“Yes, miss.We have a three-month-old son.”
“Congratulations.”Scottie patted him on the back.“How proud are you?”
“Busting me buttons, miss.”
To Michael, the lyrical sound of her southern words seemed to hover over him, making air curly cues.She talked as if she’d known the footman for eons.Would she be the same with him?
From his pocket, his phone buzzed.A quick glance told him it was his mother.“Leave it, Mum,” he muttered.She was increasingly insistent about Michael joining the Pratt Printing dynasty.
He refused.One day he hoped she’d have the courage to ask him why.
Just before the Princess Charlotte suite, Scottie slowed by the portraits on the Wall of Princesses.Enormous, beautifully painted images of her mother when she was Crown Princess Catherine, of her aunt, Princess Arabella, and of the nineteenth- and eighteenth-century Blue princesses.Charlotte, Clemency, and Louisa.The portraits continued around the corner and down the Royal Hallway.
Scottie paused in front of the portrait of her mother.“People say I look like her.”She glanced over at Michael.“What do you think?”
“Yes, miss, very much.”
“Miss?Please, call me Scottie or don’t call me at all.”She air drummed with aba-da-dump.Michael cracked a slow smile.Was he supposed to laugh?“Wow, tough crowd.”And she turned for her suite.
Miles and another footman exited the large second-floor apartment as Scottie entered.One of the maids had brought round a tea trolly with a heating kettle and a covered plate of something—Michael assumed a small plate of puffs—a beloved North Sea Island Nation pastry.
Scottie collapsed onto the curved burnt-orange colored couch.“Did you ever notice the colors of this room, the muted greens and pinks, yellows and blues, match Princess Charlotte’s portrait?”She glanced back at him.“It seems to whisper, ‘leave all your cares here.’Do you think it was like this when Princess Charlotte was alive?”
“Hadsby Castle was renovated in the last twenty years.Princess Charlotte was born in the eighteenth century.Styles have changed.But she was well-educated, an artist, author, and horsewoman.”Michael focused on the tapestried walls and carpeted floor, the coffered ceiling with the row of crystal chandeliers.Scottie was not wrong.The room invited him to leave off his cares.“This side of the castle endured several bombings from our German neighbors during the second war.I believe this room was all but destroyed by fire.”
“Yet now it’s so peaceful.”Scottie moved to the tea trolly and raised the lid from the plate.“I can’t eat all these puffs.Help yourself.Plus, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I sat on the couch.”
To where she returned, legs curled under her, eating in silence, going for a bottle of water from the ice bucket on the bottom of the trolly.
Michael did not go for puffs, though they were one of his favorite treats, but stood off to the side with a cup of tea and waited for her conversational cues.Did she want to go over her diary or rest?After all, he wasn’t hanging round for a proper chinwag but business.
“Do you think I should be here?”Scottie said, glancing back at him.“Hanging out with the Queen of Lauchtenland like I’m one ofthem.Can I really pull off a title like Lady Royal Blue?What are people saying about me?That I’m a grifter?Imposter?”
Her eyes met his, and he spied again the initial vulnerability.Then, as now, it caused a movement in his chest.
“It’s not for me to say, miss.As your equerry, I am to manage your schedule.As your protection officer, I’m to keep you safe.”
“What about as a confidant?”Scottie munched on a puff.
“Certainly everything you say and do is privileged, miss.I’m here in whatever capacity you need.”
“Okay, thenpleasecall me Scottie.Second, be honest with me and help me do things right.Kate acts like it’s a cakewalk to come here, hang out like one of the family simply because I’m her daughter.”She paced to the window, plate in hand.“The whole flight over, I kept asking myself, ‘What are you doing, S.O.?Leaving the life you know, the job you love, to play daughter and aide to the woman who abandoned you?’”
“It’s my understanding the queen invited you, miss—rather, Scottie.I assume she wants to know you.Undo those years of separation.Is it fair to say you feel the same?”
Touchéwas the look in her eye.“It’s fair.I wanted to come.I spent the last two weeks preparing my team at O’Shay to take my place.But you know, sometimes you make a decision and later you”—Scottie faced the tall, mullioned window again—“wonder if you’d lost your ever-loving mind.”
“You seem sane from where I stand,” he said.“To answer your question, I think youshouldbe here if it means spending time with people you love and who love you.Her Majesty was terribly cut up she could not come down to greet you.The doctor ordered her to rest.”
“Yes, I know.She had an IVIG treatment for her GBS yesterday,” Scottie said.“It knocks her out.She called me three times to apologize.”Scottie pressed closer to the window, leaning to see to the left of the castle.
“Did you see something?”Michael joined her at the window.
“A man.Walking along the perimeter wearing a long duster-like jacket—I think you call it an anorak—and a wide-brim hat.He stopped, looked up at me with really piercing eyes, then seemed to disappear.”
“That’s odd,” Michael said, joining her at the window.“Emmanuel?”By her short description, it sounded like him, a Lauchtenland legend.
He was a story children learned in school.A tale adults told round campfires.As a member of the Cross family, knowing stories of Emmanuel—God with us—visiting Lauchtenland was part of his education.His ancestors kept records of the man’s appearance.If he was real, he’d be eight hundred years old, so clearly he was a cultivated Lauchten fable.Though some insisted he was real and divine, Michael had never sensed a divine being interacting with his family or his country.
