Nina Bruhns - Capturing the Crown Bundle

He knew that, from the king’s standpoint, Reginald was dead and that discovering that his death had occurred naturally or at his own or another man’s hand did not change the end result. Reginald was gone. He had feared that Weston would be overwhelmed with that glaring reality and that it would cause him to lose sight of the fact that they needed to know how.

“When did it begin? The autopsy,” Amelia added gently, kneeling down beside the man who, even a few days earlier, had looked so dynamic, so bold, and who now seemed to be a shadow of his former self.

Grief had done that, she thought. Grief had hollowed him out until he appeared brittle and frail.

“Less than half an hour ago. I thought you should be here for the outcome,” he murmured to Russell.

“We’ll stay with you.” Russell’s eyes met Amelia’s and she gave him a small, imperceptible nod in response. “Until it’s over.”

Gratitude came over the monarch’s features. “I would be in debt to you for that,” he told them, looking from one to the other. A little of his former self was restored, at least for the moment. “I know I should be strong enough to remain here, waiting to be told the results. But the image.” His eyes looked haunted as he envisioned what was going on a few short feet from where he sat. “I can’t get the image out of my head—” He swept his long fingers along his temples, as if trying to banish what he saw in his mind’s eye, as if he felt an almost unbearable pounding. The king was suffering from headaches that were growing greater in number and more intense each time.

“We have nowhere else to be, Your Majesty,” Amelia assured him gently. Smiling into his eyes, she laced her fingers through his. Weston looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. The gratitude in his eyes was all the thanks she needed.

The hands on the antique grandfather clock that stood a little way down the lavishly decorated corridor seemed to move at an inordinately slow pace. Russell wanted this to be over with, to have the autopsy completed and the king’s son sewn back together again, to be a whole person again rather than the sum of parts that had been weighed, calibrated and measured.

Granted, he had been the one to lobby the king the hardest to have the autopsy performed, and they needed the answers that the autopsy would provide, but he had no idea he would be here, only a few feet away from the actual autopsy room, while the royal medical examiner performed her duties. Somehow, that seemed rather ghoulish to him.

A necessary evil, he told himself, glancing over toward the princess. He didn’t have the right to complain, even silently. Just look at the hand that fate had dealt him.

Amelia had been carrying on a steady stream of conversation the entire time they’d been waiting, bless her, he thought. She seemed to know a little about everything. Right now, he and the king were being given a verbal tour of the factory where the Gaston, the car that had firmly placed Gastonia on the map as something other than just another collection of casinos, was manufactured. The king actually seemed mildly distracted, which he knew was Amelia’s main, most likely only, goal.

And then, after what seemed like hours, the door opened and Dr. Abby Burnett came out. There was a grim expression on the physician’s usually amiable, plain face.

Weston was on his feet immediately. The chair almost fell backwards from his momentum. “Well?” he asked eagerly. “Is the prince…?”

“Yes,” Dr. Burnett told him. “I’ve just now finished stitching him back up.” She pressed her lips together, obviously wrestling with something. She nodded at the chair behind him. “Your Majesty, perhaps you’d like to sit down.”

Weston frowned, dismissing the suggestion. “I have been sitting down. Sitting down so long that I’m fairly certain I have permanently flattened your cushions.” He drew his shoulders back, momentarily looking like the formidable ruler he had always been. “Now, out with it. What have you discovered?”

There was a wealth of information to dispense. The doctor picked her way through it carefully. “That your son did not die a natural death. That he didn’t even die accidentally by his own hand.”

“There was no drug overdose?” Weston made no effort to cover his eagerness for the confirmation. This, at least, would take his son out of the realm of being just another careless drug abuser. He didn’t want that to be Reginald’s legacy, that he’d died accidentally while seeking an artificial rush.

“Unless, of course,” the medical examiner added dryly, “Prince Reginald intended to ‘accidentally’ poison himself.”

“Poison?” Amelia echoed, trying to process the information.

She knew of the adult Reginald predominantly through what she had read in the newspapers and magazine. Even the most charitable, conservative accountings made the man out to be difficult to deal with. How many toes had Reginald stepped on, how many people had secretly plotted getting their revenge against him? It looked as if one of them had finally succeeded. But who?

Amelia glanced at her husband and wondered if they would ever get to the bottom of it or if this was destined to remain one of those unsolved mysteries that teased armchair detectives from time to time.

“Poison,” the medical examiner repeated. Her tone left no room for argument.

“What kind of poison?” Russell wanted to know. If they knew what kind and its strength, maybe they could track down its purchase and with that, perhaps discover the name of the killer.

“Did he suffer?” Weston wanted to know before the medical examiner could answer Russell’s question.

The look in the doctor’s eyes told Russell that Dr. Burnett was torn. Torn between ethics and empathy. Between telling the king the truth and allowing the monarch to seek solace within a comforting lie.

But then the medical examiner raised her head as if she had made up her mind. Her expression told him that she was going with the truth. Lying, even for the best of reasons, would only undercut her ultimate value to the king. He had to be able to trust her. To know that he could believe what she told him.

The king was not a stupid man. Once the pain of hearing what she had to tell him had worked its way into the tapestry of his life, King Weston would realize that no one simply fell asleep after ingesting poison. That before death claimed the despairing soul seeking an end, there came the feeling of being strangled, of suddenly realizing that you were about to die and that there was nothing that could be done to avoid the inevitable.

Dr. Burnett placed a comforting hand on the monarch’s shoulder. “Somewhat, I’m afraid.”

Amelia slipped her hand into Weston’s, pretending not to see the tears gathering in the man’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” she whispered.

“But there is something more.”

Dr. Burnett’s words sliced through the pain winding itself around his heart. Weston stared at her.

“More? The word no longer has any meaning to me, doctor. There is no ‘more.’ I’ve lost my son, my only son. For me, there is only less, not more.”

“Well, Your Majesty,” the medical examiner went on almost wearily, as if bracing herself for a very steep uphill climb, “that’s just it.”

“What’s just it?” Russell asked, cutting in. He exchanged confused glances with Amelia, who shook her head, indicating that she had no more of a clue about what was going on than he did.

“It doesn’t look as if you’ve really lost your only son,” Dr. Burnett went on, only to have the king interrupt her again.

“What are you talking about?” Weston demanded. “You just dissected him in your clinic. You just came from there.” He gestured toward the clinic’s doors.