Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,85

to do so again. In fact I wanted to do as Dragomir suggested—have a good time with the other young women and enjoy the wedding celebrations. I just wished that Darcy wasn’t counting on me.

Chapter 26

The long gallery, Bran Castle

Still November 18

I was still toying with my cake when Matty came wandering in, looking distracted. “Isn’t Nicholas back yet?” she asked. I noted that she pronounced his name in the French way, “Nicolah,” and didn’t call him Nicky or Nick as his brother did.

“I haven’t seen him,” I replied.

“Really, what a ridiculous thing to do, to go out shooting in weather like this. Aren’t men silly—at least some men.”

She perched on the sofa beside me, her eyes on my cake.

“My mother says that men are only interested in two things, killing things and sex,” I said, trying to brighten her mood.

“Not all men,” she said, looking away again. “In Paris I met artists, writers, men who had a romantic side and could express themselves.”

“My mother claims they are all fairies.”

“Not all,” she said. She got up and went over to a tall, arched window. Daylight was fading fast. “It’s starting to snow again, you know. I hope they don’t get lost. I suppose I’d better tell Dragomir and send servants out to find them.”

And she left me. She had only been gone a few minutes when I heard raised voices and the clatter of boots on stairs, and Nicholas and Anton came into the room, snowflakes still dusting their hair and eyelashes. Their faces were alight and they were laughing.

“Your bride was worried about you,” I said as Nicholas passed me.

“It was rather an absurd thing to do, I suppose,” Nicholas said. “We got lost. Max fell into a snowdrift and had to be dug out.”

“And after all that, we come home empty-handed,” Anton added. “But it was great fun. And one hates being cooped up inside all day.”

They made a beeline for the coffeepots and cakes, then came to sit beside me.

“What was it you wanted to tell me earlier,” Nicholas asked, “when that brute Patrascue dragged you off? He wasn’t arresting you for the murder or anything, was he?”

“Actually he was,” I said. “He found a small glass bottle, containing what he believed was the poison, in a chest in my room.”

“Good God,” Nicholas said. “But surely even someone as thick as Patrascue didn’t think that you’d hidden it there, did he?”

“I did point out that I could easily have thrown it out of the window into the snowy wilderness where it wouldn’t have been found for months,” I said.

“So the question is who planted it on you?” Anton asked.

“The assassin, I presume, as he had to make a quick getaway,” Nicholas suggested.

“Or Patrascue himself, which I consider more likely,” I said. “He wanted to scare me into implicating Dragomir.”

“Oh, so he thinks Dragomir did it, does he? Interesting. I had the same suspicions myself,” Nicholas said.

“In his case I don’t think he cares whether Dragomir was guilty or not. He has a long-standing feud with the man—I couldn’t exactly get to the bottom of it, but he’d love to frame Dragomir. I didn’t play along and refused to be intimidated.”

“Quite right,” Anton said. “I love British girls, don’t you, Nick? Such pillars of strength. Think of Boudicca.” He reached across and gave my knee a squeeze.

“Behave yourself, Toni. You can’t have more than one at a time, you know,” Nick said, laughing.

“I don’t see why not. The more the merrier, that’s my motto. In fact I’m rather miffed that I wasn’t born a Turk. I’d have enjoyed a harem. It would have been a challenge to see how many I could get through in one night.”

“You are offending this young lady’s sensibilities,” Nicholas said.

“No, really,” I said, laughing, but Anton stood up. “I shall go and find Belinda,” he said. “She loves to hear of my exploits and she is quite willing to add to them.”

“That young man will have to learn to take life seriously one day,” Nicholas said as soon as Anton was out of hearing. “Father rather despairs of him. Too bad he was born a prince. He’d have done well as a film star in Hollywood, I feel—or better yet a stuntman.”

I looked around. The ladies had begun their bridge game. An old man was holding forth to several of the young counts. I moved closer to Nicholas. “About what I wanted to tell you,” I said.

“Oh, yes. You’ve discovered something important?”

“Very important,