hesitated barely a heartbeat. “Yes. Dad, he even looks like Jacob. And the photos of Karl when he was young could be Daniel Eastwood today. They have the same dark hair and strong, angular features, although Eastwood’s eyes are dark brown, not blue.”
“That could easily come from the mother’s side. Good. I’ll tell Jacob.”
“Do we have enough to prove legally he’s the old king’s son, though?” she asked. She trusted her intuition and the facts she’d uncovered, but the law was another thing.
“Karl was studying at the Sorbonne the same time as Margaret Jennings, according to the school’s records. He kept her love letters to him and her farewell note. A handwriting expert can make quick work of comparing this woman’s handwriting with that of the person who wrote those letters. There are other documents as well.”
Elly was so excited she could barely speak. But she was also deeply moved by the drama revealed by the decades-old letters they’d found. Those must have been desperate times for a young prince, soon to become king, and his frightened mistress. Had Karl even known that the girl he’d fallen in love with but could never marry carried his child? Nothing they’d found to this date mentioned her pregnancy. How very sad, Elly thought, if the man had died never knowing he had another son.
But now, years later, wonderful things might come of this discovery for Dan and his mother. Not that they deserved it, Elly thought ruefully, tossing her out the way they’d done. But imagine discovering a brother you never knew existed! And a royal one at that!
“What now?” Elly asked her father breathlessly.
“Jacob’s advisors told me this morning that if you found the woman and she had a child by the king, they’d want both of them brought over on the first possible plane.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Damage control. They believe that with the pair here in Elbia, the press will have a harder time getting to them. There are also some touchy legal issues to be ironed out, the sooner the better from the crown’s perspective.”
Elly’s mind whirled, and she felt short of breath. “Eastwood doesn’t even believe me. How will I get him on a plane to Europe? Dad, this isn’t our job. All we agreed to do was verify historical records. We’re not private investigators.”
“Elizabeth.” His chastising papa-bear growl ended in a soft cough. She hated that he smoked. But since her mother had died there had been no one, including herself, who could talk sense to the man about his health or anything else.
“Well, we’re not!” she insisted.
“We have no choice at this point. The king blames us for the leak. He’s absolutely convinced that no one in his court would peddle such volatile news to the press. Now we have to do what we can to save a bad situation. And—” He balked.
“There’s more bad news?” She didn’t want to think about one more complication.
“Consider the many implications of this discovery, Elly. There is enormous wealth at stake. Even an illegitimate child might demand a portion of his father’s fortune. And what about the mother? As far as we know, she has never been compensated for her pregnancy or given any financial help in raising the boy.”
Elly rolled her eyes to the motel room’s chalky ceiling. The packet of letters her father had only recently discovered hidden behind a panel in an ancient armoire had turned into a modern Pandora’s box. In addition to the love notes, signed “adoringly, Margaret,” other letters, returned from the United States as undeliverable, indicated that over the next ten years Karl had tried to locate his lost love, but failed. Perhaps it was just his beloved Margaret he searched for. Or maybe he feared the existence of a child and knew the danger an illegitimate offspring, older by several months than his son by the queen, would pose to his dynasty.
“Get them on a plane,” Elly repeated dully, shaking her head. “Short of kidnapping mother and son, I’m not sure how I’ll manage that.”
“We don’t have much time,” Frank reminded her. “If I were that young man or his mother, I’d want to find a good place to hide out for a while. The press will eat them alive.”
Elly shook her head. “Something tells me this guy isn’t the type to run away from anything.”
“Elizabeth,” her father whispered hoarsely, sounding increasingly worried, “if this explodes in our faces, our professional reputation will be destroyed. We might as well give up the business. Do you understand?”
She swallowed. It was that bad then. “I’ll bring them to you,” she promised. “Somehow.”
Dan was thirty minutes late for his appointment with the contractor, mostly because he had other things on his mind. His thoughts boomeranged back and forth between memories of manhandling an attractive redhead out his mother’s door, his hand placed strategically on her pretty rump, and the less enjoyable knowledge that he’d probably never see Elly Anderson again.
Luckily, the contractor was still in his office. They negotiated a few terms, signed the contract. Within a week the storm damage to the bungalows closest to the shoreline would be repaired. One less thing to worry about.
Dan drove back toward the Haven along Ocean Avenue and turned into the parking lot. A flash of crimson hair in the sunlight caught his eye. Setting the parking brake on his SUV, he squinted through the windshield into the wintry glare. A man and a woman stood where the lot met the sandy boardwalk.
Elly’s elegant legs appeared even longer whenever the wind flipped up the hem of her skirt. Her hair, lifting free of confining pins, swirled in russet waves around her face as she talked to Kevin and occasionally lifted a hand to hold flaming wisps out of her eyes.
“What’s that woman up to now?” he muttered, heaving himself up out of the car.
Dear old Kev wore that deer-staring-into-headlights expression common to men confronted by a pretty woman. Dan only hoped his friend hadn’t said anything to encourage Elly’s snooping. He jogged across the parking lot toward them.
“I thought we agreed you were through with this nonsense!” Dan shouted into the wind.
Elly turned to observe him, her eyes far too enticing to cool his simmering blood. Simmering because he was furious with her but also because she looked so deliciously disheveled with the wind tugging at her skirt and hair, and teasing open the collar of her jacket to reveal a sliver of flesh at the top of her breast.
She planted her feet firmly and straightened her spine to meet him. “We need to talk, Mr. Eastwood.”
“Isn’t that where we started this morning?”
Kevin looked from one to the other of them with a puzzled expression then backed off two steps. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll let you two hash things out. Got work to do.”
To Dan’s surprise, Elly didn’t so much as blink or make any move that might be construed as retreat. “I need you and Mrs. Eastwood on a plane for Europe,” she stated. “Tonight at the latest.”
He laughed. “You’re not only wrong about my mother, you’re insane!”
“No,” she said solemnly, “I’m not. Not on either
