The Secret Prince (4 page)

She slanted him a look that would have done the Mona Lisa proud. “There might be.”

Dan slipped a thin stack of photocopies from the envelope. He scanned the first report quickly:

There were other reports, which he read hastily, his pulse throbbing in his temple, his mouth going stone dry…

Frigid droplets of sweat skittered down the back of his neck. He stared at the next page's remarks: “Love letters signed ‘your adoring Margaret,' no envelopes.” There were even photocopies of two of the letters. He
tried not to think about the passion and longing behind the words, which seemed far too personal to be read by other than the two people involved. But he needed only to glance at the handwriting to know it was amazingly similar to Madge's flowery style. Then there was another notation:

“Well?” Elly asked, glancing up at him from her empty plate.

He smiled weakly. “I imagine Karl's legitimate son might be a little nervous about this discovery of yours.”

“More than nervous. Particularly since you were born before he was.”

“Ouch.”

“It gets worse,” she assured him. “Somebody in the palace leaked rumors of the affair. A reporter and his photographer are hot on your trail. They were following me, but I shook them off in Baltimore. It's only luck that I found you before they did.”

Dan no longer felt hungry. He pushed his plate away. Visions of TV cameras, reporters armed with microphones and endless telephone calls from pushy media hawks flooded his imagination. For an instant he tried to tell himself that it might be a good thing—free publicity for the Haven and his City Kids program.

A second later, reality smacked him upside his head. It wouldn't be his property or his favorite charity that would get all the attention. It would be Madge and the
past she'd tried so hard to hide from him, from her friends and neighbors, from the world. This would kill her.

He stared numbly at Elly across the table. “We didn't ask for this.”

“I know. But I promise you, my father and I had nothing to do with letting your mother's past become public knowledge. And now we'll do everything we can to help both you and Madge weather the storm.”

“What do you intend to do? Wave a magic wand and make us disappear?”

She gave him another one of those delicious enigmatic smiles. “Something like that.”

 

Elly was relieved when Dan told her he would agree to go with her to Elbia. But convincing his mother to evacuate her comfy cottage was, at first, a struggle. Then came the first phone call from a
Washington Star
reporter.

Apparently the British press who had first been leaked the information had contacted several American newspapers in their search for the missing prince of Elbia. The
Star
put a team on the story and soon it was clear that the prying phone calls were destined to become even more harassing visits. Madge was so horrified at the prospect of her home being invaded she reluctantly agreed to the trip.

With help from the Elbian embassy, Elly booked all three of them on the Concorde for that night. On their way from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., they somehow picked up two carloads of reporters. “It's all right,” Elly assured a frightened Madge, “as long as we keep moving, they
can't get to you. And State Department security is waiting for us at the airport.”

The limousine she had ordered raced the two black sedans through twisting roadways approaching the international terminals, then the three of them were led to a lounge where security guards kept the press at bay while they waited to board the plane. Soon, a State Department courier arrived with passports for Dan and his mother, and minutes later they were herded onto the immense jet without being accosted. She felt like giving a victory cheer. But as the sleek, tipped-nose Concorde took off with a gentle rumble into the night, Elly sensed they'd only temporarily eluded their troubles.

The seating on the Concorde felt far more spacious than that on most commercial flights. Elly had never flown on the famous French-built jet that only the elite of the world could afford. Two roomy seats were positioned on either side of the aisle, and the service was impeccably attentive. Madge and Dan sat on one side. Elly was on the opposite side of the aisle, at the window seat, while the place beside her remained empty.

After they'd taken off into the night, Elly closed her eyes for a moment. Exhaustion overcame her. She felt weightless; her mind drifted. Back to another time in her life. A time when there had been more than just two Andersons. Elly, Dad…Mom. She felt herself being sucked back in time as she pictured her mother's face smiling down at her. Elly fought the memories, struggled to escape from the images that kept her from finding peace in her own life. Her heart began to race. Her breaths came in short, shallow puffs as the muscles in her chest constricted. Resisting was futile…

“It's going to be all right, Elly,” her mother had
promised when Elly became concerned that her baby brother might come at night while Elly slept. Then she'd miss all the excitement. “It's all planned. The doctor will meet me at the hospital on the date you and I wrote on the calendar. Remember? I'll have an operation called a cesarean section to take the baby from my tummy. You'll be able to see him minutes after he's born, then you and I will fight over who gets to cuddle him.”

They'd laughed together over that. Her father had told Elly that, at twelve years of age, she was almost old enough to be a little mother herself, at least in some cultures in other parts of the world. Even before the baby's seventh month of gestation, she had begun to feel her little brother in her arms, to sense a growing protectiveness of him and know that they would be a wonderful family together—the four of them.

Then the half sleep she'd sunk into on the plane dragged her deeper into darker memories. Of
that
night.

Again she was tortured by Patricia Anderson's agonized screams and her father's shouts for help to the 911 operator. When she'd tried to go to her mother, Frank had blocked her from the bedroom, shouting frantically at her that she couldn't go in, shoving her back into her own room as if she were being punished for a crime she didn't understand.

Blue and red lights flashed in the street outside her window. She'd watched two paramedics rush into the house while the driver pulled a gurney from the ambulance. “She will be okay,” she whispered to herself. “Daddy said so.” But minutes passed and the ambulance still sat there. Soon Elly knew, without being
told, that when they did bring her mother out it wouldn't be to take her to the hospital.

Elly heard a whimper and something moist trickled down her cheeks. She twisted violently in her seat, felt the heaviness in her chest pressing relentlessly, then sensed a warm hand settling on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” It wasn't her mother's voice, as she'd so often imagined at the end of her worst attacks. This voice had a deeper, stronger timbre. “Elly?”

She blinked her eyes open and took a moment to orient herself to an adult world, lights dim along a slender, shining cabin. Her throat burned, and her temples throbbed hotly. Turning her head, she looked up at Dan who had crossed the aisle to sit in the vacant seat beside her.

“You were having a bad dream,” he murmured.

“Was I?” The break between the past and the present seemed liquid, as if she still might float back into the pain and experience it all over again.

Dan took her hand between his and rested it on his knee. “Want to tell me about it? If you share a dream, you can keep it from coming back, you know.” He smiled at her.

“Not this one.” She shivered then swallowed twice, trying to ease the roughness in her throat, trying to calm her drumming heartbeat. Horrid sounds still reverberated in her head. The awful coldness of death clutched at her. “This one's a keeper, whether I want it or not.”

Dan frowned. “A bad one, huh?”

“The worst.” She would have let it go at that. But his quiet compassion and steady gaze beckoned her to say more. She had a sudden intuitive flash that she and
Dan shared something—pasts that would haunt them and remain with them all of their lives. “It's not fantasy,” she explained. “It's like an instant replay of something that really happened.”

“Like a soldier having a flashback of battle?”

“Something like that.” Elly drew herself up in the seat, still trembling, and glanced across at Madge. She was fast asleep. “You're really good to her,” she whispered.

“Why shouldn't I be? She's my mother.”

“Some people don't appreciate what they have, the sacrifices their parents make for them.”

“I guess that's true,” he agreed slowly, encouraging her with his steady gaze. “Aren't you good to your mother?”

Her eyes closed. She shuddered.

“I'm sorry,” Dan whispered. “That was far too personal.” He took a deep breath. “I suppose I felt justified, since you've dug up so much about me. I know nothing of you, except that you work for your father.”

She shrugged, feeling a little calmer at the sound of his mellow voice. “There's not a lot to tell. I was twelve years old. My parents had tried for years to have a second child. They were overjoyed when it looked as if my mother would carry to full term.” Her voice was flat, without the emotion she held so carefully within her. “Mom died in childbirth. My baby brother didn't make it either.”

“That's terrible.” He squeezed her hand. “It must have taken a long time to get over that.” Then their eyes met and he knew. “Or maybe you never have.”

She looked away from his too-perceptive gaze. The thick-glassed window to her left was black. No moon. But fat, white stars shone through the night over the
endless Atlantic Ocean. She felt Dan's thumb drawing comforting circles over the back of her hand.

Suddenly, Elly found herself talking. Pushing out words without taking a breath, baring her soul as she'd never done with anyone in her life. She couldn't imagine why everything should tumble out of her at this moment, in front of this man. Perhaps because she fore-saw pain and a struggle coming his way. Or maybe it was because they would soon go their separate ways. Sharing the agony of her past and fears of the future with this man who was passing so briefly through her life was as devoid of threat as confiding in a wall.

As she let the words flow, telling him of the night she had lost her mother forever and her father for many months to his grief, Dan's arm came around her, as if to shield her from her own memories.

“My dad just stopped functioning after my mother died. He didn't go to work. He didn't eat enough to keep a person alive. He started smoking again, and he drank quite a lot, I think. He spent a lot of time away—most of every day and always the nights. He wouldn't mention her name. We didn't talk.”

Dan stared at her, his eyes hard and dark with concern. “That was when you most needed him.”

She sighed. “Yes, but I can't blame him for distancing himself from me. If you ever saw my mother's college graduation photo, you'd think that I could be her twin. It just hurt Dad too much to look at me, and think about her.”

“That's no excuse for neglecting a child,” he snapped.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You can't understand how it was.” She swallowed. Dare she go on? Dare she tell him the rest, the part that still controlled her
future and wouldn't let her move on with her own life? But now that she'd opened her soul to him it seemed impossible to stop the flood of feelings.

“Years later,” she whispered, “Dad told me what had happened that night. My mother had an enlarged heart. They'd known that since I was born and had elected to do a C-section. Her doctor had advised another C-section to take the stress off delivering her second baby. When she went into labor early, her heart couldn't take it, and the baby died of asphyxiation before the medics could arrive.” She swallowed three times before she was able to look at him again. Tears clung to her eyelashes.

“I'm so sorry, Elly.”

She nodded, plunging on. “Dad insisted that I get a complete physical a few years later. He didn't seem surprised when they found I'd inherited my mother's heart problem, it was just a little larger than it should have been. Nothing easily fixed, just something to live cautiously with.

“From that day, I decided never to have children of my own. I love kids, I really do,” she insisted, her heart breaking even as she said the words. “But I can't risk my life the way my mother did.”

“Death in childbirth is a very rare thing these days,” Dan commented gently. “Chances are, if she'd been able to reach a hospital, she'd have been all right. You shouldn't—”

Elly pulled her hand away from him. “Don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do!” she snapped. Not wanting to alarm the sleeping passengers around them, she choked back the sob that swelled inside her. The words came out in breathless gulps.
“Don't…lecture…me!”