me.” Simone put her thin hand on his arm. He was surprised to feel it trembling slightly. “Is it really possible? Could you be…my grandson?”
“According to those papers I am. Even so, I’d still like to get corroborating evidence from an independent source before we proceed any further.”
“You sound as if you’re not happy with this news, Luc,” the prime minister said. “I can tell you that I, for one, cannot think of a more honorable man to take the throne.”
Simone was looking almost gleeful. “You know what this means? It means that awful Celeste won’t get her grasping hands on the throne. Her baby is due any minute now, and if it’s a boy, well, then our ship would have been sunk.”
“I don’t think Queen Celeste will take the news about Luc very well,” the prime minister noted.
“As I said,” Luc interrupted them. “No one but the three of us and Juliet is to know about this news just yet.”
“Juliet?” Simone raised a perfectly penciled eyebrow. “So you told Juliet. Before you told us?”
Luc refused to squirm in his seat. He was a former Interpol agent, he was not a schoolboy being reprimanded by his headmaster.
“Yes, I told Juliet before I told you.” The set of his jaw communicated his aggravation. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“I fear it would do me no good if I did,” Simone replied. “I’ve always liked Juliet. She’s a wise little thing. So what did she advise you to do?”
“She didn’t advise, she listened.” Luc’s pointed look indicated it was something that the older woman could learn to do better.
Simone smiled and leaned back in her chair with satisfaction. “Yes, you will do well as the king. Quite well indeed.”
“I want you both to swear you won’t tell anyone about this information until we can get it confirmed,” Luc said. “And the situation with Rhineland also has to be addressed.”
The prime minister paused in his close inspection of the material Luc had handed him. “The birth certificate is registered, and the rest of the documents appear legitimate.”
“I know someone from Interpol, someone very discreet, who will do some follow-up work,” Luc said.
“I understand you were born in Texas,” Simone said with a slight shudder. “Thank goodness Katie had the foresight to bring you back to Europe and civilization. Imagine if we’d had to track you down in Texas, as some kind of roving cowboy.”
“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Luc said. “Not everyone in Texas is a cowboy.” He knew, he’d traveled to Texas during the course of his investigation.
“Some are ruthless businessmen like J. R. Ewing,” the dowager queen continued, “on that television show…what was it called? ‘Houston’?”
“‘Dallas’,” Luc corrected her.
“There’s no point in worrying over what might have been,” the prime minister said. “We should focus on what our next course of action should be. I will need to notify the Privy Council.”
“I’m still trying to get information from the French customs agency about Katie Graham’s arrival and departure from France. Those records from over thirty years ago are in some warehouse waiting to be transferred onto the computer system.”
“What do you hope to gain from those records?” the prime minister asked.
“The date Katie arrived in France to marry King Philippe and the date she left for the United States,” Luc said.
“But you already have so much information from earlier in your investigation,” the prime minister noted, opening his own file on the subject. “The marriage certificate between Katie and Philippe, the birth certificate of her son Lucas Johnson, the marriage certificate of Katie Graham and Ellsworth Johnson, the divorce certificate of Katie Graham and said Mr. Johnson and lastly her marriage certificate to Albert Dumont.”
“I could still be Albert’s son, just trying to pass myself off as the king’s.”
“DNA testing would resolve that.” The prime minister gazed over the top edge of his reading glasses before removing them entirely to solemnly ask Luc, “Would you be willing to subject yourself to that?”
Luc paused before nodding.
“Ah,” Simone murmured. “I understand now. It is not that you want us to be sure you are the real heir, it is that you yourself are not sure that you want to be the king. Isn’t that correct, Luc?”
Yes, Luc silently noted, the elderly dowager queen was still sharp as a tack, all right. She’d certainly summed up his emotions in no time at all.
“Your Majesty?” the footman whispered to Celeste as he delivered her lunch to her suite on the second floor of the palace. “I have some information for you.”
Shortly after her marriage Celeste had completely redecorated the suite in shades of ivory and gold. She thought the colors complemented her own coloring—the ivory of her flawless skin, the gold of her perfectly cut hair.
“Information? It had better be something good,” she warned him. “The baby has been kicking me all day and I’m not in the best of moods, Henri.”
“I overheard a conversation…”
“Overheard?”
“I was clearing the dowager queen’s tea tray from the Ruby Salon, which is right beside the Throne Room.”
“I am aware of the location of the rooms in this palace,” Celeste said. “Get on with it.”
“I happened to be standing next to the closed doorway leading into the Throne Room and happened to overhear the conversation between the prime minister, the dowager queen and Luc Dumont.”
“Luc is back from France?”
“He arrived this very afternoon.”
“With news I presume?”
“Yes, ma’am. Outrageous news.”
“Well hurry and tell me, I haven’t got all day. I believe I’ve gone into labor.” Celeste gripped the front of the footman’s ornate jacket. “Tell me…and quickly!”
“Luc is claiming that he is the rightful heir.”
Celeste’s grip on the footman tightened until she was almost choking the small man.
“Of course, I do not believe it,” the footman wheezed, struggling for air. “You are our most beloved and beautiful queen.”
“And I’m about to give birth to a boy,” she said, panting slightly. “A boy who will be the king. Go now. Fetch Dr. Mellion. Get him and no one else. You understand?”
Henri nodded so fast his footman’s cap almost fell off.
“And
