Eliza didn’t quite know how to answer that. As far as she was concerned, the very fact that Prince Lucas hadn’t notified his family that he was alive said a lot about his mental state, but that was strictly her opinion. She wasn’t a doctor and wasn’t about to comment on the prince’s mental or physical condition to his worried parents. So she avoided the issue and turned the conversation back to what she did know.
“Willy found the scarf at an abandoned campsite in a remote area up in the mountains. He couldn’t tell how long the prince stayed there—if it was just overnight or possibly longer, but someone had stayed long enough to build a campfire. As for the scarf, we don’t know if the prince dropped it or just forgot it, but it was on a log near the campfire.”
“Do you trust this Cranshaw fellow?” the king asked with a frown. “What do you know about him? Could he have found the scarf at the crash site and just made this all up so we would think Lucas is still alive? There are sick people out there who get their kicks doing that kind of thing, you know,” he told her grimly. “Gwendolyn and I found that out after Lucas turned up missing. Unfortunately, we live in a twisted world.”
“Willy has his moments,” she said honestly, “but I trust him. He’s not lying about where he found the scarf. He wouldn’t do that.”
She would have said more, but Duke Lorenzo arrived then, and the second he saw her sitting with the king and queen, he stiffened, his sharp green eyes dark with irritation as they locked with hers. Ignoring his aunt and uncle, he growled, “I don’t know what the devil you think you’re doing, but you’re not getting away with it.” Striding over to the chair where she sat, he grabbed her arm. “C’mon, you’re leaving. And this time, I’ll make sure you don’t sneak back in.”
Shocked, Queen Gwendolyn cried, “Lorenzo! What in heaven’s name has gotten into you? Eliza has brought us news of Lucas. Stop that!” she cried when he hauled Eliza to her feet. “Have you lost your mind? You know better than to treat a guest that way!”
“She’s just a reporter looking for headlines,” he retorted with a scowl. “Don’t believe anything she says. I caught her wandering the halls earlier and had Rudy escort her out of the building, but I guess she found a way to break back in.”
“She didn’t break in,” his uncle said, frowning. “We invited her in. She has news of Lucas. He’s alive. Look.” Holding out the scarf to him, he made no attempt to blink back the tears that pooled in his eyes. “This was found five miles from the crash site, Lorenzo. At an abandoned campsite,” he added huskily. “Can you believe it? He must be alive!”
Seeing the hope in his uncle’s and aunt’s eyes, Lorenzo wanted more than anything to believe that his cousin had somehow survived the plane crash. But how could he? It had been a year. If Lucas had walked away from the crash, where had he been for the past year? Where was he now? And even though he knew in a glance that the scarf Marcus held was Lucas’s, how much stock could he put in the word of an American reporter who no doubt lived and died by the outrageous headlines she wrote?
“I think it’s a little too early to jump to that conclusion,” he told Marcus stiffly. “This woman is a reporter. She’s just looking for a sensational story.”
“I am not!”
“She writes a gossip column about royalty,” he continued, ignoring her indignant cry. “I thought her name sounded familiar when I ran into her in the hall, so I did a little investigating. She writes for the Denver Sentinel, and she prides herself on beating the competition to a story. She’ll go to any lengths to get material for her column.”
“I don’t lie!”
“No? So you’re going to stand there and say Count Baldwin really had a child with his governess?” he taunted, referring to a twenty-five-year-old English count who had a reputation for being as pious as a monk. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. The woman’s fifteen years his senior!”
“And a paternity test proved the child was his,” she retorted. “If you don’t believe me, I have a copy of the test results back in my office in Denver. I’ll send it to you when I get back home.”
Her blue eyes sparking fire at him, she dared him to top that, and with nothing more than that little act of defiance, she set his teeth on edge. And for the life of him, Lorenzo didn’t know why. He liked women and enjoyed their company. He didn’t usually get short with them, let alone hostile, especially with someone he didn’t even know, but there was something about this little redhead that rubbed him the wrong way.
“The point is,” he said through his teeth, “that that was a private situation that you had no business exposing. You have no boundaries, and neither does the paper you write for.”
“Oh, really?” she snapped. “Then if I’m the monster you think I am, why did I even bother to come all this way in the first place? I certainly didn’t need anyone’s permission to write this story. I had the scarf and knew where it came from. I could have splashed pictures of it all over the front page and let the wire services pick it up. Wouldn’t that have been a nice way for the king and queen to find out their son was alive? They could have read all about it in the papers.”
Far from impressed, he laughed shortly. “Yeah, right! That sounds good, but I’m not buying it. You saw a bigger story and you came after it.”
Expecting her to deny it, she caught him off guard when she admitted the truth without batting an eye. “Of course I want the bigger story! Unlike you, Your Grace, I don’t have a trust fund or a king for an uncle. I work for a living and I make no apologies for that. That doesn’t make me a bad person…or unprincipled. If I had lost a son, I wouldn’t want to learn that he was alive by reading it in the paper. That’s why I’m here.”
With that, a heavy silence fell, and her sincerity seemed to echo throughout the room. Suddenly realizing what he’d said to her in the heat of his anger, Lorenzo felt like a heel. “If I misjudged you, I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “But I still don’t trust you.”
“Don’t shoot her, Lorenzo,” his aunt said with a smile. “She’s just the messenger, and she’s brought amazing news. Why should we begrudge her a story? What’s important here is that Lucas is alive. We’ve waited a year for this day. Now we have to figure out a way to find him.”
“That’s right,” King Marcus said. “I’m reopening the investigation.”
Relieved, Eliza considered childishly sticking her tongue out at the duke—it was no more than he deserved. If she’d known just how arrogant he was, she wouldn’t have been nearly as complimentary of him as she had been in her columns all these years. Irritating man. It would serve him right if the king gave him a royal dressing-down.
But instead of chastising him, the king said, “Eliza got the scarf from a man named Willy Cranshaw, who found it in the mountains in Colorado. I want you to return to America with her and talk to this man. He may be able to tell you something else that will lead us to Lucas.”
Stunned, Eliza couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly. After all the awful things Lorenzo had said to her, the king actually expected her to travel all the way back to Colorado with him? “What? Oh, no! He can’t.”
“He has to, dear,” the queen replied. “He can’t very well carry on the investigation from here. And you did say you wanted to help us find Lucas,” she reminded her. “Here’s your chance.”
“But
