I actually knew Francisco. And I definitely couldn’t waste the time it would take to explain it all to him. I’d just have to talk to the people at the ticket booth. Tell them who I was and get them to contact someone who could let me in.
This was, I thought with a smile, what I got for falling in love with a prince. The difficulties of actually getting to his house without being branded as some loony fangirl.
I paid the driver using my card (and thank God he let me do that, since I’d completely ignored the fact that I would need euros, not dollars, here), and got out with my bag in tow. Then I headed for the ticket booth, where I got in line and waited my turn.
When I finally got to the window, though, it became apparent that my problem was going to be bigger than I had anticipated.
“I know Prince Francisco,” I repeated for the fifth time. “No, he’s not expecting me, but if you’ll just call him, I’m sure he’ll tell you—”
“We are not in the habit of calling the prince for every girl who says she knows him, miss,” the girl at the window said sharply. Again.
And instead of letting me repeat myself one more time, asking for them to call Francisco and have me buzzed in, or whatever it was they did here, she closed the window on me.
I could see her picking up her phone and calling someone—security, I assumed—while she watched me closely. She was talking, and then nodding, and looking as if she’d probably just told someone important that they had some crazy girl at the front window saying she knew the prince.
I wasn’t fooling myself into believing she’d given in and called Francisco directly. She’d been very clear on the fact that she didn’t believe in doing that.
And that meant she was probably calling someone who was going to get me into trouble. The last thing I needed right now. Francisco might have ended up in jail in my country, but he also had a royal family to get him back out. I had no such thing—and that meant I couldn’t afford to get thrown in jail.
I was just ducking down to grab my bag, in preparation for hightailing it out of there, when a tall, muscly man in a black suit showed up next to me.
When I looked up at him, I saw absolutely no expression his face. But to my surprise, he just held a hand out to me.
“Miss, I have orders from the king to bring you to the palace,” he said in monotone.
Wait, what?
“Huh?” I asked. Hadn’t that girl just told me I couldn’t go? What had she told them that had me now traveling to the residence?
Wait, was it so they could interrogate me or something?
The girl in question opened the window and spoke clearly. “I called security, miss, and they spoke to the king. It seems that he has heard of you.”
My mind went completely blank at that. Because the king had heard of me.
Francisco had told his brother about me.
And that meant, I guessed, that I at least got to go to the palace. Though whether I made it all the way to Francisco or not, I supposed, was still up for debate.
Chapter 26
Francisco
I was just settling down with a book and a glass of whiskey, trying to give my brain something to think about other than my not-yet-successful plan to bring Erika here to Orlo, when I heard a knock at the door.
And not just any door. The one that led to the outside world and looked, from the outside, like a door in any old house. The one that members of the household never used.
I frowned and got up, immediately expecting the worst. If anyone was coming from within the palace, they would be using the door on the other side of my suite, which led to the courtyard at the center of all the different wings. That was by far the most direct way to get to me if someone had wanted me for palace business.
The people who came to the front door from the outside—which bordered on the lawns, but also had quick and easy access to the street (something I’d insisted on having when I was given my choice of wings as a teenager)—were here on private business. And that almost always meant trouble.
Though, I thought quickly, if they were here on secret private business, they