was something fervent and beyond argument in her tone. This was a woman who believed in what she said. For the first time Dan felt deep in his gut that Elizabeth Anderson wasn’t flinging idle fairy tales at him or working some kind of confidence game. He remembered the look on his mother’s face earlier that day. Madge had been afraid—not of lies, but of the truth. And that terrified him.
He looked at his watch. “It’s getting close to lunch time. Are you hungry?”
Elly gave him a guarded look. “Famished,” she admitted. “No time for breakfast this morning. Why?”
“Let’s get a table at Kirby’s. We can talk this out over crab cakes.”
Kirby’s, one of the most popular seafood restaurants on Ocean Avenue, was nearly deserted during off season. They sat in a fifties-style red vinyl booth and Dan ordered two steaming crab cake platters piled high with salty French fries, little paper cups of sweet coleslaw on the side.
Elly poured a stream of rich ketchup over her fries and dug in hungrily. Dan ate more slowly than usual, watching her. He was aware of her thin ankles crossed beneath the table, visible through the space between his bench and the table top. When he lifted his eyes they fixed with fascination on her animated lips as she relished the crunchy potatoes and fat crab cake with its savory Old Bay seasonings perfuming the room around them.
He found it impossible to hold onto his irritation with her. But he was curious and more than a little suspicious of her motives for wanting to whisk him off to another continent. “So tell me about this proof. And why the urgency to get me out of the country?”
“I know you feel I’m intruding,” she began, spearing another fry with her fork and shaking it at him in schoolmarm fashion, “and I don’t like being put in the position of having to accuse anyone of lying about their past but—”
“But that’s precisely what you are doing, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.
Elly pursed her lips and studied him for a long moment, as if searching for diplomatic words. “People can be very creative about their past, if they are afraid. A woman has to be particularly careful. And a single mom always has to explain herself to others. No doubt your mother felt that a dead husband was easier for people to accept than the truth.”
“And that truth is?” He might be willing to believe her. Might. But not without one hell of an explanation.
Elly continued with obvious caution as she pulled a manila envelope from the briefcase on the bench beside her. “I have photocopies of letters found on the von Austerand family’s property. There now is little doubt that the ones signed Margaret were written by your mother, but we can verify that as soon as she is in Elbia.”
She put up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “We believe your mother fell deeply in love with Karl von Austerand the year she studied in Paris. She probably believed they would marry, but he wasn’t completely honest with her. He was engaged to another woman of royal blood. And he was the crown prince, soon to become King of Elbia.
“Karl was attending the college under an assumed name to avoid publicity. When Madge discovered they could never wed, she ran home to America—probably just after learning she was pregnant. Instead of returning to her parents’ home in Massachusetts, she found a place to live in Baltimore and hid her shame by inventing a husband. The move probably was intended to elude Karl, too. Perhaps she feared what he might do if he discovered their child. You.”
Dan could feel the heat rising from his chest to his throat. He glared at the folder resting on the table beneath her hand. “This is very difficult to believe,” he said tightly.
Elly slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry. See for yourself.”
He couldn’t move, was barely capable of breathing. Still furious with Elly, he was nevertheless increasingly fearful that what she claimed might be true. She didn’t have to tell him how drastically his life would change if it was.
And what about Madge’s quiet existence? She hated confrontation. She had always favored a life without complications. Any shattered love affair and unwanted baby were as complicated as life got. Unless the father of your baby was a man whose family’s status rivaled that of the royals of England or Monaco—people with unlimited wealth and power, who could never escape their celebrity or stay off the front page of grocery-store gossip rags for long.
Elly rested her warm hand over his on the tabletop. “This must be a shock to you. You’ve grown up believing one thing, and here I am telling you everything is different. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.” Her eyes shone with sincerity and compassion. “I would have preferred to let your mother keep her secret. But it’s out of my hands now. Others have found out, so you both needed to know.”
He couldn’t utter a word. His lips felt as stiff as if he’d climbed from a December ocean.
“Take your time reading while you finish eating,” she offered. “Then let me know what you think.” Her accent was flavored with New England. Maple-syrup sweet, with a touch of Yankee logic. He would have liked to get to know her better, a whole lot better. She seemed a nice person, in addition to being so easy on the eyes. But it appeared that more pressing matters were on deck.
Dan took a bite of his cooling crab cake and chewed without tasting anything, then studied her as she sipped her cola. “There’s a lot riding on this, isn’t there? I mean, aside from being hounded by the press.”
She slanted him a look that would have done the Mona Lisa proud. “There might be.”
Dan slipped a thin stack of photocopies from the envelope. He scanned the first report quickly:
Daniel Robert Jennings. Born August 20, 1970. Verified location of birth: Baltimore, Maryland. Birth certificate on record. Mother: Margaret Jennings. No father listed. Name of mother and child legally changed three months later: Eastwood. Reason given: marriage to Carl Eastwood. No Carl Eastwood match through public records. Internet search unsuccessful. Social Security source reports no matches for location and dates given. Results: Suspect fictitious name.
There were other reports, which he read hastily, his pulse throbbing in his temple, his mouth going stone dry…
Margaret Jennings, scholarship student at the Sorbonne, 1969-1970. Superior student. Dropped out of school 3/70. Reason given: personal.
Frigid droplets of sweat skittered down the back of his neck. He stared at the next page’s remarks: “Love letters signed ‘your adoring Margaret,’ no envelopes.” There were even photocopies of two of the letters. He tried not to think about the passion and longing behind the words, which seemed far too personal to be read by other than the two people involved. But he needed only to glance at the handwriting to know it was amazingly similar to Madge’s flowery style. Then there was another notation:
Letters from His Royal Highness Karl von Austerand to one Margaret Jennings in the United States, dated 1970 (3), 1972 (2), 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1980—all returned as undeliverable.
“Well?” Elly asked, glancing up at him from her empty plate.
He smiled weakly. “I imagine Karl’s legitimate son might be a little nervous about this discovery of yours.”
“More than nervous. Particularly since you were born before he was.”
“Ouch.”
“It
