A Royal Affair Series: Book 1, 2, and 3: A paranormal, time travel, royal romance

by Christina George

  Liam had secured a cottage through the friend of a friend. There was no possible way anyone could trace it back to him, let alone realize it was where Anna-Maria and the royal children were hiding. The cottage had been abandoned years before and would no doubt be in a serious state of disrepair, but the story Liam gave his contact was that a dear friend had just lost her husband in a conflict and was looking for a quiet place to retreat to during her mourning period.

  It was a perfectly acceptable excuse, and since she was in mourning, no one would bother Anna-Maria or her children.

  Henceforth, Anna-Maria would be referred to as Greta, and her children, Monique and Benjamin. Cook had helped secure false papers for all of them, through means Anna-Maria knew nothing about, but she trusted her loyal staff and was beyond grateful they’d taken such good care of her and the children. She only wished they could all have gone into hiding together, but Liam was right. Too many of them traveling together during this period of unrest would be noticed by people as likely to be anti-monarchy as supporters of Fitz’s reign. Even the children’s governess was not permitted to go.

  All the while, however, Anna-Maria was troubled by the feeling there was something she had forgotten, or wasn’t remembering or…she couldn’t quite place it. But she knew it was vitally important.

  The journey into France, and then deep into the south of France, took two days. They only stopped for an hour every five hours and only so the horses could rest, then it was back to the route. They didn’t overnight anywhere, instead napping as best they could in the carriage. Liam had ordered two drivers so they could take turns and get the family to safety without wasting any time.

  They arrived at the cottage on the morning of the third day on the road. The cottage, as it turned out, was small and cozy with two bedrooms and in dire need of a good scrubbing. Anna-Maria hadn’t cleaned anything in years and wasn’t actually sure she knew how, but now was as good a time as any to learn. She was almost grateful to have hard work to occupy her mind.

  “Would you stay?” Anna-Maria asked the drivers, and the lead man nodded.

  “We will, but only for one night, and we will sleep in the carriage. We promised Liam to make sure you are settled before we leave.”

  “We have enough provisions to heat in a large pot to make a potage, so I’ll get it started if you men wish to wash up for dinner.”

  They nodded and returned to the carriage.

  Fleur stood silently in the main room, which was also the kitchen and living room.

  “I miss home,” she said softly, and Anna-Maria could tell from her voice that her precious daughter was exhausted. In fact, so was Noah. And so was she. Sleeping in a bouncing carriage was difficult at best, but after having experienced the terror of their father’s kidnapping and injuries, she was amazed they weren’t walking dead.

  Anna-Maria walked over to her children, knelt in front of them, and took their hands. Noah was crying, and she took out her handkerchief and dabbed his tears.

  “My loves, I know how difficult this is. But once we find your father, our sorrows will be over.”

  “When will we find him?” Noah sniffed.

  But she didn’t know, and she couldn’t tell them she did, because she refused to lie to her children. Yet she did know, didn’t she? There it was again, that thought, the information that needed to be told, or recalled. But what was it?

  She shook it off and smiled at her babies. “I don’t know when it will be, but everyone is looking for him.”

  Noah bit his lower lip and then asked, “If Papa isn’t found, who will be King?”

  “You will,” Fleur looked at her little brother with a half-smile. “You will be our new King.”

  “No!” the little boy screamed, “No, I can’t. I don’t want to if Papa isn’t here!! Please, Mamma, promise they will find him.”

  Anna-Maria’s heart shattered as she watched Noah, barely five years old, struggle against the weight of the world resting on his shoulders.

  “We will find him,” Anna-Maria said and then immediately regretted it. She knew with every instinct that Fitz was alive, but finding him was another matter entirely.

  chapter 23

  Peyton hadn’t been able to sleep. Emma had not come home, and she’d known since shortly before Emma was due to arrive that something had gone seriously wrong. When she called Marcel’s bookstore, no one picked up. The phone went to Emma’s cheery, pre-recorded message, telling the caller they were either helping a booklover find the perfect book, or they were closed. She knew Marcel didn’t have a cell phone.

  Peyton sat on Emma’s couch, cell phone in her hand. Calling and texting Emma’s phone hadn’t done her any good. No response, no one picked up, and if anyone had the phone, it had been turned off, because her calls went right to voicemail. She closed her eyes and tried to tune in to her intuition, but her skills had flatlined thanks to the emotional firestorm brewing inside her.

  Peyton stood up and paced the small living room. She could start calling hospitals, but the process could take hours. Then a thought popped into her mind. Peter’s cell phone! Emma must have it in the phone book on her Mac. If Emma was hurt, Peyton’s somewhat fragmented intuition told her, he would know where she was.

  Peyton scrambled to Emma’s computer and flipped the lid open. The computer sprang to life, and after typing in Emma’s far-too-simple password, IloveBelgium, she began digging through Emma’s contacts until she found Peter’s number. She dialed the number, which was out of the country, praying Peter would notice the US exchange and hopefully (please, God) he’d pick up.

  “Hello.” Peyton had never heard him speak before, but she was immediately struck by the tension in his voice.

  “P—” she began, and then realized who she was speaking to. “Sir, Your Royal Highness, my name is Peyton, and I’m Emmeline’s cousin. I have been staying at her apartment, and she hasn’t come home. I apologize for calling you, but I can’t reach her grandfather, and I’m worried sick.”

  “I’m glad you called, then,” he said, his accent evident as Emma had always told her, gushing about how even his accent made him sexy.

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but Emmeline’s been shot. She’s just come out of surgery and—”

  “Is she going to be okay?” Peyton interrupted. Whatever royal protocol was regarding interrupting a prince, she didn’t care.

  “We don’t know, Peyton, but you should be here with us.”

  Peter quickly filled her in on where Emma was and how to access their private area.

  Peyton was already out the door before they disconnected.

  chapter 24

  “Peter,” Dr. Shepherd popped his head into Marcel’s room as Peter hung up from speaking to Peyton. “Detective Beckett is here to see you.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be right out.” Peter looked at Marcel, “Do you mind if I speak with her alone?”

  Marcel was seated in a comfortable chair, Astrid by his side, “Not at all, son. But please let me know if there is any news.”

  “I will,” Peter said, and he hurried out into the hall, dimly aware but not caring that he wore only a white shirt, no tie, no jacket, and looked anything but royal. The detective greeted him with a firm handshake and a solemn smile.

  “Your Highness, it’s an honor to meet you,” she began.

  “Please, no formalities. My name is Peter.”

  The detective nodded. “All right then,” she began, and gestured to a cluster of chairs in the hall. “Let’s have a seat.”

  Peter followed her lead and asked, “Please, what do we know so far?”

  “Based on what we’ve learned, it seems Ms. Avery walked in on an attempted rape and tried to intervene to save the girl. When she did, she was shot.”

  Peter frowned. “How do you know this? Were there witnesses?”

  “N
o, she called 911 immediately prior to being shot and told the operator it sounded like a girl was being attacked. But by the time we got there, the girl was gone, as were, obviously, the shooters.”

  “There was more than one?”

  “Emma reported to the 911 operator that she saw two men but could not give a description since their backs were to her.”

  “Where did this happen?”

  “In an alley off of Fifty-fifth Street. The alley was poorly lit, and it seems there were no cameras. We did get a partial print, which we ran through our database, but it came up with no matches, so it may have been the girl’s.”

  Peter was furious. How the hell could a city like New York not have a camera covering every inch of it? “So that’s it, no leads, and this becomes a dead-end case to remain unsolved? I want whoever did this to be caught.”

  “Sir, I understand completely, and we are doing our very best to make it happen. We’re getting footage from trafficams and other cameras in the area to see if we can spot them either coming or going, which might give us a lead, or at least a face to go on.”

  Peter was silent for a moment, and then the detective said, “Sir, I have to tell you, we have assigned the best team in the department to this case. There’s just one thing I need to ask you.”

  Something in her tone made Peter give her his full attention.

  “Is there any reason anyone would intentionally hurt her? Or might she have been involved with anything illegal?”

  When Peter started to protest, she held up a hand, “I know it sounds like a terrible thing to ask at a time like this. But in this case, the odds against the number of coincidences involved are astronomical. Most are hard to explain. The alley, for example. Nearly all restaurants have cameras on both doors, and most of those doors are well lit for the safety of the staff. This happened in an area ideally suited for this to happen. Dark alley, limited lighting, no cameras.”

  “Let me begin by assuring you Emma would never be involved with anything illegal.”

  “Then would someone intentionally want to hurt her?”

  Peter looked away from the detective, trying to process what she was asking him. Hurt her, yes. But hurt her like this, attempting to kill her? The idea boggled his mind.

  He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, where a day’s worth of stubble was beginning to itch.

  “I-I don’t know.” He couldn’t say no, not definitively, merely because it seemed outlandish to accuse anyone of his acquaintance of such a thing.

  The detective snapped her small notebook shut and stood. “I know this is a difficult time, but please, if you recall anything, any detail, no matter how small, that could help us solve this and find the perpetrators, please contact me.”

  “I will let you know immediately,” Peter stood and was shaking her hand when something sour settled in his stomach.

  He opened his mouth to mention it to the detective, but then closed it again. He wanted to tell her he might know someone and then quickly thought better of it. He hated to accuse anyone of attempted murder, but he had a sickening conviction that he wasn’t entirely wrong.

  chapter 25

  “Where is my daughter??!!” Sebastian’s voice boomed down the hall. He heard female voices coming from her room, and when he flung the door open, it slammed against the wall, hard, and everyone inside Alexandra’s room jumped.

  Various wedding dresses hung around her room, and a woman was in the process of taking Alexandra’s measurements when Sebastian made his entrance. The woman’s hands shook, and she stepped back and watched the clearly very angry man approach his daughter.

  “Father, we are busy here. Can’t you see I’m selecting my wedding dress—”

  “I need to speak to my daughter,” Sebastian boomed again. “Alone!” He yanked her off the small dressmaker’s pedestal.

  “Father, please, I’m in my undergarments!” Alex protested, but he was already frog-marching her out of her room and down the hall.

  “You will shut your mouth and come with me.” He continued to drag her down the hall and into his office, where he shoved her inside and slammed the door behind them.

  He advanced on her, as angry as she’d ever seen him, and growled, “What the hell have you done, you mindless twit?!”

  Alexandra did her best to pull herself together, but it wasn’t easy with the weight of his anger bearing down on her. But she stiffened her spine, tossed her hair back, and crossed her arms in defiance.

  “It’s not becoming of you to speak to the future Queen that way,” she spat back.

  Sebastian approached her, and though he was shorter, Alexandra feared him and took a half step back as he wagged a finger at her.

  “The girl, the whore as you call her, was shot. You didn’t tell me she was shot, Alexandra.” His eyes narrowed at her, and for a moment Alex felt her breath catch in excitement. Had the bitch died?

  “I don’t know why it matters.” She tried to keep her voice calm but desperately wanted to ask him what he knew.

  Sebastian inched forward again, his anger coming off of him in waves. “It matters, because if you had anything to do with this, it will come out. When it does, everything we’ve worked for will be done, finished, kaput!”

  Alexandra jutted her chin out, “Oh please, Father, how could I have done such a thing? I’m thousands of miles away.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” he said, and Alex stepped back again, out of his heated, angry space. She walked to the window.

  “I needed to take care of things, Father,” she said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means she was too much in the way.”

  “And you weren’t woman enough to rid his mind of her?” He walked over to her again, but she held her head high. He was angry with her, but he wouldn’t hit her as she’d seen him hit her mother.

  When Alexandra didn’t respond, he said, “So you did do this.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “I had someone help me, someone who can never be traced back to me. Not ever.” She heard a slight tremble in her voice that she tried to suppress.

  Sebastian stepped into her space again, “You aren’t me, and you shouldn’t even pretend to be me. I know how to hide things better than anyone—certainly better than you do.” He pointed a meaty finger at her, and Alexandra tried not to wince. “You’d better hope not, or all our years of work will have been for naught. Now here is what I need you to do. Immediately. If your fiancé is there, you will fly there now and be by his side, and get yourself pregnant.”

  Alex turned back to the window. There it was again, her ultimate failure. “Father, I don’t think he wants me there.”

  Sebastian threw back his head, bellowing laughter, “When the hell has that ever stopped you?” Then he grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him.

  “You haven’t slept with him yet, have you?” his eyes were narrowed. “You useless baggage, can’t you do anything right?!” he boomed.

  Alex didn’t respond, but she yanked her arm free of his too-tight grip.

  “I do not wish to go back to the States. I have a wedding to plan here.”

  Sebastian leaned in, crowding her mentally and physically. “You will go to the States, you will stay by his side through this, and you will show support. If you stay here, you’ll appear both guilty and stupid, and the papers will report that he’s by the side of his former lover. You must control the narrative, Alexandra.”

  Something tightened around Alexandra’s throat. She didn’t want to go there, to be “by his side.” She wanted to stay here, plan her wedding, and let the bitch die. Once the silly, simpering woman was dead, Peter would be hers.

  “And one more thing, Alexandra,” Sebastian said, his voice steady. “If you are caught, do not expect me to come to your rescue. I will disown you like the stupid tram
p you are.”

  Then Sebastian stomped out, slamming the door behind him.

  chapter 26

  Anna-Maria was dreaming. She was standing in a dark building—a filthy, dark building. She could see Fitz in prison, shackled to a wall, his face dirty but still beautiful. He was in a room that looked like a horse stall, with hay strewn on the ground.

  She heard guards outside the cell, laughing while Fitz sat alone, nearly starving to death.

  She could see herself outside the jail, watching the jailers. They were the men who’d kidnapped him.

  “Fitz, my darling, I’m here,” she said, but he couldn’t hear or see her.

  She grabbed onto the bars and yelled again, “Fitz, darling, I miss you so much. I’m here to save you!” But he didn’t look up. He stared off into the distance, as though the light had gone out of him.

  Anna-Maria looked around. The jailers walked out of the room, still laughing, and she followed them toward the daylight. The building was low and not well constructed, rickety enough that it would never survive a harsh winter or heavy rain. But she’d listened long enough to know Fitz’s kidnappers weren’t planning to remain here much longer. No doubt they planned to leave him here to starve to death alone.

  The men walked outside, where their horses were tied to posts.

  “How much longer do we have to stay here?” one of them asked.

  “Until we have control of Belgium,” the evident leader replied. He was the one whose face Anna-Maria saw the night Fitz was taken.

  “When will that be?” another man asked, and the leader spun to face the man, advancing on him.

  “I despise impatient people,” he said harshly, and both men looked down, avoiding his menacing look.