That fear he’d just mentioned might have returned if she didn’t hear his sigh. She kept her eyes averted, and he said nothing else for several long minutes.
“So which question was I remiss in answering for you?” he finally said.
She relaxed when she heard his calm, professional tone. He was behaving like the captain of the palace guard, not like a seductive rogue.
She was able to match his calm now. “We both know you never would have locked me up unless you’d truly ruled out the possibility that I am Frederick’s daughter. After everything I’ve told you, how can you still be so firm in your disbelief?”
She had to look up to gauge his reaction. He seemed to be hesitating to say anything at all, but then his eyes abruptly narrowed.
“You don’t realize the seriousness of what you did. We don’t look kindly upon anyone who enters the palace with weapons when we are very much aware that there are people who want to harm our king.”
“You can’t really be accusing me of being an assassin!” she said incredulously.
“I didn’t say that. Yet you haven’t explained to my satisfaction why you came here so heavily armed.”
“I did explain. The pistols were my first defense, the daggers a last resort, but all of them were for my own protection and nothing else. But that doesn’t negate your suspicions, does it?”
“I’ve told you I will keep an open mind.”
She nodded, though she didn’t believe him one bit. He was too quick to accuse her of other reasons for being there and was flatly discounting the real reason.
Exasperated, she nodded to the rapiers on the wall. “I know how to use those. Would you like a demonstration?”
He burst out laughing. “You want to prove you’re an assassin?”
“I believe it would prove I’m not, because that’s not a weapon an assassin would use, is it? Sword fighting is as much about self-defense as it is about offense.”
He was still smiling when he said, “You appear to have an answer for everything, revealing how quick-witted you are. An excellent memory would go hand in hand with the intelligence you reveal with your every word.”
She tsked. “So I am part of some elaborate plot and have memorized my lines well? Is that what you really think?”
He stared at her for a long moment. His humor was gone, and the intensity in his blue eyes was unnerving her again. But she recognized this wasn’t passion, this was suspicion. She had to resist the urge to glance away from him.
He finally said, “I apologize.”
For his amusement? Or for his pouncing on anything that might support his false conclusions?
She decided to be blunt. “I was central to a plot, but my role in it was to die. Poppie foiled that plot by removing me from it.”
“What turned a murder into an abduction instead?”
“I smiled at him. Very sentimental I know, but from that moment on, he became my protector. And I owe him my life. Had someone else been sent to kill me, I would be dead.” Because the captain was being somewhat cordial again, she also answered his earlier question. “You asked about my other traveling companions. We hired coaches as we crossed Europe, the drivers came with them. The boy, Henry, is an orphan whom Poppie and I are very fond of. There’s no scheme, as you put it. We thought it best not to even tell Henry who I really am.”
“And your guardian’s real name?”
“I gave you his name, it’s the name he used all of our years in England, even the name I thought was mine until he told me about my father.”
“You call this being truthful? Farmer is not a Lubinian name.”
“I call it protecting a man who is like a father to me—from you. You don’t need him when you have me.”
He stared at her for a long moment before he said, “I do have you, don’t I?”
He sat back in his chair. His expression didn’t reveal if he believed anything she’d said. She really wished he wasn’t so strong-willed and carefully guarded. That last remark made her feel distinctly uneasy.
“Boris,” he called suddenly.
The servant appeared so quickly, it was obvious he’d been waiting in the hallway—and listening to their every word. And the captain knew that or else he would have shouted the summons.
