Royal - Danielle Steel Page 0,61

might all love each other, and somehow I think it would make Lucy happy.”

They threw away their paper plates from lunch then, and Annie left him to walk slowly back to the house. She needed time to think about everything her father had said. She was a royal princess, and had been stolen at birth by the woman she knew and loved as her mother. It sounded like a fairytale, and Annie didn’t know what to believe.

Jonathan saw her walk into the barn later that afternoon and saddle up one of the horses. She took a horse he had discouraged her from riding before. He was a stallion who was barely broken, skittish and hard to manage, although she had never had any trouble with him. He saw her leave, heading toward one of the trails at a slow trot, and then he saw her take off across the hills at a blistering gallop, riding as hard as she could. He stood watching her for a minute, hoping no harm would come to her, as she flew across the meadow at breakneck speed, and for once, knowing what she was wrestling with and had to face the next day, he didn’t blame her a bit, or try to stop her. She was riding like the wind.

Chapter 10

Annie was almost silent on the brief hour’s train ride from Kent to London. She sat staring out the window, thinking of the only mother she had ever known, trying to understand who she had been at nineteen, to take a baby she believed no one wanted, and claim it as her own for twenty years. Annie couldn’t fathom why Lucy had never told her the truth. She had done it out of love for Annie, and in time, the lie had become too big to admit. She had in fact been a wonderful mother, and perhaps she had been right and saved her from an orphanage, if the royal family had rejected her as an infant. She would never know now what they would have done.

Annie could even less understand her place in the family she had inherited overnight. She was suddenly a royal princess with all the burdens, responsibilities, expectations, and confusion that entailed. She had no idea what was expected of her, if they would accept her, or accuse Jonathan of having concocted a lie, and Annie of being an imposter. What if the royal family didn’t believe them? Annie still couldn’t believe it herself.

And what had her “real” mother been like? Princess Charlotte, who died at seventeen, hours after Annie was born. She didn’t know what to think, or believe, or who she was now. It was all so confusing, and she wondered if they would treat her like a fraud at the palace. Why would they believe a history as complicated as hers? She was twenty-one years old, and it was a lot to absorb. Whatever would happen at Buckingham Palace, both of her mothers were dead now. She felt like the motherless orphan she was as she stared out the window, and then turned to Jonathan with an unhappy expression.

“I want to go to Australia,” she said in a dead voice.

“Now? Why? What brought that on?” It was an odd idea to him.

“Female jockeys can ride in amateur races there. I want to see what it’s like and sign up.”

“How about an apprenticeship at the queen’s stables here instead? She has some fabulous racehorses and the best stables in the country. You could do worse.” They might be open to that idea, if they believed her story at all.

“I’d rather go to Australia,” she said, trying not to think of the meeting they were going to. She had worn her only appropriate dress to meet the queen, who was supposedly her aunt. It was the black dress she had worn to her mother’s funeral, and Jonathan recognized it immediately. It suited Annie’s somber mood, as they headed for their fateful appointment in London. He was nervous too, but tried not to show it. He wanted to give Annie the courage to face whatever came next. His worst fear was that they would be blamed for Lucy’s youthful but very grave mistake. However innocent her intentions, she had robbed them of a child. It explained to him some of Lucy’s obsession with the royals.

“I can’t afford to send you there,” Jonathan said apologetically about Australia. “I think you should stick around here for now, until you get