Linda Needham (17 page)

Drew didn’t quite know what to say, didn’t need the pint-sized help but didn’t want to hurt the child’s feelings.

“I think, Marguerite,” Caro said, clearly amused at Drew’s distress, “that Mr. Earl has plenty of help. But I surely could use some.”

“Then I’ll help, too!” Robert Frederick said, tugging on her sleeve and gaining her smile.

“And me!”

“Me, too!”

“Excellent, children. But in the meantime…” She turned to the door and pointed at Runson. “Do you see that nice man over there?”

“Yeesssss!”

Runson’s brows shot into his hairline, though he kept silent, obviously waiting for Caro to pronounce his fate.

“If you go with him, he’ll take you off to the kitchen for an apple.”

Runson’s eyes grew large in alarm.

“Yaaaaayyyyyy!!!” The children left the conservatory in a noisy stream, running ahead of poor Runson, who cast Drew a baleful frown before he lumbered off after them.

Everyone in the conservatory exhaled as one. “Thank you, Your Highness,” Karl said. “They get restless.”

“I know how they feel, Karl. I’m restless, too. I want to go home to Boratania, as I’m sure all of you do. But first we need to settle all of you into your rooms here at Grandauer Hall. Then we can meet and make some plans over lunch.”

She seemed to have worked out all the lodging arrangements in her head, and herded the adults up the stairs like a dancing piper.

“You’ll have this entire wing to yourselves.”

Trying to look helpful, Drew had relieved Wil
helm’s wife of a basket of what must be rocks and now embedded himself inside the group, shadowing Johannes, watching Caro efficiently point the different families toward their individual rooms as though she were a hotelier and they were her paying guests.

Which meant that his staff would now be wasting more of their time changing linens and chasing after every little whimper.

“And here’s the sunroom for the children to play in when they’re not playing outside. I’ll hire a tutor tomorrow for the two older ones—”

“A tutor?” The question sputtered out of Drew, but only earned him one of Caro’s frowns.

“You’ve been so very generous to us, Princess Caroline,” Johannes said, approaching Caro more hesitantly than before, setting off warning bells in Drew’s head. “So I’m sorry to be asking another favor of you—”

“Just ask, Johannes.”

“You see, we’ve brought with us most of our private wealth, coin and bank notes and a few gems that some of us have collected over the years—”

“And you’d like a safe place to store it all while you’re here?” Caro turned to Drew for a quick flick of a brow, this woman who seemed to be able to unerringly read a person’s motives. “Of course. His lordship will be able to help you whenever you like.”

Johannes nodded eagerly at Drew, and then back to the princess. “You’re such a blessing to us, Princess Caroline. Whatever we can do, you have our deepest loyalties.”

“Be careful what you promise me, Johannes, because I have great plans for every one of you to help me finish up my preparations for the exhibition.”

Not before Drew had a chance to find out what the man had meant by his comment about Caro’s parents. Surely he could find the perfect opportunity.

“I don’t know how we can be of help, Your Highness.”

“You will, Marcus, when you see my collection. But that’s for later. For now, please settle in, and I’ll see you in the dining room in an hour. If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs in the library.”

In a very few minutes the corridor was empty and blessedly quiet, and Caro was walking with Drew toward the stairs.

“There, Drew. All safely settled in. You’ll hardly know they’re here.”

“You must be joking, Caro. A house full of people, wandering around at all hours.”

She slowed as they started down the stairs, studied him slightly from behind. “Where is your home, Drew?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where do you sleep when you’re not on an assignment somewhere?”

Indeed, where did a man of the world call home? “I have rooms at my club.”

“But you’re an earl. You must have an estate somewhere. County Wexford? I don’t think there is such a thing.”

“I own a good deal of agricultural property around Shropshire and West Riding. But it’s leased out, for the most part.”

“Ah, a wicked absentee landlord. I should have guessed.” She was smiling back at him as he caught the thick oak newel post at the landing and used it as pivot.

“I let others profit. I prefer to sit back and collect rents. I can’t spare the time to do otherwise.”

“So you live in a couple of rooms?”

“I do have a house in Cornwall. Only a cottage, really.” He followed her through the library door, wondering what it was about this woman that made him babble like a Fleet Street gossip. “It’s out on a spit of the coast, rocky as hell, completely surrounded by uncultivable ground.”

“I love the sea, and a rocky coast best of all.”

“At its finest with a storm pounding in off the ocean.”
And a wife like Caro, a few children.
“But I don’t get there very often.”

“You really do need to take time for yourself now and then, Drew.” She stood over the worktable, working at the buckle of a strap that wrapped a leather case.

“First, Princess, I need to see that you’re happily coronated.”

“It’s been nearly a week and I’m still alive.” The buckle came loose and she started wrestling to unfurl a thick parchment.

“Miraculously. What are you doing?” Drew grabbed the stubborn piece before it could flip itself off the table.

“Good, thank you,” she said, still wrestling with her end. “It’s my family tree. Obstinate as an old milkcow.”

She began unfolding it before his eyes, one flap after the next until it had dwarfed her.

“It hangs right here.” She reached up to slip the thong around the filagree hook at the base of a sconce and he did the same.

Then he stood back and took in the whole thing. The Grostov family, since long before Charlemagne.

Every sire and scion, down to his Princess Caroline.

“Another daring rescue, Caro?”

“Oh, not this. I’ve had it since before I can remember. Though I don’t look at it very often.”

“And what do you plan to do with it now?”

“I thought it might help me understand why someone would try to have me killed. And why me, Drew? Why not Queen Victoria?” She pointed to the line above and to the right of her own name. “Or my cousin the Grand Duke Leopold II?”

Because you’re the threat, Caro. You, personally.
He believed that now more than ever. “How exactly did your father lose his kingdom?”

“Betrayal and conniving, I’m afraid. But it can’t be that. It was too long ago.”

“A quick invasion?”

“A slow one, actually. Boratania had been under a state of siege by three of its neighbors for more than two years. Over an age-old dispute about who had won what war. From what I understand, people were starving in the streets, the army had been decimated by injuries and disease.”

“I imagine the outcome must have looked quite bleak to your parents.”

“They couldn’t have known just how bleak things were going to get.”

“Few of us can see into the future, Caro. Most people wouldn’t
want
to know.”

“I’m sure my father would have liked to have looked ahead, just a week or so, because when his most trusted friend offered to deploy his own troops
into Boratania to strengthen the borders and break the siege, he eagerly agreed.”

“That was the Grand Duke VanGroyen. Your father’s third cousin, twice removed.”

“In this case, blood counted for nothing at all. As it turned out, Stephan VanGroyen was the most treacherous man in the whole of Europe.”

“That’s saying a lot, madam, considering the cast of characters.”

“Which is a great shame. Because my father welcomed VanGroyen’s aid as a friend. I wish I’d gotten the chance to know my parents.”

“Things would certainly have been different for you, Caro.” Though she couldn’t possibly know just how different. “So your father invited his worst enemy through his fortified gates?”

“Father was so relieved that he greeted the duke’s advancing army into his own capital city of Tovaranche with a grand salute and a military band. It wasn’t until the terrible man signaled his troops to turn and attack my father’s soldiers that he realized the extent of the treachery.”

“He didn’t just invade Boratania, as I understand it. The duke then invaded one of the warring duchies and usurped that throne as well.”

“With the blessings of the third duchy. But not before putting my father to the sword and causing my mother to flee for her life with the servants. She went into hiding, even though she must have been heavy with child at the time. With me.”

Not with you, my dear.
When the beleaguered queen was last seen trying to escape the attack, she was wearing a heavy ermine cloak and had a fortune in gems and jewelry sewn into her bodice, which would
indeed have made her look pregnant. Though she never left Tovaranche.

So when she died in the attack, the rumors of her rounded shape provided the perfect piece of fiction to the powerful men all across Europe who needed to keep a Boratanian heir in reserve.

A simple ruse, with such long-lasting consequences.

A dangerous secret that too many important people needed to keep quiet.

Was that truly the answer, then? Was the secret of Caro’s identity about to be exposed?

And was someone, or some agency, willing to kill her to keep it cloaked?

Christ! That was the only explanation that made sense.

“Everything went so badly for them, Drew, so quickly,” Caro said. “A kingdom lost, a people. Two lives and a marriage, a family. It’s very sad, isn’t it? So unnecessary.”

Except that I would never have met you, my dear.
“Most wars are completely unnecessary.”

“To think that my mother was in her mid thirties by that time, and yet I was her only child. One she never got to hold in her arms.”

Oh, my dear, if you only knew.

“Can you imagine all those years of disappointment and sorrow? And then imagine my parents’ joy when, in the midst of a horrible siege, they realized my mother was with child.”

Imagine.

“Though they both must have been hoping for a son to inherit the kingdom of Boratania,” she added in a tiny voice, so unlike her.

“No male heir could have bested you at caring for their legacy, Caro.”

Her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, this brave young woman who carried the world on her shoulders.

“You’re very kind, Drew.”

“I’m very lucky, madam.” He tipped her chin up with his knuckle. “Instead of you, I could have drawn the task of protecting Malcomb from his gambling debts.”

She smiled wanly and her tears slipped down her cheeks. “The lesser of two evils.”

“The lesser of nothing in the world, Princess.”

Then he did a foolish, foolish thing, forgetting himself and the distance he’d worked so fiercely to keep from her.

He kissed her.

On the cheek, but too near her mouth.

And he lingered there too long.

“Oh, my…Drew,” she breathed against his eyelashes.

Nothing left to do but kiss her flat on the forehead, a smacking, platonic kiss that was supposed to mask his motives but only sealed his fate and left him reeling.

“Well, then,” he said, his pulse raging and his head swimming as he raised up. “Till lunch then, Princess.”

Drew wandered out of the library, dazzled and unfocused, and didn’t find himself again until he noticed that he was standing in the investigation room, staring down at the items from the shooter’s pockets.

“Ah, there you are, sir!” Runson said from the doorway. “Took the kids up to the east wing.”

“Good to see that you lived through the ordeal.”

“Ah, it were nothing. A good lot, they are. P’s and q’s and yessirs in all the right places.”

“Let’s hope we can say the same about the princess’s so-called subjects, Runson. I want to know everything they do. Not only the men, but also the women. Where they go and who they talk to. Follow any of them who might leave the grounds.”

“Right, sir. I’ll let the rest of the staff know.”

Just now Drew was heading off to find Johannes, hopefully to head the man off with a story about Caro being sensitive to anything that had to do with the deaths of her parents.

A blatant, unfair lie, but it would have to do for the moment.

Bloody hell, it was going to be a long, long day.

“W
hy, this is a blessed miracle, Your Highness!”

Caro adored seeing the joy and wonder in Johannes’s eyes as he picked up the silver salver, his growing smile as he lifted his spectacles and peered more closely at it. “Where did it all come from?”

She opened her logbook to the section on religious icons. “I’ve been collecting Boratanian artifacts for more than ten years.”

Marcus was walking among the crates, reading the labels. “Do these all contain artifacts, Your Highness?”

“Every item examined against an historic reference, such as a vestment or a door knocker, or a painting, that sort of thing, and then catalogued in my logbook, packed away and stored safely in the vaults below for our return trip to Boratania.”

“Simply amazing, Your Highness.”

“It really is, Marcus.” And until she met these fine
men, the artifacts had been her only contact with her country.

She noticed that Erasmus was peering at something partially hidden in a nest of excelsior.

“You’re from Dubarre, Erasmus. You probably remember this.” She retrieved the brass vessel.

“Yes, yes, indeed, Your Highness.” The old man’s hands shook as he took the chalice. “Dear Lord, I must have seen it at every Sunday mass for the first fifty years of my life. Drank from it at my wedding to my dear Greta. But I’d heard it had been stolen.”

“Looted, Erasmus.” She put her arm around his thin shoulders and tried to see the chalice as he did, as his beloved bride had, so many years ago.

“Then how did you come by it?”

“I looted it back, Erasmus.” Though she couldn’t recall from whom. There had been so many pieces, and she’d found the chalice such a long time ago.

She flipped through her book and found the entry. “Ah, yes! Nine years ago, from the vestry at York Minster.”

“Great heavens!”

“If I recall, that’s just what the archbishop said when I walked out with it.”

Wilhelm came around to her side of the worktable. “What’s this you have, Your Highness?”

“It’s my current logbook. A catalogue of everything I’ve collected. I take it with me everywhere. I have a dozen of them in the library, a book for each of these categories. But this is the working book that I add to every day.”

“Oh, I see.” The old general pointed to the page with the listings of etchings. “I remember this one:
the Albrecht Dürer portrait of Alfonso-Gustav II. Didn’t it used to hang in your father’s great hall?”

“Exactly.” Another confirmation that the portrait had once belonged to her family. “And here you can see that, until recently, my cousin Queen Victoria kept it in the breakfast room at Kensington. She was most gracious when I asked for it back.”

Wilhelm laughed with his whole body. “Your Highness, if you’re as courageous as an empress as you’ve been as a thief, then Boratania will be an international force to be reckoned with in just a few years.”

“Just as I’ve been telling your princess, Wilhelm.”

Drew! Caro turned toward his voice at the orangery door, her heart already thumping crazily in her chest.

He might have been answering Wilhelm, but he was looking straight at her, at her mouth where he had almost kissed her.

Almost, because he’d missed her mouth on purpose.

That was one thing she knew about her Lord Wexford: He didn’t make mistakes.

A pity, that.

Perhaps he would try again.

“Good morning, my lord,” she said, catching the edge of the table for balance. “I’ve been showing off the artifacts that we’ll be returning to Boratania.”

“An impressive collection, isn’t it, gentlemen?” Drew said, still smiling at her as the men eagerly agreed.

“I never thought I’d see that statue of Gatkemeer the Destroyer again.” Karl ran his gnarled hand over the lush marble figure.

Wilhelm shook his head in awe. “Or the Karenina tapestry. Last I saw, it was in the great hall of the Weavers Guild in Clarence.”

“Let’s hope that the items I’ve chosen for the Great Exhibition will impress the entire world.”

“Are the wagons ready, Princess?” Drew asked abruptly.

“All three of them, thanks again to the remarkable Mr. Wheeler.” She looked at the old mantel clock on the worktable and found the day wasting. “Good heavens, if I’m going have enough time to deliver all of them to the exhibition hall today, then we’ll have to leave now.”

“
We’re
not driving into London, Princess.
I
am. My crew. I’ll make the delivery. You’re staying here.”

Caro heard herself snort at the man; but nipping this one in the bud right away was her only hope. “Don’t be absurd. You wouldn’t know the first thing about who to see or what needs to be done there.”

“You can draw it out for me.”

“You cannot possibly talk me out of going with you, Wexford.” She caught her finger in a buttonhole of his waistcoat and tugged at him. “But you
can
talk me into traveling in your amazing carriage. Which means we can haul even more things inside. An excellent work-around-my-duties, don’t you think?”

To her great amazement Drew just stood there, apparently speechless. Then he leveled his finger at her. “We leave as soon as the horses are hitched, madam. Gentlemen.”

Caro watched him stalk off toward the stables, wondering what would have happened if things could have been different between them. If only she
weren’t a princess-soon-to-be-empress, or if he were a prince…

“Pardon me, Your Highness”—Johannes came up beside her—“but you said we could help you in some way.”

She turned to him. “In a very special way, Johannes, because you and the others know so much more about the history of all this than I do.”

“Possibly a bit more, Your Highness. What is it you want us to do?”

“The items in these crates on this side of the room are listed in my catalog, but they haven’t been entered into my logbook as being found.” She picked up an oar from a longboat. “I would love for you and the others to examine what I’ve got here, and if you recognize anything at all, either here or down in the vaults, please add the information right onto the log page next to its number. Any story at all will be a treasure to me.”

The men were all grinning from ear to ear, like children in a candy shop. It wasn’t greed she saw in their eyes, not the prospect of the cool feel of gold in their hands.

It was the pure joy of coming home again.

“A million square feet of glass, Drew,” Caro said, following his dark gaze as it once again traveled the soaring details of the huge Crystal Palace.

“An assassin’s paradise, Princess.”

“It’s gloriously spectacular, though, isn’t it? Designed and commissioned by Prince Albert and built in record time. More than eighteen hundred feet long and four hundred feet wide, over nineteen acres all
under the same roof, which is one hundred thirty-five feet at its highest!”

“Truly a marvel of modern engineering, Princess.” He stuck his thumbs into his belt as they walked down the transept. “But at the risk of repeating myself, it’s also an assassin’s fondest dream.”

“How do you mean?”

He stood behind her and pointed into the galleries and along the railing of international banners and the vast expanse of glass and iron. “Pillars to hide behind during the bustle of the opening ceremonies, and railings and unobstructed lines of sight, not a single inside wall.”

And his own men placed at crucial intervals, just as they were now. As they always were. She’d gotten so used to having them around, they’d become a sort of extended family.

“But the Crystal Palace will be so crowded, no one will be able to move, let alone aim a rifle anywhere.”

“Assassins love crowds, my dear.”

“Mine seem to love the woods, Drew. And the library. Much quieter places.”

“Complacency will get you killed, Caro.” His voice grew low and intimate. “And I wouldn’t like that at all.”

“Well, then…” She could feel her face growing warm, her thoughts tangling on themselves, on that kiss a few days ago, so she blathered on with her catalog of amazing facts.

“You can see how the entire hall is divided up into different courts.” She’d been here so many times before in preparation for her own exhibit, had asked so many questions of the experts, she’d be excellent at leading in-depth tours, should the Royal Commis
sion ask. “There’s art and architecture from all the ages. Industry and commerce and raw materials…There! See that, Drew…that huge glass lantern? That’s a lens for a lighthouse.”

Drew seemed the stalking lion as he went ahead of her down the aisle, leading her around the huge stuffed elephant that was being muscled into its place in the Indian exhibit. “How many exhibits did you say?”

“Thirteen thousand.”

“Bloody hell!”

“Including mine.” Which was looking enormously impressive with everything unloaded from the packing boxes and now on display.

Looking suddenly, terribly vulnerable. “In your professional opinion, Drew, just how secure is the exhibition hall?”

“It isn’t secure in the least, Princess.”

“That’s what I am suddenly realizing. That these irreplaceable treasures of Boratania are now fair game for anyone with light fingers.” Wondering why she hadn’t thought about the problem before this, Caro started off the platform. “Blazes! I’m going back to the exhibition office to find out what kind of—”

“I’ve already taken care of it.”

“Taken care of what?”

“Security. The exhibit hall has a dozen guards on duty, posted around the clock, inside and out.”

“But—”

“But because I knew it would ease your mind, Caro, I’ve already arranged to have two of my men guarding the Boratanian exhibit at all times. Starting right now, for as long as you need it.”

Come home with me to Boratania, Drew.

“Thank you, Drew. You always think of everything.”

Drew wasn’t sure he could take much more of her smile. Too bright for his eyes, too large for his heart.

“It’s my responsibility to prepare for every eventuality, before it comes to pass.”

“I’m going to need someone just like you when I become empress.”

“Just like me?” Drew stepped back and spoke without thinking. “Are you proposing marriage, madam?”

“To you?” Her eyes flew open, wide and blue, bolts of panic lighting them. “Oh, Drew, no! I didn’t mean—”

“No, madam?”

“No, I just meant that…well, if you should ever find yourself in Boratania…”

He knew what she’d meant, felt it in his heart like an endless void. “You’ll find me at your castle door, Princess, if I ever do.”

“And if I ever need someone to watch over me again, Drew…well, I can’t imagine anyone but you. So…thank you. Again.”

“Come, then, Caro,” he said, shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets, not daring to do anything more than nod toward the aisle that was bristling with ancient agricultural implements. “I really should get you back home through the woods before dark.”

She gave a long look at her elegant display, with its medieval tapestries and marble statues, portraits and baskets and all manner of brassworks. “It does look fine, doesn’t it?”

“Less than a week and the rest of the world will have a chance to agree.”

“I hope so.” She picked up her leather folio and started down the aisle.

They passed by the Prussian textile exhibit, the woodcarvings of Württemberg, the Saxony china.

“The Steegman-Meyer porcelain factory used to be well within the borders of Bora—great heavens!” She stopped short in front of an unfinished display area. “Of all the nerve.”

“What?”

“Do you see that silver goblet in that glass case in the corner.” She pointed at a glass-fronted wardrobe and the array of glittering objects inside.

“Yes, why?”

“The goblet is mine.”

“That may be, Princess, but at the moment, it’s locked behind a glass door in the Hollen-Zwingen exhibit.”

“Stolen from a pair of goblets that were given to my grandparents by King Frederick V on their wedding day.”

“That may be, Caro, but you don’t have your logbook with you, so you have no way of knowing for certain that this one is from the same set.”

“The pair were struck just for them. There were only two and I already have the other.”

Before he could react, the woman was standing in front of the case, picking at the lock with a hairpin from her now unwinding hair.

In the next moment, she had the goblet tucked under her arm, hidden by her cloak, and resumed ambling along the aisle.

“It’ll serve them right.”

“I never thought I’d get a chance to actually see you in action, Caro. My God, you’re good. My very own royal thief.”

“I’m not the thief in this drama, Drew,” the madwoman said, as she stooped slightly to peer into another case. “I’m the relentless detective and, when necessary, I’m the ruthless liberator.”

Of all the royals Drew had ever met, this one was the most brazenly fearless.

The most beautiful and the only one who had ever made him laugh from down deep in his gut.

He strolled leisurely beside her, playing her game, following her lead, feeling deeply involved in her mischief, which put him in mind of long ago intrigues with Jared and Ross.

“It’s good to know that your conscience is utterly clear, Princess.”

“Clear as the sky, Drew.”

“You’d make a fine pickpocket, my dear. But some day you’re going to be found out. And then what?”

“Then my Hollen-Zwingen cousins will just have to do without the goblet.”

“They’re sure to see it displayed in your exhibit.”

“I hope they do. But there’s nothing much they can say or do about it, is there? Keeping looted property when you know who the rightful owners are is shameful!”

“Tell that to the Egyptians.”

“Exactly. My cousins know very well that I’ve been searching for looted items. I’ve even distributed lists of the most important pieces.”

The woman was a walking, talking time bomb.

“Was that wise, Caro? Announcing to your potential victims your intention to rob them—”

“As I live and breathe, it’s Princess Caroline!”

Drew recognized the voice to be Peverel’s. It had come from behind the crystal fountain in the center of the transept.