Pierre continued, “We will establish a schedule and system that works for us. I won’t interfere or inquire about your private life.”
She nodded. She would certainly do the same. She planned to never confront Pierre about Abigai Caillemotte and their four children together ever again. Dancing with Abigai at his wedding to Flicka had been unforgivable. Her heart still hurt.
“You may have your pick of accommodations within the palace. The guest suite was meant to be temporary. Just tell the staff where you’d like your things moved, and it will be done.”
She said, “The guest suite is fine for now. I’ll let you know.”
Her own clothes, the ones that she had left in the suite she’d shared with Pierre, had already been hanging in the guest suite closet when she’d arrived, so she’d been able to pick up right where she’d left off and had chosen which of her clothes she would wear this morning. She’d worn a black sheath business dress with a high collar and low hemline. The cut wasn’t so much prudish but rather a very visual signal that Pierre didn’t have the right to even look at her skin.
He said, “I must ask one thing, however, and it is for informational purposes only. I do not judge. Indeed, I am in no position to judge at all, I think we both understand. Quentin said that you told him Alina Mirabaud is your biological daughter from a previous relationship.”
As long as Alina was in Monaco, Pierre could threaten her, even though Flicka was quite sure his threats would be mild compared to what the Ilyins had threatened. Nevertheless, Flicka wanted Alina to be somewhere safe, which meant somewhere else.
Flicka held her chin up. “Not at all. I lied to Quentin and told him that so he would rescue the child from the Russians after he’d refused to do so. I’m not heartless.” She lifted her eyes to look behind Pierre, to where his head of security stood. “Sorry, Quentin.”
Pierre continued, “I am only inquiring, as I said. When was she was born?”
“Almost two years ago.”
Pierre frowned. “We were dating at that time.”
“Yes.”
A line creased between Pierre’s brows. “I mean no disrespect nor criticism, but I remember you were a little zaftig at the time.”
“Good God, Pierre. I got chubby, but I was not nine-months pregnant. I indulged in the mousses and cakes that they served at those charity balls we attended, the ones my trainer won’t allow me to sniff anymore, lest even the scent of sugar undo all her hard work.”
“The timeline for a concealed pregnancy around that time fits,” Pierre said. “I remember you left for a month that spring, ostensibly to soak in the sun and get a base tan before summer. You could have had the child and recovered during that time.”
“I was with Christine, your cousin. She posted pictures online of us and the other girls, wearing bikinis. I didn’t appear pregnant in the slightest, and I dare you to say that I did, Pierre.”
One side of Pierre’s mouth lifted in the smallest of wry grins, and a dark twinkle infiltrated his eyes. “I would never say that, my darling. Even if you had been, I’m sure you would have been as royally svelte as ever, and everyone would have been shocked that you had somehow produced a child.”
He was trying to charm her.
In the past, it might have worked.
Flicka allowed her smile to warm a bit. “I assure you, I was definitely not pregnant. There is ample photographic evidence to the contrary.”
Pierre’s eyebrow twitched. “Photoshop. My own public relations department makes me look unreasonably good in every photo we release. I have been informed that they can work miracles with Spandex and whalebones these days for personal appearances.”
“I was only gone for a month. I ask you this: Did I ever look heavily pregnant or immediately postpartum?”
Pierre should know what a woman’s body looked like when she was in the later stages of pregnancy and afterward because his other wife, Abigai Caillemotte, had given birth to four children for him. He had been there for every one of their births.
He frowned. “No. You didn’t.”
Flicka still shook her head. “We dated during that time. We were intimate. I never looked pregnant.”
He bobbed his head. “That’s true, I suppose.”
She might kill him for that I suppose later, but right now, she needed to convince him that Alina was not her offspring and thus was not a means for leverage over her, so that he would send the child someplace safe.
From behind Pierre, Quentin Sault cleared his throat. “Her Serene Highness assured me that Alina was her biological daughter from a secret relationship with her bodyguard. She said the bodyguard and his infertile wife privately adopted the child.”
Flicka refrained from stabbing Quentin with a pen from the set on the front of Pierre’s desk, the one right by her knees and well within reach. “Alina is the daughter of my bodyguard and his very fertile wife. He got her pregnant during our affair and married her immediately. I seem to have a problem with falling in love with men who are already producing families with other women.”
The slight movement of Pierre’s eyebrows was a subtle flinch, but he had damned well deserved that.
She continued, “In any case, I assure you that Alina is not my biological child. I did have a relationship with my previous bodyguard, and I ate my way through the breakup depression afterward. You know how it is, Pierre, working with a hot guy all day.” She waved her hand at Quentin Sault, standing in the morning sunlight from the windows. “Sometimes, you slip.”
Pierre’s expression didn’t change much—one groomed eyebrow raised a smidgen in amusement, not anger—but Quentin startled. His head popped up, and he threw a sharp glance at Pierre. The overall impression was as if Quentin had demanded, What in the hell have you been telling people?
Flicka smiled. She’d distracted both Pierre and Quentin with the suggestion that the two of them were sleeping together. She didn’t think they were, really. Pierre was bisexual only in casual encounters. He preferred women as partners for anything longer than a quick dick suck in the coat closet, though he’d sometimes dabbled with men for the fun of it. She’d heard he liked to sexually dominate men more than to have sex with them.
The angry flush on Quentin’s cheeks looked like he didn’t like the insinuation of sexual relations between him and Pierre at all. His pale eyes widened in furious dismay.
Quentin knew Pierre too well to become involved with him. Plus, Quentin seemed rigorously heterosexual and loyal to his wife, and his ethics probably would have prevented him from getting involved with his principal protection target, no matter what his tastes were.
Quentin growled, “The child does uncannily resemble Her Serene Highness. That’s what convinced me to disobey orders, change the plan, risk our men, and retrieve the child, too.”
Pierre said, “Sault is correct. The child does resemble you.”
Flicka shrugged. “My bodyguard is blond and has gray eyes. The child’s eyes are green-gray, not the brightly colored eyes that run in the Hannover line.”
This was true. Her older brother’s eyes were the dark blue of star sapphires, and her own eyes were a bright, dark green that had made her wonder if she might really be a living, glass-eyed doll when she was a child. Other odd traits ran in the Hannover family, too: an exceptional memory for numbers, insomnia, hemophilia, the Hapsburg jaw bone malformation, an occasional descent into madness, and serial or mass murder. Just your run-of-the-mill royal family genes.
Considering those, Pierre really shouldn’t make her angry.
Pierre sighed. “Eye color has very complex inheritance. We can’t rely on that as evidence. But you’ve taken to the child, yes?”
“Rather,” Flicka said. “I think anyone would. She’s a sweet little girl.”
Pierre smiled, still trying to charm her. “I didn’t think you were the type to be a mother. That’s what you always said.”
No, Flicka had said she didn’t want to have children with Pierre. �
�I’m as surprised as you are.”
Pierre said, “In the meantime, she’s certainly welcome here. We’ll say she’s your ward.”
Flicka laughed. “There’s an old-fashioned word.”
“Or a friend asked you to care for the child while she’s indisposed. Or we just won’t explain at all because it’s no one else’s business.”
No, Alina needed to get out of Monaco and Europe and go somewhere safe. “She’s not my child. She should go to her next-of-kin.”
Pierre asked, “Is the child’s father alive?”
“He—” She couldn’t quite say it.
Quentin Sault cleared his throat. “Raphael Mirabaud, whose alias was Dieter Schwarz, was in the warehouse last night, and he did not leave with us. We heard gunfire and explosions as we evacuated.”
Flicka refused to allow her shiny Hannover shell to crack. “I’m not sure where her father is at this time.”
“I’ll have our lawyers look into the matter and see if we can find evidence of a will or trust for her. Whatever the real story, this will not pose a problem. I am the law in Monaco, and if I say she stays, she stays.”
“You can’t just kidnap a child away from her legal guardians to use as leverage. It’s immoral. Surely you wouldn’t stoop so low.”
“Do we know who her legal guardians are?” Pierre asked.
“Raphael assigned my brother and his wife, Wulfram and Rae, as her guardians if anything were to happen to him. She should go to them. His will specifying that is with the other paperwork in the Mirabaud house in Geneva.”
Pierre leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk, and he looked Flicka straight in her eyes. “Now why would he do that?”
Flicka refrained from rolling her eyes at the oh-so-obvious because she was a gracious, kind princess. Really, she was. “Raphael and Wulfram served in the Swiss military together for several years. Raphael headed Wulf’s security team until very recently. They depended on each other for their very lives. They are best friends, though neither would admit such a drippy thing.”
Pierre didn’t blink his dark eyes as he stared at her. “I don’t think that’s the case at all, is it? You are adamant that Alina is not your biological daughter, but her father has designated your next-of-kin, not his own, as her guardian. Can you explain that?”
She waved her fingers in the air, dispersing Pierre’s silly theories. “They’re like brothers, except they don’t fight like real siblings, like you and Maxence, say. Wulfie’s wife is a psychologist, and she has a theory about why Wulfie latched onto Raphael so tightly. It has to do with Constantin.” Wulfram’s gray-eyed, older fraternal twin had been gunned down by a psychopathic murderer when they were nine. Flicka used Constantin’s murder to neg people, to make them uncomfortable with such a sensitive subject so she could gain the upper hand in conversations. “You remember that, right?”
“I was there,” Pierre said. “I watched it happen.”
“Oh.” How had Flicka not known that?
Pierre said, “I dove for cover behind a tree on the opposite side of the street when the assassin started shooting.”
Wulf’s childhood friend Yoshi had pulled Wulf under a car and saved his life, though another high-caliber bullet had nearly destroyed Yoshi’s arm in the process. “I didn’t know that.”
Pierre sat back in his chair and regarded her, like he was analyzing just how green her eyes really were.
Flicka bit her lip. Yoshi wouldn’t talk about that day. No one would. Constantin’s death was the reason that she had been born at all, because the Hannover dynasty needed another spare for its heir, and yet she knew little about it beyond the sterile news reporting and horrific footage of the funeral, plus one devastating conversation with her brother.
She said to Pierre, “I have a question about that day.”
“Hasn’t Wulfram told you enough about it?”
“He only spoke about it once, and he never talked about it again.” She bit her lip. “This is going to sound odd. You’re sure that Constantin died that day, right?”
Quentin was watching Pierre from where he stood, back by the windows. One of his eyebrows lowered.
Pierre closed his eyes and leaned his head against the high back of his chair. His eyelids creased. “Yes. Horribly. Bloodily. When that maniac couldn’t kill Wulfram because he had crawled under the car for cover, he kept shooting Constantin’s body. He must have pumped a dozen high-caliber bullets into his corpse, maybe more. He didn’t just kill Constantin. He destroyed him. Constantin’s head burst open. He was torn apart. The police wrapped him up in a sheet as they took his body away, but they missed pieces. It was easily the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. Before that, when we were children, Constantin was more my friend than Wulfram was. Wulfram was quiet and amused at things. Constantin liked to ditch class and run around the playground, so you can see why he and I were thick as thieves. He was The Wild One.” Pierre drew a deep breath and swallowed hard, his eyes still closed and creased. “Why do you want to know?”
Because sometimes, when she had been little and Wulfram and Dieter had been young, blond, military men with identical haircuts and robust physiques, she had imagined Wulfram had found Constantin again. In her narrative, Constantin had survived and been raised by well-meaning, middle-class parents or a blacksmith or wolves to hide him from the assassins, and he was out there somewhere, waiting for Flicka and Wulf to find him and bring him home.
Wulf and Dieter didn’t really look alike, of course. Wulfram looked very Germanic with a perfectly square jaw and cheekbones. Raphael did have a bit of the finer features of French men and the nearly Scandinavian looks of the Swiss. Raphael didn’t look much like the pictures of Constantin that she’d seen, other than the gray eyes.
She’d just wanted to be absolutely, completely, totally certain that she hadn’t been inbreeding the Hannover royal family any more than it was. The branches of her family tree already crossed far too many times. “No reason.”
Psychologically, Wulf may have found his lost twin Constantin again, but not biologically.
Besides, Valerian Mirabaud was Raphael’s father. That family resemblance was obvious. Their eyes were a distinct, dark gray like storm clouds, and Valerian looked exactly like Raphael would in forty years or so. He was a handsome man, though cold.
But that possibility was something she wanted to rule out on every front and in every single way, so it was good to know.
Pierre opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, musing. “Legally, you have no relationship with Alina, correct?”
“I married her father. I’m her stepmother,” she told him. “And I say she should go to her designated guardian.” Alina would probably know and recognize her previous nanny Suze Meier, Flicka hoped. Her heart broke at the thought of Alina thinking that Flicka was handing her off to strangers, but the child would be safer on a different continent.
Pierre flicked his hand in the air, brushing that away. “I don’t think being a stepparent confers legal rights, and besides, that marriage was not legally binding. A Monegasque court invalidated the Nevada divorce. We are still married and always have been. We don’t want you to be accused of bigamy.”
Flicka didn’t argue. That was Pierre’s rationale for why he was still the heir apparent to the princely, Catholic throne of Monaco. If they had been legally divorced, he wouldn’t be eligible for the throne. In many ways, Monaco was a deeply conservative, Catholic country.
In other ways, it was a casino and a European beach.
But she had been married to her Raphael, her Dieter, her Lieblingwächter, if only for a few days, and her heart was an empty cavern in her chest. She tightened her fist around her wedding ring.
Besides, she didn’t want to argue about bigamy with Pierre Grimaldi. One of those ballpoint pens just inches away from her fingertips might end up in his throat.
He asked, “What about the bodyguard’s wife? You said they couldn’t have children, but she is the child’s
legal, adoptive mother. Shouldn’t Alina go to her?”
“His ex-wife,” Flicka clarified. “And she is Alina’s biological mother, not adoptive. She gave up all her parental rights in the divorce.”
Pierre frowned. “That’s odd.”
Raphael had told Flicka not to let Gretchen take Alina, no matter what. “Raphael said she wasn’t the type to be a mother. He said that Wulf should raise her, if anything happened to him.”
“So, there’s no impediment to Alina staying here with you. We don’t know if her father is dead, and if he is, we don’t formally know his wishes.”
“I told you that a copy of his will is in Geneva. Someone could go to the Mirabauds’ house and ask for it. Quentin could go and be back by tomorrow.”
Quentin Sault didn’t flinch. He continued to stare at the wall behind Flicka’s head.
Pierre shook his head. “The child knows you. She feels safe with you. If we asked her, she would want to stay with you, I’m sure.”
“Alina is not even two years old. Her wishes would not be considered in a court. Even if Raphael is incapacitated or merely inconvenienced, he would want Wulfram to take her in the interim,” she argued.
“Yes, well, I still think it’s very odd a bodyguard would designate a prince as his child’s guardian unless the child had a hidden biological relationship with that prince. I’m sorry, Flicka. I know exactly why you want Alina out of Monaco. She’ll have to stay here with us, at least until you and I are established and settled. No matter what the outcome, she won’t be in the line of succession, of course.”
“Of course,” Flicka echoed.
He grimaced as if he didn’t like what he had to say. “And of course, our agreement specifies that this kind of thing will not happen again.”
Because Pierre now owned her body. “Of course not.”
“Look, I want to be agreeable about this. I want us to be business partners, if we can’t be anything else. If that’s all you want, I understand.”
She smiled even though she was gritting her teeth. “Anything more is impossible.”
“I hold out hope that we can become friends.”
Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5) Page 2