Her Secret Prince (11 page)

“Whatever the truth,”
his friend continued. “I suspect it’s going to be weird.”

Felix wasn’t wrong.

“Thanks for looking into it,” Jed said quietly, mind lurching. “I should have searched harder myself. I’m in Paris now—meeting him tomorrow.”

“No worries. Be careful when you meet him. If I don’t hear from you in forty-eight hours, I’ll contact Interpol.” Felix’s tone implied he was only half-joking.

“Appreciated.”

Jed looked for Dee as he hung up. Still on the phone, laughing hard with a hand on her stomach. He had time for another call.

His mother answered on the second ring.

“Jed? Where are you?” The words reached out to him like desperate, straining hands. He hadn’t called her in months.

“Paris.”

“Paris?” She paused, confused, those hands frozen mid-reach. “For work or something?”

He watched as
Dee slid her phone into her handbag and started walking back towards him. Quietly, he said, “I’m going to meet my father in Leguarday tomorrow.”

A dull thump carried down the line. Seconds passed, five, six, seven. Then, “You’re what?”

“Meeting my father.” Jed took a gamble. “You remember him. Prince Oscar Montaigne.”

His mother’s silence was so absolute he thought the connection had cut out.
Then he heard the strain of breath, the harsh scrape of air down a horrified throat. “Don’t meet him,” she said, a vocalized gasp. “Jed, don’t, or they won’t let you come home. They’ll force you to—”

He hung up as Dee reached him.

“I feel better now,” she said, plucking off her hat to run her fingers through her hair.

Jed gave a nod as his thoughts raged. He didn’t feel better. He felt sick
and exposed and less connected to the world than ever.

Dee eyed him as she took the handle of her luggage. She stilled, frowning. “You okay?”

No.

Jed pulled himself together enough to say, “Just tired.”

Tired of never feeling at home; tired of the fact that he’d lived in Melbourne for the past eight years, the longest he’d been in one place, but still didn’t feel settled. He drifted through
his days in the studio, his apartment. He hung out with friends in arcades and beer gardens, enjoying their company but somehow feeling like their place in his life was temporary. That it was just another phase in his fragmented existence. A consequence of a childhood on the move, unable to trust that anywhere could really be home.

He was tired of wondering who his father was; of looking over
his shoulder in case he found out the hard way.

As it turned out, this weariness was unwarranted.

Dee’s smile didn’t seem to believe him. She eyed him strangely as she readjusted her glasses. “Then let’s get some fresh air.”

He followed her towards the exit, stunned and heavy. His mother had been lying to him his entire life, making him fear the clutch of a dangerous father. But they hadn’t
spent his childhood running from a criminal.

They’d been running from the crown.

‡

From: Oscar M

02-05-2015 (4 hours ago)

To: Jed Brown

Subject: Meeting

We could meet tomorrow for lunch. Café Georgette, in the city centre, at midday. It has a blue sign. Would that suit?

Oscar

J
ed read out
the latest email
as Dee parked in front of a thatch-roofed stone cottage. The clouds were darkening from grey to graphite, but even the biting, cold evening couldn’t lessen her delight at the lodging and country garden before them.

“We could do midday,” she agreed. It would only take them a couple of hours to reach Legaurday. “And then I’ll have to come back here. I need to write in that window bay, overlooking
those flowers.” Scratch flying straight home. She would spoil herself with a garden view.

Jed didn’t answer. As she got out of the rental car, she noticed him typing a response to Oscar. His mouth was a thin line—thin for those lips, anyway—and he’d hardly spoken since the airport. They’d found a quaint café in Paris where he’d stared into the middle distance. Distracted, she knew, and he’d always
been the kind of person that needed space to process change, so she’d kept quiet, kept the coffee coming, and let him be.

She’d be processing too, if she was this close to meeting her father for the first time.

“I’ll take our bags in,” she told him, but he didn’t seem to hear.

Inside, with the luggage by the door, Dee lost herself in the split-level wonderland of the cottage. White walls and
exposed structural beams, clean tiled floors, and dinky corridors. She found a small bedroom clinging to the end of one such passage, abundant with lace and frills and all things floral. She grinned at the cheery little kitchen, with green wooden cupboards, drying herbs strung above the bench and a jar of wildflowers next to a plate of pastries.
Bonjour et bienvenue!
read the note beside it
. Fire
is lit and champagne is in the fridge.

A narrow staircase set off from the wall beside the pantry—four steps and a bend took Dee into a tiny raised laundry. Back the way she’d come, she passed through a sunken living area with a stoked fireplace. She stopped to test the mismatched couches that huddled close to the heat, all heavenly soft, and then climbed half a staircase to the mezzanine that
overlooked the crackling fire. It was enthralling, this home of hidden rooms and crooked stairwells.

Still smiling, she continued up the stairs that curved, sharp and narrow, and emerged in a sparse loft. It had a wide side window at waist height, loaded bookcase, and wooden beams forming a steeple over a large bed.

This would be Jed’s room. Flowers and lace should keep her chaste.

Downstairs,
she was sitting at the table, eating a second pastry, when Jed finally came inside. The door closed and there was the thud of one boot falling to the floor, then another. He appeared, socks soundless on the tiles, raindrops seeming to weigh him down through his grey jacket. His hair was wet. Wetter than it should be from darting from car to door. Even his face held streaks of water. He must have
stopped and looked up at the rain, the miserable goof.

Jed’s attention locked on the window, his mouth grim and eyes haunted.

“Hi,” Dee said, chewing.

He looked to where she sat with knees pulled to her chest, hair braided roughly back from her temples, and airplane slippers flopped on over her tights. She knew her skin was pasty with exhaustion, her eyes squinty. She looked a mess after the
flight, but he looked worse. Way, way worse.

He smiled faintly. “Hello.”

“You look terrible.”

Dee suspected his fixed grimace was an attempt to keep smiling. His hands were balled by his sides, his posture rigid. “I know.”

Concern had her asking, “You sure you’re okay?”

Lines met in a frown on his forehead and his gaze focused on hers. “Apparently I’m—” He stopped, looking pained. “You’ll
never believe…” That ended in a shake of his head. “I’m overwhelmed,” he said, running a hand harshly over his face.

“I wouldn’t think any less of you for deciding not to meet him. You’ve gone this long without a father. There’s no need to do this.”

“I’m doing it.” That was firm. “I’m just…”

Not finishing sentences.

Dee said, “I’d say it’s natural to be anxious right now.”

Panic bolted across
his features and disappeared beneath a strained mask. “I’d say you’re right.”

“I’m only a little bit sorry to say that I’m feeling the opposite,” she said, because with nothing to do but wait for tomorrow, he needed distracting. “I’m beside myself. We’ve found paradise.” She extended the plate towards him as she took another bite of the buttery lemon sweet. “You can’t have the one with chocolate
oozing out the ends. That’s my next victim.”

“No. Thank you.”

She put the plate down. “Champagne?”

“No,” he said, before pausing. “There’s champagne?”

“I booked for two. They must have assumed we’re a couple.”

He frowned.

“I don’t plan on telling them. For all I know, these are honeymoon pastries.”

His brows lowered further. “I’m sorry, Dee.”

Uncertainty tumbled in her stomach. She stopped
chewing. “For what?”

“Wasting the romance of this place.”

She pulled a face, waving it off, internally wondering what that meant. “It’s not wasted on me,” she said softly, but he didn’t seem to hear. His attention was back on the window.

He asked, “Have you chosen a room?”

“You’re in the loft.”

He nodded once and turned towards the stairs. “Then I’ll be in the loft.”

*

Jed sat on
the chair beside the window, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. As still as a boat on calm water, his mind completely at sea.

A prince.

He didn’t know what that meant. What it could mean or could never mean for his future.

His mum had tried to call him since the airport. Seven times. In the car outside the cottage, he’d texted back.
Unless you think I’m in physical danger,
let me do this.

She hadn’t rung again.

The danger was to his identity. An easy target. Jed floated through life, feeling detached and unfinished. His identity had as much form as the ghosts in his comic. Meeting Oscar could fill him in, but the worry was how he’d end up looking, who he would become.

He knew little about Leguarday. Perhaps being royalty was in name only. But no—he’d read Oscar’s
approximate value and “only” didn’t come into it.

Conflict hauled at his abdomen. The pull to tell Dee, and the shove to wait. He had tried, but words had failed him. Not surprising, when he had yet to get his head around it. Reactions hurtled through him like snapping dogs, horror, disbelief, alarm, with the momentary bite of relief that finally, there was change.

Jed shifted, lowering his
hands and looking dully out the window. A thicket of trees grew behind the cottage, looming in the darkening light. There was no point dragging Dee into this confusion. Not before he’d met Oscar; confirmed facts and made a decision. He’d torn her life up enough in the past forty-eight hours. It wouldn’t be fair to keep tearing blindly.

Dee.

Jed stood and paced the loft. She’d travelled across
the world for him. Had planned on suppressing what she’d believed to be unreciprocated desire, simply to stay by his side. She’d booked a romantic cottage to please herself, because she hadn’t forgotten why they were really here. She could push people, but also knew when to give them space.

He wanted her. All of her. Always.

Since yesterday he’d felt it, a hook snagged firmly beneath his solar
plexus. The very space one would pump to revive him, torn out if he left her. There’d be no moving on from her this time. If she’d have him, she would be his last move.

At that, tension eased off his shoulders like a released grip. A second change. One for his head, the other for his heart. Jed could promise Dee his life, if that was what he wanted to give her.

And it was. No one could make
him stay in Leguarday. No one could make him do anything. He’d finished reading the information Felix had linked—a crown prince already existed in Oscar’s nephew. They didn’t need Jed. He was a spare sovereign, a secret heir, an unclaimed bastard. His return to the principality would change nothing but his relationship with his father.

Resolve set in him, a steely determination that cast the
whole situation in black and white. He was of royal blood—that was irrelevant. He was meeting his father—that was very relevant. He was still in charge of his own life and could do what he pleased—that was nonnegotiable.

A wry smile overtook him. Of course he could do what he pleased.

He was a goddamned prince.

*