“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know. She never told me. She just said she needed to take care of something and she’d be back in a few hours.” Hannah laced and unlaced her fingers. “But she never returned that day. Or the next. So here I am.”
They never returned to the ballroom. The Amethyst & Ice Ball finished without them.
Instead Zale had Emmeline escorted back to the Queen’s Chambers, his tuxedo jacket still draped across her shoulders. He headed to the parapet where he walked the tower for half an hour.
He didn’t believe her. Couldn’t.
Emmeline wasn’t Emmeline but an American secretary named Hannah Smith? Impossible.
There weren’t two Emmelines in the world, and Emmeline d’Arcy was such a rare beauty, so distinctive that there couldn’t be another woman who looked like her.
Or moved like her.
Or smiled like her.
Which meant that Emmeline wasn’t well, and he needed to get her away from Raguva, away from the pressures of the palace, far from the wedding preparations and all the attention that came with both.
She needed rest and medical care and he’d make sure she got the help she needed.
Back downstairs he gave instructions for his jet to be prepared for an early morning departure. He sent for Krek and told his butler that he needed a suitcase packed. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone … one week, two. See to it that Her Highness’s maid packs for her, too.”
Krek stood there a moment looking confused. “Pack another suitcase, Your Majesty?”
“No, Krek. She just needs one.”
“But Her Highness went downstairs with a small suitcase a little while ago. Her maid found this on the floor in the living room. She must have dropped it on the way out.” The butler reached into the pocket of his black pin-striped trousers and withdrew Emmeline’s phone. “Perhaps you could give it to her when you see her?”
Zale took the phone, turning it over in his hand. The infamous phone. The source of so much tension.
Silent, gut hard, chest tight, Zale flipped the phone open to scroll through her in-box. Text from Emmeline.
Text from Emmeline.
Text from Emmeline.
His chest squeezed tighter. He drew a rough, unsteady breath as Krek quietly left. For a moment Zale wanted to hurl the phone across the room but instead he sat down in the nearest chair to read the messages. He went back to the very beginning and read them all, incoming as well as outgoing since he had time, because Emmeline, or Hannah, or whoever she said she was, wouldn’t be going anywhere. The palace gates were always locked, and no one came or went without Zale’s knowledge and permission.
Just as Krek said, Hannah had packed a suitcase, and changed into traveling clothes, but she couldn’t get out of the palace. The gates were locked. The palace guard stood at attention. They refused to even make eye contact with her. She tried to persuade one guard and then another to open the gates but each one stared straight ahead as if she wasn’t even there.
Hannah gave up pleading and sat down on the palace’s front steps. It was a clear night, a cool night, and she was growing cold but she’d rather freeze to death on the steps than go back inside.
She was beginning to think she’d freeze to death, too, when Zale’s very deep voice spoke on the top step behind her. “Hannah Smith, you have some explaining to do.”
Her stomach plummeted. Goose bumps covered her arms. Slowly she rose knowing that this next conversation with Zale would be horrendous.
She was right. He grilled her for hours, repeating the same questions over and over. It was three-thirty in the morning now and Zale was growing angrier by the minute.
“It’s illegal what you’ve done,” he said harshly after she finally fell silent, worn-out from talking, exhausted from trying to make him understand. “You’ve broken too many laws to count. You didn’t just impersonate Princess Emmeline, you committed fraud as we well as perjury.”
She stared at him dry-eyed, her body trembling from fatigue. “I am sorry.”
“Not good enough.”
“How can I make amends? I want to make amends.”
“You can’t,” he answered brusquely. “And the more I think about it, the more certain I am that I should have you arrested. Locked up. Let you sit in jail for a couple of years—”
“Zale.”
But he couldn’t be placated. “What sort of person are you? Who does what you did?”
“I was never supposed to come here. I’d never agreed to come—”
“But you did.”
Hannah’s shoulders twisted