Hand-Me-Down Princess (37 page)

Nicklaus wasn’t dead, though. Or they couldn’t prove he was. Very few people knew his body and that of his nanny had never been found. Yvette didn’t. In fact, before long she would begin to plan the wedding. He prayed, for so many reasons, that Nicklaus had survived and would appear before the wedding. Malachi wasn’t certain his father or Christiana should
make
them go through with it, but to plan the whole wedding and not have a groom? That would make life exceptionally difficult for his sister.

“What does any of that have to do with Lizbeth, though?” His wife’s words brought him back to the present.

“Nothing. Unless her father was planning to use something, some way, to gain more power.”

“Is there any ancient law or anything he could use to force your father’s hand?” She shivered, and he realized how cool it had gotten in their stone home.

Thinking it over, he walked to the kitchen. “Probably. There’s a billion old laws that are still technically in effect. No one’s used them forever and most people don’t even know they exist, much less how to look for them.” He pulled a mug off its hook under the cabinet and found the cocoa.

“Maybe that’s something to think about then?”

He set the water to brew in the coffee pot as he got the cup ready. Did they have any mini-marshmallows? That’s how she liked it. “I guess, but what or why would that be his end goal? Force my father off the throne as the other grandfather of the second child’s kids? That seems awfully far fetched.”

“It does,” she conceded.

While the water brewed for the hot chocolate, Malachi went to the fireplace and lit the kindling waiting there. The staff always seemed to anticipate their every need. In moments it would catch, and warmth would permeate the room.

“I just don’t see what the end game would be,” he finally told Jessabelle as he stirred her hot cocoa and put five, no more no less, mini marshmallows on top.

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him as she took the mug. “It’s perfect,” she told him after a sip. “I know I didn’t want to marry you, but I’m so very glad I did.”

Chapter 37

“Thank you for agreeing to come with me.”

Jessabelle gave King Antonio a small smile. “Of course.”

“I hope you came because you wanted to and not because you felt you had to.”

She turned that over in her mind. Would she have wanted to say no? “I don’t know,” she finally answered honestly. “I’m not sure I wanted to turn you down, but...” She felt the need to be completely honest. “I don’t know that I felt I could say no if I had.”

They walked their horses a bit further before he replied. “Do you see me as an ogre, Jessabelle?”

There’s a loaded question.
“No,” she finally answered. “But you are the king.”

“So you don’t feel you can say no because of that?”

“You don’t say no when the king asks you to do something.” Wasn’t that the way everyone was raised? When the royal family asks you to jump, you don’t bother to ask how high, you just jump as high as you can.

“We are also family, even before yesterday.”

“You were my father-in-law who never really wanted me to marry his son in the first place,” she pointed out.

He didn’t answer immediately, but finally turned his horse to look over the incredible vista below. “You are not wrong. I would not have chosen you for Malachi, for many reasons, but I had promised your father all those years ago.” He turned to look at her, his blue eyes as earnest as she’d ever seen them. “I was wrong.”

Jessabelle found herself taken aback. “Pardon?” Had she really heard what she thought she heard?

“I was wrong. You are the perfect person for Malachi, and I began to realize that before the revelations of yesterday.” He shook his head. “I am going to have to have a long conversation with my grandmother about her secret keeping.”

“I suppose it’s good she knew the secrets, though,” Jessabelle stared at the green meadow on the hill opposite them. “Even if the outcome didn’t change, it would have been a very long few weeks waiting for confirmation.”

“I am having the tests run again, you know. Just to be certain.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” It made sense and would make her feel more comfortable, too. “What did you hope would come out of this horseback ride, Your Majesty?”

She could see the wounded look in his eyes. “Have we not progressed past the title at least? Antonio? Tony even?”

“You are not a Tony,” she replied tearing her eyes away from the profound sadness on his face. “And I’m not comfortable calling you Antonio, much less Father or Papa.” A smirk crossed her face. “Ask Malachi sometime how long it took me to call him something other than Prince Malachi.”

“You were thrown into it as much as he was, weren’t you? Your father had not told you your whole life that you would marry one of my sons?”

Jessabelle shook her head. “If he mentioned it, I don’t remember, not until about a year ago. Even then, I didn’t think it would happen. In all honesty, I hoped it would wait until after his death. Then I could postpone because of my grief and go hide somewhere else in the world.”

“I am glad it did not come to that.” After another moment of silence, he turned his horse back toward the trail.

Jessabelle followed him, the hush of the forest encapsulating them as they rode on. Half an hour later, they reached another overlook and he turned to her, concern on his face. “Are you going to be all right riding all the way back?”

“I’ll be fine.” Though it was the longest ride she’d taken in a very long time.

“I just remembered that you and Malachi rode in together the morning after your wedding, and I wondered.”

“That was because my horse stumbled, and we wanted to make sure not to injure her further.”

He simply nodded. “Regardless, I think it is time for us to turn around. I do have a video conference later this afternoon.” The ride wasn’t uncomfortable, at least not any more uncomfortable than she ever was riding a giant horse. The silence stretched between them, but she felt at peace, more than she had in a very long time.

“I cannot change my will,” the king said suddenly.

“Pardon?”

“I do not have a will like most people do. Who inherits most of my wealth is proscribed by law. William will inherit the properties, the bulk of the fortune that comes with the title of ‘King of Mevendia.’ Malachi will receive the second largest portion. If Yvette married Prince Nicklaus of Ravenzario, who was the heir to their throne, she would have received nothing because her husband would provide for her. Now?” He shrugged. “I am not certain what she will inherit.” His brows pulled together. “I need to find out and make sure she will be taken care of.”

“She only has about a year before the wedding?” Jessabelle asked.

“The week after her eighteenth birthday.”

“Her fiancée is dead, and she still has to go through with the planning and be stood up for the world to see, even though everyone knows it’s coming?”

The king stopped his horse as they reached the clearing nearest the mountain home. “It is not my choice. We wrote the marriage contract the way we did for reasons I cannot go into now, but those reasons are still in force. The contract is still in force until a week after the wedding date.”

“But why?” Jessabelle persisted. “Why do that to your only daughter?”

He stared her in the eye. “She is not my only daughter.” Before she could protest, he went on. “There were many forces at play, many that have still not fully played out, and until they do, the wedding is still on. Yvette will have to help plan and attend the wedding. She will not have to walk down the aisle if there is no groom.”

“If?” Jessabelle asked. “How could there possibly be a groom? He died in that car accident.”

He didn’t answer but clicked until his horse started to walk toward the garden gate once more.

All right then. No answer. At least this time she didn’t feel like it was something personal. It wasn’t the father-daughter relationship he wanted, but it was a start.

* * *

Malachi stared into his bowl of cereal. Sure most people probably thought of cereal as a boring, bland when-there’s-nothing-else-and-no-time fall back, but for the child of the Mevendian king and queen, cereal was a rare treat. With cooks and chefs and nannies and everything else that came with being part of the royal family, breakfast rarely consisted of toasted oats in a bowl with milk.

Because he hadn’t come down for breakfast when everyone else did, there was nothing left. The cook offered to make him anything he wanted, but Malachi just shook his head and found a box of something the staff must eat from time to time.

“There you are, dear.”

He looked up to see his great-grandmother walk into the room.

“I have been looking for you, child.”

In his twenties, married, and she still called him child sometimes. He wanted to be annoyed with her for it, but he couldn’t. He was too annoyed with her for keeping secrets.

And so he barely glanced her way, even as she settled into the seat next to him.

“So you are not speaking to me?” The amusement in her voice was hard to ignore.

“You knew the truth for most of my life and thought it was best to keep all of us in the dark?” His bitterness seeped out.

“What good would have come from telling you? Your father decided many years ago it did not matter to him what your biology said about your relationship to him.”

“And what exactly would he have been able to do if it had mattered? Tell the rest of the country I died and send me off to live with some distant relative? I could wind up in an orphanage in the Maldives after they went on a trip and tell everyone I’d been kidnapped without a trace?”

“You have a point,” she conceded. “You were nearly three before he even knew it was a possibility. I do not know what the alternatives would have been or what he might have considered if he decided he could not handle being the father of a child not biologically his after so long.”

He poked at the last couple of round oats in his bowl. “Why didn’t you tell him about Jessabelle? He didn’t deserve to know he had another child?”

She laid a weathered hand on his. “Look at me, Kai.”

He turned to see her still-bright blue eyes filled with tears. “What would it have done to the country? To your mother? To your family if he had known about Jessabelle all those years ago? He had already ended things with his mistress and told her in no uncertain terms he did not want to see her again. I heartily approved of the decision. He knew my position on his improprieties. We had more than one row about it. But when she came to see me a few days later, I could not leave her alone. She asked me to make sure her child ended up with a good family who would take good care of him or her. I knew Jessabelle’s parents were the right ones even before I knew she would be a girl.”

“And before the marriage contract was announced wouldn’t have been a good time to bring it up?”

“Oh please, Kai. Think that through.”

He knew she had a point, but he didn’t particularly care. He wanted to continue to wallow, to feel the full impact of his world flipping upside down.

His own words came back to him again.
My value as a human being comes from being a child of the King. Not my father, but my Heavenly Father...You have value because you are a child of the King. Your worth has to come from Him, not in your title or status here on earth.

Or in his perceived status and title on earth. No one outside of his immediate family would ever know he was not his father’s child. To the rest of the world he would always be Prince Malachi Jedidiah Richard Louis Van Rensselaer of Mevendia. Even his wife, the true child of the King of Mevendia, would never consider him to be less than what he had always been.

For many years, he’d struggled with the idea of his worth being only in his title and his last name. As he’d told Jessabelle, over time, he’d come to terms with the fact that his worth had to be found in God alone, in his status as a joint heir with Christ, and not in earthly principalities.

So why couldn’t he convince himself his worth hadn’t plummeted upon the realization that he was a child of the king through a twist of fate and not due to his biology?

Chapter 38

If possible, the drive back to the palace was quieter than the drive there had been. Malachi continued to stew in his own thoughts, shutting her out of whatever discussions might be had.

As they pulled into Erres in front of the main part of the royal caravan. “Have you looked at your schedule this week?” he asked about a mile from the turn to go up the hill and onto palace grounds.

“I have a bunch of stuff going on,” she told him. Didn’t he usually know her schedule far better than she did?

“We have a couple of appearances together, right?”

“I think so.” Where was he going with this?

“I told Carson to cancel everything for me this week. I’m going out of town.”

Jessabelle tried to absorb his statement. “Pardon?”