A Prince at Last! Read online

  “If you knew Katie Graham was your mother, then why on earth did you spend the past few months searching for her son?” the prime minister asked.

  “I knew my mother as Katherine Dumont,” Luc replied. “I had no idea about her…colorful past. It was only as I began the investigation that I started putting the pieces together. Even then, I didn’t believe it could really be true. When I went to my father—the man I believed to be my father—and confronted him, he gave me the key to a safe deposit box that my mother had requested I open should I ever question my heritage. It’s all here.” He opened the manilla envelope he’d brought with him. “The entire paper trail—wedding certificate, my real birth certificate, not the one my mother had Albert Dumont falsify.”

  “Falsified birth certificates seem to have reached epidemic proportions around here lately,” Simone noted tartly.

  Luc flinched.

  “Not that we’re accusing you of any such behavior,” the prime minister hurriedly assured him.

  “I can understand your skepticism,” Luc said. “I considered not sharing this information with you at all, just pretending I never found it.”

  “Why would you do something like that?” the prime minister asked.

  “Because I’m not any happier about this…situation than you are,” Luc said in a clipped voice.

  “You misunderstand me.” Simone put her thin hand on his arm. He was surprised to feel it trembling slightly. “Is it really possible? Could you be…my grandson?”

  “According to those papers I am. Even so, I’d still like to get corroborating evidence from an independent source before we proceed any further.”

  “You sound as if you’re not happy with this news, Luc,” the prime minister said. “I can tell you that I, for one, cannot think of a more honorable man to take the throne.”

  Simone was looking almost gleeful. “You know what this means? It means that awful Celeste won’t get her grasping hands on the throne. Her baby is due any minute now, and if it’s a boy, well, then our ship would have been sunk.”

  “I don’t think Queen Celeste will take the news about Luc very well,” the prime minister noted.

  “As I said,” Luc interrupted them. “No one but the three of us and Juliet is to know about this news just yet.”

  “Juliet?” Simone raised a perfectly penciled eyebrow. “So you told Juliet. Before you told us?”

  Luc refused to squirm in his seat. He was a former Interpol agent, he was not a schoolboy being reprimanded by his headmaster.

  “Yes, I told Juliet before I told you.” The set of his jaw communicated his aggravation. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “I fear it would do me no good if I did,” Simone replied. “I’ve always liked Juliet. She’s a wise little thing. So what did she advise you to do?”

  “She didn’t advise, she listened.” Luc’s pointed look indicated it was something that the older woman could learn to do better.

  Simone smiled and leaned back in her chair with satisfaction. “Yes, you will do well as the king. Quite well indeed.”

  “I want you both to swear you won’t tell anyone about this information until we can get it confirmed,” Luc said. “And the situation with Rhineland also has to be addressed.”

  The prime minister paused in his close inspection of the material Luc had handed him. “The birth certificate is registered, and the rest of the documents appear legitimate.”

  “I know someone from Interpol, someone very discreet, who will do some follow-up work,” Luc said.

  “I understand you were born in Texas,” Simone said with a slight shudder. “Thank goodness Katie had the foresight to bring you back to Europe and civilization. Imagine if we’d had to track you down in Texas, as some kind of roving cowboy.”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies,” Luc said. “Not everyone in Texas is a cowboy.” He knew, he’d traveled to Texas during the course of his investigation.

  “Some are ruthless businessmen like J. R. Ewing,” the dowager queen continued, “on that television show…what was it called? ‘Houston’?”

  “‘Dallas’,” Luc corrected her.

  “There’s no point in worrying over what might have been,” the prime minister said. “We should focus on what our next course of action should be. I will need to notify the Privy Council.”

  “I’m still trying to get information from the French customs agency about Katie Graham’s arrival and departure from France. Those records from over thirty years ago are in some warehouse waiting to be transferred onto the computer system.”

  “What do you hope to gain from those records?” the prime minister asked.

  “The date Katie arrived in France to marry King Philippe and the date she left for the United States,” Luc said.

  “But you already have so much information from earlier in your investigation,” the prime minister noted, opening his own file on the subject. “The marriage certificate between Katie and Philippe, the birth certificate of her son Lucas Johnson, the marriage certificate of Katie Graham and Ellsworth Johnson, the divorce certificate of Katie Graham and said Mr. Johnson and lastly her marriage certificate to Albert Dumont.”

  “I could still be Albert’s son, just trying to pass myself off as the king’s.”

  “DNA testing would resolve that.” The prime minister gazed over the top edge of his reading glasses before removing them entirely to solemnly ask Luc, “Would you be willing to subject yourself to that?”

  Luc paused before nodding.

  “Ah,” Simone murmured. “I understand now. It is not that you want us to be sure you are the real heir, it is that you yourself are not sure that you want to be the king. Isn’t that correct, Luc?”

  Yes, Luc silently noted, the elderly dowager queen was still sharp as a tack, all right. She’d certainly summed up his emotions in no time at all.

  “Your Majesty?” the footman whispered to Celeste as he delivered her lunch to her suite on the second floor of the palace. “I have some information for you.”

  Shortly after her marriage Celeste had completely redecorated the suite in shades of ivory and gold. She thought the colors complemented her own coloring—the ivory of her flawless skin, the gold of her perfectly cut hair.

  “Information? It had better be something good,” she warned him. “The baby has been kicking me all day and I’m not in the best of moods, Henri.”

  “I overheard a conversation…”

  “Overheard?”

  “I was clearing the dowager queen’s tea tray from the Ruby Salon, which is right beside the Throne Room.”

  “I am aware of the location of the rooms in this palace,” Celeste said. “Get on with it.”

  “I happened to be standing next to the closed doorway leading into the Throne Room and happened to overhear the conversation between the prime minister, the dowager queen and Luc Dumont.”

  “Luc is back from France?”

  “He arrived this very afternoon.”

  “With news I presume?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Outrageous news.”

  “Well hurry and tell me, I haven’t got all day. I believe I’ve gone into labor.” Celeste gripped the front of the footman’s ornate jacket. “Tell me…and quickly!”

  “Luc is claiming that he is the rightful heir.”

  Celeste’s grip on the footman tightened until she was almost choking the small man.

  “Of course, I do not believe it,” the footman wheezed, struggling for air. “You are our most beloved and beautiful queen.”

  “And I’m about to give birth to a boy,” she said, panting slightly. “A boy who will be the king. Go now. Fetch Dr. Mellion. Get him and no one else. You understand?”

  Henri nodded so fast his footman’s cap almost fell off.

  “And tell no one what you have heard about Luc,” Celeste continued. “It is all a lie, a conspiracy by that dotty old woman and her crazy prime minister. Remember, Henri—” she released her grip on him a
nd patted his arm as she smiled her famously charming smile “—I will reward those who are loyal to me. Reward them greatly.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. My only aim is to serve you.”

  Her smile slipped as another contraction hit. “Then go get Dr. Mellion and be quick about it!”

  Chapter Three

  “Have you heard the news?” Juliet asked Luc the next morning. She’d come to his office first thing. They were alone, and with the office door closed, assured of some privacy.

  Unlike her own working space, his was spacious and possessed every modern convenience—computer, fax machine, a bank of telephones. His desk held a blotter, a penholder and a lamp. No mess, no pile of papers. Everything was neatly in its place, under control. Even the chairs in his office possessed a firm practicality that didn’t make them particularly nice to sit in, but she plopped into the nearest one anyway.

  “What news?” Luc barely looked up from the file he was studying.

  “Celeste had a baby boy at four this morning.”

  “Oh, that news,” he said absently. “Yes, I heard.”

  He’d reverted back to his usual working attire of a perfectly-fitted black suit and light blue shirt with a burgundy tie. He looked very classy…and very much like a “hottie” to quote her sister Jacqueline’s favorite terminology.

  Wishing she could just sit here and admire the view—him—Juliet realized she should try to keep her mind on court business and not funny business, like making out with Luc on his smooth desktop. “Did you hear she’s proclaiming he’s the next King of St. Michel?”

  “Celeste has proclaimed a number of things over the past few months. It doesn’t mean any of them are true.”

  Too jumpy to sit still for long, Juliet abandoned the chair for the corner of his desk, where she perched. Luc clearly hadn’t noticed the flowing floral skirt she was wearing, nor the gauzy pink camisole top that had required all her nerve to put on. After all, she was visiting the future king. She’d almost put on the nunnish gray dress she wore to chapel. But some spark of rebellion had prompted her to stick to her present attire. “Did you tell her that you’re the real heir to the throne?”

  “No.” Luc closed the file he’d been studying. “She was rather busy last night.”

  “When do you plan on telling her?”

  Getting up to come around his desk and join her on the front edge of the desk, Luc replied, “As late as possible.”

  Juliet nodded understandingly. “She’s not going to be pleased.”

  “Now there’s an understatement,” he noted dryly.

  “When is the announcement going to be made about you being the true heir? How did the dowager queen and prime minister take the news? And…”

  “One question at a time.” Luc placed a teasing finger over her lips, effectively silencing her questions while sending her heart into overdrive. His skin was warm against hers. She was suddenly assailed with the urge to draw his finger into her mouth, to taste his skin.

  She leapt away as if burned, almost falling from the desk. What kind of wanton was she to have such thoughts? Especially about the future king! She should never have worn this camisole top. It gave a girl ideas, ideas that she was far sexier than she really was, far more confident.

  “Something wrong?” Luc asked.

  She frantically shook her head, her dark hair tumbling down into her eyes. A pencil wasn’t the best hairclip, but it’s what she usually used to wrap her hair up into a knot on top of her head, and she’d somehow misplaced all of hers, which wasn’t surprising. She often got so engrossed with her research that she lost track of things like pencils. So she’d had to leave her hair loose this morning.

  “No, nothing.” She wanted to sit down, but now felt awkward doing so while he still stood. All of a sudden the realization that he was the king was overshadowing everything else. “Go on with what you were saying, please. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “I don’t care if you interrupt.”

  “It isn’t polite.”

  “Which brings me to my next topic.”

  He still hadn’t answered her previous questions, but she wasn’t about to point that out now. Instead she tried to look properly attentive and respectful and not as if she secretly longed to kiss him.

  “I want you to do a favor for me,” Luc said.

  “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  He smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. Because I want you to give me royalty training.”

  She stared at him blankly. “Excuse me?”

  “I want you to teach me all the kingly things I’ll need to know.”

  When she just blinked owlishly at him, he put it another way. “I’d like you to tutor me on protocol, customs and traditions of the royal family.”

  “I’m sure the protocol minister would be glad to help…”

  Luc cut off her words. “No way am I going to that toady fellow. I dealt with him when I first arrived at the palace and he had the effrontery to tell me not to chew gum in front of the king. What are you smiling at?”

  “Your use of the word effrontery. A very regal term.”

  “I don’t feel regal,” he confessed. “It feels so strange to think of King Philippe as my…father.”

  “I imagine it does. I know none of this has been easy for you.”

  “And it’s not going to get any easier. Which is why I need you to help me quickly learn my way about. You and no one else.”

  If only that were true. If only he did need her, as a woman rather than as a friend. And if only he wasn’t the future king. And if only she were more beautiful and confident. And had bigger breasts. Hey, since she was making wishes here, she might as well wish for the entire package.

  “So what do you say?” Luc asked.

  “I’m honored that you’d ask me, but I truly don’t feel I’m the best person for this job.”

  “I feel you are.”

  “There, you’re already sounding like a king. You don’t need me.”

  “You’re doing it again,” he warned her.

  “Doing what?”

  “Going all strange on me. All distant.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  “Oh please.” He rolled his eyes at her. “You used to take great joy in offending me.”

  “I did not!” she vehemently denied. “Name one time when I did that.”

  “When I told you that men made better leaders than women and you said I was sounding like a chauvinist pig.”

  “Well, you were. But that was before…”

  “I want the two of us to remain as we were before.”

  Which was part of the problem. He was happy with them just being friends as they’d been before, whereas she wanted so much more. And now those hopes were futile. As king, Luc had to marry someone worthy, someone who had the confidence and polish of the royal princesses, not an ugly duckling like herself. And she knew herself well enough to know that the more time she spent with Luc, the more intense her emotions for him were likely to get. Not a smart thing. And if nothing else, she was a smart woman.

  “Come on, Juliet, I can’t do this without you.”

  He could, of course. She knew he could. But it was impossible for her to turn away from the look of teasing pleading in his intense blue eyes. She doubted there were many women on the entire planet who could turn Luc down when he gave them that look—no matter what he wanted.

  “Protocol and traditions, right?” she said briskly.

  “Right. Piece of cake, right?”

  “Speaking of cake, I think we’ll begin with royal meals and formal state dinners.” She kept her voice coolly efficient. If she was going to be coerced into doing this, she was going to do it her way.

  “That sounds fine. There’s just one thing. I don’t want anyone knowing you’re giving me these lessons.”

  “Why?” Was he ashamed of being seen with her? The thought stung like a cruel barb.

  “Why? Because I don’t wa
nt anyone else knowing yet about my being the future king,” he explained. “Not until the corroborating documentation comes in. I figure we have about a week to ten days before that happens.”

  “So you’re not telling Celeste that you’re the king until then?”

  “That’s right. I thought you and I could get together later at night, after everyone else in the palace has gone to bed,” Luc suggested. “Would that work for you?”

  Work for her? None of this worked for her. Not one single thing. Not him thinking of her as a friend, not him being king, certainly not her spending more time alone with him. But there was no changing reality. And the reality was that she had to help him. “That will be fine.” She could only hope that stating it so confidently would make it so.

  Bond. Juliet Bond. That’s how she felt. As if she were participating in some sort of covert operation.

  She was even wearing the appropriate clothing—black, so she wouldn’t be seen in the palace’s shadowy hallways. King Philippe had ordered a reduction in the electricity used within the palace, and had replaced the light bulbs with low-wattage models that wouldn’t need replacing for a decade.

  The dim light served her purposes well. So did the fact that most of the servants had gone home to their own beds in St. Michel, leaving only a skeletal staff behind in the palace. A hundred years ago, the staff would have lived on the top floor in the servants’ quarters. But things had changed a lot in the past century.

  She tried to imagine any of the royal women she was researching sneaking down the hallway toward the Crystal Ballroom to meet the future king. Only one kind of woman did that. A royal mistress. Not that a royal mistress would ever have been caught dead wearing the tailored black slacks and black long-sleeved T-shirt she was presently wearing. Or rubber-soled shoes so her footsteps would be quiet in the marble corridors. Not the sexiest of outfits.

  As often happened, Juliet was so caught up in her own thoughts she didn’t realize anyone was in front of her until she almost ran smack into him.

  At least she didn’t shriek in surprise. Instead she emitted a startled oomph.

  A pair of male arms circled her waist. But even before they did so, she knew it was Luc. Her nose was buried in his shirtfront and she could smell the citrus scent of his soap.