The Royal Runaway

by Lindsay Emory

  Nick didn’t look happy, either with my piecing it together or with the cold, hard truth: the British government had been spying on one of its own.

  Except . . . Christian had surrendered his British passport right after our engagement and applied for Driedish citizenship. Which made this even worse. “You were spying on one of my citizens?”

  He shrugged. “Currently, my country is negotiating several important treaties with the European Union.”

  I snorted. That was putting it lightly.

  “And Drieden will be accepting the presidency of the EU next year.”

  “But what does that have to do with Christian?” I asked for the third time.

  “You’ll have to forgive British intelligence for presuming that a man might retain an . . . interest in the affairs of his former country. Perhaps he’d want to be involved in high-level trade negotiations, that sort of thing.”

  I stared at Nick. “Did you think he’d spy for you?”

  Nick shook his head ruefully. “Me? No. Christian would have made a terrible spy. He only cared for one thing: himself.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “But a man of his status? It’s reasonable that people would want to know what he intended to do with his influence.”

  I bit my lip. Once again, I hated my naiveté. My cluelessness. I had been concerned with dress fittings and wedding invitations to heads of state. All the while, there were classified international debates about where my future husband’s loyalties lay.

  And I hated that I didn’t know which way he would’ve gone.

  But I could start trying to figure it out. Clearly, there was a connection between the bugs at Christian’s law firm, his apartment, and his room at Ceillis House. But these secret papers being somehow connected to Christian? That seemed like a stretch.

  I said as much to Nick. “What about the other people in his office? We should start narrowing down who had access to these papers and whether that had anything to do with Christian being under surveillance.”

  “I was unexpectedly called out of the city before I could find one to talk to,” Nick said drily.

  Boson Chapelle, Christian’s law firm, was a prestigious boutique corporate law practice—and it relished publicity, so naturally I’d been invited there to meet the partners and the board. I flipped through a mental notebook before I remembered . . . “Tomas Claytere.”

  “Who?”

  “One of the partners. He has a summer home about an hour from here. We could go interview him there, but we’ll need to drive. It’s miles from the river.”

  Nick’s gaze sharpened on me. “How good are you at stealing cars?”

  • • •

  WITH NICK, SOMETIMES IT WAS hard to tell if he was joking. When he’d asked me if I could steal a car, I’d assumed it was a joke. I mean, a British spy should be able to get his hands on some tricked-out Jaguar at a moment’s notice, right? But the nearest village had no car rental shops, and after a call to Max Cornelius, Nick was informed that no James Bond–style sports cars—or regular normal-people cars, for that matter—were available this far out in the country. Therefore, we ended up driving the first tragic, scraped-up sedan he could find.

  He fiddled with the wires and in just a few minutes we were off, driving into the countryside to Tomas Claytere’s summer home. I remembered the location fairly well. Christian and I had spent a weekend at a nearby resort the previous year, and Claytere had invited us out for the day.

  The discovery that someone had been bugging Christian’s apartment and offices worried me. My own rooms were regularly scanned. At least, I believed that they were. That was something else for me to educate myself about when I returned to the palace. If I ever returned to the palace.

  Why weren’t Christian’s rooms also scanned for devices? And who would want to listen in on Christian’s conversations, anyway? According to Nick, the bug wasn’t British government property, so it couldn’t have been them listening in. It wasn’t the press—if it had been the media, they would have already broadcast whatever tiny morsels had been obtained from such things.

  It was definitely a mystery that I had all but given up solving until we arrived at Tomas Claytere’s charming cottage that was nestled in a cozy crevice between picturesque crags.

  I started to get out of the car, but Nick put his hand out.

  “I didn’t drive all this way to . . .”

  Nick drew a weapon from under his jacket.

  “Are you kidding me?” I hissed. “This is a corporate lawyer’s summer home. No one is going to come out guns blazing!”

  “You’re right.” Nick nodded quickly. I was gratified that he agreed with me. “No one shot at us in the National Galleries, either.”

  I was unable to counter that sarcasm.

  “You’ll stay until I tell you to come in,” he said with the inarguable authority of a battlefield commander.

  I decided to give him some space.

  A tall yew tree blocked my view, and when Nick disappeared into the house I told myself I would hide behind it and take a peek through the branches. Then I scurried to a window to catch a glimpse between the curtains.

  A hand wrapped around my arm. I screamed. A Scottish accent purred in my ear, “You don’t take directions well for a princess.”

  “Nick!” I shook off his hand. “You scared the life out of me!”

  “You can come in, if you don’t mind blood.”

  Figuring it was a scare tactic, I followed him defiantly because he was absolutely right: I had discovered that I really didn’t like taking directions. Not anymore.

  But two steps into the house, I had the ghastly realization that Nick had not been joking or trying to employ advanced reverse psychology.

  Inside Tomas Claytere’s summer house, there was blood everywhere.

  Trails of it, to and fro, here a puddle, there a splatter.

  “Oh my God.” I held up a palm to my mouth, anticipating a sickening stench signifying a pile of lifeless bodies. But my nose detected only the scent of grass from the meadow and a certain stale dirt odor.

  “Hmph” was all Nick came up with as he surveyed the scene.

  I saw a new side of him for the first time. An intimidating, larger-than-life, all-business intelligence officer. His hand still on his gun, he carefully walked through the rooms with me close at his heels until we came to a stop. There was an office that looked like someone had picked it up, kicked it, turned it upside down, and shaken it until all the pieces had come loose.

  Nick holstered his weapon and started sifting through the papers. He looked at me. “Make yourself useful, Princess.”

  Automatically, I picked up a handful of paper, but I had to ask, “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything interesting.”

  Boson Chapelle specialized in international corporate law. Now, I spoke four languages: Driedish, Spanish, French, and English. However, I did not speak accounting-ese, which was what most of the papers in my hands seemed to be drafted in.

  Nick found the important pages about four seconds before I did.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed.

  “You can understand these?” I asked, with a hint of dismay in my voice. The guy really was too good at his job. How was anyone supposed to compete with that?

  “Enough to get the idea.”

  “Are those the secret Cayman papers?” He nodded even as he kept rifling through what he held.

  “So, Tomas had some of the Cayman papers,” I reasoned aloud. “He obviously got them from his own law firm, or from his own clients. They were probably legitimate business deals that he and Christian were involved with.” It was ridiculous that British intelligence was trying to make a big deal out of some papers that were probably covered by attorney-client privilege.

  Nick nodded again, a serious expression on his face as he looked at the exploded contents of Tomas Claytere’s summer office. “You’re right.”

  “See!” I exclaimed, for
no real reason other than that I wanted desperately for there to be an easy explanation for all of this. Something rational, something simple.

  “Sure. Normal, legitimate clients break into their lawyer’s home, ravage it, and leave a trail of blood a mile wide.”

  “They . . .” My voice trailed off when I realized he was being sarcastic. I could see where he was going with this.

  Then Nick stomped over to the oil painting across from the window, ran his fingers just along the frame, and I knew what he’d produce before he did so: a matte-black disc with a wire.

  “Grab whatever you can. We have to go.”

  “Again?” I hissed, snatching a pile of papers to my chest, but Nick was already heading out the door.

  seventeen

  “YOU’RE KIDDING ME,” I SAID as we pulled up to the small cottage outside of Demiel, a small town about fifteen kilometers from Claytere’s house. “This is the safe house?”

  Nick had given me that much information on the ride from Claytere’s, probably because I was trying not to hyperventilate during yet another quick exit under stressful circumstances and he was trying to calm me down. But he took my question the wrong way. “Why, it’s not grand enough for you?”

  I just shook my head. He’d know the reason for my astonishment soon enough. The side door to the cottage opened and we were met with its owner, a slim, dark-haired woman.

  “This is . . .” Nick fumbled. “Someone who works with us.”

  I crossed my arms and gave the woman what I hoped was a disapproving glare.

  “Hello, Sybil,” I said.

  “You two know each other?” Nick’s mouth settled into a grim line.

  “Oh, quite well,” Sybil chirped.

  “Not really,” I muttered.

  “Can we go in, please?” Nick asked with a quick look at the sky.

  “They’re not going to find us,” I assured him as I brushed by Sybil and entered her house. “Not here. No one comes here anymore.”

  Sybil snorted behind me. I heard the door close and my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside. It had been at least ten years since I’d last visited, but nothing much had changed. The walls were painted the same dark emerald and ruby; silk scarves were still draped across every possible surface. Bookshelves were crammed with dusty, leather-bound classics and crumbling 1960s spy novels. It was exactly the sort of place you’d imagine a psychic and an astrologer to inhabit.

  The owner of the house hadn’t changed much, either—she was as elegantly slim as ever, with a chic black bob. I had always thought of Sybil as being an older woman, so either she practiced some cosmetic voodoo to limit wrinkles or she really wasn’t much more than twenty years older than me.

  “I just got the message that you’d be coming,” she said to Nick with a fond smile. She put a hand on his upper arm and I felt my lip curl. “I didn’t have time to prepare for your arrival. Would you like a drink?” Sybil walked by me and headed toward the kitchen, leaving a cloud of musty rose and sandalwood perfume behind her that made me want to sneeze.

  Nick declined, and although I wanted to, I suddenly realized that I was both parched and famished. “Yes, please. Tea. And some ginger biscuits.”

  Nick gave me a look at my imperious tone. I shrugged. Sybil always had tea and ginger biscuits. Besides, she owed me that much.

  He lowered his head toward me and asked, “And how do you know each other?”

  I smirked at him. “The great spy doesn’t know everything, then.” He tilted his head and gave me his very best enigmatic smile, but I knew I had the upper hand. He didn’t like not having all the information. But no one had ever accused me of not being generous.

  “Sybil was the unofficial court astrologer,” I said brightly, making sure my voice would carry into the kitchen. “She’s advised many members of my family on their life decisions.”

  “As did my mother before me, and her mother before her.” Sybil smiled gamely when she returned to the room with a bamboo tray, holding a plate of ginger biscuits, a pot of jasmine tea, and several mismatched cups.

  It was all part of the performance. As someone neared the bottom of their cup, she would offer to read the leaves. The tray was hand-painted with arcane symbols that she would artfully direct attention toward. This one was for marriage, that one for luck. It would prompt more questions, for which Sybil always had the answers.

  The tradition of a court astrologer was long-standing in many of the royal families in Europe and Asia. Astrology had that nice sheen of science that could make it acceptable even for the religious-minded. My mother, a member of a very old aristocratic family, had known Sybil’s mother since she was a teenager, as had my aunt Beatrice and my aunt Carlotta, and they’d passed the tradition down to their daughters. Mother had had charts made up for me and my siblings at our births and we’d come to visit Sybil at least once a year.

  Sometimes, Mother let us sit with her as Sybil read tarot cards and explained the trajectory of our stars across the skies. Other times, Mother and Sybil disappeared into a locked study while my sisters and I snacked on cookies and played with the various trinkets and boxes that dotted the shelves and tables.

  We stopped coming when one of the tabloids reported details of the astrological chart of Mother’s new boyfriend—something that had been drawn right in this house—while she was still married to Father.

  And now, as I sat on Sybil’s wine-colored velvet chaise and helped myself to a cup of tea and three biscuits, all those visits made sense to me.

  “And Nick, how long have you and Sybil been working together?” Nick’s jaw clicked and his eyes shifted uncomfortably toward his asset.

  “Just a few years.”

  “How fascinating. Did you always intend to betray my family by working for foreign governments?” I asked Sybil innocently.

  I noticed that Nick stilled, his hand frozen over the teapot. But Sybil? She laughed, a light sound in the midst of the gloomy, mystical set design.

  “Betrayal? Really, Thea. You were never the dramatic one. That was always Sophie.”

  “You sold my mother out to the press. It’s not dramatic to assume you’ve also sold us all out to the British, the Americans, and the Chinese.”

  “It was meant to be.”

  “Which part—the treason or the betrayal of my family?” Now I laughed lightly, an echo of her. “But that’s silly. They’re one and the same, aren’t they?”

  Nick shifted in his seat, but Sybil stayed annoyingly composed. “I’ve provided Nick and his compatriots what I always provided your family. Information. People hire me to uncover secrets—past, present, or future. It’s no betrayal to take multiple clients. A woman has to earn a living.”

  I tilted my head toward Nick and my blood got hotter as I thought of all the things that Sybil could have told his fellow agents over the years. Things about my family, my country. Private things. Secrets. She had been trusted, and now . . . ? “How many other countries are you serving?”

  Her smile faded. “I may sell information to other nations, but I am loyal to Drieden.”

  “The fact that a British spy is using your home as a safe house says otherwise.”

  “And what does it say about you, dear Thea, that you are here with a British spy?”

  Ouch. That hit really close to home. But my training ran true, so I simply said, “You have not been given leave to use that name,” and lifted my cup of jasmine tea to my lips.

  “I have. You gave it to me the first time you came to see me alone.”

  “Things change. Like my parents’ charts. You told my mother the stars were aligned for their union.” I’d heard that story for years before my mother stopped believing it.

  Sybil lifted a blasé shoulder. “They were. Things changed.”

  “Don’t mock me.” Her blithe echo of my words was impertinent and she knew it.

  A thick pause filled the room. “My apologies, Your Highness.”

  I would not accept her apology. If it ha
dn’t been for her, my parents’ divorce could have been civilized, not the public shit show it had turned into. And now I had evidence that she’d sold secrets to the tabloids—all those private details she’d collected over the years from her Driedish clients were a gold mine of information. I could have her arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison. Once I stopped being on the run with a sketchy British spy, that is.

  For the time being, I would be the bigger person and bite my lip. I reached out, poured another cup of tea, and handed the blue-and-white chipped porcelain to Nick.

  “Drink,” I told him. Maybe he was thirsty or maybe he was finally starting to listen to me, because he knocked that tea back.

  After he put his cup back on the tray, he said to Sybil, “The car might be a problem.”

  She waved a hand. “If anyone notices, I’ll say a hooligan left it in my drive and ran off down the street.”

  The ease with which Sybil came up with that lie thoroughly unnerved me. Memories of all those predictions, those confident reassurances that my future would be bright and shiny, came rushing back. As if she knew what I was thinking (which she couldn’t, I was sure, being the cynic that I now was), she glanced over at me.

  “Your mother asked for a chart for your wedding, as well.”

  Despite the warm cup of tea I held, my hands went to ice. “I hope you gave her her money back,” I said. “It’s useless if the wedding never took place.”

  “I did one for Caroline.” Sybil shrugged. “But that was just for my curiosity, after the fact.”

  The thought of Sybil inserting herself into my sister’s scandal was infuriating. She kept poking.

  “I did one for your fiancé, too.”

  I turned my head sharply, not wanting to see what was in her eyes, whether it was a lie or not. “There you go, Nick. I’m sure Sybil can simply consult her cards and crystal ball and whatever voodoo altar she’s built for the solstice and point you in the direction of Christian.” I stood and carefully settled my mismatched china on a nearby table. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”