The Secret Prince (3 page)

“Why does it matter whether or not my mother ever was in Europe?” he had the presence of mind to demand.

Elly took a deep breath and stepped toward him, praying the right words would come to her. “Papers have recently come to light that indicate a young American woman named Margaret Jennings spent a year abroad, as a student in Paris. That was your maiden name. Right, Mrs. Eastwood?”

Dan answered for her. “Yes, and her junior year she attended the Sorbonne. You told me you did, Mom.”

Madge closed her eyes but acknowledged nothing.

Elly held her breath and asked, “Was it during that year that you met a young man named—”

“I met Carl Eastwood there, yes!” Madge snapped, pushing herself up from her armchair with startling energy. “We married, and nine months later Dan was born. But Carl died very young.” Tears filled her eyes and she wiped at them with the sleeve of her dress.

Dan frowned, looking more puzzled than ever. “I thought you and Dad hooked up in Baltimore.”

“No. No, it was in a little village outside of Paris.” Madge sniffled and looked away from her son. “Years later, I heard the church burned down. Probably destroyed all its records too.”

Elly opened her mouth to tell the woman she knew that was a lie, but at the last second thought better of it since her six-foot-plus son stood by ready to defend his mother's honor.

“Go on,” Dan growled, his too-perceptive gaze locked onto Elly's face. “What were you about to say?”

She swallowed over a sandpaper-dry spot in her throat. “There is no record of a marriage, that's true.” She hesitated, but the look on Dan's face told her she must finish what she'd begun, regardless of how he took the news. “There is no record…because there has
never been a Carl Eastwood in your mother's life. And there never was a marriage.”

“All right, you're out of here!” Dan's wide hand shot out. He seized Elly by the arm and marched her firmly toward the door.

She had only enough time to swipe her purse from the coffee table and grab her coat from the back of her chair before he ushered her out of the room.

“I don't know what kind of game you're playing, and I don't care. You're leaving, lady.”

“But don't you want to—”

Before she could get out the rest of her sentence, she found herself standing alone in the cold ocean mist on Madge's lemon-bright porch. She could still feel the pressure of Dan's strong fingers on her arm and his palm on her backside after the door slammed behind her. The nerve of the man. He'd thrown her out!

Then the implication of what had just happened hit her. A triumphant grin spread slowly across her lips.

She had found her missing prince!

E
lly bounced in anticipation on the edge of the hotel bed, her ear pressed to the telephone receiver. Someone had gone to find her father to take her call. She'd never seen the castle in person, but photographs of Der Kristallenpalast, the famous crystal palace, revealed an immense, turreted structure of pale, lustrous marble and hundreds of richly appointed rooms. Frank Anderson could easily be half a mile from the nearest phone.

His unmistakable smoker's voice suddenly rasped across the line. “It's about time. What do you have?”

“It's a boy!” she cried.

“The old king had a
son
with the Jennings girl?”

Elly grinned, enjoying her moment of triumph. “That
girl
is now in her fifties, goes by Madge and is being really stubborn about admitting that she had a royal fling thirty-some years ago.”

“Understandable,” he grumbled. “She married
now? Not wanting her husband to know about her past?”

“No,” Elly admitted with a sigh. “But she's sticking to a story about an American husband who died young. I'm certain she made him up for her son's benefit.”

“But you're sure about this young man?”

She hesitated barely a heartbeat. “Yes. Dad, he even looks like Jacob. And the photos of Karl when he was young could be Daniel Eastwood today. They have the same dark hair and strong, angular features, although Eastwood's eyes are dark brown, not blue.”

“That could easily come from the mother's side. Good. I'll tell Jacob.”

“Do we have enough to prove legally he's the old king's son, though?” she asked. She trusted her intuition and the facts she'd uncovered, but the law was another thing.

“Karl was studying at the Sorbonne the same time as Margaret Jennings, according to the school's records. He kept her love letters to him and her farewell note. A handwriting expert can make quick work of comparing this woman's handwriting with that of the person who wrote those letters. There are other documents as well.”

Elly was so excited she could barely speak. But she was also deeply moved by the drama revealed by the decades-old letters they'd found. Those must have been desperate times for a young prince, soon to become king, and his frightened mistress. Had Karl even known that the girl he'd fallen in love with but could never marry carried his child? Nothing they'd found to this date mentioned her pregnancy. How very sad, Elly
thought, if the man had died never knowing he had another son.

But now, years later, wonderful things might come of this discovery for Dan and his mother. Not that they deserved it, Elly thought ruefully, tossing her out the way they'd done. But imagine discovering a brother you never knew existed! And a royal one at that!

“What now?” Elly asked her father breathlessly.

“Jacob's advisors told me this morning that if you found the woman and she had a child by the king, they'd want both of them brought over on the first possible plane.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Damage control. They believe that with the pair here in Elbia, the press will have a harder time getting to them. There are also some touchy legal issues to be ironed out, the sooner the better from the crown's perspective.”

Elly's mind whirled, and she felt short of breath. “Eastwood doesn't even believe me. How will I get him on a plane to Europe? Dad, this isn't our job. All we agreed to do was verify historical records. We're not private investigators.”

“Elizabeth.” His chastising papa-bear growl ended in a soft cough. She hated that he smoked. But since her mother had died there had been no one, including herself, who could talk sense to the man about his health or anything else.

“Well, we're not!” she insisted.

“We have no choice at this point. The king blames us for the leak. He's absolutely convinced that no one in his court would peddle such volatile news to the press. Now we have to do what we can to save a bad situation. And—” He balked.

“There's more bad news?” She didn't want to think about one more complication.

“Consider the many implications of this discovery, Elly. There is enormous wealth at stake. Even an illegitimate child might demand a portion of his father's fortune. And what about the mother? As far as we know, she has never been compensated for her pregnancy or given any financial help in raising the boy.”

Elly rolled her eyes to the motel room's chalky ceiling. The packet of letters her father had only recently discovered hidden behind a panel in an ancient armoire had turned into a modern Pandora's box. In addition to the love notes, signed “adoringly, Margaret,” other letters, returned from the United States as undeliverable, indicated that over the next ten years Karl had tried to locate his lost love, but failed. Perhaps it was just his beloved Margaret he searched for. Or maybe he feared the existence of a child and knew the danger an illegitimate offspring, older by several months than his son by the queen, would pose to his dynasty.

“Get them on a plane,” Elly repeated dully, shaking her head. “Short of kidnapping mother and son, I'm not sure how I'll manage that.”

“We don't have much time,” Frank reminded her. “If I were that young man or his mother, I'd want to find a good place to hide out for a while. The press will eat them alive.”

Elly shook her head. “Something tells me this guy isn't the type to run away from anything.”

“Elizabeth,” her father whispered hoarsely, sounding increasingly worried, “if this explodes in our faces, our professional reputation will be destroyed. We might as well give up the business.
Do you understand?
”

She swallowed. It was that bad then. “I'll bring them to you,” she promised. “Somehow.”

 

Dan was thirty minutes late for his appointment with the contractor, mostly because he had other things on his mind. His thoughts boomeranged back and forth between memories of manhandling an attractive redhead out his mother's door, his hand placed strategically on her pretty rump, and the less enjoyable knowledge that he'd probably never see Elly Anderson again.

Luckily, the contractor was still in his office. They negotiated a few terms, signed the contract. Within a week the storm damage to the bungalows closest to the shoreline would be repaired. One less thing to worry about.

Dan drove back toward the Haven along Ocean Avenue and turned into the parking lot. A flash of crimson hair in the sunlight caught his eye. Setting the parking brake on his SUV, he squinted through the windshield into the wintry glare. A man and a woman stood where the lot met the sandy boardwalk.

Elly's elegant legs appeared even longer whenever the wind flipped up the hem of her skirt. Her hair, lifting free of confining pins, swirled in russet waves around her face as she talked to Kevin and occasionally lifted a hand to hold flaming wisps out of her eyes.

“What's that woman up to now?” he muttered, heaving himself up out of the car.

Dear old Kev wore that deer-staring-into-headlights expression common to men confronted by a pretty woman. Dan only hoped his friend hadn't said anything to encourage Elly's snooping. He jogged across the parking lot toward them.

“I thought we agreed you were through with this nonsense!” Dan shouted into the wind.

Elly turned to observe him, her eyes far too enticing to cool his simmering blood. Simmering because he was furious with her but also because she looked so deliciously disheveled with the wind tugging at her skirt and hair, and teasing open the collar of her jacket to reveal a sliver of flesh at the top of her breast.

She planted her feet firmly and straightened her spine to meet him. “We need to talk, Mr. Eastwood.”

“Isn't that where we started this morning?”

Kevin looked from one to the other of them with a puzzled expression then backed off two steps. “I don't know what this is about, but I'll let you two hash things out. Got work to do.”

To Dan's surprise, Elly didn't so much as blink or make any move that might be construed as retreat. “I need you and Mrs. Eastwood on a plane for Europe,” she stated. “Tonight at the latest.”

He laughed. “You're not only wrong about my mother, you're insane!”

“No,” she said solemnly, “I'm not. Not on either account. I have evidence. Please listen to me. If you don't, both of you are going to be hurt far more than you can imagine.”

There was something fervent and beyond argument in her tone. This was a woman who believed in what she said. For the first time Dan felt deep in his gut that Elizabeth Anderson wasn't flinging idle fairy tales at him or working some kind of confidence game. He remembered the look on his mother's face earlier that day. Madge had been afraid—not of lies, but of the
truth.
And that terrified him.

He looked at his watch. “It's getting close to lunch time. Are you hungry?”

Elly gave him a guarded look. “Famished,” she admitted. “No time for breakfast this morning. Why?”

“Let's get a table at Kirby's. We can talk this out over crab cakes.”

 

Kirby's, one of the most popular seafood restaurants on Ocean Avenue, was nearly deserted during off season. They sat in a fifties-style red vinyl booth and Dan ordered two steaming crab cake platters piled high with salty French fries, little paper cups of sweet coleslaw on the side.

Elly poured a stream of rich ketchup over her fries and dug in hungrily. Dan ate more slowly than usual, watching her. He was aware of her thin ankles crossed beneath the table, visible through the space between his bench and the table top. When he lifted his eyes they fixed with fascination on her animated lips as she relished the crunchy potatoes and fat crab cake with its savory Old Bay seasonings perfuming the room around them.

He found it impossible to hold onto his irritation with her. But he
was
curious and more than a little suspicious of her motives for wanting to whisk him off to another continent. “So tell me about this proof. And why the urgency to get me out of the country?”

“I know you feel I'm intruding,” she began, spearing another fry with her fork and shaking it at him in schoolmarm fashion, “and I don't like being put in the position of having to accuse anyone of lying about their past but—”

“But that's precisely what you are doing, isn't it?” he asked in a low voice.

Elly pursed her lips and studied him for a long moment, as if searching for diplomatic words. “People can be very creative about their past, if they are afraid. A woman has to be particularly careful. And a single mom
always
has to explain herself to others. No doubt your mother felt that a dead husband was easier for people to accept than the truth.”

“And that truth is?” He might be willing to believe her.
Might.
But not without one hell of an explanation.

Elly continued with obvious caution as she pulled a manila envelope from the briefcase on the bench beside her. “I have photocopies of letters found on the von Austerand family's property. There now is little doubt that the ones signed
Margaret
were written by your mother, but we can verify that as soon as she is in Elbia.”

She put up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “We believe your mother fell deeply in love with Karl von Austerand the year she studied in Paris. She probably believed they would marry, but he wasn't completely honest with her. He was engaged to another woman of royal blood. And he was the crown prince, soon to become King of Elbia.

“Karl was attending the college under an assumed name to avoid publicity. When Madge discovered they could never wed, she ran home to America—probably just after learning she was pregnant. Instead of returning to her parents' home in Massachusetts, she found a place to live in Baltimore and hid her shame by inventing a husband. The move probably was intended to elude Karl, too. Perhaps she feared what he might do if he discovered their child.
You.
”

Dan could feel the heat rising from his chest to his throat. He glared at the folder resting on the table be
neath her hand. “This is very difficult to believe,” he said tightly.

Elly slowly shook her head. “I'm sorry. See for yourself.”

He couldn't move, was barely capable of breathing. Still furious with Elly, he was nevertheless increasingly fearful that what she claimed might be true. She didn't have to tell him how drastically his life would change if it was.

And what about Madge's quiet existence? She hated confrontation. She had always favored a life without complications. Any shattered love affair and unwanted baby were as complicated as life got. Unless the father of your baby was a man whose family's status rivaled that of the royals of England or Monaco—people with unlimited wealth and power, who could never escape their celebrity or stay off the front page of grocery-store gossip rags for long.

Elly rested her warm hand over his on the tabletop. “This must be a shock to you. You've grown up believing one thing, and here I am telling you everything is different. I'm sorry. Truly, I am.” Her eyes shone with sincerity and compassion. “I would have preferred to let your mother keep her secret. But it's out of my hands now. Others have found out, so you both needed to know.”

He couldn't utter a word. His lips felt as stiff as if he'd climbed from a December ocean.

“Take your time reading while you finish eating,” she offered. “Then let me know what you think.” Her accent was flavored with New England. Maple-syrup sweet, with a touch of Yankee logic. He would have liked to get to know her better, a whole lot better. She seemed a nice person, in addition to being so easy on
the eyes. But it appeared that more pressing matters were on deck.

Dan took a bite of his cooling crab cake and chewed without tasting anything, then studied her as she sipped her cola. “There's a lot riding on this, isn't there? I mean, aside from being hounded by the press.”