Page 48 of A Valiant Prince

Anna glares at me. “Well, sorry I care,” she says with a huff and turns away from me. I feel like an ass. I put a hand on her arm, and she shrugs it off.

“Anna…listen…I’m sorry. I…I’m glad you came for me, OK? I don’t regret meeting you for a second. And you might very well have saved my life and your own by doing that. So, stop apologizing, alright?” I say.

She turns slowly and looks at me. “Do you mean that?” she asks. I want to roll my eyes and knock some sense into her, but I refrain.

“Yes, I swear it,” I say to her.

She nods and turns back toward me, resting her head on my shoulder as she yawns.

“It’s been a long day, and I think the coming days will be long too. We should get some rest,” I say to her.

“I agree,” she says, and with that, I pull a blanket over us, and we fall asleep.

Chapter Fifteen

The thing about being royal is you are never alone. I’m starting to understand that, and I’m also starting to loathe it. Pete, Hendrick, and Lucas might as well be an awkward third wheel in Anna’s and my relationship. They are with us twenty-four seven. It takes about two hours to drive from Glasgow, where we land, to Jack’s home.

I’ve never been to Scotland. It’s beautiful. I sadly wish we could sightsee, and then remember that we’re not hiding any longer. We’d need to be cautious, but I think we also all need to get out of here for a few hours. I contemplate this for a minute.

“Can we go somewhere tomorrow?” I ask Pete, who drives us down a country lane with hedging that is entirely too close to the road on one side and a stone wall on the other.

“I…well…maybe?” Pete says. I want to laugh because he sounds so conflicted.

“We could go down to Edinburgh for the day,” Anna suggests. “You’d like it there.”

“Sure, I mean, if it’s safe for us to go there. I do think we all need to get out of here for a bit,” I acknowledge.

Anna frowns. “Where all have you been?” she asks me.

I contemplate it for a minute. “Well, Canada,” I start and grin at her while she rolls her eyes, “Mexico, Costa Rica, obviously the Bahamas and a few other islands in the Caribbean, France, England, Italy, Norddale, and as of today, Scotland.”

She giggles. “And Montelandia,” she states.

“Oh, right, Montelandia, if you want to count where I was born but have no memory of,” I say to her.

“Still counts,” she says. I shake my head and smile back at her.

“It should be up here,” Pete mutters as we come upon a giant stone wall with a gate. He pulls up to the gate and through the metal bars, I can see a rather large stone home off to the side of a driveway that goes through a tunnel of trees. It’s very picturesque.

Pete punches a code into the security box on the side of the drive and the gates open. We pull inside and up to the old stone house.

“Wow,” I say as I look up at it.

Anna giggles again. “It’s just the gatehouse,” she says.

“If this is the gatehouse, I can’t wait to see the main house,” I muse as we get out of the car. The pebble drive crunches beneath my feet as I walk up to a giant wooden door. It’s curved at the top and looks like some sort of medieval entrance. Pete punches a code into what I presume is a lockbox and it opens, revealing a very ancient-looking skeleton key, only it has been retrofitted with some interesting-looking electronic sensors. I note that while the keyhole is still ancient looking, there clearly has to be more security going on here than what meets the eye.

Pete slides the key into the keyhole and turns it. There’s a beep and the door opens. Once inside, Pete punches another code onto a keyboard by the front door.

“Jack had the house retro-fitted with a number of security upgrades after he had an incident here several years ago,” Pete says.

“Oh?” I ask, curious as to what incident occurred here.

Pete just nods and walks away, giving me no answer. I shrug. I walk back toward the car and grab my suitcase and the box of my mom’s things. Anna is already upstairs. She finds the master suite like a dog searching for a treat.

“Found our room,” she says with a grin. I look around and wonder where her brothers will stay.

“Don’t worry, there’s like four suites with bathrooms, plus there’s like three or four more bedrooms,” she says.

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