“No, he maintains he only tried to frighten you. I’m inclined to believe him.”
“Believe a confessed traitor instead of me? Thank you very much,” she cried angrily.
“You don’t even try to see my dilemma, do you? Your tale isn’t remarkable. It has been told before with only slight variations.”
“I do see your difficulty, it just wasn’t anticipated. Poppie was sure that I’d be taken straight to my father, that he wouldn’t have any doubt of who I am. The bracelet was to prove it. Do you really think something that exquisite could be copied without the original being seen? The detail was too fine, the different gems a rainbow of colors. It was something my father would have recognized. But it was stolen, so instead I am faced with you and your doubt, which puts me in a similar dilemma.”
She ended with a sigh. He chose to ignore it to point out, “You realize of course that according to you, this story isn’t even your own but what Poppie told you. What if he lied to you?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“What if he did?”
She raised a black brow at him. “So he raised me for eighteen years with the intention of feeding me a fabrication? For what reason?”
“A man, any man, who would have the absolute confidence of a monarch would have power. Power is a very potent motivation.”
“True,” she allowed. “Yet eighteen years is too long, when one of us, me, Poppie, my father, might not have survived. And that would be assuming that in all that time my father doesn’t produce a male heir to be the next king.” She shook her head. “I know Poppie. He didn’t lie to me. I wish he had. Anything else would have been preferable to what he told me.”
“Contradicting yourself, Alana? You’ve already said he wasn’t the man you thought he was.”
“You’re taking what I said out of context and trying to give it a different meaning. His past is what shocked me. My past added to that shock. That doesn’t change who he is now, who he has been all the years I’ve known him.”
“You are amazing,” he surprised her by saying. “You have a ready answer for everything, don’t you?”
She gave him a slight smile. “You might want to ask yourself why. Ask yourself if you ever need to pause to think about the truth. Now if I was lying, then, yes, I’d have to agree I’m amazing.”
He laughed. “You don’t act at all like an eighteen-year-old, you know.”
She gave him a curious look for his humor, but merely asked, “What makes you say that?”
“Most aristocratic young women are barely adults at that age, yet there is nothing of the child in you.”
She laughed now. “Possibly because I was never treated as a child.”
“Never?”
She shrugged. “I suppose, despite how quickly Poppie came to love me, he was still mindful that one day I might be queen and treated me differently than he would other children because of it.” But an old memory surfaced, and she decided to share it. “Actually, there was one time he treated me as a child. I had sprained my finger on an outing in one of London’s parks. I cried like a baby. I think I was six. It was the first time I ever felt pain that severe. Poppie held me in his arms the whole time the doctor treated my finger, telling me silly things to take my mind off it. I did actually laugh, even with tears on my cheeks.”
“You still love him, don’t you?”
It was said so gently it almost brought tears to her eyes. Her guard went up immediately. Was this a new tactic on his part, appealing to her emotions? She didn’t allow him to know it worked.
She answered him with a question of her own. “How do you stop loving someone you’ve loved all your life? What he told me he used to do was horrible, but that isn’t the man I grew up with. I don’t know what else I can say to stress that he’s not like that anymore.”
“Isn’t he? Didn’t you say he came here to kill your enemy?”
“That isn’t the same thing at all. That’s protecting me—and my father. That, Captain, is doing your job for you.”
He didn’t get angry, he actually smiled at her. “That was a very good answer.”
She didn’t like his smile. It drew her eyes instantly to his mouth and made her think of other things. She wished he wasn’t so damned handsome. If he were old or ugly, or didn’t have such a finely made body, it would be so much easier to deal with him. But her attraction was too strong. It got in the way too often.
He suddenly said, “We are going to discuss how you might be innocent of all charges.”
That was an incredible statement for him and made her instantly suspicious. “So you can let me go?”
“No.”
