Даниэла Стил - Royal

“Of course,” Jonathan responded about bringing Annie with him. He wondered if he was going to be arrested when he got there, and wind up in jail. Anything was possible, but he was too far down the road to back out now, and he didn’t want to. He had a bumpy stretch of road ahead of him, when he told Annie about her history, and tried to explain why Lucy had taken her in the first place, and never contacted the Windsors until now.

He waited until he saw Annie return from exercising one of the horses, and then asked her to have lunch with him as she walked the horse back to his stall.

“Something wrong?”

“Not at all. I just have something I want to discuss with you,” like the fact that you’re a royal princess and part of the royal family, just a little thing like that.

He made two sandwiches, put them on plates, and set them down on a picnic table near the barn, where they could talk.

“Something’s up,” she said, looking suspicious after they had both sat down. “Is it something to do with Mom?” she asked.

“Yes, and no. It’s actually old news, but your mom only told me about it two days before she died. I think you should know about it too.”

“She left each of us a million pounds,” she teased him, and he laughed.

“That would have been nice. Actually, it’s more complicated than that.” He wasn’t sure how to broach the subject with her, so he just plunged in and told her the story and the circumstances surrounding her birth. It got complicated here and there, but Annie followed, and at the end of his recital, she sat and stared at him, as though she’d seen a snake.

“Stop. Let me see if I got this right. Mom was not my real mother, she didn’t give birth to me, and the woman who did died a few hours after I was born. She was a royal princess, and her mother was the queen when I was born. And the woman who is the queen now is my mother’s sister, and my grandmother is now the Queen Mother. If any of that is true, it sounds totally crazy to me. And what does that make me, if it is true?” she asked, visibly confused and more than a little overwhelmed.

“It makes you a Royal Highness,” he said quietly. And it made Lucy, the woman Annie knew as her mother, an infant thief, a young girl who had stolen a baby and kept it a secret for more than twenty years. But Annie hadn’t absorbed that part of the story yet, and she loved the woman she knew as her mother, and the memory of her, no matter what. And Jonathan hoped she always would. Annie had been suffering terribly from her mother’s death.

“Wait a minute,” Annie said holding a hand up, as though to stop traffic. It was all coming at her too fast. “You’re telling me that I’m a princess, that I’m royal, and related to the queen and the royal family.” He nodded and then she stared at him in disbelief. “And how did Mom get away with that for so long?”

“Because no one knew that you existed. Tragically, everyone died, your mother, your father in the war, and both his parents. The only other family you have are the royals. And me, of course.” He smiled at her. “And I want you to know that I think what your mother did was wrong. She did it because she loved you, but just taking a child is not the way things should be done. She told me about it two days before she died. I think she would have told you herself if she hadn’t been so ill. I’m not judging your mother, but what came clear to me is that you have a right to meet your relatives, and at least know who they are. And your mother felt that way too at the end, which was why she told me the whole story. What you do after that is up to you.”

“What if I don’t want to be a princess, Papa. I don’t think I’d like it. And what if they hate me on sight? Or don’t believe you?”

“They might not. But why would they hate you? You’re the daughter of their beloved sister and daughter. They owe it to her to be civil to her child, and welcome you after you’ve been lost to them for so long. They never knew that you were born.”

“I wasn’t lost. I was with you and Mama, where I belong. I don’t want to be a princess, Papa,” she said, sounding like a little girl.

“You don’t have that choice. That’s who you are, and who you were born. We don’t get to pick and choose our families, although being related to the Royal House of Windsor is a pretty cool thing to be.”

“When am I going to meet them?” She looked afraid.

“Tomorrow at eleven A.M., at Buckingham Palace.”

“Oh my God,” she said and immediately looked panicked. “I don’t think I want to be a princess, Papa. It sounds hard. I think I’ll renounce my title. Can I do that?”

“Technically, yes. In real life, I wouldn’t. Why not enjoy it and try it out for a while? And get to know your Windsor relatives first. You might all love each other, and somehow I think it would make Lucy happy.”

They threw away their paper plates from lunch then, and Annie left him to walk slowly back to the house. She needed time to think about everything her father had said. She was a royal princess, and had been stolen at birth by the woman she knew and loved as her mother. It sounded like a fairytale, and Annie didn’t know what to believe.

Jonathan saw her walk into the barn later that afternoon and saddle up one of the horses. She took a horse he had discouraged her from riding before. He was a stallion who was barely broken, skittish and hard to manage, although she had never had any trouble with him. He saw her leave, heading toward one of the trails at a slow trot, and then he saw her take off across the hills at a blistering gallop, riding as hard as she could. He stood watching her for a minute, hoping no harm would come to her, as she flew across the meadow at breakneck speed, and for once, knowing what she was wrestling with and had to face the next day, he didn’t blame her a bit, or try to stop her. She was riding like the wind.

Chapter 10

Annie was almost silent on the brief hour’s train ride from Kent to London. She sat staring out the window, thinking of the only mother she had ever known, trying to understand who she had been at nineteen, to take a baby she believed no one wanted, and claim it as her own for twenty years. Annie couldn’t fathom why Lucy had never told her the truth. She had done it out of love for Annie, and in time, the lie had become too big to admit. She had in fact been a wonderful mother, and perhaps she had been right and saved her from an orphanage, if the royal family had rejected her as an infant. She would never know now what they would have done.

Annie could even less understand her place in the family she had inherited overnight. She was suddenly a royal princess with all the burdens, responsibilities, expectations, and confusion that entailed. She had no idea what was expected of her, if they would accept her, or accuse Jonathan of having concocted a lie, and Annie of being an imposter. What if the royal family didn’t believe them? Annie still couldn’t believe it herself.

And what had her “real” mother been like? Princess Charlotte, who died at seventeen, hours after Annie was born. She didn’t know what to think, or believe, or who she was now. It was all so confusing, and she wondered if they would treat her like a fraud at the palace. Why would they believe a history as complicated as hers? She was twenty-one years old, and it was a lot to absorb. Whatever would happen at Buckingham Palace, both of her mothers were dead now. She felt like the motherless orphan she was as she stared out the window, and then turned to Jonathan with an unhappy expression.

“I want to go to Australia,” she said in a dead voice.

“Now? Why? What brought that on?” It was an odd idea to him.

“Female jockeys can ride in amateur races there. I want to see what it’s like and sign up.”