The Secret Princess

“No, I’m good. Thanks.” She thought of the coffee and gum, which were all she’d had for twelve hours. “Unless you’re sending him, anyway?”

He flashed a brilliant smile and held up his index finger. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She watched him go out the front door, apparently heedless of the cold, and bend down to the passenger window of the limo. It opened and he said something to the driver inside, then stood back up, gave two flat-handed pats on the roof of the car and came back in while the limo edged out of sight. He came back over to her, the crisp scent of cold and snow clinging to him.

“If you’ve finished reading the affidavit, you can see here the receipt for a car purchased on the afternoon that they left the ambassador’s mansion. That car fits the description of the one that was in the accident.”

Amy listened to his story, following along with his visual aids, eyewitness accounts, maps and various other pieces of evidence that made his story seem plausible. She believed he might have accurately traced the movements of the princess and her family to a point, and then moved onto her own history.

“Like your mother, you excelled in literature in college. This course on comparative literature looks quite challenging.”

“Wait a minute—”

He turned a page and raised an eyebrow at her. “But I see you did have some trouble with mathematics.”

“I did not!” She was immediately defensive. “First of all, Professor Tanner lost an assignment that accounted for thirty-three percent of my grade, then penalized me for it, and second of all, that is none of your business.”

“Professor Tanner claims that you never turned the work in.”

Outrage rose in Amy. “You talked to him? You actually contacted my former teachers before you ever even met—” She stopped when she saw the amusement in his eyes. “You’re kidding, right?” she asked soberly.

“Right.” He smiled. “My apologies.” He didn’t look sorry at all. He flipped through some more pages. “I see you were also engaged after college to a…Ben Singer.”

“Do you also see that he dumped me for another woman, claiming I was ‘emotionally inaccessible’?” she asked sharply.

He leveled a blue gaze on her. “No. Are you?”

“No.” She didn’t mention that she hadn’t had a relationship last longer than a month since, or that her friends joked that they wouldn’t take one of her boyfriends seriously unless he made it to day thirty-two. “I’m in full possession of my emotions,” she contended.

He laughed. “You seem uncomfortable with personal questions.”

She was. “Only because I don’t think my private life has anything to do with this.”

“On the contrary, I believe your private life has everything to do with your heritage. To say nothing of your royal duties.”

She shook her head. “I think it’s a bit early still to be talking about my royal duties. I am in no way convinced that my parents are who you say they are. I mean, it’s very difficult to believe they came so far off the royal course as to end up in Dentytown.”

“Keep looking” was all he said, indicating the papers she held.

As he must have predicted, her skepticism was in for a shock when she got to the end of the pile. With only a couple of papers left, he pulled out a stiff piece of paper with “Princess Lily, Lufthan Palace” scrawled across the back in spidery script.

“Here,” he said gravely, “is the last known picture taken of Princess Lily. Your mother.”

Amy took the faded color photo from him slowly. Her first reaction was that her eyes were playing tricks on her.

Her second reaction was to think this was a dream. This had to be a dream.

Because there, in her trembling hand, was a glossy photograph of a woman with long wavy auburn hair, pale blue eyes and a small cleft in her chin. A woman who, if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn was herself.

“Okay, whoa, you’re going where? With whom?” Mara’s face registered all of the incredulity and skepticism that had been churning in Amy’s stomach since Franz Burgess had first walked through her door and told his story.

It wasn’t as if she’d just magically gotten over her doubts, but when she’d seen that photograph of Princess Lily, it was as if someone had punched her in the gut. She decided to ignore the lure of logic and take a chance, for once in her life, by getting to the bottom of the story.

“What do your parents think about this?”

“We spent the entire night talking about it,” Amy said. “And they’re with me—this warrants investigation.”

“You’ve all lost your minds.”

“Maybe, but we’re not complete fools. My father did call the embassy and confirm that Franz Burgess is the private secretary to Prince Wilhelm.

“That’s a relief. I guess.”

“Look,” Amy said, sticking the last of her instruction Post-its on the wall next to the desk, “I figure this will make a great story, if nothing else. Think of the publicity we could get for Blue Yonder—maybe I could do an editorial piece for Coastal Life or some other magazine. ‘I Was a Princess for a Day,’ that kind of thing.” That wasn’t the real reason she was going, but she could barely admit to herself how much she wanted to find her roots, much less share that with someone else.

Mara screwed up her eyebrows. “And you’re not going to be devastated if this all turns out to be a hoax?”

“Absolutely not,” Amy answered vehemently. “Although I get the feeling this isn’t a hoax. A mistake, probably, but I don’t think anyone is setting this up as a cruel joke to make me look stupid.”

“I can’t think of anyone who’d want to do that to you,” Mara agreed, then pressed her lips together for a moment before asking, “Have you thought about what you’ll do if it turns out to be true?”

Amy stopped shuffling papers for a moment. “What, that I’m a princess?” She dropped the papers into a file folder.

Mara nodded excitedly. “Can you imagine?”

Amy paused and tried to imagine. Princess Amy of Lufthania. It was ridiculous enough to make her laugh. “No, I can’t imagine. I’d like to, but I just can’t.” She sat heavily in her chair and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, Mara, do you think this is crazy? Am I insane to even think about going through with this?”

Mara sat on the edge of the desk and patted Amy’s shoulder reassuringly. “To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure this is all that far-fetched.”

Amy raised an eyebrow.

“No, I’m serious,” Mara said. “You don’t know what your life was before the accident when you were three. The dates fit. The physical description fits. Maybe it would be crazy not to investigate further.”

Those were the very thoughts that had made Amy decide to go. “Thanks,” she said, putting her hand on Mara’s. “I needed to hear that.”

“Anytime. Now, don’t you worry about a thing while you’re gone. I can handle the store and the orders and anything that might come down the pike. You just go and have some fun, okay? If you don’t bring back a crown, you can at least bring back an outrageous tale, huh? And maybe a souvenir or two.”

Amy gave a laugh. “Yeah, an ‘I went to Lufthania to be a princess but all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ T-shirt.” She opened the desk drawer to retrieve her cell phone. She dropped it into her purse and said, “I hope this works in Lufthania, just in case I need to call and have you come rescue me.”

“There are always local police,” Mara said seriously.

“Oh, Mara, I was kidding. Please don’t start worrying about me.”

“I’m not worrying about you. I’m worrying about me.”

“You?”

“Yeah, if it turns out you’re really a princess and you move off to another country, will I still have a job? Can I be a lady-in-waiting?”

“And waiting and waiting.” Amy smiled. “You bet.”