Page 100 of A Royal Kiss & Tell
“Do you like it? I made it myself.” She smiled coyly. “We’ve not seen you in two days, Your Highness. Have you grown weary of us?”
“Quite the contrary. Unfortunately, I’ve been too well occupied.”
“All right,” Beck said. “If you please, Caro, go and keep the judge company, will you? I should like a word with the prince.”
“Really? What word?” she asked.
“Does it not stand to reason that if I wanted you to know, I would invite you to stay? Go,” Beck said, fluttering his fingers at her.
She cast a brilliant smile at Leo and walked across the room to join Hollis and her father.
Beck indicated with his chin a corner of the room.
“Is something wrong?” Leo asked when they had separated themselves from the other guests.
“You’re being watched,” Beck murmured, his eye on the others. “Gentlemen from the foreign secretary have come round. They seem to think Caro might know something about a plot to steal your father’s throne.” He shifted his gaze to Leo. “They think you may have confided in her. What the devil is going on, Leo? Why do they think my sister might know of your plans? Whatareyour plans?”
“Beck,” Leo said. “I don’t have plans. I’m not plotting against my father, for God’s sake. I love him. I don’t even know my uncle.”
Beck looked dubious.
“It is something else entirely.”
“What?”
Leo considered what he ought to say. “It has to do with betrayal in my father’s ranks, but I really can’t say more. I’m asking you to trust me, Beck.”
“And Caroline?”
Leo swallowed. He would not lie to his friend. “She has helped me meet some people who were useful to know.” It wasn’t a real answer, Leo knew, and judging by Beck’s dark frown, he didn’t think so, either. But Leo wouldn’t say more. He would not risk implicating Caroline to anyone.
Beck pressed his lips together and looked across the room to where Caroline was standing. “Look, I don’t know what this is all about, but these men were serious. My advice is to depart Britain as soon as you can.”
“I plan to leave this week,” Leo said.
Beck put his hand on his arm. “Listen to me, Leo. It doesn’t matter what is true—it matters what they perceive. And people perceive you to be rotten at the core.”
“I understand.” He did. The people behind this would look for any scapegoat to keep their profits. How the devil had he gotten himself in this mess?
“For the sake of my sister, I hope that you do,” Beck said. He walked away.
Leo reluctantly turned back to the others. He wanted a word with Caroline, but it seemed as if all eyes were upon her, watching everything she did. And she, of course, was holding court as only she could do.
At supper, he was seated across from Caroline. She laughed and talked as she normally did, almost too beautiful to behold. She looked for all the world like nothing had happened between them. He would have been perfectly content to watch her all night, but Lady Katherine Maugham and her friend, Mrs. Hancock, wanted otherwise. They peppered him with questions he found confusing and silly, and he was certain he appeared as bored as he felt.
The only saving grace was that every so often he would catch Caroline looking at him with a sparkle in her eye. He would carry that delightful sparkle and brilliant smile with him always, imprinted on his heart. He would look back on this night and remember her and imagine what might have been.
She laughingly accused Mr. Hancock of wanting to steal their driver, apparently after a mix-up of carriages on Park Avenue one day. She congratulated Mrs. Hancock on her dress. She regaled the entire table with a tale of three young girls who had gone out when they shouldn’t have and gotten lost in a thicket.
“Where did this happen?” Lady Farrington asked.
“Oh, our home in Bibury. We used to summer there, all of us.”
“What I remember was taking a switch to the three of you,” the judge said.
“You never took a switch to them that I recall,” Beck said with a laugh. “Admit it, my lord. You indulged them terribly.”
“No worse than you, Hawke,” the judge agreed.
