Nina Bruhns - Capturing the Crown Bundle

Dr. Burnett slipped her slender hands deep into the pockets of the lab coat she had thrown over her operating livery. “I dissected someone,” she agreed, “but it wasn’t your son.”

Amelia was trying to make sense out of what was being told to them. “Someone switched the bodies?” she guessed incredulously.

Dr. Burnett’s eyes shifted toward her. “Yes, but not right now.”

“I don’t understand,” Russell interrupted. What she was suggesting wasn’t possible. The clinic had been secured. The palace was always secured and never more so than now. No one short of a magician could have come in and switched the bodies before the autopsy. Besides, there was also the fact that Weston had just been with Reginald earlier today, paying his final respects. The doctor had to have made some mistake. “When could this so-called ‘switch’ have taken place?” he challenged.

Her answer floored them all. “My guess is thirty years ago. At the hospital right after the queen gave birth.”

For the first time in days, color rose to the king’s cheeks. “What are you talking about?” he demanded heatedly. “That isn’t possible.”

“I’m afraid that it is,” Dr. Burnett said calmly. “That it has to be. There is no other explanation.”

The calmer she sounded the more agitated Weston grew. “No other explanation for what?”

The medical examiner took a deep breath and began. “Your Majesty, as a matter of course, a blood panel and tox screen were performed on the sample of blood I took from the dead man.”

“My son,” Weston interjected sternly.

She nodded politely and went on. “For whatever reason, someone in the lab accidentally did blood typing, as well. The man on my autopsy table had type O negative blood. You and your late queen were both AB positive. There is no way that man in my clinic is a product of a union between you and the queen.”

“Someone made a mistake,” Weston insisted.

“No mistake, Your Majesty. I ran the second test myself.” Dr. Burnett looked to Russell and Amelia for support before turning her attention back to the king. She remained unshakable in her conviction of the findings. “I have no idea why this was done or who was behind it, that’s not my job. What I do know is that the man I performed an autopsy on wasn’t your natural son and that if there was a switch—”

Russell cut in, as the full import of what the medical examiner was saying hit him, “Then the Prince of Silvershire is still out there somewhere.”

“I have a son? Another son?” Weston looked like a man shell-shocked as the question dribbled from his lips in slow motion, just the same way his gaze drifted from the doctor to Russell. It was clear that he didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or shattered by the news.

“No, not another son,” the medical examiner corrected. “Your only son. I don’t know who the man on my autopsy table actually is or was, but the fact remains that he couldn’t have been your son.”

“You’re right,” Amelia cut in, trying to come to grips with what the doctor had just told them. “If a switch was made, it had to have been done in the hospital. Most likely as soon as the newborn baby was taken from the queen to be cleaned up.”

It all sounded so far-fetched, so unreal. “Why? Who?” Weston cried, stunned. He looked at Russell, wanting something logical to hold on to. Feeling like a man who had just been given hope and had his soul condemned at the same time, with the very same words.

The real prince was still alive. This meant that he couldn’t take the crown, Russell realized. The thought brought with it a wave of energy that filled his heart. He didn’t have to be king, didn’t have to suffer through the kind of life that was examined and reexamined on a daily basis. The relief he felt was incredible.

“We don’t know why or who yet,” Russell told him, “but we are going to find out.” He looked at the sovereign. “I promise you that, Your Majesty. We’ll find out who he is and why he was taken. And why we haven’t heard anything about it until now.”

It would seem to him that if there was a royal abduction, whoever had done it would have tried to take advantage of the situation. Yet in thirty years, there hadn’t been a single word about it. Not a demand for ransom or even a hint that it was done. Why?

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something dire was about to happen.

Reginald’s poisoning took on a different perspective. Perhaps it hadn’t been done for some personal wrong. Perhaps poisoning the prince had been the first step in the present reign’s undoing.

“Your Majesty?” Amelia prodded when the king made no reply. She slanted a glance toward Russell, concerned about the monarch’s state of health. “Would you like to lie down?”

Very slowly, Weston turned his head toward her, as if unable to move his eyes independently. “I—I—”

He couldn’t go on, couldn’t force any more words from his lips. There was no air with which to move them. His heart was hammering too hard for him to catch his breath. What there was of it was quickly fading from him. And his head, his head was doing very strange things. Lights were winking in and out, blurring his vision, making him see things out of his past. Things that were not there.

A baby. His wife. Both appeared to him in flashes and then were gone. And all the while, there was this pounding in his brain. A pounding that grew ever louder.

Weston’s knees gave way, failing him.

Like a crumpled doll, the king collapsed. He would have hit the floor had Russell’s reflexes not been so keen. He grabbed the monarch just before the latter hit the floor.

Propping him up, Russell looked at the king. “Your Majesty, can you hear me?” Russell cried. Weston’s eyes rolled back in his head.

Dr. Burnett was at his side immediately. “Bring him in here!” she ordered, leading the way into the clinic. Russell picked the unconscious man up in his arms and followed her. Amelia was right beside him.

An alarm was sounded. Instantly, there were technicians and equipment materializing from all over the fully stocked clinic. Russell placed the king down on the gurney that had been brought over, then stepped back. Amelia shadowed his movements, her eyes never leaving the king’s crumpled body.

“Is he—?” She couldn’t get herself to finish the question.

“He’s still alive,” Russell told her.

The staff did what they could. The defibrillator paddles were not necessary. The king’s heart went on beating, but despite all their best efforts, the king remained unconscious.

Maybe it was better that way, Russell thought, watching as the king was taken to a private room. Everything that had happened in the last few minutes had been too much for the monarch to process. The man needed his rest. His body needed to fight its way back to health. To grow strong enough to handle the adverse situation it found itself in.

“Inform whoever needs to be told that the king is staying here tonight,” Dr. Burnett told Russell.

“Do you think a hospital might be better for him?” Amelia suggested.

“The king has been fighting off the effects of the flu,” the doctor told her. “We’re running some tests, but perhaps all he needs is a little rest. We can tell more in the morning.”

Russell nodded. In the meantime, he thought, he had answers to find and a potential king to track down.

“We’re not going to Gastonia just yet,” he told Amelia.

Gastonia’s princess threaded her fingers through her husband’s as the doctor drew a curtain around the king’s bed. They would be going home soon enough, she promised herself. Right now, Russell needed to be here. Needed to stand by his king and help him. His sense of duty and responsibility were among the things she loved about him.