a facet to her that made him wonder if she was entirely trustworthy. He had a feeling that a secret like his would be too great for her to keep to herself and she would be compelled to share it, for love or money.
He couldn’t say why he chose Mrs. Honeycutt, either. She was the only one who’d ever guessed the truth. She was the only who had ever looked at him closely enough to notice the things that she had about him. Even Mariska had never commented on the patch of white in his hair.
It was entirely possible that it was because of Donovan, too—that Mrs. Honeycutt had kept the man’s secret, had even harbored him.
Maybe he was a fool, but the moment Marek started to speak it was too late—he could no longer contain the truth.
He told her he was raised by two people he thought were his aunt and uncle on the Tophian Sea in a remote part of Wesloria. From the time he could remember, he was told that his parents had died of cholera. Marek accepted this explanation, just as he accepted that he was deaf because of an accident—a bad fall and blow to his head when he was only two years old. “My childhood was idyllic,” he said.
He told her about his life growing up on the sea, of the days spent on a fishing boat with his uncle, bringing in the catch. Of the tutoring his aunt insisted upon, the wide range of subjects in which he was educated, her determination that he learn several languages. It was odd, he admitted, that a common lad in a common house was tutored in this way...but he didn’t question it. His aunt and uncle wanted the best for him. If he’d known at the time a substantial portion of the income his uncle brought in went to his education, he’d have given it little thought.
He told her he never aspired to anything more than to captain a fishing vessel, like his uncle. “My dreams, my hopes were all rather ordinary. I was happy,” he said. “I enjoyed my life. I never had reason to believe it should be anything other than what it was...until I was seventeen years old.”
That was when his aunt had become gravely ill. She was dying of a cancer. Days before she succumbed to it, she called him to her deathbed and told him something that changed his life forever.
“That’s when she told you who you were?” Mrs. Honeycutt asked, wide-eyed.
He nodded. “She was not my aunt. She’d been my nursemaid at the palace.”
“Your nursemaid kidnapped you?” she asked, clearly stunned.
“She was part of it,” he said.
The woman he had always believed to be the sister of his poor mother was no relation to his mother or to him. The mother his aunt had described never existed. “I should have realized this,” Marek admitted. “Neither my aunt nor uncle had the same coloring as I do,” he said. They were both very pale, whereas his skin color was tawnier. His aunt—nursemaid—confessed to him that he was the firstborn son of the King of Wesloria, presumed kidnapped and dead. She confirmed the history that Marek knew through his studies—the king assumed the throne at a young age after the death of his father. He was green, untried, and there was a lot of strife in the country. Rumors abounded that members of the king’s family—cousins, uncles, what have you—and other disruptive factions wanted to invade Alucia. But Maksim’s father had been an advocate of peace, and the young king vowed to continue on that path.
“It was the half brother of the Alucian king who was the most troublesome. He was—and still is—hungry for power and wealth, and will stop at nothing to get it. If he can’t depose the Alucian king and claim the throne, then he’ll depose the Weslorian king and claim it.”
“Felix Oberon,” Mrs. Honeycutt said.
Marek paused. “You know of him?”
“Yes. He tried to kidnap my brother-in-law.”
Of course. Marek had read about the attempt to kidnap the crown prince of Alucia when he was in London two years ago. The plot had gone wrong, resulting in the death of the prince’s private secretary. “Felix Oberon has been a threat to King Maksim and his family since the king ascended the throne. I believe I am living proof of it,” Marek said darkly. “His claim to the Weslorian throne is through a distant relation. There are many in Wesloria who