“I am certain.”
“Then explain, please.”
“She caught me off guard. We had only just spoken of mistresses. Frederick has been faithful to both his wives, but there was a time between those marriages when he went through a number of mistresses. One tried to kill him. It is my job to know them all, even though this was before my time in the palace. I thought I did know. Her remark implied that she and Frederick—”
“I didn’t gather that from her remark at all,” Alana cut in. “She showed delight that he still remembers what she did for him, even though she claimed his little gifts weren’t necessary. That, Christoph, is a female response. Are you really not familiar with it?”
He made a look of self-disgust. “Just wake her so she can give you a motherly hug and you will be too happy to complain anymore.”
Alana knelt beside the sofa and continued to pat her mother’s cheeks. Without any response at all. She was beginning to worry that Helga might have hurt herself in that fall. But then she heard the slight groan and the catch of breath that followed. Helga’s eyes opened, disoriented, but calm, as if waking from a nap—until she noticed Alana. She actually pushed back into the sofa to try to put distance between them, her eyes rounded in horror.
“Get away from me!” Helga shrieked.
But she was too upset to give Alana a chance to move away. She leapt off the sofa, nearly knocking Alana over, and ran around behind it.
“You lie!” she cried, pointing a condemning finger at Christoph.
Christoph frowned. “If you don’t believe us, then why do you act like she’s a ghost? I assure you her flesh is very warm.”
Alana didn’t have a chance to reprimand Christoph for his inappropriate remark as Helga loudly denied, “I don’t know who or what she is, but she is not my daughter. My daughter is dead!”
“Yes, we know that’s what you thought, what we all thought,” Christoph said gently. “But the proof stands before you that it isn’t so.”
“Why? Because she says so?”
“Actually, she thought she was Frederick’s daughter because the man who stole her thought he’d taken the princess and that’s what he told her. But thanks to you, he took the wrong child.”
“Thanks . . . to me,” Helga said brokenly.
She finally looked at Alana—and started to cry. But she didn’t appear to be crying tears of happiness.
Chapter Forty
ALL THESE YEARS, I thought he took you to kill you.”
Though said hollowly, it was also the first indication that Helga was starting to believe them. Yet the news was apparently still too much of a shock to her for her to express any joy.
Alana managed to get Helga to sit on the sofa again. Christoph offered her a handkerchief for the tears before he stood back, not taking a seat himself. But after initially wiping her face with the handkerchief, Helga discarded it in her lap and didn’t seem aware that an occasional tear still rolled down her cheeks.
Alana sat next to her, even tried to hold her hand reassuringly. But she felt Helga tense at her touch, so she took her hand away.
She was feeling a bit rejected by then. Her own brief burst of happiness, when she’d seen the laughing Helga, was gone. Nothing about this reunion was happy—yet. But Alana was still hopeful that once the shock wore off, it would become joyful for both of them.
Some explanation might help in that regard, so Alana said, “He did take me for that reason. He just couldn’t do it and raised me instead. He changed because of it. He’s no longer an assassin.”
“He was an assassin?” Helga gasped.
“Didn’t you think so?” Christoph asked.
Helga’s eyes dropped immediately to her lap. She obviously didn’t like looking at Christoph. He was an official, and he’d been sharp with her.
After a moment Helga said, “Yes, but only you have confirmed it, no one else did.”
“He’s been like a father to me,” Alana assured her mother. “In fact, all these years I thought we were related by blood, that he was my real uncle. He only told me the truth last month.”
Helga’s eyes flared wide. “He’s still alive?”
“Yes, but—”
