Lucy Gordon - Princess Dottie

“But, Randolph…what difference does that make? It's out now, and that means I can't be the queen and-”

“It means no such thing. Trust me Dottie, I'll make you a queen before the day's out.”

Sophie was regarding Dottie with a mixture of triumph and malevolence. Harold and Durmand were having a shouting match, with Harold's voice growing shriller every moment.

“This woman is an impostor. She should be arrested for offenses against the state.”

“But you'll never get the king to agree to that,” Randolph observed mildly.

Harold rounded on him. “I am the king.”

“No,” Randolph said, still in the same mild tone. “ I am.” Ignoring Harold's sneer he went on, “I have been king of Elluria since the moment of my father's death.”

If Harold's announcement produced consternation this one caused turmoil. Everyone was staring at Randolph as if unable to believe their ears, but his glance was for Dottie, as though only her reaction mattered to him.

“Your researchers have been hard at work, Harold, but so have mine. And I too have found something interesting. It concerns Ellie Trentworth, the young woman with whom my father went through a form of marriage. I say 'a form of marriage' because it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Ellie already had a husband, two in fact. Probably more than two. Goodness knows who she was really married to, but it certainly wasn't my father.

“So the 'form of marriage' had no basis in law. It was invalid, leaving him as much a bachelor afterward as before, and therefore free to marry my mother. There never was a stain on their marriage, or my legitimacy.”

Harold had gone very pale but he recovered himself.

“Words,” he scoffed. “Where is your proof?”

“Here,” Randolph said, pulling some papers from inside his jacket. “These are the marriage certificates of Ellie Trentworth to both husbands. Since I discovered the truth I've kept them on me at all times. I had a feeling I might need to produce them at a moment's notice, especially today.”

Harold snatched at the papers. The whole cathedral seemed to be holding its breath as he went through them.

“These are forgeries,” he snapped. “I don't believe any of it.”

But Sophie believed it. As she saw her last chance vanish she screamed and went into hysterics. Nothing else could have so effectively demolished Harold's claim, and two soldiers moved discreetly to take their places behind him. Sophie's sobs grew louder, prompting him to hiss, “Shut up!”

“This is most irregular,” the archbishop said worriedly, looking at Dottie. “Is this lady of legitimate descent, or isn't she?”

“It doesn't matter, since she makes no claim to the throne,” Randolph said. “Indeed, she never did make a claim to the throne. It was forced on her, and she accepted it as a duty, and from love. But it was based on a misapprehension. The mistaken belief that I was illegitimate because my parents' marriage was bigamous. These certificates prove otherwise.”

Durmand was studying the papers with increasing delight. “Then the marriage was valid, and your claim to the throne cannot be challenged,” he told Randolph. “You are, and have always been, the rightful king.”

“You need never have brought me here at all,” Dottie breathed. “Randolph, how long have you known about this?”

“I discovered soon after you arrived in Elluria.”

Her brain whirled. “You mean…before we married?”

“Yes.”

She couldn't speak. The implications were so enormous, so wonderful, that she didn't dare believe them. “But why did you keep quiet?” she asked at last. “If you'd spoken then you wouldn't have needed to marry me.”

He put his hands on either side of her face and spoke in a voice deep with tenderness. “Darling, beloved Dottie, I wanted to marry you. I longed to marry you. I've loved you since the day we met in London, when you took me out of the narrow, constricted world I'd known, and showed me another world that could be mine, but only if you were there. Since then I've plotted and schemed, pulled strings, behaved unethically, broken rules, all to keep you with me. You made the sun shine for me, and I knew if I lost you the sun would never shine again.

“I was afraid that if you learned the truth, you'd pack your bags and go. I couldn't face the thought of losing the only woman I have ever loved. It was a deception, but one for which you will, perhaps, forgive me?”

“But you could have been king all this time,” she breathed, still not daring to be convinced by the love she saw in his eyes, a love that more than matched her own.

“Earlier today I told you that there were things you don't know about me, and perhaps never would, because they could only be told at the right time. Now that time has come.” He raised his voice. “I call on everyone here to witness that I would rather be your consort than king, and married to any other woman.”

The congregation broke into loud applause. The royal guests in the front row rose to their feet and were followed by row after row behind them, clapping and cheering. High up aloft the choirboys joined in.

But Randolph and Dottie saw only each other. His gaze said that this was the measure of how much she mattered to him. She was more to him than his duty, more than his life. She was his life. She was awed by the sacrifice he'd been prepared to make, rather than lose her.

The archbishop's worried voice broke in on them. “But can we have a coronation or not?”

“Of course we can,” Dottie told him. “The coronation of Elluria's rightful monarch, King Randolph.”

“And his consort, Queen Dorothea,” Randolph put in, “who reigns as supremely in her subjects' hearts and she does in her husband's.”

Taking her hand in his he stepped forward and they stood side by side as the archbishop raised his voice, calling to the people.

“I present to you, Randolph, your sovereign lord, rightful king of Elluria, and his lady…”

She barely heard the rest. The mist that had shrouded the path ahead had lifted now, and she could see clearly at last. This was the world they would share; years of work and duty, made sweet to each by the presence of the other. Behind them stretched the way back out of the cathedral, and beyond that lay the sunshine.

met her husband-to-be in venice, fell in love the first evening and got engaged two days later. They're still happily married and now live in England with their three dogs. For twelve years, Lucy was a writer for an English women's magazine. She interviewed many of the world's most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Sir Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud.

In 1985 she won the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Outstanding Series Romance Author. She has also won the 1990 Romance Writers of America RITA В ®Award in the Best Traditional Romance category for Song of the Lorelei .