Elizabeth Harbison - The Secret Princess

“As I was saying,” he said, “I’m here in the prince’s service, looking for a lost relative.”

“A lost relative,” she repeated flatly. “Of royalty.” She stared at him for a moment before asking, “Are you an actor?” That would explain the slick good looks, the smooth delivery of an absurd story. Someone had hired him as a practical joke.

He looked puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did one of my friends send you here with this crazy story?” That had to be it. Someone remembered her search for books on Lufthania and thought it would be funny to resurrect the place.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “My birthday isn’t for two months.”

“On the contrary,” he said, his gaze even. “Your birthday was the day before yesterday.”

The silence that followed was brief but shuddering.

“What are you talking about?” Her nerves went tight. “My birthday is in almost two months. January twenty-ninth.”

He gave a short nod, as if he knew better but wouldn’t bother with such small details right now. “Let me explain why I’m here. Why I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have.”

He nodded. “For a very long time, actually.”

A tremor rumbled through her. “Okay, what do you want? Special orders can take several weeks, you know.”

“I’m not here to order anything. My business with you is personal.”

Gooseflesh rose on her arms and she ran her hands over them. “What personal business could you possibly have with me, Mr. Burgess?”

His gaze was steady. “What I’ve come to tell you might seem unbelievable to you, but it’s true, and I believe you’ll consider it very good news.”

Amy’s muscles tensed. “So what is it?”

He glanced at her desk. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

“That doesn’t sound like good news.”

He smiled. “Sometimes good news can make you weak in the knees as well.”

She bet this guy knew a lot about making women weak in the knees. “I’ll be fine,” she said, defying her own reaction to him more than his suggestion that she might go weak. “Spill it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

Now it was her turn to smile. “Spill it. Your news. I’m ready.”

“All right.” He took a breath, then cocked his head slightly and looked at her for a moment before saying, “I’m here on behalf of your country.”

She hesitated. “Funny, you don’t look like Uncle Sam.”

“Not America. Lufthania.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. He watched her closely as he added in a careful tone, “The country where you were born. The country of your blood family.”

Her face turned cold, then her shoulders, her arms and, in a rush, the rest of her. For a moment, she couldn’t speak. No one ever talked about her biological relatives. She knew nothing about them except that her parents had died in a car accident that she’d survived. Just under three years old, she was taken to Kendell County Hospital, where her adoptive mother, Pamela Scott, had worked as a nurse on the night shift.

The authorities had tried to identify her parents to no avail. No missing-persons reports ever surfaced, no alerts for missing children. It was as if they didn’t exist at all. The only reason they knew Amy’s name, or thought they did, was because one of the paramedics on the scene had heard the woman saying the name repeatedly before she died. They concluded that Amy must have been the child’s name.

Pamela Scott had taken to Amy immediately, working extra shifts to nurse her back to health. When no family could be traced, she and her husband, Lyle, a very successful attorney, had become Amy’s foster parents. After several years they were finally able to make the adoption final.

Amy found her voice. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny.”

He moved closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “I assure you, it isn’t a joke. Now, why don’t you sit down and let me tell you what brought me to you?” He guided her to her chair and she sat like an obedient child. “I only ask that you hear me out with an open mind.”

She glanced behind him. “Perhaps it would be wise of me to listen with an open door as well.”

He smiled. “You’re quite safe, I assure you.”

She gestured toward him. “Okay, I’m listening.”

He took a breath. “You are the heir to the throne of Lufthania.”

A moment passed. “Doesn’t Lufthania already have someone on the throne?”

He gave a short nod. “A crown prince who wants to return the throne to the rightful heir after his parents stole it nearly three decades ago.”

“Sort of like returning a lost wallet, huh?”

“This is no joke.”

She could see he meant it. “Okay. So where are the parents who stole the throne? Aren’t they going to be miffed that he’s giving it back?”

His face remained impassive. “They’re both dead. The princess died ten years ago of cancer. Her husband, who was much older than she, passed away two years ago of natural causes.”

“Oh.” Amy felt she shouldn’t have been flip. “Sorry, I—well, why don’t you tell me how this led you to me?”

“As I’ve indicated, twenty-five years ago, there was a political revolution, a coup d’état, in Lufthania. A very distant cousin thought the throne was legitimately his, since it had been taken away from his family several hundred years back owing to the fact that the only heir was not blood, but a foundling.”

“Adopted?”

He nodded. “Exactly. Although that is not a term they used in the sixteenth century.”

Amy frowned. “So this descendant of an adopted heir decided to take back what he thought would have been his right, had his ancestor been accepted three hundred years earlier?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds like Shakespeare.”

He smiled. “Shakespeare could have given it a much tidier ending.”

“What was the ending?”

“Prince Josef was removed from the throne and killed by overenthusiastic soldiers for the opposition.”

“What about his wife?”

He shook his head. “She had died years before in a riding accident. But his daughter, Princess Lily, escaped the country with her husband and their young daughter. Very few people knew where they’d gone, and not one person knew all of their movements, because it could have compromised their safety. But I have traced their path to the United States.”

She was skeptical. “How? It seems to me they wouldn’t have wanted to be traceable.”

“They didn’t. But it’s been so long now and the political climate of Lufthania has changed so much—it is now a democracy—that people are finally willing to talk about what they know.”

“People who knew them are still alive?”

He nodded, and she noticed a haunted look in his eye. “Lily and her family stayed with friends in Washington, D.C., for a while, before shedding their identities entirely and leaving the city. Sort of like your witness protection program, you understand?”

Amy nodded.

“They stayed in the city for some months before picking their destination and leaving. Their friends never expected to hear from them again, so when they didn’t, they were not alarmed.”

“They never heard about an accident involving people who couldn’t be identified but who fit the descriptions?” She very nearly said our descriptions but caught herself.

“No. When the accident occurred, it didn’t make national headlines because it was assumed all identifying papers had merely been lost in the explosion of the car. The authorities checked national databases for missing people for more than a year afterward, but nothing ever came of it.” His voice softened. “But, then, you already know that part of the story.”