Princess Ever After (Royal Wedding Series) Read online

  Reggie hopped up for her laptop and googled Braelon Bay and Cliffs of White. Chills gripped her scalp and trickled down her neck and arms when the images popped on the screen looking exactly as Gram had painted them. Had she painted them from memory. Or from a photograph.

  Back on the bed, Reggie returned to the story, her resolve, her “no” waning. But she could not let a booklet painted by an old woman direct her life.

  On the next page, the princess sat on a settee under a bay window in a luminous room with swirls and swirls of sunlight falling through the window.

  The princess was most happy with her mamá and sister, living with her uncle in the palace of the magical kingdom. But as she grew older, she fell in love.

  Reggie glanced at Rein. “Was it you?”

  But all was not well in the land.

  Turning the page, Reggie’s heart sank to see the swirls of golden light now swirls of dark, ominous clouds. The princess ran through some kind of forest, a possessed one if Reggie ever saw one, with craggy limbs and twig fingers snatching at the girl’s hair and clothes.

  Evil came to the kingdom, and the princess and her family had to flee.

  Evil? Gram, what evil? Did she mean the war? The entail?

  The princess clutched a brown bag to her chest, peering back over her shoulder, her red hair streaming over her eyes.

  In the next scene, the princess found safety in a red stable nestled in a light-washed thicket clearing, thin brambles and vines growing about the structure as if to protect it from outside intrusion. Sitting under an arch of white light, the stable image was ethereal. Surreal. Reggie could almost see the light beams dancing in the air.

  Reggie flipped the page and walked with the watercolor princess through the stable door, her lantern raised high.

  With only moments to spare, the princess stowed away her treasures, believing that one day, when salvation came, they would be found and loved again.

  Hmm . . . Gram, what do you mean? When salvation came? Was she referencing the entail? The war? The future heir? Was she even aware of the entail’s consequences? While fascinating and reminiscent, Reggie found none of the fairy tale compelling enough to leave her home, her job, her security, her friends and family to . . .

  How did Daddy say it? Hop on over and give Hessenberg a look-see.

  Turning the page, Reggie read to the end of the story, still unmoved to travel four thousand miles for the sake of some old piece of political paper. Or the whims of a dead uncle she’d never met.

  However, the last page torpedoed all her resolve. Bombarded all of her walls of reason.

  In the depths of the stable, darkness all around save the lone lantern, the princess knelt by a sparkling red Starfire #89.

  Scrambling off the bed, her pulse surging and every nerve firing, Reggie collected the contents of the box and stuffed her legs into a clean pair of jeans without bothering to remove her pajama bottoms. Pulling on a top and jamming her feet into boots, she grabbed her purse and the attaché case and headed out the door, barely caring that the clocks were striking midnight.

  EIGHT

  The pounding on his suite door was a little too aggressive for late-night room service, but it mattered not to Tanner.

  He’d waited forty-five minutes for his chocolate cake à la mode, and his mouth was buzzing. His stomach was rumbling. The server could bust down the door for all he cared. Just let him eat cake.

  “Finally.” Tanner swung the door wide, but Miss Beswick, not a server with a tray of cake, stood in the hallway.

  “Finally? You were expecting me?”

  “No, but please come in.” Tanner leaned to see down the hall. No cake in sight. But oh, it was far better to see Miss Beswick. His vacant stomach would have to wait.

  “Look, I know it’s late but—” She stood in the middle of the suite, a box in her hands, the attaché case swinging from her shoulder, staring at the floor. “Can you put a shirt on?”

  “Begging your pardon. I wasn’t expecting you.” He reached for the dress shirt he’d left on a chair. “I was working on e-mails . . . waiting for cake. What are you doing here?”

  A light knock peppered the room.

  “There’s your cake.”

  “Now he comes.” Tanner opened the door and the server entered, a tray balanced on his palm.

  He signed for the dessert, feeling awkward for crossing lines of impropriety by standing in front of his future sovereign half naked.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked when they were alone.

  The server had left the cake and ice cream on the bar, but Tanner shoved it out of his mind, composed himself for king and country, and focused on Miss Beswick.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? This princess business.” She trembled, a wild look in her eyes.

  “Yes, it’s true.” He motioned for her to sit in one of the twin club chairs while he brought up the recessed lighting with the dimmer switch.

  She cradled the box in her lap, a concerned expression bruising her beauty. She’d showered so the grease was gone, and her likeness was all the more like Princess Alice in the painting.

  “My father brought me this box.” She leaned forward, handing it over, her hair flowing free, framing her face. Tanner ignored the airy sensation in his chest and focused on the box. “Gram left it for me. He was going to give it to me when I got older but . . . forgot . . . until now.” She smiled softly. “And technically, I am older.”

  “Then the timing of the delivery must be spot-on.” The box was made of dark wood, plain, except for the brass hardware. He opened the lock and started to raise the lid, but when he glanced at Miss Beswick, tears gleamed in her eyes.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your dessert?” She glanced back at the bar. “I don’t mind.”

  “But perhaps I do.” Tanner scooted to the edge of his seat, setting the box on the coffee table. “Unless you care to share. I’ve extra spoons at the bar.”

  She hesitated. “What kind of cake?”

  “Chocolate . . . à la mode.”

  She smiled with a wave of her hand. “Bring it. Can’t resist chocolate when I’m mulling over a problem.”

  Tanner brought the cake to the table, offering Miss Beswick a spoon. For the first few bites, they ate in silence save for the “mms” and exclamations of, “This is so good.”

  Then Miss Beswick set her spoon aside. “You can have the rest. I’m good.”

  “Are you sure?” Tanner eyed her, eyed the cake. He was still quite famished and had to control himself from hoarding the whole thing.

  “I’m sure.”

  Tanner cut another bite of cake, the rich edges soaked in melting ice cream, allowing himself to relax while maintaining his guard in her presence. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Depends.”

  “How did your grandma die? Eloise, was it?”

  “Cancer at sixty-six. She’d been a heavy smoker her whole life.”

  “And your grandfather?”

  “Heart failure, diabetes. Died just before seventy. I have some memories of them but they died when I was pretty young. They were Depression babies and wartime adults. Hardworking, honorable people but food and smoking moderation were not qualities they embraced.”

  “What about your father’s parents?”

  “Still alive. They live on a farm in Live Oak.”

  Tanner raised his brow, spooning up another round of sweet ice cream and cake goodness. “Farmers.”

  “You do realize you’re getting a country girl in me, don’t you?”

  He stopped motion, spoon in midair, a drop of ice cream hitting his bare foot. Shoving his spoon in his mouth, Tanner snatched up a cloth napkin. “Are you saying you’ll come to Hessenberg?”

  He peeked sideways at Miss Beswick. But she stared blankly toward the window, distracted with the questions Tanner knew rattled her heart.

  “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “I’m just reminding you I’m nothing fancy. Just a simple nort
h Florida girl.”

  Tanner tossed the wadded-up napkin to the table and set his spoon in his dish. “Who said we were looking for fancy? You appear to be a woman of substance to me, and I do believe that will service us more.”

  “The very definition of princess is fancy.” She shook her head.

  “Only in movies or cartoons.”

  “I don’t know . . .” She sighed. “This morning I woke up sure of my day, my future . . . Then you walked into the barn and told me I was someone completely different.”

  “Did I?” Tanner attempted one more bite, but he was done. He carried the tray with the remains of their snack to the door and set it in the hall. “Seems to me I only filled in some missing information.”

  “Which yanked me around,”—she mimed a jerking move—“in a completely different direction.”

  “I’m sorry the news came as a surprise. But I can’t think of any other way to inform you of your true heritage. Of Hessenberg’s need for you.”

  She laughed with irony. “A country needs me. Do you know how strange that sounds? How strange it feels? My heart feels like a rock and my thoughts are running around, bumping into each other.”

  “Did the contents of the box help or hurt?” Tanner pointed to the box.

  “Both.” She exuded a confident innocence that fascinated him, made him want to spend the night talking to her, learning about her, watching her face, and memorizing her unique nuances. “Go on. Take a look.” She motioned to the box.

  “All right.” Tanner raised the lid to see a spiral artist notebook on top, barely fitting.

  “Gram wrote and illustrated a fairy tale for my sixth birthday.”

  He tugged it free and turned the pages. “Your gram did this?”

  “When she was ninety-four.”

  She’d painted a beautiful replica of Meadowbluff Palace. “This is where she grew up. It used to be the country palace until the capital city, Strauberg, expanded into the countryside. In the winter and social season, the royal family lived in the city, at Wettin Manor.” He looked up at her. “It’s a government office now, but you will have discretion to—”

  “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not even sure who I am anymore.” Miss Beswick slipped from her chair, pointing to the next page. “What’s this scene about?”

  “I don’t know.” Tanner studied the image of a young woman fleeing through an angry forest. “There were no woods behind the palace in 1914 when the princess lived there.”

  “What was it when she lived there?”

  “A meadow.” He offered her a smile. “Thus, Meadowbluff Palace. The royal mews, stables, would be about here somewhere.” Tanner pointed to the top of the page. “The prince, her uncle, kept a couple of race horses there along with his automobiles.” He waved his hand over the forest scene. “All of this used to be a meadow. But after two wars and a depression, the extended grounds around the mews were not maintained. They grew wild and left to become whatever. The mews were torn down in the twenties, I believe. This whole area is actually woodlands now. It’s funny your gram would know that.”

  “Maybe she saw a picture?” Miss Beswick left her chair, perched on the edge of the coffee table, and leaned over the book, leaned into Tanner’s personal space with her air of sweetness.

  He exhaled, tilting away from her, quite sure his veins were visibly pulsing in his neck. “Did you find the letter? In the attaché?”

  “Yes, to an Otto.”

  “He was your uncle’s scribe.”

  “Scribe?”

  “The Grand Duke was illiterate. Probably due to dyslexia. He employed a lad to read and write for him. Otto Pritchard. His younger brother, Yardley, was a law professor of mine—”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  “I am. Rather was. Now I serve Hessenberg as the Minister of Culture.”

  “Right.” She rested her chin on her clasped hands. “You did tell me that.” Then she sat back, sweeping her hands through her hair. “It feels like eons since we first met.”

  “Yes, eons.” This would never do, her every move fanning the small flame she ignited in his soul.

  “You were saying . . .”

  Yes, he was saying . . . What was he saying? “Yardley recalled his brother saying Princess Alice moved to London in the twenties, after the war, and married an RAF officer.”

  “She never said a word, at least to me, about her life in London. I was four and five when my grandparents died. As I got older, Gram talked a lot about Hessenberg and her childhood love of painting . . . She had mild dementia in her early nineties so stories were interwoven with truth and fable and I didn’t pay much attention. The older I got, the older she got. I loved sitting with her, holding her hand. But by then, she was in her late nineties, hard of hearing, and sleepy.” She smiled softly. “Very sleepy.” Miss Beswick shifted her gaze to him and Tanner felt a bit like he was drowning in pools of blue. “She was the sleepy princess.”

  “Leaving Hessenberg, two world wars, living in Brighton, then London, losing her husband . . . all painful seasons in her life. Maybe she tried to forget.”

  “The letter to Otto said as much. That she wanted to forget her past and all of its death.”

  Tanner turned to the fairy tale’s last page, his gaze landing on the Starfire #89. “Miss Beswick—”

  “Okay, Tanner, please. Call me Reggie. Or Regina. Miss Beswick makes me sound like a spinster.”

  “She painted a Starfire #89. Did you know her uncle—your uncle—commissioned the original Starfire #89? He paid for its engineering and production. He put it in its first race. Against Henry Ford’s #999.”

  His brief time as Minister of Culture had so far centered on Augustine-Saxon history. It served him well now.

  “I knew about the car but never that my great-great-great-uncle commissioned it to be made. I didn’t know about him at all.” Miss Beswick, rather, Regina studied the picture. “The princess is putting a bag of something in the trunk. Wonder what that means?”

  “I’ve no idea. But this stable and the car are long gone by now, Miss Besw—Regina.” Her name felt good on his lips. “The Nazis occupied some of the island during the second war. If the Starfire was still there, they’d have found it and shipped it to Germany.”

  “But there’s only one Starfire #89 in a German museum, and it’s documented as number seven, the last one made, and sold by the owner at an auction.”

  “I can’t tell you.” He closed the book. “I’m your entail chap, your royal family and Hessenberg historian, but the whereabouts of an ancient auto, I’ve no idea.”

  She sighed, taking the notebook and flipping through the pages. Her shoulders rounded forward with weariness.

  “This stinks. How can I go back to being just Reggie, have-tools-will-restore-your-car, Beswick while the idea of being a real princess floats around in the back of my head? What am I supposed to do with this?” She waved the fairy tale at him. “I feel like half my life is a lie.”

  “Not a lie, Regina. Just incomplete.”

  She collapsed back into the chair. “None of this makes sense. Why didn’t she tell me?”

  Tanner held up the fairy tale. “What do you think this is, Regina?”

  She made a face. “Tanner, I’m too tired, too confused—”

  “Regina, look. A book. An offering, an avenue of communication. Fairy tale, parable, letter, novel, e-mail, blog, whatever. Words communicate. Your gram was communicating truth to you through this story.”

  “If she wanted me to know the truth, why didn’t she just come out and say it? Why hide it in a fairy tale? And the bigger question is, what did Mama know? Because when Gram painted this, Mama was alive and well and the true heir.”

  “There are some mysteries we may never know the answer to, Regina.” A passion fueled his thoughts, and Tanner slipped down to one knee next to her. “But this book is for you, about you . . . You are the princess in the story, more or less. Your gram is telling you who you are. Look at th
e last line. ‘Believing that one day they would be found when salvation came.’ She means you. The one who can save Hessenberg, save your gram’s legacy. You are her treasure, her heritage. There’s your truth.”

  Regina pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead with a deep sigh. “What truth ever started with ‘Once upon a time,’ Tanner?”

  He laughed low and rose to his feet. “Resist all you want, but you know I’m right.” He retrieved two waters from the mini-fridge. “You are the princess, the heir to the Hessenberg throne. No doubt, fear, or once-upon-a-time can change the truth.”

  “I keep waiting for someone to show up with an, ‘Aha, we got you!’ ” She reached for the water bottle he offered and twisted off the cap.

  “If they do, I’m as goosed as you, Regina.” Tanner sat, picking up the notebook again. Something he saw on the back of the car suddenly registered with him. Yes, there on the license plate. Princess Alice was a clever woman. “See this? RAB. Your initials if I’m not mistaken. And this.” He pointed to the emblem in the top right corner of the plate. “Princess Alice’s cipher with the Augustine-Saxon crown above her initials. She’s speaking to you loud and clear. She used to mark her cipher with a sapphire ring—”

  “What did you say?”

  “She’d mark her cipher with the shank of a sapphire ring. I know that—”

  “Like this?” Regina retrieved a small jewel box from the larger box and opened it.

  “Yes, like this.” Tanner examined the ring, raising it to the light of the lamp next to him. The sapphire stone surrounded by diamonds was set in an intricate filigree setting. “The Grand Duchess ring,” he whispered. “We thought it’d been lost. Grand Duke Earnest Wilhelm fashioned this ring for his wife in 1833. The sapphire came from Hessenberg’s own mines when they were producing some of the world’s best.”

  “Then take it. It belongs to Hessenberg,” Regina said.