“I have the heat and my fingers will serve as a comb.”
“You won’t win this argument.”
He didn’t sound triumphant, just matter-of-fact, yet it still made her want to scream. He already had a fistful of her hair and was pressing the towel to it with his other hand, so she couldn’t even get up without his yanking her back down with her own hair.
“I hate you,” she said impotently.
“No, you don’t, you like me.”
“I don’t! You have no clue how to treat a lady. And even if you did, an insensitive brute like you wouldn’t know when you ought to.”
He tsked. “You sound like a brat. I think your Poppie must have spoiled you.”
She clamped her mouth shut. Trying to get through to him was a lesson in pointlessness. But he didn’t try to provoke her any further. He didn’t give her back her hair, though, and the gentle way he was handling it slowly began to relax her.
Quite sometime later, he dropped her hair over each shoulder so she could feel how warm and dry it was. He’d almost put her to sleep, his hair drying had turned out to be so sensually soothing. She couldn’t even garner any energy to object when he tilted her head back so he could lean forward and kiss her brow.
But then he straightened and said behind her, “I have the king’s permission to tell you the truth and to take you to meet your mother. Dress warmly, Alana mine. She lives high in the mountains.”
Chapter Thirty-One
MY MOTHER?”
That was all Alana could get out and it felt odd even saying it. Wide-eyed, she tried to comprehend, but couldn’t. And Christoph didn’t say another word. She swung about to face him, only to have to turn full circle because he was walking out of the room!
“Don’t you dare!” she yelled at his back.
He didn’t stop. “Your wet hair was an unexpected delay. We need to hurry now or it will be dark before we arrive. You’ll find a satchel at the bottom of my wardrobe. Pack us each a change of clothes. I’ll be back in a few minutes with my horse. Be ready.”
She would have told him to pack his own clothes, but she barely even heard the last of what he said as he was closing the door behind him! She bolted to the bedroom and quickly dug out the thick woolen dress she’d worn for most of the trip across the Continent, gloves, several extra petticoats, some warmer stockings, and her traveling boots. Dressed, she filled the valise he’d mentioned, and not taking the time to put up her hair, she just tied it back and donned her fur cap.
She went back into the parlor with her heaviest coat over her arm, and Christoph’s as well since he’d only been wearing his uniform when he left. She could see out the windows on the side of the room that it wasn’t snowing. The sun was even out, but she’d felt that icy draft and didn’t doubt the coats would be needed.
Alana didn’t know what to think because what Christoph had said made no sense at all. Even now, when she had a few minutes to spare before he returned, she merely dropped the valise on the floor by her feet and stood in the middle of the room staring blankly at nothing in particular.
But she snapped to attention the moment the door opened. Christoph didn’t close it. She could see the horse standing just outside. The air was icy. She held out his coat to him so she could slip hers on.
He raised a brow at her as he donned his. “Seeing to my comfort? Are you beginning to feel like my woman?”
She snorted. “I was just saving time since you stressed we must hurry.”
He grinned, picked up the bag, and took her arm. “I like my thought better. But come.”
He’d only brought one horse. After he’d mounted it, he lifted her up to sit precariously across his lap sideways, prompting her to complain, “You can’t really be taking me into the mountains like this. The roads will be covered with snow up there, won’t they? Not like that road to the festival.”
“Which is why I’ve already arranged for a sleigh. It’s a short ride to where they are kept outside the city.”
“A sleigh? Is it enclosed?”
“No, but it will make better time and is safer.”
“But we’ll be so cold.”
“You won’t be,” he promised.
She didn’t try to turn around and look at him to see if he was serious. She didn’t blast him with her questions yet either, because she had to concentrate on keeping her perch without having to hold on to him.
They passed through the palace gates and turned away from the city, leaving behind the streets that were kept free of ice and snow in the winter. Snow covered the countryside, including the roads, and no doubt there would be more of it in the mountains, which is where they were going, so she had to allow a sleigh, designed for such travel, might be the better choice—but not if she was going to freeze in it!
About ten minutes later, Christoph helped her into the vehicle waiting for them outside the large sleigh house. He did so by picking her up and setting her in it, it was so high off the ground. Two horses were already hitched to it, tall animals that could make it through snowdrifts without too much difficulty, she supposed. A wide, cushioned seat was in the back, with an elevated seat in front for a driver, which Christoph had also arranged for. The front of the sleigh curved up quite high for a windbreak, but it was still completely open to the elements.
“Just how far are we going that we might not make it by nightfall?” she yelled back at Christoph as he tied his horse behind the sleigh.
He came back around to place his rifle, the valise she’d packed, and a saddlebag on the floor by her feet. She hadn’t sat down yet, afraid she’d find the seat wet from a previous snowfall.
“Far enough to need these,” he said, taking the armful of blankets one of the sleigh-house workers handed him.
He tossed the pile up at her. She lost her balance trying to grab them all and dropped down on the seat behind her. She gave him a fulminating glare as he climbed in and sat beside her. He didn’t seem to notice, picking up the blankets she dropped and setting them out of the way, then taking the single one in her hands and spreading it across their laps. She would have preferred her own blanket rather than sharing one with him, but she couldn’t wait any longer to question him, so she didn’t mention it.
The very second the sleigh began to move, she turned to Christoph. “My patience has been extraordinary.”
“Yes, it has,” he agreed.
With her eye on the driver’s back, she leaned closer to whisper, “I was told my mother, Queen Avelina, died soon after my birth. Everyone knew it. This was a lie?”
“You don’t have to whisper. I requested this driver specifically because he’s deaf.” When she leaned away from him again, he shook his head. “I should have waited to mention it.”
She ignored that. “My question?”
“Frederick’s first wife died, yes, but she wasn’t your mother.” He put a finger to her mouth when she started to interrupt him. “We know who you are now. You were correct, your guardian Poppie did take you from the palace nursery. Everything he told you recently is probably true, even that he is Rastibon—everything except what he didn’t know: that it wasn’t the princess sleeping in the royal bassinet. It was the daughter of the nursemaid Helga Engel that he carried off that night.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
ALANA COULDN’T STOP LAUGHING. She laughed so hard tears came to her eyes. When she caught a glimpse of Christoph’s annoyed expression, she laughed even harder.
He waited until she wound down before he said, “You don’t believe me?”
“On the contrary, you have just taken an incredible burden off my shoulders. I can go home now. I certainly won’t be stopping any war if I’m not the king’s heir. Actually, do you still contend this country isn’t headed for war now that you know your theory, that the king’s enemies were going to use me for a coup, isn’t accurate?”
“War, no, we never thought it would come to that. The rebel ploy is to stir up enough fear that Lubinians are soon going to lose
their beloved king through illness so the people would either demand a new king or rejoice at having a large family in power again, one with many heirs.”
“That sounds as if the Bruslans are setting the scene for my—er, for the king’s assassination?”
He smiled at her lapse and Alana realized it was going to take a while for her to stop thinking of the king of Lubinia as her father. But she still had a parent who was alive, one who wasn’t royal, thank heavens, and one she wasn’t the least bit nervous about meeting—well, she was too relieved to be nervous yet.
“Indeed,” Christoph answered. “I stopped three assassination attempts last year, so now they try to get rid of me as well.”
She started, yet she realized she shouldn’t be surprised. “They’d rather someone less competent was in your post?”
He grinned. “Or they’re just furious at me for foiling them on every front.”
She noted he didn’t seem the least bit worried about being one of their targets, so she guessed he’d just exaggerated, maybe to gain her sympathy. That wasn’t going to happen. Frederick Stindal’s difficulties were no longer her concern—and neither were Christoph Becker’s.
“What was I doing in the royal bed for Poppie to have made such a mistake?” she asked.
“Your mother switched the two infants prior to keep the princess safe in her own room.”
“So people suspected there was a plot to kill the heir?”
“No, not at all, or the palace would have been better guarded. According to Helga Engel, it was fear that prompted her bold plan. I don’t know much else about it. You can ask her when you meet her.”
“But it sounds like she sacrificed her own child to protect another. That seems a bit unnatural, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps she thought she was saving her own life. She had sole charge of the royal heir, after all. If anything did happen to the princess—”
“I get it. Execution and all that rot. How could I forget how barbaric this country is.”
He frowned at her sarcastic tone. “Not that barbaric, but perhaps, like you, Helga might have thought so.”
Alana asked, “What about my father? Is he still alive?”
Christoph sighed. “You should save your questions for your mother, but that one I can answer. Helga came to the palace a recent widow. She had other family, but I don’t know if they are still alive. I will say no more other than she was quite the heroine, protecting the princess in the way she did, aware that she could lose her own daughter in doing so. Which is what happened. She thinks you’re dead. She’ll be overjoyed when she discovers that isn’t so.”
Alana gasped. “She wasn’t told of Poppie’s message to the king that I was still alive?”
“No one was.”
Alana sighed. She’d come to Lubinia thinking she’d have to convince her father of who she was, but now she wondered if she’d have to do the same for her mother. Or would her mother take one look at her and know instantly who she was—just as she’d hoped would have happened with the king. Ha! Fine joke that would have been on her if she had made it into his presence. At least she didn’t have to convince Christoph of anything else. No one could be as stubborn as he was.
She pinned him with a stabbing look. “It’s just occurred to me that you’ve known all along that I couldn’t be the princess. Why couldn’t you have just said so?”
“I did. I called you an imposter, as I recall.”
“You know what I mean. You knew that the babies had been switched.”
He shrugged. “There was always the possibility that you could be Helga’s daughter. I just couldn’t discuss what has been a well-guarded secret all these years: that the wrong child was abducted. Your hair, raven black, is mainly why I didn’t pursue the possibility. Helga described her daughter as having golden hair, the same as the princess, which made it a simple matter for her to switch the two babies until the king returned.”
Alana’s brow knitted thoughtfully. “I only ever remember having black hair. Poppie never said if it used to be blond and changed color.”
Christoph chuckled. “Are you still clinging to the hope that you’re a royal?”
She laughed. “I never once expressed that hope and you know it. I’m just surprised Poppie never mentioned I had lighter-colored hair when I was very young.”
“Perhaps he did and you were too young to recall,” he said with a shrug. “Or perhaps like my father, he didn’t consider it worth mentioning.”
“Your hair used to be different?”
“I was nearly a man when I came upon my mother and aunt reminiscing about their children when they were babies. Mother teased me, confessing she used to call me her white-haired angel until I turned three and my hair turned golden.”
She gave him a disgruntled look. “And yet you stressed that the color of my hair was why—oh, never mind. That was quite an amazing fact you kept from me, that the king never lost his daughter, so of course that daughter couldn’t be me. And she’s been hidden all these years? He even let his subjects think she’s dead? He didn’t even bring her out to drop the floor out from under the rebels? When is he going to bring her home?”
“He did,” Christoph said solemnly. “She’s buried on the palace grounds next to her mother.”
Alana drew in her breath sharply, remembering the mock funeral Poppie had told her about—and the king’s rage at that time. And no wonder, when it hadn’t been a symbolic ceremony, as everyone supposed, but a real funeral.
“She died when she was seven, didn’t she?”
“Yes. It appeared to be an accident. Frederick thinks otherwise and blames himself for visiting her so often. He can’t go anywhere alone, his guards must always accompany him. And naturally this draws attention to him.”
“So he could have been followed?”
“Yes, and seen with a child the age of his daughter. Even if his enemies weren’t sure she was his, they would want to be rid of her just in case.”
She exclaimed, “That’s—!”
“No different than sending an assassin to kill a baby. But due to the absolute secrecy advised back then, to hide the princess, even to pretend she had been stolen so no further attempts would be made on her life, the king told no one about that missive that suggested you were still alive, not even your mother. But after five or so years passed, most people considered you dead. Yet whoever hired Rastibon, as well as all sorts of opportunists, weren’t absolutely sure, thus the imposters started showing up.”
“No, because of his reputation for never failing, Poppie expected whoever had hired him to conclude that he’d finished the job successfully. The ‘disappearance’ of the princess supported that.”
“But now they think otherwise because of that bracelet,” Christoph said.
She stilled. “You’re saying I’m still not safe, aren’t you?”
“Not as long as enemies of the king suspect you’re Alana Stindal.”
“Then the king has to admit the truth!”
Christoph gave her a reproving look. “We don’t tell the king what to do. But you need only think about it to know that he can’t do that, at least, now would not be the time for such a confession. He deceived his people. Some will understand the necessity for it, but his enemies will pounce on it and use it to their advantage. Had the princess survived, that confession would have been cause to rejoice. Now—”
‘’I understand,” Alana mumbled. “And all the more reason for me to go home to London where I can hide safely again. There’s nothing else to keep me here.”
“Nothing?”
“You mean my mother? I’ll take her home with me.”
“She lives in grand splendor in the royal chalet,” he informed her. “She was given quarters there for life, her reward for the sacrifice she made. She isn’t going to want to live in your sooty London.”
“How do you know London is sooty?”
“My maternal grandmother lives there.”
“Why there
instead of here?”
“Because she’s English.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
ENGLISH?!” ALANA EXCLAIMED. “WERE you never going to mention that?”
“I just did,” Christoph said with some amusement.
“But you’re half-English!”
“Only a quarter. My mother is half, though to listen to her flawless Lubinian, you would never think so.”
“I bet you speak English, too, don’t you?”
“Perfectly.” He chucked her chin, then laughed when she swatted his hand away. “I couldn’t tell you because you were under interrogation. Now you’re not.”
“Meaning now you can be honest with me? Too bloody late,” she fumed. But she only sat there in stiff chagrin for a minute before her curiosity got the better of her. “How did that happen?”
He chuckled. “My guess would be in the usual way.”
“You know what I meant.”
“My English grandmother was an artist. Painting was her passion, but she was dissatisfied with her skill. An Austrian painter had inspired her, but he didn’t stay in England for very long. English painters were found to teach her but she was already more skilled than they. So before she came of age, she talked her mother into taking her on a trip to Austria to find that old teacher of hers. My great-grandmother didn’t object. Her only condition was that they return to England in time for her marriage.”
“She was betrothed?”
“Yes. But she fell in love with a young man while in Austria, a Lubinian finishing his schooling there.”
“Because there are no schools here?”
“There weren’t any then. There are schools now, though we still have no university. The nobles import tutors or send their young out of the country to be educated. But Frederick has had schools built for the commoners. They sit mostly empty.”
“So he is actually trying to bring this country forward into the nineteenth century?”