“You’re absolutely right, sister. Thank you ever so much for reminding me.”
“You’re most welcome.” Eugenia sighed heavily. “Our magic may, though, be needed yet.”
Gwendolyn turned to look in the direction Rachel had taken.
“It may indeed,” she said quietly.
Hannah needed to escape.
She paced back and forth in the Queen’s Solar, her grasp on her composure slipping more with each step.
She imagined everyone in the palace knew of her fight with Alex. It felt like everyone looked at her with either pity or outrage. They were probably whispering about her around every corner, behind every door. Maybe they had a betting pool going. She wondered what the odds were that Alex actually would throw her into the dungeon. She needed to get away from all these people looking, whispering and wondering. She needed to be
alone
for just five damn minutes!
She didn’t understand the big deal. He was a man, wasn’t he? She thought men wanted a woman who wanted to have no-holds-barred, no-strings-attached wild jungle sex. Didn’t they?
“So I’ve always believed.”
Hannah spun around. She didn’t realize she’d actually voiced her thoughts, or that her daughter had come into the room. She flushed. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.”
Catharine’s smile was the one Hannah had always labeled cheeky. Any other time, seeing it would have lightened her heart. Now, it just annoyed her.
“That’s what’s wrong with this damn place. It’s as big as a…a…”
“Palace?”
“Smart-ass. My point is, it’s big beyond belief and there’s still no privacy here!”
“I’ll go.” Catharine turned to do just that.
“No!” Hannah watched as her daughter slowly turned back to face her. “I’m sorry. I’m letting that man turn me into a babbling, raving bitch.”
“By ‘that man,’ I presume you mean my soon-to-be father-in-law?” Catharine asked as she sat down on a loveseat.
“Yes, the I’m-the-ruler-of-all-I-survey-and-can do-whatever-the-hell-I-like king of this country.”
“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good.”
“‘I can do whatever I want, including detaining uncooperative tourists.’” Even as she mimicked Alex, Hannah felt small and mean and miserable.
“May I ask what you’re being uncooperative about?”
Hannah turned away and walked over to the windows. Below, the gardens spread out like a beautiful tapestry. There, just off the path, sat the bench where Alex had proposed to her—looking at her watch, she could see it neared noon—less than twenty-four hours ago.
“Alex asked me to marry him.”
A silence greeted this announcement, followed by a cautious, “And you said no?”
Because a lump suddenly clogged her throat and she didn’t think she could speak, she simply nodded. As she did, she felt a tear slip down her cheek.
“I thought you loved him.” Then, obviously putting two and two together, Catharine said in growing outrage, “And because you said no, he threatened to have you
detained
?”
Instead of cheering Hannah, Catherine’s commiseration made her feel worse.
“I can’t blame him, really. I hurt his feelings, terribly.”
“You can’t blame him for threatening you?”
“Well, I may have goaded him, a little. We argued, and it got out of control. I thought we were having an affair, you see, and I was fine with that.” Then, because she felt tired and confused, she turned around and lowered herself to the floor. She’d said things to Alex she hadn’t even known had been fermenting inside of her. Saying what she had, she felt tainted, as if a black poison had touched her, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself. It had been as if the words had needed to come out.
She looked up when her daughter came over and sat on the carpet beside her.
“I do love him. But when he asked me to marry him there was this choking feeling inside of me.” Hannah covered her face with her hands. “I hurt him so badly. What am I going to do?”
Catharine put her arm around Hannah’s shoulders and hugged her comfortingly
.
The sense of having suddenly switched roles with her daughter only added to her guilt.
“I don’t know, Mom.”
“Neither do I, honey. Neither do I.”
* * * *
Rachel worked quietly at her desk in her shop. The familiar activities of sketching and creating soothed and comforted. She couldn’t explain it precisely, but when she had her pencil in hand, it seemed like she stepped back from life, from reality, and existed separately. Sometimes, these moments brought peace and replenishment of spirit. And sometimes they brought more.
While Dagmar and Simone worked their sewing machines, with Simone’s voice providing a droning background sound, Rachel recalled that it had been when she’d been designing a dress to wear to Michael’s wedding that she’d suddenly come to the realization that her mother’s lack of attention and affection really had nothing to do with any lack in herself. She’d understood for the first time that her mother had been incapable of showing love in a way that would make a young girl feel happy and secure.
Now she wondered, what sort of person she might have turned out to be if her mother had been more like Hannah. The first time Peter’s mother had given her a hug, she’d found the moment awkward. But she’d gotten used to them now, and had discovered they filled a need in her she’d not even known existed.
Releasing her thoughts, she let her mind wander as her fingers did what they would with lead and paper. She sketched a pantsuit. The pants had straight, narrow legs, with the waist riding low on the hips. The top was more flamboyant, with a standup collar and very wide bell sleeves. She pictured the outfit in pale gray, and as her pencil added details, she wondered at the sense of dread that stirred in her belly while her drawing took shape. The model would be small, very small. Probably no more than five feet tall, max, but emaciated, with long white hair. The entire combination, the gray clothes and white hair, matched with impossibly white skin and bloodshot eyes reminded Rachel of a rat.
Scratching and clawing. She had to get smaller, smaller, so the rats wouldn’t get her.
The rats!
A sound caught her attention. Looking up and out her open office door, she saw the girls standing at the main worktable, looking at one of the dresses they’d made. As if sensing her regard, they both looked up. Simone blushed, a tiny giggle escaping her. Dagmar’s expression was steady, but unreadable.
Rachel jerked her gaze back to her work, feeling her insides turn to jelly. Quickly now, she began to draw another figure. Dressed almost identically to the first, this one was male. The sleeves of his tunic fit skintight and his clothes, and hair, were brown. His eyes also seemed bloodshot, though his skin tone was not the same white as the woman. She drew the man in the forefront, and it appeared like the woman followed him.
Followed him with her eyes, everywhere he went, not letting him out of her sight. He laughed and kissed Rachel full on the mouth. Rachel tried not to grimace. He was Luc’s best friend. When she looked up, the woman glared at her, and Rachel trembled in sudden fear.
A soft thump sounded, echoing in her mind. Past and present merged. Rachel’s heart pounded hard in her chest, and her fingers began to shake. Slowly, she came back to the present. The sound of chatter coming from the next room had stopped. Looking up, she could see no one in the adjoining room. Had that thump been real? Where were Simone and Dagmar? The skin along her arms and neck prickled.
Memories that had been taunting her through nightmares flashed through her mind. The pieces all slid together. She kept her eyes on the door, even as she got up from her desk. Listening carefully, she could hear nothing, not one bit of sound. She approached the door. Craning her neck, she could see the two machines. She could see neither girl. Stepping closer, she looked through the crack between the door and the frame.
A part of her brain registered that she should close the door to her office, and turn on the radio to cover the sound of her using the phone to call for help.
Because she suddenly knew who had sent the threatening letters. She remembered. She knew she was in very real danger.
But if she called Peter, or anyone, and someone got hurt, she’d never be able to forgive herself. A quick glance around her sparsely furnished office told her what she already knew. Nothing here could be used as a weapon.
Common sense prevailed. She needed to trust Peter, and anyone else who came to help, to know what to do. She was a princess, not a trained warrior.
Without making a sound, she walked backwards, picked up the receiver of the phone that sat on the corner of her desk—and heard nothing. The line was dead.
Setting the useless receiver back in its cradle, her mind worked frantically, trying to remember where she’d left her cell phone. She had it with her when she arrived this morning. Closing her eyes, she cursed under her breath when she realized she’d left her purse in the next room, on the large table adjacent to the machines.
Screwing up her courage, she took three steps, closer to the door, to the hinged side of it. Looking to the left, she saw no one, and nothing moved. But that covered only the smallest part of the common work area. The majority of the room lay to the right.
If she sprinted, she could hopefully reach the door to the street about fifty feet from where she stood, but on the other side of the room. Maybe, if she stayed low.
Then a soft, pain-filled groan broke the silence.
* * * *
There has to be something
. Peter looked up from the reports scattered on his desk and tried to ease the kink in his back. He’d been sitting since after breakfast, reading through all the results of the two intense investigations his team had conducted while he’d been incapacitated.
His people had been thorough, but it would take a long time to rule out every little bit of fiber, lint, and strand of hair collected. Three shell casings, all from a hunting rifle, had been recovered from the farm—specifically, from the public parkland just across the river from where he’d been shot. The bullet they’d dug out of the tree would likely match at least one of the casings. Everything had been sent to the police lab. Although Peter’s official title was chief of security for the royal family, he was in fact a member of the police force as well. In times of national crisis, and an assassination attempt against Princess Rachel could be considered a national crisis, he had the authority to step in and command the small, well-trained force. He’d use them if he had to, but for the moment, he was content to leave it at making sure that all the evidence his team had gathered be given top priority.
The crime lab was good, considering the size of the country, but with only one tech, any extensive analysis would take time.
Unfortunately, he didn’t think they had much time.
Peter couldn’t shake the feeling that the answer really lay in the past. His gut had told him that since receiving the second threatening letter. Sorting through the pile of paper and files covering his desk, he found the large manila envelope Claude had sent him from the Interpol office in Paris.
After clearing a spot on his desk, he ripped it open. Inside, he found two smaller envelopes. One had the year 2005 printed in the upper left-hand corner. Opening it, he dumped the contents out. The investigator’s report, three pages, detailed the events of that time, beginning with Peter’s phone call alerting the authorities of the danger to the princess. Scanning the document, he understood, as he hadn’t in the past, how thorough Interpol and the Geneva police had been. They had wanted to make absolutely certain that what had happened to Rachel had indeed been an isolated incident by two miscreants seeking a ransom and not part of a greater conspiracy of terror. They’d investigated both men, their families, their associates. The investigators had taken dozens of photographs. Copies of them littered his desk, and he scanned them.
There was the one of the dirty room in the three-story rooming house where Rachel had been found unconscious. He still felt a cold fear mixed with anger thinking about it. There were pictures of the two men.
Bordeau
looked a little worse for wear, and Peter felt no regret at having given the bastard a black eye, a split lip, and some broken ribs. Johansson just looked creepy. That man, Peter recalled, had shown a real
sang-froid
at the time of his arrest and during his trial. He’d been involved in some sort of political movement, and the police had wondered if perhaps the princess’s kidnapping had signaled a larger agenda. But in the end, the “political” movement had consisted of a few stoned college kids Johansson had seduced into an almost Charles Mansonlike discipleship.
One by one, Peter looked at the photos, seeing shots of the town, the school, and some of the known associates of not only the two men, but of Rachel, too. The back of each picture had a brief, descriptive note.
The packet contained so many photos of so many different people he almost missed it.
In the process of tossing one aside and reaching for the next, his gut twisted, and he focused on the one in his hand anew. The description on the back didn’t give much away, only “some of the regulars at Café Noir, known hangout.” The photographer had captured the faces of several young people, some of them oblivious to the camera, some of them just oblivious, period.
Except for one young woman sitting alone at a table. Eyes cold, tiny mouth drawn up in a snarl, she stared at the photographer with what could only be called malevolence.
Her long white hair was straight and didn’t suit her tiny face. Her skin looked almost ghostlike. And as he stared at her, he knew he looked at someone who teetered on the edge of sanity.
Swallowing hard, he focused on the woman. He knew that face. There was something so familiar about her.