The Secret Princess Read online

  Her face turned cold, then her shoulders, her arms and, in a rush, the rest of her. For a moment, she couldn’t speak. No one ever talked about her biological relatives. She knew nothing about them except that her parents had died in a car accident that she’d survived. Just under three years old, she was taken to Kendell County Hospital, where her adoptive mother, Pamela Scott, had worked as a nurse on the night shift.

  The authorities had tried to identify her parents to no avail. No missing-persons reports ever surfaced, no alerts for missing children. It was as if they didn’t exist at all. The only reason they knew Amy’s name, or thought they did, was because one of the paramedics on the scene had heard the woman saying the name repeatedly before she died. They concluded that Amy must have been the child’s name.

  Pamela Scott had taken to Amy immediately, working extra shifts to nurse her back to health. When no family could be traced, she and her husband, Lyle, a very successful attorney, had become Amy’s foster parents. After several years they were finally able to make the adoption final.

  Amy found her voice. “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny.”

  He moved closer to her and put his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “I assure you, it isn’t a joke. Now, why don’t you sit down and let me tell you what brought me to you?” He guided her to her chair and she sat like an obedient child. “I only ask that you hear me out with an open mind.”

  She glanced behind him. “Perhaps it would be wise of me to listen with an open door as well.”

  He smiled. “You’re quite safe, I assure you.”

  She gestured toward him. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  He took a breath. “You are the heir to the throne of Lufthania.”

  A moment passed. “Doesn’t Lufthania already have someone on the throne?”

  He gave a short nod. “A crown prince who wants to return the throne to the rightful heir after his parents stole it nearly three decades ago.”

  “Sort of like returning a lost wallet, huh?”

  “This is no joke.”

  She could see he meant it. “Okay. So where are the parents who stole the throne? Aren’t they going to be miffed that he’s giving it back?”

  His face remained impassive. “They’re both dead. The princess died ten years ago of cancer. Her husband, who was much older than she, passed away two years ago of natural causes.”

  “Oh.” Amy felt she shouldn’t have been flip. “Sorry, I—well, why don’t you tell me how this led you to me?”

  “As I’ve indicated, twenty-five years ago, there was a political revolution, a coup d’état, in Lufthania. A very distant cousin thought the throne was legitimately his, since it had been taken away from his family several hundred years back owing to the fact that the only heir was not blood, but a foundling.”

  “Adopted?”

  He nodded. “Exactly. Although that is not a term they used in the sixteenth century.”

  Amy frowned. “So this descendant of an adopted heir decided to take back what he thought would have been his right, had his ancestor been accepted three hundred years earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sounds like Shakespeare.”

  He smiled. “Shakespeare could have given it a much tidier ending.”

  “What was the ending?”

  “Prince Josef was removed from the throne and killed by overenthusiastic soldiers for the opposition.”

  “What about his wife?”

  He shook his head. “She had died years before in a riding accident. But his daughter, Princess Lily, escaped the country with her husband and their young daughter. Very few people knew where they’d gone, and not one person knew all of their movements, because it could have compromised their safety. But I have traced their path to the United States.”

  She was skeptical. “How? It seems to me they wouldn’t have wanted to be traceable.”

  “They didn’t. But it’s been so long now and the political climate of Lufthania has changed so much—it is now a democracy—that people are finally willing to talk about what they know.”

  “People who knew them are still alive?”

  He nodded, and she noticed a haunted look in his eye. “Lily and her family stayed with friends in Washington, D.C., for a while, before shedding their identities entirely and leaving the city. Sort of like your witness protection program, you understand?”

  Amy nodded.

  “They stayed in the city for some months before picking their destination and leaving. Their friends never expected to hear from them again, so when they didn’t, they were not alarmed.”

  “They never heard about an accident involving people who couldn’t be identified but who fit the descriptions?” She very nearly said our descriptions but caught herself.

  “No. When the accident occurred, it didn’t make national headlines because it was assumed all identifying papers had merely been lost in the explosion of the car. The authorities checked national databases for missing people for more than a year afterward, but nothing ever came of it.” His voice softened. “But, then, you already know that part of the story.”

  Amy swallowed a very large lump in her throat, but it didn’t go away. She felt her lower lip tremble, and pressed her lips together to stop it. She didn’t want to cry. She’d spent a long time not crying about those missing first years and the parents she’d lost. Somehow it had felt disloyal to Pamela and Lyle Scott to even think about her biological parents, and the fact that Pamela and Lyle never mentioned them either seemed to corroborate that.

  So for more than two decades Amy had dismissed those thoughts from her mind over and over again until, finally, she rarely had them anymore.

  And now this man—this stranger—came in and churned all those emotions up again.

  Seeing her distress, Franz pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “I’m so sorry to touch on such a tender subject, but you need to know that you belong in Lufthania.”

  Amy dabbed her eyes with his handkerchief and tried to smile. “Look, you must have the wrong person. I’m no princess.”

  “As I understand it, you have no memory whatsoever of your life before the accident.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I’ve done a lot of research in trying to find you.”

  “I’m not sure I like that.”

  He gave a half shrug. “It was necessary. Now, you can’t very well say that you’re not the princess if you don’t remember who you are.”

  “It just defies logic,” she argued. “I have an ordinary life. An ordinary business, with ordinary bills that need to be paid.”

  He smiled. “That doesn’t preclude your heritage.”

  She sighed. “Look, what would royalty have been doing driving through Dentytown in an old Chevy, for Pete’s sake?”

  “They didn’t want to be found.”

  “Well, surely they could have traced my mother’s DNA during—” she paused and took a short breath “—during the autopsy.”

  He shook his head. “Not in those days. It would, of course, be possible now. In fact, that’s exactly what I have in mind.”

  She stepped back involuntarily, as if he might pull a syringe out of his pocket. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

  “For you to go back to Lufthania with me and have your blood tested with DNA samples from your grandparents. The laboratory can have the results back four to seven days after the test.”

  She gave a shout of laughter, then, when he remained solemn, asked, “Are you serious?”

  “Quite.”

  “You want me to go to Lufthania? Just leave my life behind and go jetting off with some guy I don’t even know on the basis of a ten-minute story I find unbelievable? No thanks.” She laughed and tried to imagine her parents’ reaction to such an announcement and laughed again. They’d probably be up from Florida within three hours. “No way.”

  “Are you not even a little curious?”

  “No. Thi
s is crazy. And even if I were, why couldn’t I just give blood here? Go to my own doctor and have him take blood and send it to your lab technicians or whatever? Why on earth should I have to leave the country for such a routine test?”

  “Because we are not talking about a simple paternity test,” he explained patiently. “This is to confirm your position as royalty. The reigning monarch of a nation. There must be witnesses to the blood test, witnesses who can confirm and swear that you were present as the test subject.”

  She still didn’t get it. “Can’t you have witnesses here?”

  “It would be impractical to fly a number of witnesses here rather than to simply fly you there. To be honest with you, I didn’t anticipate having to persuade you to go.”

  “What woman in her right mind would just blindly go along with this?”

  “One who is open to the facts. One who wants to know where she comes from.”

  “Well, I do want to know, of course. But I’m not prepared to just jet off to a foreign country and dive in as the long-lost princess when I don’t even speak the language. I don’t even know what the language in Lufthania is!”

  “It’s German.”

  “Well, there you go. I don’t speak or understand one word of German. How could I possibly become the princess there?”

  “Your birthright has nothing to do with the language you speak. You have been in this country for nearly a quarter of a century. Naturally, much of your heritage has been lost to you.”

  “Much of my heritage,” she repeated, unconvinced. She thought of her father, always practical. What would he do? One answer hit her suddenly. “I’m not even sure of your heritage. Do you have any proof that you are who you say you are?” She should have asked that the moment he walked through the door.

  “Of course.” He stopped and pulled a wallet out of the inner pocket of his dark overcoat. He handed it to her.

  On top, there was a photo identification card with his name and vital statistics, as well as the designation Secretary in Service of His Highness, Prince Wilhelm of Lufthania.

  Amy wouldn’t have known a legitimate Arizona driver’s license if she saw it, much less a legitimate Secretary in the Service of His Highness, Prince Wilhelm of Lufthania ID card, but she couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Did you get this at some carnival or something?”

  He did not smile. “I did not.”

  She handed it back to him. “Well, sorry, but that doesn’t convince me of anything. I’m not leaving the country on the basis of your story so far.”

  “And if I gave you satisfactory evidence of my contention?”

  He looked so serious that she had to stop and think. “Maybe—maybe—I would agree to this crazy plan. But I would need to have pretty hard evidence.”

  He looked amused. “You’re very like your mother, Amelia.”

  “It’s Amy,” she corrected him absently.

  “No, it’s Amelia. Princess Amelia Louisa Gretchen May.” He smiled sadly. “However, your parents simply called you Amé.”

  “Amé,” she repeated, numb. The name, as he pronounced it, held some resonance for her. It echoed through cobwebbed chambers of her memory. Amé. Amy. She could almost hear it. It was easy to see why the paramedics had assumed the woman was saying “Amy.”

  For her own part, Amy had not spoken a word for the first four months after the accident. After ruling out autism, psychologists had attributed her silence to the trauma. If Mr. Burgess’s story was correct, though, it could conceivably be because she hadn’t understood the language.

  But that was impossible.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern etched in his features. “Can I get you some water? Do you have brandy here?”

  Despite her shock, she had to smile at the idea of having a bottle stashed somewhere. “No, I don’t. I’m okay. It’s just…obviously, this is all a bit of a shock. Not that I believe it,” she was quick to add. “But I’m willing to listen if you’ll tell me everything.”

  He nodded. “I will. But not now. You look very tired tonight.”

  Now that he mentioned it, she was exhausted. This brief conversation had taken a toll on her energy. Besides, she needed time to call her parents, to get their advice and opinions. It was late now, but she’d call, anyway. “Can you come back tomorrow morning? With this proof you say you have?”

  “Of course. For now, why don’t you let me take you home? I have a car right out front.” He gestured toward the wide plate-glass window, through which Amy could see a long black limousine parked out front.

  “No, thanks. I only live a couple of blocks away and, frankly, I could use the walk.”

  “It’s quite inclement,” he pointed out.

  The snow was falling heavily now, billowed by the occasional gust of wind.

  “Then you’d better get that boat out of here before it gets stuck,” Amy said. “Come back tomorrow. I’ll be here from 10:00 a.m. until at least five or six.”

  “I’ll be here early. I hope you’ll be ready to go.” Before she could object, he raised a hand. “Just in case the evidence is sufficiently persuasive to you. You must be open to that possibility.”

  He was a hard man to refuse. “Okay. I’ll try. But I’m not making any guarantees.”

  “Very well.” He gave a short bow. “Until tomorrow.” With one last lingering gaze, he turned and left the shop. The driver hopped out of the car to open the door for him, but he waved him off and opened it himself. He looked back at the shop before closing the door behind him, and for one insane moment, Amy wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing.

  Then the wind blew again, pushing the door open. Amy ran to close it. The small spots of cold snow that landed on her skin assured her that she was awake.

  She closed the door and turned the dead bolt. How was it she’d managed to forget to do that earlier? She always locked the bolt after she turned the sign to Closed.

  She leaned her back against the door and closed her eyes. The only thing wrong with his story—the only part that didn’t tug at her heart—was the part about being royal. If he had come along telling her he had evidence of her biological family and that they lived in Cleveland, she would have been thrilled. But this business of royalty tipped the story into the realm of fairy tale, making it something she couldn’t entirely believe.

  Yet…what if it were true? What if the wind outside had brought something magic along with it, something other than snow and power failures?

  A handsome stranger.

  And her own past.

  Chapter Two

  Franz Burgess, known as Will to his friends, went outside into the damp, cold air and got into the waiting limousine. He’d hoped to feel relieved by this point, but he’d known, going into this, that he might be disappointed. With everything he knew about Amy Scott—and he knew a great deal—he should have known her intelligence would make her cynical, at least give her a cynical reaction to his story.

  One thing he had not known, or prepared himself for, was his own reaction to her. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d been captivated by her. He could have stayed all night, watching her eyes flash when she spoke, listening to her voice, observing her movements and the way her clothes hugged the soft contours of her body.

  It wasn’t simply that she was attractive. He had plenty of access to beautiful women. At times, he was even tired of beautiful women. They all seemed so vacant. But Amy Scott was different. Her coloring was like that of many women from his country, the pale skin and faintly pink cheeks. Yet she had something different, something extra. It was an unexplainable quality of magnetism that he’d rarely encountered. It was easy to imagine himself watching her for many years to come.

  If only he could persuade her that the story he’d told her was true. She was so perfect for the role. Her sharp intelligence, combined with her beauty, would make her an excellent princess. Yet she was skeptical. And despite financial difficulties that he knew about, she was
strong enough to resist the temptation of being told she was a princess and would thus have no more bills and debtors to worry about.

  So he was going to have to bring out documentation, to try to convince her to accompany him back to Lufthania. It wasn’t going to be easy, he knew that already. But he’d budgeted time for that possibility.

  However, he hadn’t budgeted time, or prepared himself mentally, for the possibility that he couldn’t convince her. That would be a disaster for him. Yet it was looking entirely possible that he wouldn’t be able to. He didn’t know what he’d do if she didn’t come back to Lufthania with him.

  His entire life depended on it.

  The first thing Amy did after Franz Burgess left was call her parents. They both got on the line and for half an hour they discussed the situation. Amy was surprised that her parents didn’t immediately dismiss the idea that she might be a princess.

  To the contrary, her mother was ready to believe it. “I’ve always thought you were more regal than most people,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, you were never too fond of doing the dishes, and it was darn near impossible to get you to clean your room.” She laughed. “I always thought it was a queen complex, but princess will do.”

  Amy was glad for the levity. In the end, they agreed that Amy would see Franz Burgess’s evidence in the morning and make a judgment based on that. If he was on the up-and-up, they reasoned, he must have some pretty compelling evidence. She could hear him out and call them back with the additional facts.

  Meanwhile, her father would call the Lufthania embassy and see if he could verify the existence of Franz Burgess.

  After that, they would decide together what Amy should do.

  This plan made Amy feel a lot better, and she spent the rest of the night looking for any information she could find on Lufthania.

  First, she checked her stock for any books that might make even slight mention of Lufthania. Since it was a very small country and didn’t hold the international cachet of, say, Monaco, no books were devoted to it entirely, but she recalled several references to it in some of the books on Germany and Switzerland. It was little more than a footnote, but when she looked through an out-of-print volume on the region, she was able to find a slender chapter devoted to the country and its history.