Prince Charming (36 page)

“I don’t think it would be wise,” he finally said, though his dark eyes glittered like those of a starved man. “Not here.”

Orlando shrugged with a mild smirk. “Suit yourself. I’m sure we’ll meet again.” He began drifting off down the hall.

“You’re not—you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“Get some sleep, di Tadzio. You worry too much. By the way, was Rafe really with Chloe tonight, or were you just saying that to be a prick to Daniela?” Orlando called, sauntering down the hall.

Adriano gave a short laugh. “He’s with her.”

“Not all day, surely? No one has seen him in hours.”

Adriano tossed his forelock out of his eyes. “The last I heard, he disappeared into the city after an appointment with someone from your department.”

Orlando stopped. Turned. “The Ministry of Finance?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“Some vile little fat man. Don’t know his name. In some kind of trouble, apparently. He’s accused of embezzlement, I think.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Rafe questioned him, but the fellow wouldn’t cooperate. Elan told me they threw him in one of the holding cells in the palace basement for the night. I guess they’ll try again tomorrow to make him talk.”

Orlando’s heart had begun to pound. “Rafe interviewed him personally?”

Adriano nodded.

“That’s odd,” Orlando remarked in a carefully casual tone. “Well, good evening, di Tadzio.”

“Ciao,”
Adriano muttered as he went into his suite.

Orlando stood there in stunned amazement for a second, trying to absorb it.

The time was upon him.

The time to act. Now.

Tonight.

His heart leaped. The blood roared in his veins. If the prince was on his trail, there wasn’t a moment to lose. He began striding quickly toward the stairs.

He had to find out at once exactly how much Bulbati had told Rafe. At heart, he believed Bulbati feared him too much to reveal anything, but he had to be sure. He always liked to be meticulously prepared for the worst.

Without another minute to lose, Orlando went to the palace basement where Bulbati was being held in the highly secured cells.

He got through the staunch Royal Guardsmen by explaining that, as Bulbati’s direct superior in the Ministry of Finance, he had every right to question the man about his activities, and so what if it was midnight? The Royal Guardsmen hesitated; he employed his usual blend of charm, manipulation, and arrogance.

Perhaps they saw a bit of his father in him, he thought in bitter amusement as they finally stepped out of his path and admitted him.

The air was dank but cooler under the palace, in the bowels of the earth. Torchlight flickered on the rough stone walls of the curving stairwell. Orlando slid off the leather strap tying back his queue and let his long black hair fall free to his shoulders as he slowly descended to the cell below where Bulbati was being held.

“Is someone there?” the count called. “You can’t leave me to starve here! I demand some proper victuals!”

Orlando’s broad shadow loomed large as he crept silently along the wall down the short aisle. All the cells were empty, save one.

“Prince Rafael? S-sire, is that you?” Bulbati stammered, seeing the shadow approaching.

Orlando saw the count’s pale, plump hands wrap around the iron bars down the way.

“Oh, God,” the count whispered as he came into the man’s view.

Orlando smiled serenely at him.

Bulbati began backing away. “I didn’t tell them anything! I didn’t, my lord!”

“Did you give them my name?” he asked gently as he took a key out of his breast pocket and twirled it in his fingers in silent threat.

It wasn’t the key to Bulbati’s cell, of course, but Bulbati didn’t know that.

“No!” the fat man choked out in horror, cowering in the corner of his cell. “I told them nothing!”

“For some reason, I don’t believe you, Bulbati.” He slid his knife out of its sheath.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t, oh, please, please, please, my lord,” Bulbati whispered as Orlando lifted the key toward the lock, then glanced at him.

With a wide-eyed, panic-stricken expression, Bulbati’s jaw was working noiselessly. Sweat poured down his face. He clutched his chest, gasping as though he couldn’t get breath.

“Did you give them my name, you filth?” Orlando asked again. “Tell me now before I lose my patience.”

“Help me!” Bulbati gasped out. Suddenly he fell onto the floor, his face tomato-red.

Orlando lifted a brow and stared at him curiously, then shook himself. “Did you tell them, Bulbati?” he demanded once more, unamused by this display.

But Bulbati didn’t answer, merely gurgled, his bulk lolling on the floor, twitching violently.

“Bulbati!”

Scowling, Orlando crouched down and peered through the bars at him.

The twitching stopped. Bulbati’s body went rigid and stiff. Strange small choking sounds came from his throat; his wide eyes stared blindly. Orlando waited but Bulbati did not move again. Orlando reached through the bars and poked him: no response. Not so much as a blink.

Suddenly Bulbati’s body disgorged its contents from both ends.

Wincing in disgust, Orlando swept to his feet. Well, the count wouldn’t be telling any secrets now. He stared at Bulbati, then suddenly laughed. He had never
scared
anyone to death before.

Marching back up the torchlit corridor, he stifled his laughter and assumed an angry expression. “Guards!” he bellowed, pointing down the aisle as they came running. “What the hell is going on here? Bulbati is dead!”

“My lord?” the first asked in astonishment.

“Go see for yourselves! The man is lying dead in his cell. I demand an explanation!”

He watched them scramble to survey the situation, heartened by this unexpected boon. Perhaps his charade could continue a little while longer. His spirits lifted, eager for the night’s work. Finally it was time to throw the net around golden, laughing Rafael, who was, without even knowing it, the sun and center of King Lazar’s cosmos.

Time to make a new use of the young chef Cristoforo.

Orlando left the guards in chaos behind him, bounding lightly up the circling stone stairs with a leering grin, leaping them two at a time.

  
CHAPTER  
FOURTEEN

Orlando located Cristoforo, the young underchef, in the same brothel where he had found him before. Once more, he plucked the skinny lad out of pretty Carmen’s bed, then tossed him into his black carriage, binding his wrists and ankles with ropes to avoid any mishaps, and was presently driving, hell-for-leather, to the prime minister’s elegant palazzo in the west end of Belfort.

The drive was not long, but Orlando’s urgency made him impatient. At last, the black coach rolled to a halt before Don Arturo’s sprawling home, which he had visited many times, cultivating the prime minister. Having lost his precious nephew Giorgio in that duel years ago, the old man had taken Orlando under his wing like the son he’d never had.

Not that his true father had any suspicion of whose son he really was,
he thought in a bitter pulsation of hate. He jumped down from the driver’s seat and walked back to open the carriage door. Barring Cristoforo’s exit, he studied his human instrument of deception with a hard warning stare.

“You know your lines, I trust?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Cristoforo gulped, then gingerly added, “Is it not too late to call on him, sir? It’s p-past midnight.”

He smiled blandly. “Don Arturo would not wish me to delay in bringing such shocking and terrible news to him as you have to tell, my dear boy.”

The tall, lanky lad shuddered and looked away, staring out the window, his thin shoulders hunched.

“Don’t do anything foolish, Cristoforo. I will be back directly to fetch you.” With that, Orlando checked his ropes one more time, then locked the carriage door from the outside and proceeded up to the house.

As he walked toward the graceful entrance, he meditated on his pretense and felt himself changing, chameleonlike. By the time he banged on the prime minister’s door, his expression was one of anger and frantic dread. He paced back and forth across the small front patio in feigned agitation until the old butler, in nightcap and dressing gown, opened the door and held up a candle.

“Good heavens, Your Grace! Is aught amiss?”

“Wake the prime minister,” Orlando ordered at once.

“Sir?”

“For the good of Ascencion, get him, man! We are in a state of emergency!”

Staring at him as Orlando shoved the door open and strode into the foyer, the butler paled. “Right away, sir.”

When the butler had scurried off to wake Don Arturo, Orlando went back outside and ordered Cristoforo out of the coach. Holding him roughly by the arm, Orlando propelled the youth into the palazzo and shoved him into Don Arturo’s reception room.

“Wait here until I come for you. Do not fail me,” he murmured in warning, then locked him in.

He returned to the foyer with just enough time to glance into the mirror, reassembling his countenance into a look of angry discomposure before the venerable Don Arturo came shuffling into the foyer in his dressing gown.

“Orlando, what are you doing here at this hour? What has happened?”

“Don Arturo!” He strode to him. “We must speak privately, sir, right away.”

The older man frowned, his single bushy eyebrow moving up and down like a black bar across his forehead. “Very well. Calm down, boy. Step into my study.”

“I have news pertaining to the king’s illness. Dire, most terrible news,” he said in a struggling tone the moment the door had closed behind them.

“What is it?” the prime minister asked, pausing behind his desk rather than sitting down. Above the fireplace mantel was a portrait of the nephew who had died in the duel.

Orlando rubbed his forehead as he shook his head. “Sir, I barely know how to say it.” He lowered his hand and met Don Arturo’s anxious stare. “I have evidence that the king’s illness is not stomach cancer but may actually be the result of…poisoning.”

“What?”
Eyes widening, Don Arturo slowly sank into his desk chair.

“I found a young chef of the royal kitchens who claims that someone of our mutual acquaintance bribed him to administer poison in His Majesty’s viands. He says the poisoning began over eight months ago!”

“Whom does he name?”

“He can tell you himself, sir, for he is here.”

“In my house?” he exclaimed.

“Yes, I will bring him in. Then you can judge for yourself whether or not you believe him, for I know not what to think. He is waiting in your reception room.”

“Orlando, wait! I need a moment to absorb it all. My God. My poor, dear king. A poisoner?” Don Arturo looked up at him shrewdly. “How did you find this vile creature and what on earth convinced him to confess to you?”

“Cristoforo came to me of his own free will and told me everything, confessing his part in the crime because he sought my protection. With His Majesty having left Ascencion, the lad is no longer needed. Now the one who hired Cristoforo is trying to kill him in order to conceal the plot.”

Don Arturo leaned forward, his voice dropping to a tremulous whisper. “Whom does he name, Orlando?”

Orlando gave him a distraught look. “Who has the most to gain by the king’s demise, my lord? It pains me to say it, sir. I think you realize of whom I am speaking.”

“Rafael,” he answered, as though he barely dared breathe the name.

Orlando closed his eyes and nodded.

Don Arturo covered his mouth with his hand and sat back, stunned into silence.

Orlando gave him a hard look, inwardly rejoicing at the man’s look of instant credulity. “I will be right back with the chef.”

Don Arturo gave no reaction, staring at nothing with a stricken look on his lined face.

Orlando exited the study without another word and walked down the hall to retrieve Cristoforo, exulting with private glee. Unlocking the door of the reception room, he opened it and stuck his head in.

“It’s time,” he grunted, but as he scanned the room, he saw no Cristoforo…only an open window.