Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,107
own children?”
“Because I asked my daughter to invite her,” the king said in a voice taut with annoyance. “My son let it be known that he had selected her as his future bride and we wanted her to have a chance to know us better. So you will please treat her with the same respect you accord to us. Is that clear?”
Patrascue gave the merest hint of a bow. “Of course, Majesty. But if she is involved in the cold-blooded murder of an important man, surely your son would wish to know the truth about this before he entered into marriage with such a woman.”
“Of course I’m not involved,” I said.
Siegfried came over to me. “Georgiana, did these men hurt you? You look terrible. You are bleeding.”
“Not these men,” I said. “I fell into a dungeon. Count Dragomir did not believe me but there really is an oubliette in this castle. My maid is still down there.”
“An oubliette in this castle? Surely it is just a legend.”
“I assure you it’s very real,” I said.
“How did you come to stumble upon this oubliette?” the king asked.
I hesitated. I was in a foreign country about to implicate its princess. What if nobody believed me? It would be easy enough for the king to agree with Patrascue that Darcy and I were the guilty ones. But if I were her father, I’d want to know the truth, wouldn’t I? Maybe I could make her confess somehow.
“Would you ask your daughter to join us, Your Majesty?” I said. “I believe she can help prove my innocence.”
“Of course. Please tell the princess her presence is required in my private sitting room.” One of Patrascue’s men bowed and departed.
“Perhaps you are innocent, Lady Georgiana,” Patrascue said. “Perhaps it is this Mr. O’Mara who hid the poison in your room to implicate you while he fled with the body. We have heard rumors about Mr. O’Mara. He is a ruthless man and very interested in making money, is this not correct? A certain scandal at a casino?”
Darcy actually laughed. “The scandal was that I was chucked out because I kept winning. They thought I was cheating. Actually I was just damned lucky. The luck of the Irish, don’t you know? But let me assure you that I’m the son of a respected Irish lord. Killing people for money is not something I’d do. Killing people because they annoy me, on the other hand . . .” He stared hard at Patrascue. If the matter hadn’t been so serious I would have laughed. Darcy didn’t seem to be particularly worried.
“Then why are you here, Mr. O’Mara? I understand from interviewing the other young men that you are not a particular friend of Prince Nicholas.”
“We were good friends at school,” Nicholas said angrily. “The rest doesn’t concern you.”
Suddenly it struck me that Nicholas might have anticipated some kind of trouble at this wedding and Darcy had been invited to protect him.
“But understand that he is here at my invitation and I have absolute confidence that he has nothing to do with the death of Field Marshal Pirin. The whole suggestion is ludicrous. You should be looking for—”
He broke off as Matty came in, looking puzzled and concerned. When she saw me, a relieved smile crossed her face.
“There you are, Georgie,” she said. “I wondered where you had disappeared to. We were all looking for you.”
I smiled back. “Oh, I think you know very well where I went to, since you sent me there.”
“What do you mean? One minute you were following me up the stairs, but when I reached the top, I turned around and you weren’t there.”
“Maybe that was because I was in the process of falling down the oubliette,” I said.
She gave a tight, nervous laugh. “Oubliette? There’s no such thing. Believe me, we hunted for it when we were children, didn’t we, Siegfried?”
“Then allow me to show you,” I said. “My maid is still trapped in the dungeon below and it’s about time someone rescued her.”
I marched them back through the halls until I recognized the place where the door had to be.
“Would you please show us the door in the paneling, Your Highness?” I asked Matty.
She shrugged, stepped forward and pushed open a section of the wall.
“You’ll see a staircase leads up from here,” I said, “and one of these flagstones tips an unsuspecting victim down into a dungeon. I’m not sure which.”
“But I go up and down this way all the time,” Matty said.