Linda Needham (13 page)

Wanting to be sure that she’d gotten enough of the details to make a positive identification once she checked her resources, she raised up the drawing in front of her face and adjusted it side to side with both hands and moved backward down the cobbled path until the proportions of the drawing matched the actual size of the bell.

“Good enough, I think.” She gave the design one last blinking scan, then lowered the drawing.

But instead of finding the St. Timmin’s bell and the
bed of pansies and the boxwood hedge in front of her, she found a sea of men’s faces.

Elderly faces, mostly. A half dozen pairs of eyes staring back at her in wide-mouthed surprise.

“Your Highness!”

“Princess Caroline!”

“Boratania’s own!”

And then these same six men clapped their hands to their hearts, fell to their knees and began singing,

“Wait, wait, stop!” Stunned nearly speechless, Caro waved her hands at the three men kneeling directly in front of her. “Please, stop!”

The anthem faded and the bearded man in front of her stood tentatively.

“As you wish, Your Highness. Sorry if we offended, we were just overcome by—”

“May I ask…Who are you, please?”

The group shared a few shy glances at one another, then a second man stood with a groan and bowed.

“My name is Karl Brendel, and these other men, Caroline Marguerite Marie Isabella, Princess and Empress-elect of Boratania, are your loyal subjects.”

Subjects? But she didn’t have subjects.

A third man stood on shaky legs and revealed a very plain-looking sword, his eyes worried as he spoke, “Wilhelm Belvedere, Your Highness. We have
come to pledge to you our steadfast hearts, our hallowed honor and our strongest swords.”

Come from where?
she wanted to ask, but they all seemed so intent.

The men smiled broadly at her and nodded eagerly as Wilhelm raised the old, well-used sword into the air in what might have been a highly charming salute, but just as he was tilting t he handle in her direction, she heard her name bellowed from behind her.

“Head down, Princess!”

And then a scrambling scuffle to her right, and poor Wilhelm went flying along the cobbles, landing in the bed of pansies with a man straddling his chest.

“No!”

But before Caro could rescue Wilhelm, she was scooped up, enfolded and was being carried away from the melee in a very familiar pair of arms.

“What the devil are you doing, Wexford!” Caro kicked at him with her feet, but found nothing but air.

“Now are you satisfied, Princess?” He jounced her as he stalked along the cobbles.

“Satisfied that you are a lunatic! Release me!” Caro smacked at his shoulder, but he just kept walking.

“See what happens, Princess? I leave you alone for a moment and—Owww! Damnation!”

“Are you mad, Wexford?” Caro gave another twist to the lean muscle at his waist and the beast finally set her on her feet against the back of a hat vendor’s wagon.

“In case you hadn’t realized it, Princess Caroline, that old man was about to ceremonially separate your pretty little head from your shoulders.”

“No, he wasn’t, Wexford, you big lout! That nice
man had just pledged his undying fealty to me and was offering me his sword.”

“I know what I saw.” Wexford was hunkering over her like a branching oak.

“And I know what I heard.” Caro stabbed her finger toward the group of men cowering near the bell, surrounded by Wexford’s agents. “Those people are my loyal subjects!”

“Your subjects?” He straightened.

“And you just struck one of them to the ground. An elderly one at that. I ought to have you clapped in irons. However, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make amends.” Caro ducked under his arm but the man caught her again and spun her.

“You’re not going anywhere, Princess, until I tell you it’s safe.”

“My subjects are waiting, Wexford.” She pulled away from him, but he followed and stopped her with the towering bulk of his body.

“When did you meet these so-called subjects?”

“About three minutes ago. They seemed very nice. And since they happen to be my only subjects, I’d better do something to prove to them that I will protect them from tyrants and bullies like you and your agents, or they might find someone else to honor.”

“Three minutes ago?” He was still blocking her way like a mountain range. “You let a half dozen men approach you all at one time without a thought to their motive?”

“I didn’t have a choice, Wexford. They just appeared before me out of thin air.”

“And that seemed perfectly reasonable to you, madam? Utter strangers appearing out of nowhere to pay homage to you?”

“They’re not strangers—”

“Princess Caroline!” Wilhelm was waving at her, straining against the agent’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Wilhelm. Now, let me go, Wexford.” She managed to finally drag her warden back to her worried-looking subjects and went to Wilhelm’s side. “How about you? Have you broken anything?”

“Not even a scratch, Princess Caroline.” Though the man had just been rubbing his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Wilhelm.” She checked the same shoulder, but found nothing broken. “These men are here to protect me, and they didn’t understand what—”

Another man joined Wilhelm. “But we understand completely, Your Highness. They were only doing their jobs, as they just told us. And very well, I might add. Any one of us would give our life to protect you from harm.”

Too many people seemed willing to throw themselves in front of the nearest train for her.

She glanced up at Wexford and his glowering frown. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” She took the man’s thin leathery hand. “Your name, sir?”

He shuffled and shied like an old plow horse. “My name is Erasmus Uechersbach, Your Highness.”

“Well, Mr. Uechersbach, I’m most grateful and honored by your pledge.”

“We would have contacted you sooner,” Erasmus said, swallowing hard, “but…well, it wouldn’t have made any difference until now.”

“And you surely didn’t need to be burdened with the lot of us,” added Wilhelm.

“Believe me, you’re no burden to me.” So this was
what it was like to have her own people. “But if you are my subjects, where have you been all this time?”

She heard Wexford muttering behind her, doubtless scowling at the men like a thunderstorm.

Another man stepped forward, older, but of thick-muscled peasant stock. “Johannes Halstedt, Princess. I was your father’s equerry, as my father was before me.”

“How truly wonderful!” Caro swallowed back a lump in her throat. “I have so many things to ask you.”

“Ask anything you wish of me, Your Highness.” He bowed again. “Though I’ve been living away from Boratania for a very long time.”

Wilhelm patted the man on the back. “It was best that Johannes leave the kingdom after it fell. He was wounded while defending Tovaranche castle alongside your father, and he wasn’t welcomed by the new regime.”

Her father. Her family! “Then you’re a true hero, Johannes, and you’re very welcome by me. A most loyal subject, to be sure.”

“Come, come, I wasn’t the only man among us to help your family, Princess Caroline. Each of us here has a similar tale. Wilhelm was one of your father’s generals, Erasmus was the master of the hounds—”

“I’ve kept his favorite lines intact, Your Highness, wolfhounds and mastiffs.”

Her father’s hounds! She had all their papers!

“Karl was ambassador to Prussia—”

“Though a lot of good that did us in the end, Your Highness.”

“Marcus was your mother’s favorite gardener, and Gunnar here was the court composer—”

“Your music, sir!” she said, as thrilled as though she’d found her family, “I have much of it catalogued at Grandauer Hall! You must come look through it.”

“You found my music?” The old man’s eyes glistened with tears beneath his shaggy eyebrows. “Oh, my dear Princess Caroline, I…well, we’ve been waiting more than twenty years for you. Waiting and hoping.”

Karl clasped Gunnar around the shoulder. “And now that you’re about to regain some of Boratania, Your Highness, we thought—”

“Just a small piece of it,” she said, never realizing before just how small ten square miles would be. How would she feed these few people? And what about their families? And the people who already live there?

“In any case, Your Highness,” Johannes said, “that’s why we’ve come all the way to London. To share in the great, historical celebration.”

Wilhelm had been looking up at Wexford, his old eyes wary and shy. “So we’d best be going now. You’ve got this fine tournament to attend, and we had promised each other not to be a bother to you.”

She grabbed Wilhelm’s bone-thin hand. “But you’re not a bother at all. You couldn’t be!” They were like family! After all this time she’d spent alone. “In fact, you’ve come at the perfect time to help me get ready for the exhibition. Imagine that, Wexford!”

But Drew was still frowning, his arms crossed over his chest. “Indeed, Princess.”

“Oh, pinch me for a fool, men!” Johannes said, slapping his thigh. “We’ve even brought something for you. Besides the sword, of course.”

The men began to murmur in happy anticipation
among themselves. Wexford’s agents had stepped back to the edge of the melee and now they moved forward again while Marcus laid a long, rectangular crate at her feet.

Wexford himself moved in beside her, as though he suspected the box might contain a ticking bomb.

“For you, Your Highness. In memory of Boratania, the way it used to be.” Johannes unlocked the latch and opened the lid while Marcus lifted out the excelsior to reveal a shiny brass beehive-shaped object, about a foot in diameter. Attached to the top of the hive was a three-foot-long brass pole and on top of that, five swarming honeybees.

The two men lifted it carefully out of its nest and held it upright in front of Caro.

Caro blinked at it, at a memory of something she’d only seen in etchings. And then her eyes filled with tears that spilled over and onto her hands.

“Great heavens! It’s the Tovaranche spire! Where did you find it?”

The men looked at one another knowingly and smiled as though she’d just passed an exacting test, and then Johannes said, with an even larger smile, “It was rescued by the late Lord Minorhoff from the looters the night your parents died. And kept by his good wife until just last month.”

Caro traced her fingers along the polished ridges of the hive, amazed at the smoothness, trying not to weep. “I’m so grateful to you all. I thought it was gone for good.”

“There isn’t much left of the old world, Princess Caroline, but you have the time to start over again.”

Starting over again suddenly seemed very important. For her family. For her subjects.

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what all I’ve recovered, Wilhelm.” She touched the spire again, wondering if she should include it in the exhibition. Or was it too precious to put on display?

“You’ve been most wonderful to receive us without notice, Your Highness.”

Which gave her the best idea she’d had in a long while. “Where are you lodged, Johannes?”

The man began to stammer. “Well, we’re at the Sip and Whistle tavern. That is to say, Your Highness, we’ve not really been in town long enough to arrange for suitable rooms as yet, but—”

“Then don’t, Johannes.”

“What do you mean, Princess Caroline?”

“I have the perfect solution to both our situations.”

No, Princess, don’t!

But hell and damnation, she did it anyway! And Drew realized the woman’s unacceptable intentions too late to stop her, and could only listen in horror as she announced her invitation to her little group of potential assassins.

“You’ll come stay at Grandauer Hall for as long as you need to. All of you. As my guests.”

Drew bent to her and whispered into her ear. “That’s not possible, Princess.”

“Don’t be absurd, Wexford.” She jabbed a pointed elbow into his ribs. “There’s room at Grandauer to sleep a hundred guests.”

“I can’t have them underfoot.” Though to a man they looked harmless enough, elderly and dewy-eyed as they took in every movement the woman made.

“I promise you won’t even see them. And they can help me enormously with the exhibition, relieving
your own men and speeding up the process. How can you possibly object?”

Bloody hell, he could spend the next week objecting, but he doubted she’d listen to a word of it, unless and until one of them came at her with another ceremonial sword.

And there was something else that troubled him more deeply. These men, if they were truly from her father’s scattered court, doubtless held vast secrets that she should never hear.

One of the clues had revealed itself moments ago, but she hadn’t caught its meaning.

And now she was happily chattering with them, asking more questions, listening raptly, giving them directions to Grandauer Hall: “But only two hours out of London, gentlemen! You must come!”

“Sorry, Wexford, she got away from us.” One of his operatives, Davidson, came to stand beside him, looking more than a little uncomfortable in his jester’s costume.

“And me, Davidson. Which makes me even more suspicious of these faithful Boratanians. You heard their names and where they are staying. Stop off at the Factory and spare nothing. And do make it fast.”

Davidson was studying the motley group of men. “Don’t look much like assassins, do they?”

“I doubt that Guy Fawkes did either. Bring me any information you can find on the lot of them, how they got here, where they were this morning, where they’ve spent the last twenty years. Including any mention of Boratania itself. Anything from any source.”

It took another fifteen minutes before the princess had sent off her new subjects in a proper carriage,
and only after a promise from them that they would arrive at Grandauer Hall as soon as they could pack up their belongings.