Royal - Danielle Steel Page 0,62
things settled.”
“What if they think I’m a fraud?”
“They might. But then you’ll be no worse off than you were before.” He had brought the original documents with him, at their request, and all the letters, and kept handwritten copies and photographs of the documents and letters for himself, and a set made for Annie too. He had brought the leather box with him in a bag too, in case it added to their credibility.
“Do they pay you to be a royal princess?” she asked with a mischievous look and he laughed.
“They give you an allowance. The entire royal family gets an allowance. It would be nice for you.” There was an upside to this for her, if Lucy’s story was true and they believed her.
“Is that why you did this?” She was worried when she said it.
“No, I did it because they’re your family, and you deserve to know them, and they have a right to know about you.” It had crossed his mind that if they accepted her, she might not want to live with him anymore. He wasn’t her father and he had never adopted her officially. It hadn’t seemed necessary, but he might lose her in the process. Even if he did, he knew that what he was doing was correct, for her. She had a right to a life he couldn’t give her, and they could. He wanted the best for her. And in her own naïve way, Lucy had too. Jonathan was just grateful that Lucy had told him the truth before she died. Otherwise, they would never have known.
They were both quiet as they got off the train, and he could see that Annie was anxious, and so was he. People probably tried to claim that they were part of the royal family every day. He wasn’t sure who would be there, the queen or the Queen Mother, or only the queen’s secretary.
They took a cab from the station to Buckingham Palace, to the same entrance he had used two days before, when he had dropped off the copies of the letters and documents.
A security guard checked their ID papers at the desk and called Sir Malcolm and told him they were there. “Miss Walsh and Mr. Baker.” She hadn’t been accepted as royal yet, and a moment later Sir Malcolm hurried down a hall, and they followed him into an elevator after Jonathan introduced Annie. He saw the secretary staring at her, as Annie gazed at the floor, and then they walked down a long carpeted hallway with portraits of members of the royal family all the way back through several centuries. They stopped at a tall door, where two uniformed palace guards opened the door and announced them, and Jonathan could feel his heart catch as he realized that at the end of the room Queen Alexandra was sitting at her desk. She stood to greet them as Jonathan bowed and Annie curtsied, and she invited them to sit down. An older woman walked into the room, and they both recognized Queen Anne the Queen Mother, for whom Annie realized now she had been named, since she was her grandmother. She was wearing a simple black suit. Jonathan and Annie stood and bowed and curtsied again. The Queen Mother had a photo album with her, and after a few moments of polite superficial conversation, she handed it to Annie.
“Would you like to take a look?” she asked, and Annie nodded, almost too intimidated to speak. “They’re photographs of your mother as a little girl and before she went to Yorkshire. You’re only a few years older than she was then.” Annie’s eyes grew wide as she carefully turned the pages. The photographs were old, but it was easy to see that Annie was the image of her. They looked like twins. The Queen Mother had seen it too when she walked into the room, and Queen Alexandra spoke to Jonathan and Annie then. She noticed the leather box that Jonathan was still holding, and she asked to see it. He handed it to her, and she opened it carefully, moved some of the contents aside to look for the initials, and stared at Jonathan with amazement when she found them.
“My father gave me this box on my eighteenth birthday. I gave it to Charlotte for her correspondence when she left for Yorkshire,” the Queen Mother said quietly. She looked deeply moved when she said it. “It’s a very unusual story,”