The Prince and I: A Romantic Mystery (The Royal Biography Cozy Mystery Series Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 2

EXACTLY FIVE MONTHS BEFORE I agree to help Francesca search for the diamonds, I find myself the victim of a horrible accident.

As a matter of fact, it happens on the day I first meet Francesca Di Campo. Simply put, Francesca is spacey with a capital S. This is apparent the moment I first see her. She is standing in the villa kitchen, staring up at the ceiling with her lips pursed tight. Who is this woman and what is she doing here, I wonder. Despite my best efforts, I stop and gawk and notice that even though this woman is spacey, she is definitely Italian. From a fashion point of view, she is pulled together—wearing these high-heeled black boots with a blood red patent toe that are straight out of last year’s Prada collection. I know, because I remember seeing them when I passed by the flagship Prada store on Via Montenapoleone in Milan. In addition to the boots, she also wore dark black designer jeans, and a flouncy white sheer blouse that sports a Dolce label.

“Ah, Lily, there you are,” Alice says, filing into the kitchen a moment later. “And I see you’ve met Francesca, good, good. Francesca will be helping you about the house. Today we will be deep cleaning the formal salon.”

I look over at Francesca to gauge her reaction to Alice’s exciting proposition. Nope. Nobody’s home. Francesca is definitely not hanging with the conversation. Her eyes are still completely transfixed on the ceiling.

“Come, come, ladies,” Alice says, clapping her hands. Following Alice out into the hallway, I give Francesca the once-over as she walks like Joan of Arc going to the pyre—she keeps her eyes up on the ceiling, saint-like, seemingly not impressed by the grandeur of the villa.

How can she do that? I don’t care how many times I see the magnificent rooms of Ca’ Buschi, it always blows me away. But Francesca never looks down. She never looks around. She doesn’t even steal a glance into any of the rooms that we pass.

“Good heavens! She’s as cracked as my good ol’ Auntie.” I thought to myself.

“There now, Francesca will be helping out when she is not attending classes,” Alice says as we come through the doorway of the main salon. “Francesca studies law at the Cattolica in Milan, don’t you dear?”

Law? Mercy, I can’t even imagine how boring that must be.

“But anyway, Francesca will be here four or five hours a day to help you, Lily, with all the housecleaning. And when there are guests in residence, she will be here full-time—as will we all,” Alice says this last part looking smug, but her attitude does not disturb me. I beam back at my aunt, taking her by surprise. Honestly, how could I not be happy? How wonderful to have somebody to help divide up the ridiculous Bible-thick list of tasks she gives me to complete every day. And who cares about having to work full time when “there are guests in residence?” From what Carla, the laundress, and Elenora, the cook, have told me, nobody ever comes to stay.

“Well then, I would like for the two of you to use your time together to deep clean all the rooms on a rotating schedule…” Alice prattles on while I stare out the French doors, soaking up the view of the lake.

“…and here are the first few pages of today’s task list. When you have finished with them, please come see me at my desk in the kitchen and I’ll give you the rest…”

What? Is she finally done talking? My gaze flits from the window back to Alice, who is standing there impatiently, flapping the sheets of paper in our direction. Slowly, Francesca reaches out a tentative hand and takes a set. She pulls the papers in close and stares at them intently, as if reading the answer to the meaning of life.

Anxious to see what Francesca sees, I hastily snatch my own set of sheets out of Alice’s hand, but I find no such providence. It’s just the regular checklist of things to clean. I flip mine over in case I am missing something.

“THANK YOU, THANK YOU, SIGNORA BETTONINA!” Francesca suddenly shouts out so loud that I jump.

“Very well, I shall leave you ladies to it,” Alice says, as though suddenly being shouted at is a perfectly normal occurrence. “Lily, if you would be so kind, please show Francesca what to do. Oh, and I do apologize, Francesca, I shall have to go over my three rules for keeping this villa functioning tomorrow. I’m sorry but I don’t have time today.”

Ah hah! Tomorrow, poor Joan-of-Arc-in-Prada over there is going to be subjected to the Alice Bettonina’s Three Principle Laws of Fine Villa Upkeep. Having already been subjected to them myself, I can only say all the laws are incredibly tedious. Finished speaking, Alice turns to leave, but Francesca makes a little “ah hem” noise that stops her in her tracks.

“Yes?” Alice says, “Did you have a question?”

“YES, I DO,” Francesca shouts in a high-pitched, singsong voice. “WHEN CAN WE NEXT EXPECT THE SIGNORE TO VISIT?”

“I have no idea,” Alice states with a blank look on her face. I shoot her a glance. Is she insane? Bringing a young, impressionable girl like Francesca into the house of a Hollywood star?

“Well then, I’ll leave you two to your work? Fine? Good?” Alice eyes us up and down and doesn’t wait for a reply. “I’m afraid I have some business to attend to. The phone company installed a new answering service last week and it isn’t working. I need to get that sorted out, and then I’ll work on the rest of your task sheets. Va bene?”

“Va bene,” Francesca whispers straight at the ceiling, although I do believe she is talking to Alice, who is already slipping out of the room, heading for the kitchen.

“Um, Francesca, if you could give me a moment,” I say as I hurry after my aunt, “I need to speak to Alice a second. I’ll be right back.”

“What on earth is wrong with you?” Alice hisses as I almost mow her down in the hallway. I don’t wait for her to finish her sentence. I press my face right up to her ear and whisper, “Are you crazy, Alice? Hiring a girl her age to work here—for the most eligible bachelor in the world?”

“Nonsense.” Alice pushes me off with both arms before leaning over to pick an errant piece of fluff off the floor. As she straightens back up, she adds, “Non si deve preocupare di Francesca.”

Which loosely translated means Francesca is nothing to worry about.

“Are you kidding me Alice? She is what, all of 19? She is going to go completely gaga as soon as the Signore first strolls through the door. He’s a huge movie star, you know?”

Alice actually locks eyes with me and gives a little laugh. She actually mocks what I believe is a very serious situation.

I glare at her appalled, but she rises to the challenge, squares her shoulders and says “Don’t be ridiculous. Francesca is far more concerned with the dead than she is with the living.” Before I can even think of a reply, she stalks off down the hall.

Apparently what Alice has told me is a hundred-percent true. Francesca is “far more concerned with the dead than the living.” I learn this quickly; as we begin to move furniture to the edge of the room in preparation for scrubbing the floor, Francesca begins to chat casually.

Well not really chat, actually, because that would involve two people. What she does is to start mumbling to herself or the wall or something. What she says is this—that by this time tomorrow Silvio Berlusconi will be six feet under. I am so stunned by this revelation that I stop pushing on my end of the sofa and stare at her in amazement.

“Blood feud with a street gang,” she sighs as she continues to shove on her end of the leather sofa.

“That’s horrible,” I gasp, watching as Francesca -who hasn’t seemed to notice that I am no longer pushing on my end- continues to try to muscle the huge piece of furniture out of the way. This is a bit comical actually, because it’s a really heavy sofa and Francesca is a tiny gal in dangerously high-heeled boots. As she shoves and shoves, the sofa doesn’t really go anywhere. In fact, all that happens is that she ends up sliding around on those slick Prada boots of hers.

“Yes, that is it, he will be killed during a blood feud with a street gang,” she states firmly.

“Really?” I venture back with a bit of concern—more for Francesca’s sanity than for Silvio’s forecasted doom.

“Really,” Francesca stops pushing the sofa, and looks happy that someone has joined in her private conversation. “It will happen early in the morning. In Reykjavik, I believe.”

“I had no idea the Prime Minister was in Iceland?”

“Yes.” She looks doleful as she turns her saucer-like eyes on me.

Well, that’s worth a smile. Yeah, I can imagine those street gangs in Reykjavik are pretty dangerous. I look at the floor trying not to laugh. When I glance back up, I notice that Francesca is still staring at me.

“Oh, oh right. Let me help you with that,” I say, and go back to pushing on my end. Together, we shove the sofa and the rest of the furniture to the edge of the room. Carefully we roll up the large wall-to-wall sheep carpet and prepare to scrub the tiles—on our hands and knees—as Alice insists it is the “only way to achieve a truly clean floor.”

While we scrub, I decide it best not to pursue the conversation. Yes, it is always best not to encourage crazy. Yet not a second later, I ignore my inner wisdom and ask, “How do you know all this about the Prime Minister, Francesca?”

“Because,” she says with all the conviction of a martyr, “His great-grandmother told me.”

Oh my stars...

Seven hours later, after listening to the chatter of the deluded for precisely 420 odd minutes, I pull out of the Villa Buschi parcheggio with great celerity. Like a woman trying to get away from a sheer maniac, that’s how I drive. I hit my gate-opening button right after I fasten my seatbelt. Then I race across Villa Buschi’s grounds doing my usual slalom to avoid shrubs, hedges and snake-like vines. As it is, I want to put as much distance as possible between me and the young gal in designer wear who talks to the dead great-grandmothers of elected officials.

I glance at the clock on the dash. 3:40. Perfect. I can easily get to the nursery school in Arona in twenty minutes. And today I must be on time because who knows what that headmistress will say if I am late again. The other day she told me she is certain the reason why Luca and Matteo are always late to school—and always late being picked up—is because they are from a “broken” family. Then she scolded me in front of several other mothers, saying that children with divorced parents suffer “huge handicaps” when it comes to learning. I have to say, I have enough guilt as it is, and I am getting more than a little tired of talking to people I barely know about my marital status.

Thinking over the headmistress’ comments as I drive, I begin to feel my blood boil. I grip my steering wheel fiercely and press on the accelerator. I gun the engine and zing around the villa, racing along at top speed. Overhung branches whip at my windshield, but I don’t care. I round the last curve and barrel down on the entrance. I am almost through the gate when it happens. The most surreal thing. The most absolutely amazing and surreal thing. You see, instead of going through the gate, my Panda is hurled backwards as if by some unseen and immovable force.

                                                                    
 
Chapter 3

SOMEBODY RESCUES ME though.

No, it wasn’t Brandon Logan, the Hollywood actor who recently purchased Villa Buschi, but another big star. I’ll call him Matt Z. That’s not his real name of course. Nobody has the last name of Z. That would be absurd. But I’m not allowed to say his real name, because I signed this ridiculously long confidentiality agreement when I started my job. 
Thou shall not speak the name of any guest of Villa Buschi
, or something or other was written in bold print along with several other ridiculous requirements in a document full of legalese that was over 100 pages long.

Anyway, I swear, it’s him. One of the most important Hollywood stars of the moment, and he is rapidly untangling me from the airbag that has engulfed me like a giant marshmallow.

“Are you all right? Signora, are you okay?” he asks in an anxious voice as he undoes my seatbelt and pulls me from the vehicle. Unstable, I wobble to and fro. Briefly I think I might be dead. Matt looks really good. Like an angel. And he smells good, with a hint of pine, like the woodlands.

“Your airbag really scraped you up there,” he says and his eyes narrow in concern. Wait a minute, I know that look. It’s exactly the look he had in his last movie. The one where the terrorist tells him there’s a bomb in the building and he has five minutes to diffuse it, only the bomb is buried under five layers of concrete so that even his trusty Labrador retriever cannot sniff it out. That is precisely what he looks like now.

I stare at him. I just stare. I can’t even think about the blood that is trickling down my face. I mean there he is and he is exactly as they say in People magazine. He is captivating, and wholesome, and he smells so
darn
 good. I decide that I love him. Yes, I love him. Oh, but not in the romantic way. No, I love him as if he were my long lost brother.

I want to reach out and hug my long lost brother, but all I can do is sputter, “How did this happen?” I look around. My car is in a heap. It looks like a tin can that has been crushed. Did I hit the gate, I wonder? Did I forget to hit the button and the gate did not open and now I am dead and God has sent my long lost brother Matt to take me to heaven?

But I did hit the button—that much I remember
—
and the gate is wide open. I look at the Panda again, and I see that directly in front of it is a large Mercedes SUV with nary a scratch. It is only now that I notice Matt and I are not alone. Somebody is dabbing at my face with a fist full of tissues. It’s an uptight-looking, young woman wearing jeans, a sweater and bright blue horn-rimmed glasses.

“Does your head hurt?” somebody asks me. I am not sure who. A third person has emerged from the SUV—a sort of driver/body guard who wears a black suit and dark glasses.  I am so disoriented, I can’t tell which one of the three has spoken.

My head? No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels heavy though. I want to tell everybody that I need to lie down but I can’t quite manage the words. Instead, I stare at Matt and have an overwhelming desire to lean in and sniff that wonderful pine smell. So I do.

“Oh, wow!” says the uptight-looking woman, “She’s out of it.”

“Maggie, would you please map out the nearest hospital?” Matt says authoritatively. The uptight-looking woman nods her head. She whips out a bright, shiny, purple-clad Blackberry and begins to type madly with her thumbs. “Now if you’ll just come along with me,” Matt says as he takes hold of my elbow and guides me to the SUV. “I think we need to get you to a doctor. There now, that’s it, baby steps. Not to worry about a thing, my driver Carson will take us to the closest hospital.”

“I know the way, I live here,” I chime in, the heaviness in my head subsiding. “We need to turn around and head straight towards Arona, then take the first exit,” I gibber as Matt and Maggie both try to help me climb into the backseat of the Mercedes. Inside the SUV, Matt helps me fasten my seatbelt. “I’m so sorry, Signora,” he says, “we didn’t see you until the last second.” Carson mumbles something about it being impossible to see anything given all the trees and shrubs around the entrance of the villa. Then he turns the SUV around, mowing down several shrubs and a small pine as he does so. Deftly, he makes the left turn out onto the highway.

Less than thirty seconds later, Maggie decides she is done playing nursemaid and shoves the box of Kleenexes in my lap. I pull a tissue out of the box as the enormous Hollywood star, who is seated on my left, turns to me and says, “I am so sorry, Signora, with all the commotion, I haven’t even introduced myself.” He quickly adds, “I’m Matt so-and-so,” as if anybody, anywhere in the world, would not know.

I smile wide. I must look awful because Matt’s eyebrows draw together ferociously as he points to all the places on my face that are still bleeding. “You know, right there, on your forehead,” he says, and I raise a shaky hand to pat feebly at my wound. “Uh, that’s good, and now on your cheek, right there, and your chin too. My, you’re not a very big person, are you? That airbag tore you up.” Despite what he is saying, I am not thinking about my face or my injuries. What I am thinking is that outside of the absolutely cherubic faces of my children, Matt has the sweetest face I have ever seen in the world. And his woodland scent is so soothing.

I can’t help it. I stare at him and dab at my face. And sniff, discreetly.

To purchase the Hope Diamond click here

The Prince’s Secret

In her quest to write the perfect biography, Trudy Rue becomes one of the Prince’s closest confidantes. When he reveals a horrible secret about his past, and asks Trudy to use her access to his historical files to help, she tries to rise to the task. While working on the biography and trying to help the Prince, Trudy becomes embroiled in another mystery: who is the author of a small, brown book she and the Prince found in Holyrood Palace?
The mysteries will take Trudy from her small cottage to one of the oldest cemeteries in Scotland and onwards to small town on the coast of Northern Ireland. Can she help the Prince find out what really happened on the day his brother was killed, while simultaneously unravelling the mystery of the small brown book? And most importantly, will the Prince turn out to be her man, or simply a frog in disguise?

To purchase or check out The Prince’s Secret, the second book in the series
click
here.