The Prince's Secret (The Royal Biography Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) (10 page)

It’s all I can do to contain myself as we drive from Edinburgh to the Cotswolds the next day.

“Well, were the letters everything you hoped they would be?” Alex questions, and I’m happy to see a grin on his face.

“Indeed they were,” I smile smugly and press down on the gas.

“Well, come now… according to all the papers I am besotted with you, but don’t tease me, my beloved…tell me what you read.”

It’s true; the papers are still carrying on with “
After Acting Irrationally in Scotland the Prince Flees with Biographer.”

The Palace is going to have to talk fast to set the press straight on our relationship. I am going to have to talk fast to get Meg, my editor, straightened out. Over the last few days she has left no less than 15 messages asking what is going on, and what did I think I was doing locking myself in a cemetery at night?

“It says here, in this fine newspaper that we picked up at the gas station, that Mrs. Taylor Anne Barnabus of no. 24 High Street in Portstewart, Northern Ireland swears she saw the Prince of Wales in a shaggy black wig along with his biographer walking down the street,” Alex reads.

Oh dear, I clench my jaw. How are we going to explain that? I decide not to worry about it for now, and return to talking about the papers we found inside the cherub.

“Those vellum sheets, with the exception of one, appear to be Mary Beaton’s attempts to copy Mary, Queen of Scots handwriting. They are basically practice attempts at writing the Casket Letters.”

“So, with that, my dear,” the Prince smirks, looking about a million times better than he did yesterday. “You have just solved a 500 year old mystery.”

“I believe I have.” I wonder if this frustrates him, that we have resolution for Queen Mary but not for him.

“You know, all’s well that ends well for Mary. Bothwell got his comeuppance at the hand of his first wife Anna Tronds,” I continue with a smirk of my own.

“Really?” Alex asks with a grin. He’s probably tired of hearing me drone on and on about Mary, Queen of Scots. Our journey has been long and I told him every detail I knew about her life.

“When Queen Mary was imprisoned by her half-brother after being captured at Carberry Hill. Bothwell escaped. Stupidly, he sailed to Copenhagen. He was arrested and taken to Bergen, Norway, where his first wife lived. Anna complained about his treatment of her, how he had taken all her money and then abandoned her. The Norwegians took her side and threw him in prison. Later, when King Frederick of Norway learned that Bothwell was wanted for the murder of Lord Darnley, Bothwell was sent to the notorious Dragsholm Castle where he lived in appalling conditions until he went insane.”

“Mercy,” the Prince says, “that puts a few things in perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” I ask tentatively.

“Lizzie, this whole last few days of sheer craziness puts a lot of things in perspective. And you know what, I know it seems absurd, but somehow talking to Mabel did help. Maybe, I do remember things wrong. Maybe it was the power of suggestion from hearing things when I was only four. Mabel reminded me of an incident where my cousin Rose and I were watching the news coverage of my brother’s death, and I remember my mother flying into the nursery in a rage and yanking the plug straight out of the wall.”

“Wow, why?”

“Because the reporter was saying that there were all kinds of wild speculation going on, namely that I had actually shoved Albert out the window. I have to say that if I think about it, I can’t remember the day of Albert’s death in detail. It’s a bit of a haze. I’m not so sure any more what happened. But I do vividly remember that reporter talking about rumors that I had shoved Albert out the window. And maybe, that is where I got the idea that I did it.”

He stops talking and stares out the window.

“So I’ve been thinking and…” he hesitates, “I think it’s time for me to let it all go. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Otherwise you will become insane like Bothwell.”

“Precisely,” he agrees and leans back against the headrest, closing his eyes. We’re still both exhausted from everything that’s happened. As the Prince rests, I wonder if 500 years from now, somebody will figure out what exactly happened on the day Albert died. Maybe someday someone will find a piece of paper marked “Top Secret” and all will be revealed. For now, Alex will have to make peace with not knowing for sure what happened that day. I wonder if Mary made peace, going to her grave, not knowing who had forged the letters that looked so much like her handwriting. I imagine in the end, Mary didn’t care. I imagine in the end, she simply forgave the others. I hope, at last, Alex has been able to forgive himself, although he never really did anything wrong. 

I glance over at him again, he looks so peaceful, half asleep in the passenger seat. Do I dare disturb him?

I dare.

“There was something else I read in those letters too,” I add mysteriously.

“What?” he asks, his eyes flying open. I startled him awake.

“I need to reread the letter at home. Preferably after I’ve showered and…”

“And we order in some Chinese food.”

“We?” I ask.

“You don’t mind having me for one more night, do you, Lizzie. Honest to God, I am too tired to drive home. Tomorrow I’ve got to return to London and to my appointments.”

“Of course, I don’t mind. I have two guest bedrooms, neither of them has ever been used. You go back to sleep. I’ll tell you after I reread the letters exactly what I’ve discovered.”

******

That night we watch the latest reports on the incident in Greyfriars Kirkyard.

“They stole several tombstones, just ripped them right out of the ground. And they smashed up a really lovely cherub, just tore the head right off,” the cemetery keeper, a Mr. Marvin Upshod is telling a reporter.

I laugh, which causes pain in my mid-section. My ribs still hurt from being tackled.

“Dear Lizzie, I really did a number on you when I lept on top of you at the cemetery.” Alex’s face is etched with little worry lines.

“I’ll be fine.” I give a dismissive gesture. “You did what you had to do. I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I was so afraid the McKenzie Poltergeist was after us.” I click off the television and lean back against the couch.

“Alright then, we’ve finished with the Chinese food. You’ve had a shower, I’ve had a shower. You reread the papers, I saw you. Are you going to tell me what they said?”

I stare at him for a moment, taking in his whole smiling face. I love him. I love him like I’ve never loved anyone in my life and I secretly wish what they were saying on the news were true. I wish that Alex was besotted with me. I wish he were a fool for love and that he would follow me on every crazy adventure. But then I remember the voice of the other woman on the phone, and I’m sure the dreamy expression I am wearing disappears off my face.

“So what did that last letter say?” he questions seriously.

“Before I get to that, I would like to point out that we still have two mysteries on our hands. The first is, with regards to finding Mary Beaton’s diary inside the chest in Holyrood, we still don’t know how it got there.”

“Schnipps is still reviewing video tape of the apartments to see who placed it in the chest-of-drawers,” Alex replies thoughtfully.

“And two, we still don’t know how that strange missive from Scotland Yard got in your Year Five Memorabilia box.”

“I suspect someday, some historian like you will figure out that mystery.”

“I suspect so,” I agree.

“Well?”

“Alright, here it is. The last letter we found was not a practice letter for the Casket Letters.”

“No?”

“No. The last letter was a letter from Mary Beaton asking the Countess of Erlington to look after something which was very special to the Queen.”

“What?”

“Her second son.”

“Her what? Lizzie, you’ve gone daft. Mary only had one child, James I by Lord Darnley.”

“Not according to that letter. According to that letter a second child was born to Mary Stewart after Bothwell fled and Mary was imprisoned. By that time, James Moray and Mary Beaton were thick as thieves, and when the child was born nobody was told. Moray sent the child into the care of Mary Beaton, under the condition that she never tell a soul who the child’s real parents were. It looks like Mary Beaton kept that promise until she grew ill in her later years, and then she pleaded with the Countess to look after the boy and to let the world know who the child was. Listen.”

I grab the piece of vellum off my desk, and sit back down beside Alex on the couch, reading the last line of Mary Beaton’s letter, “My dearest friend Jane, tell them all someday that this is the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Bothwell and that if James I should die, then this boy, whom I have christened Charles, shall be the King of Scotland.”

“My god!” Alex jumps up. “Lizzie, do you know what this means?”

“I do.”

“We have to find out what happened to the child.”

“I like your enthusiasm.”

“The Stewart line died out,” he muses to himself.

“I realize that.”

“But perhaps it didn’t, perhaps the boy survived.”

“I know,” I say, as excited as Alex. “Perhaps out there somewhere is the descendant of this boy Charles and that man would have his own claim to the Scottish throne.”

“Ah, now wait a second, my father is the King of Scotland,” he says, sinking down on the couch beside me.

“Absolutely, your father is the true King of Scotland. Still, it’s romantic isn’t it, to think that somewhere out there a descendent of Mary Queen of Scots might be walking around, not having any idea who he is. How wonderful it would be to find him, this long, lost potential King of Scotland.”

Alex considers this for a moment. Then he says, “I suppose it is romantic, but not nearly as romantic as this.”

Quite unexpectedly, he leans over and kisses me hard on the mouth. Well, perhaps it wasn’t all that unexpected, because I find my hands going around his neck and I kiss him back even harder than he is kissing me.

I should stop. I should stop to contemplate what madness has brought us to this point and what good could possibly come out of such a kiss. We’ve been through a lot in the last two days and Alex has been in emotional turmoil over his brother’s death. This is just a manifestation of his turmoil. We shouldn’t be kissing like two manic teenagers.

The prince must be thinking the same thing, for abruptly he stops. My heart sinks all the way into my shoes.

He looks at me for a moment, then he murmurs “Lizzie Rue, it’s true what the press says, I am besotted.”

Besotted, there’s that word again. Mary Beaton was besotted with James Hepburn. The Press called the Prince besotted in the papers. Besotted is the word of the moment.

“Do you feel the same for me?” he stops kissing, and sounds quite vulnerable as he watches me closely.

I manage a small “mmm, most definitely” and press my lips back to his.

~The End~

Keep clicking, after the recipe section meet Lily Bilbury, protagonist extraordinaire of the Sweet Delicious Madness series as well as Magda Pendragon, protagonist of Magda Pendragon, Heir to Arthur a Harry Potteresque fantasy story with plenty of mysteries. Lastly, meet the charming protagonist of Murder at Mudswell Manor, Abigail Dei and her mother-in-law Dessie, as the live out a Downtown Abbey dream by moving to Great Britain. There they become involved in a cozy so classic, Agatha would have approved. Tea, anyone?

Recipes for the Prince’s Secret:

Eggplant Parmesan

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 large egg

4 3/4 - inch eggplant slices

1 cup prepared Marinara sauce

1/2 cup grated fontina

1. Position rack in center of oven, preheat to 375 Fahrenheit.

2. Coat baking sheet with Pam or similar cooking spray

3. Place flour in shallow dish such as pie plate. Add 1/2 cup panko and Parmesan to a second dish. Add egg to a third dish, whisk.

4. Season eggplant with salt and pepper. Then coat slices with flour, then egg, then panko mixture, press panko to eggplant to make sure it sticks. Coat slices with cooking spray and arrange in dish.

5. Bake 12-15 minutes, until bottoms are brown and crispy. Flip them over to other side and bake 12-15 minutes. Eggplant is finished when both sides are brown. Eggplant should be tender.

6. Spread marinara sauce over eggplant. Sprinkle with fontina and bake 4 to 5 minutes until topping is heated through.