counter with. "Would the princess like to move into the drawing room?" the maid asked, approaching the bed with a dressing robe in hand.

  I shook my head and finished fishing my laptop out of the drawer. "I think I'll stay here a bit longer." Settling into the pillows, I opened the computer, watching the screen blink to life, hoping that Mme Fraise would leave me alone and go off to do whatever it was she did. No such luck though.

  "You should not do work in your bedroom, princess. It is not good for your health," she said, stepping up to the side of the bed. She held the robe up by the shoulders, waiting for me to get up and shrug the silk onto my shoulders.

  "Nah, I'm alright. Thanks though," I said, not getting up.

  "Your breakfast will be ready shortly, princess," she persisted. "I must insist you move to the other room so that you
can eat your breakfast comfortably.”

  I looked up from the computer screen and into her cold eyes, her face a practiced mask of emptiness. It didn't look like she was going to leave anytime soon, so with a heavy sigh, I gave in, flipping back the sheets. "Fine," I grumbled, shoving my arms into the offered robe. I picked up my laptop and stomped through the door to the living room and flopped down onto the leather couch. My silk robe was slick on the leather, making me slide down until I was slouched in a very undignified position that was nowhere near as comfortable as my bed. The maid didn't follow. Opening a browser, I pulled up the homepage of the main Solisian news network. The headlining article read "Sleeping Beauty's Princess Missing." Skimming the article, it seemed that people were starting to get upset with my absence. After I had been seen leaving the hospital at the beginning of the week, it had been released that I had gone to Arcadis for preplanned meetings. But now that a week had passed and I hadn't been spotted out in public or at any of the events I had been supposed to appear at, the article was questioning where I was and what I was doing.

  "They're mad I'm not with him," I muttered, shutting the laptop. M. Arsnault raised an eyebrow as he stepped in from the hall. He had his suit pants and dress shirt on, but no jacket. It seemed that even he didn't see the point of getting fully dressed anymore.

  "You have responsibilities," he stated and then yawned. "Or that is the theory." He was trying to be comforting. I pushed myself upright, folding my legs underneath me. He sat on the couch across from mine.

  "They are right though. I am not getting anything done here. I should just go back. Then I can be there when he wakes up," I reasoned.

  "You need to stay here a while longer, Mademoiselle. You know that. This may be the only chance we get." My guard's voice was still thick with sleep. I knew what he meant, what he wasn't saying. I needed to be here on the off chance I might actually find something that could help uncover who was plotting against Leopold, or at least implicate Governor Richard and Antoine in criminal activities.

  "I know, I know, but I feel useless. I wish—"

  Grandma Addams reappeared, carrying a tray full of food from my bedroom into the sitting room. "Voila, Princess, your breakfast is served. If you require me for nothing else, I will go and perform my regular duties." She placed the tray on the table, making the china and silver rattle.

  "Sure, you may go," I said dismissively.

  The maid bowed in gratitude. "Remember that the tours end at four today and I will be departing shortly afterwards."

  "Yes, thank you," I agreed, putting down my documents and picking up the bowl of porridge. It was cold. Apparently my wake up time did not correlate with the food quality.

  "Be sure to ring for me if you require anything, princess," she said, backing out of the room the way she came.

  I rolled my eyes and slouched back into the couch. "I miss Angelique."

  "I miss food," retorted M. Arsnault as he wrinkled his nose at the cold porridge. He pushed his away and reached for a mug and the carafe of coffee instead.

  I spent the day reading a French book by a Solisian author, or at least trying to. Some of the French vocabulary was still too difficult for me to read. The book was on the historiography of the Solisian Revolution so I had a feeling I would have missed a few things even if it were written in English.

  Around four in the afternoon, Mme Fraise returned and made me get off the couch and take a bath. She promised they would have dinner on the table by the time she left at five. I sat in the tub for an hour. After washing my hair twice, I decided that I could probably go the third day without shaving my legs, and I continued soaking well past the time it took my skin to shrivel. Only when I heard the maid come and go with the dinner trolley did I deem it safe to get out of the bath. I dried off quickly, pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and piled my damp hair up in a bun.

  M. Arsnault was eating a forkful of peas when I returned to the sitting room. "Chicken pie," he told me as he pointed at the plate that had been left for me. "It's not bad actually – best meal so far at least."

  We ate in silence for a while. I picked the crust off the top of my slice, letting the pastry dissolve on my tongue. "What do you think about having a look at the throne room tonight?"

  "We haven't been down that bit of hall yet," M. Arsnault agreed. "Have you heard anything else from them today?"

  I nudged a burnt carrot to the edge of my plate. "Nope. You?"

  "Nothing outside of the usual reports."

  "That's good though, right?" I asked him softly. Was it strange that we had heard so little from the castle?

  "It's good, Mademoiselle. We would know if something were wrong," he assured me.

  A clock chimed six. Everyone would be out of the castle by now. I put my plate with the pie down on the table. It wasn't that good. "You ready?"

  M. Arsnault looked down at his dinner and pursed his lips. "Yeah," he agreed, "May as well. It'll be easier with the daylight anyway; we won't have to hunt for the light switches." He stood, brushing out the wrinkles in his shirt and pants."One sec," I said, running into my bedroom. I went to the bedside table and grabbed my phone. It had all the pictures that Hector had sent in it. As I turned back around to leave, I noticed that the light in my closet was on. I frowned. I was pretty sure I had turned it off after I had gotten dressed. I shrugged and went over and flicked the switch off before joining my guard. Together, we went out into the hall and headed towards the sweeping staircase of the atrium. The air smelled funny, like all the colognes and perfumes of the visitors that day were trapped in the giant dome of the entrance. I wrinkled my nose."Do you have the map?" I asked M. Arsnault. He had stolen one of the tour pamphlets for the castle on our second day here. It had the layout of the castle on it. We had marked the rooms we’d inspected so far. The frustrating part was that we couldn't even get into half the rooms on the map; they were locked down.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, he pulled the well-creased paper and pen out of his back pocket and unfolded it. "We did this whole side already," the guard said, indicating the hall on the left side that I had examined on my first day here. The dining room and ballroom had come up blank for stolen priceless artifacts.

  "And the crown room is down here, right?" I asked pointing to the right.

  "Yes, past the greenhouse. I can't imagine there would be anything in there though," M. Arsnault said.

  "Doubt it," I agreed. "But if we finish the crown room quickly, we can go down to the violet room. That's where the king would hold meetings with foreign dignitaries. He may have kept some fancy knickknacks in there to show off.”

  "Yes, Mademoiselle."

  We started down the right-hand hall. At first, it was a replica of the left. There were big mirrors against the interior wall reflecting the watercolor light of the sunset shining in through the windows on the wall opposite. About thirty feet down, though, the wall of mirrors became windows. A whole room of windows, in fact, containing what seemed to be a tropical forest. From the outside, we could see leaves and flowers of varying forms and colors crawling across marble counters, statues, and columns.

  "Wow," I said, pressing my hand up against one of the warm panes. "I didn't think this room would still be functional." The garden had been kept by one of the Arcadian queens, Marie III. She had been a healer, and she had used her garden to make ointments and medicines for soldiers wounded in her husband's army.

  "The queen collected some very rare plants, Mademoiselle. Luckily, the people who took over the castle recognized that and maintained them after Arcadis was taken. Also, the French had a weak spot for beauty. We should continue though," M. Arsnault urged, "before we lose more light."

  "Look though," I said pointing toward a tree with little fluffs on it that I was pretty sure was a willow tree. "M. Fraise is in there. I thought he had gone home with Mme Fraise."

  "I suspect that they are taking shifts. He will probably be taking care of us for the weekend instead o
f his sister. I doubt they would leave us alone in the castle, Mademoiselle."

  I pulled on the door to the green house. "It's locked. How did he get in there?"

  M. Arnault pointed across to the other side of the greenhouse where a panel in the marble wall was propped open by a spiky green potted plant. "There's a secret entrance to the servant halls. They probably use this to cross the castle when the guests are here in the daytime."

  I thought back to the servants' corridors that Leopold and I had used to escape from the castle. If only we could find an unlocked room with one of those open doorways. Then, we would have access to the whole castle. I tried the door one more time for luck, but it was no use.

  "Come on," I sighed to my guard, "let's go see the crown room." We would have to keep using the slow route until a better opportunity presented itself.

  We marched on down the hall for another forty feet or so until we arrived at a roped off doorway. A pair of huge gold doors with the Sinclair crest emblazoned on them opened into an extremely Arcadian room. The floor was made of green stone, the walls striped with white and blue marble. Huge tapestries hung from the walls, laced with branches and spotted with faces that formed the Arcadian royal family tree. In the center of the room, on a pedestal, was a very large, very gold chair that had been carved to look like a wave breaking against a rock. In its center was a green velvet cushion with a heavy looking crown and scepter encrusted with jewels sitting on it. To top it all off, there was a white fur cap draped over one of the tidal-like armrests.

  They were fakes, of course. The real ones, I had been told, were in safe keeping in the DuMont's vaults somewhere under the castle in Solis.

  "That's it?" I asked. I mean, sure it was a flashy room, but besides the old carpets on the walls, the uncomfortable looking chair, and the fake crown and scepter, there was nothing in it. I checked my phone.

  "What were you hoping to find, Mademoiselle?" M. Arsnault asked. I handed my phone to him.