Royal Blood (19 page)

I laughed with her but my cheeks were very pink. It was the first time anyone had ever suggested that I might be elegant one day. Maybe there was some of my mother’s blood in me after all.

I had just been unpinned from my dress and was retrieving my more practical jumper and skirt when there was a tap at the door. One of the seamstresses was directed to go and returned with a letter. Matty looked at it, then handed it to me. “From one of your admirers.” She gave me a knowing look.

I glanced up at the door as I recognized Darcy’s firm black scrawl.
I need to speak to you immediately,
it said.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

“A midmorning tryst. How romantic. Siegfried will be jealous.” Matty wagged a finger and the other girls giggled as I went to the door. I hoped she was just joking. For a second I felt a stab of a different kind of fear—had I been brought here to be bride of this particular Frankenstein after all? Frankly if it was a choice between life with Siegfried and a bite from a vampire, I think I’d prefer to be undead. But I didn’t have long to consider this as Darcy was waiting outside the door for me.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, drawing me to one side. “Look, something has come up and I have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“We’ve run into a complication,” he whispered. “Nicholas’s father demanded to be taken straight to see Pirin.”

“Oh, Lord, so I suppose the game’s up.”

“Not yet. We kept the curtains drawn so that it was pretty dark. The firelight actually made his skin look reddish. I slipped into the room and hid under the bed, then I snored loudly to make it sound as if he was still breathing.”

I started to laugh, it was so absurd.

Darcy smiled too. “It worked once, but the king is very concerned. He wanted to send one of the cars to bring his personal physician from Bulgaria immediately.”

“How did you stop him from doing that?”

“Nick persuaded him that there was a good hospital with modern equipment in the nearest city and it would be better if Pirin were transported there immediately.”

“Oh, no, what are you going to do?”

“I’ve volunteered to go to the hospital with him, since Nicholas can’t leave his bride.”

“But what good will that do? They’ll pronounce him dead as soon as he arrives.”

“If he arrives,” Darcy said. “I’m also going to be driving and unfortunately the car is going to go off the road into a snowdrift somewhere up on the pass. By the time I’ve gone for help poor Field Marshal Pirin will have died, so there will be no point in summoning the personal physician. And the news of the tragic death won’t reach the castle until after the wedding.”

“So you’re not going to be here for the wedding either?” The disappointment in my face must have shown.

“I have to do this, my love,” he said. He raised his hand to my cheek. “I’m the only one who can do it, but I want you to help Nick and Anton in any way you can.”

“Of course,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, then he went down the stairs without looking back.

Chapter 22

Still in Bran Castle

I returned to the salon.

“That was quick for a tryst,” Matty said.

“He just had a message to give me,” I said. “Your future father-in-law wants the field marshal to be taken to a hospital immediately and Darcy has volunteered to accompany him.”

“Thank God he’s going,” Matty said. “Now we can return to enjoying ourselves.”

I excused myself soon after, having decided not to ask one of the seamstresses to save my scorched dress. The way those sewing machines were clattering away indicated that they were busy enough already. Maybe when all the dresses were finished, I’d try again. I came into the hallway in time to run into Lady Middlesex and Miss Deer-Harte. “I don’t know how you two managed to go for a walk in that snow,” Lady Middlesex said accusingly. “We only ventured a few yards before Deer-Harte sank up to her middle. Had a dashed difficult time getting her out.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We walked in the tracks the cars had made.”

“Better get you up to your room, Deer-Harte, before you catch your death of cold,” Lady Middlesex said. “Saw them loading the field marshal’s body into one of the hearses, by the way. And Mr. O’Mara went off with him. I hope they’re taking him to a place where a proper autopsy can be performed.”

I put my finger up to my lips. “Remember we’re not supposed to be talking about this,” I said. “Field Marshal Pirin has gone to hospital.”

“Oh, yes. Right. Of course.” She grinned like a naughty child. “Not that it matters. I’m sure none of the servants understand a word of what we’re saying.”

“I’m sure it’s very easy to listen in on conversations in a castle like this,” I said. “We have a laird’s lug at Castle Rannoch—you know, a secret room where you can listen to conversations in the great hall. And sound carries through all the pipes in the bathrooms, so I’m sure it must be the same here.”

“Well, I believe in calling a spade a spade,” Lady Middlesex said, annoyed now that I’d caught her out. “I don’t hold with trickery and deceit. Not the British way, you know. And if there is a murderer loose in this castle, then it’s high time he was found.”

I looked around to see who might be listening to this outburst. Luckily the hall appeared to be deserted, but at that moment I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Prince Nicholas came toward us, taking the steps two at a time.

“Well, that’s been accomplished, thank God,” he said. “My father saw him off.”

“How did you manage that?”

Nicholas grinned. “We carried him down to the car, wrapped head to toe in blankets against the cold. Father never had a chance to see any more of his face than a mustache peeping out. Good old Darcy. Splendid chap. Now we can hope that it takes a long time to mend the telephone wires.”

“So when do we hold the council of war?” Lady Middlesex demanded.

Prince Nicholas looked wary. “War?”

“I mean when do we meet to plan strategy and work out how we are going to solve this?”

“Oh, right.” Nicholas looked as if meeting with Lady Middlesex was not what he had in mind.

“We should pool our brains on this one, and our observations,” she said. “Deer-Harte thought she noticed one of the servants acting shiftily.”

“Very well. No time like the present, I suppose,” Nicholas said. “Maria is still with her ladies and the dressmakers, I presume?” I nodded. “So I’ll find Dragomir and my brother and we’ll meet in the library in fifteen minutes. Agreed?”

“Just gives you time to get out of those freezing wet clothes, Deer-Harte,” Lady Middlesex said.

I was making my way up to the floor that contained the library when I remembered that I hadn’t had any breakfast and took a detour to the breakfast room in the hope that there was still a roll I could grab. The room was empty but for Belinda, sitting alone at the table with a coffee cup in front of her.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I got up late and then went for a walk with Darcy,” I said.

“How romantic. But where is everyone else? The place is like a morgue.”

“Matty is having a dress fitting with her attendants and you know that the royal party arrived, don’t you?”

Belinda frowned. “Oh, yes. Anton deserted me to rush to the side of his papa. And they all seemed to be heading for the sickroom of that awful man Pirin.”

“Pirin’s now on his way to hospital, thank goodness,” I said, feeling strange about lying to my best friend.

“So why aren’t you at the dress fitting?”

“I went first. And I have such a perfect lack of figure that not much alteration was involved.”

“Good, then you and I can do something fun together. What shall it be?” She got up and slipped her arm through mine. “Not that this is the sort of place that I consider to be fun. No casino, no shops. Thank God for sex, or I’d be bored to tears.”

“Belinda! You really shouldn’t say things like that where they can be overheard.”

She laughed. “There’s nobody in the room but the two of us. Besides, it’s the truth.”

“You were the one who wanted to come here,” I reminded her.

“Well, it did seem like a good lark at the time,” she said. “And I have to admit that Anton is rather scrumptious. But now his parents are here, I’m afraid he’ll have to behave like a good little boy. So what shall it be? Do you want to go and look for your vampires? We could find where their coffins are stored.”

“Stop teasing. I know what I saw, why won’t anyone else believe me?”

“But darling, of course I believe you, and I’m dying to meet a vampire.” She attempted to drag me from the room.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t come anywhere with you at the moment,” I said. “I have to meet—” I stopped hastily. Of course I couldn’t tell her that I had to meet the princes or she’d want to come along. “Lady Middlesex,” I finished. “I have to meet Lady Middlesex and Miss Deer-Harte.” I tried desperately to think of a reason for this meeting that would sound unappealing to Belinda. “She’s writing a history of Sandringham House and she wants my insights.”

Belinda wrinkled her nose. “I think I’ll go and take a long bath so I can try out my new Parisian bath beads. The bathrooms seem to be unoccupied at this time of day. Toodle-pip.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, put a slice of cheese onto a roll and fled. I arrived at the library to find that the others were already assembled, sitting around a big oval mahogany table in the center of an impressive if gloomy library. Shelves of leather-bound volumes rose into darkness, and a gallery circled the library at about twelve feet above our heads. High, narrow windows threw shafts of sunlight onto the floor, illuminating the dust motes. There was a pervading smell of must, dust and old books. I took the empty chair next to Lady Middlesex and opposite Nicholas and Dragomir.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got held up by—” I broke off as I noticed that there was one person at the table I hadn’t expected. Prince Siegfried was sitting beside Dragomir.

“Lady Georgiana.” He nodded his head.

I looked at Nicholas. He raised his eyebrows. “Siegfried sensed that something was wrong and insisted on seeing Field Marshal Pirin, so naturally I had to tell him the truth and apologize for our secrecy in keeping this matter hushed up.”

Siegfried pursed those cod lips. “This most serious matter was brought to my attention, and I now have to decide whether it should be brought out into the open, or kept from my parents.”

I glanced at Dragomir. Had he been the one who had spilled the beans to Siegfried? And if he was the murderer, would that have been a wise thing to do?

“I have explained to His Highness the delicacy of the situation regarding the stability of my nation and the Balkans as a whole,” Nicholas said in a clipped voice. It was clear there had been an argument about this already.

“And I have explained to His Highness that this is my country and I have to make sure that we behave as we would expect any citizen to behave—and that includes reporting a murder to the proper authorities.”

“Obviously we may have to do that eventually,” Anton said in a soothing manner, “but if we can solve it among ourselves here, then nobody else needs to know and the wedding can take place as planned. Surely that is what you wish, Siegfried?”

“Of course.”

Dragomir cleared his throat. “But surely the simplest thing to do would be to claim that a communist or anarchist managed to climb into the castle, administer the poison and then make his getaway undetected.”

“The simplest thing,” Nicholas said, “would be to treat the death as a heart attack, which is what everyone else believes anyway. If they decide on an autopsy, it will be hard to trace the cyanide after that amount of time.”

“If we are to believe your diagnosis that cyanide was administered,” Siegfried said carefully, “then we must do our duty and find the person who committed this shocking act. Just because the occupants of this castle are royal does not put us above the justice system of our country.”

“Well spoken, Your Highness,” said a deep voice in guttural French, and a figure stepped from the darkness at the far end of the library. If I had been asked to describe Dracula, this man would have fit the bill perfectly. Tall, thin, hollow cheeked, hollow eyed and very pale, he was dressed head to toe in black, which accentuated the whiteness of his skin. For one ridiculous moment it crossed my mind to wonder whether Vlad the Impaler was still alive and still ruled this castle and the people in it. The man moved toward us with smooth, menacing steps. Then he looked around at us and smiled. “If the personages at this table were not of such exalted rank, I should think that I was witnessing a conspiracy and have you all arrested on the spot,” he said. “However, as His Highness Prince Siegfried has just so wisely said, even royal personages are not above the law. If I understood correctly, and I admit that my English is not as fluent as it should be, you were planning to cover up a murder so that there would be no unpleasantness and the wedding could take place as planned. Am I right?”

“Who the devil are you?” Nicholas asked coldly.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Patrascue, head of the Romanian secret police.” He pulled up a chair and squeezed himself in between Nicholas and Dragomir. “Given the importance of the occasion and the presence of foreign royalty, I elected to travel with Their Majesties to this royal wedding. How fortunate that I did, wasn’t it? I had only just arrived when one of my men reported to me that he had overheard a conversation about a murder and a body being whisked away.”

I looked across at Lady Middlesex, who had gone a little pink.

“So perhaps one of you would be good enough to tell me who died.”

“Field Marshal Pirin,” Siegfried said. “Head of the Bulgarian armed forces.”

“Also senior adviser to my father and a powerful force in the politics of the region.”

“Ah, so we are looking at a political murder, are we?” Patrascue licked his lips. “Very well. Understand this. I will be conducting the investigation and you will be answering my questions—royal or not. Do not think that your exalted rank puts you above the law in Romania. Dear me, no. Our country is a constitutional monarchy and you really have very little power.”

“You have to understand,” Anton said, “that we were not attempting to cover up a murder just so that a wedding can take place. This man’s death could have significance for the future of my country and this entire region.”

“And you are . . . ?” Patrascue asked insolently.

“I happen to be Prince Anton of Bulgaria,” Anton said coldly. “In case you don’t know, you are sitting next to Prince Nicholas, my older brother, heir to the throne and bridegroom.”

“My felicitations.” Patrascue nodded to Nicholas. “And these other people—your fellow conspirators. Why are they here?”

“I am Lady Georgiana, cousin to King George of England,” I said, reverting to my imitation of my great-grandmother, as I always do when I feel threatened. “I am here representing Their Majesties at this wedding. These two ladies are my companions, sent to accompany me by Queen Mary.”

“And the reason you sit here now? I did not think the power of the British Empire extended to central Europe.” Patrascue eyed me insolently.

“Actually I’m here as a relative,” I said. “As a descendant of Queen Victoria I am related to the Bulgarian royal family and more remotely to the Romanian one. Also I was sitting opposite Field Marshal Pirin at the fateful dinner, and thus witnessed everything. My companion Lady Middlesex was the first to suspect that his death was not a heart attack.”

“You say you witnessed everything,” Patrascue went on. “What exactly did you see,
ma chérie
?”

I bristled at the words “my dear.” I had come to believe that there is at least one obnoxious policeman in every country and he was facing me. “I saw Field Marshal Pirin give a long, rambling toast, take a swig of his wine and then seem to be choking and pitch face forward across the table.”

“He seemed to be choking, you say. Was it possible that he was indeed choking and a simple slap on the back could have revived him?”

“He had finished eating at the time,” I said. “There had been speeches and toasts for some minutes. Besides, he was dead almost immediately. Initially it was suspected that he had had a heart attack.”