The Man Behind the Mask. Christine Rimmer

the passageways.

      I was seeking any object, any small scrap of paper or cloth, that the intruders—or whoever had given them access to the passageways—might have let drop. I also sought the point where the two traitorous louts had entered.

      I found nothing that they might have left behind. But I did find the way they’d come in—through one of the tunnels that ran beneath the hill on which Isenhalla stood. There were four such tunnels leading into the passageways, one for each of the four directions. For as long as I could remember, each of the thick steel doors at the ends of those tunnels had been sealed with a bar and a heavy lock—a lock to which only my father and Hauk had a key.

      Someone had cut the lock on the west entry. Knowing Hauk’s men would arrive shortly, I removed the mask and became once again the damaged Prince Valbrand. When three soldiers appeared, I gave two of them orders to stand watch, cautioning them not to touch the door, the lock or the walls. I sent the third man back to Hauk, with a message that a technician should be sent to observe, photograph and dust for prints.

      I had no idea where Hauk would find that technician. Any crime occurring in Isenhalla or on the palace grounds fell within the jurisdiction of the NIB—the National Investigative Bureau—which is roughly equivalent to the American FBI. But since an incident in the Helmouth Pass three months before, when Brit and Eric had been set upon by a team of traitor NIB agents—led by the man who’d pretended to be Brit’s friend, the now-vanished former Special Agent Jorund Sorenson—we held the NIB and its people under suspicion. Hauk would have to find some way other than the Bureau to test the entrance for prints and to run identity checks on the two prisoners. I knew he would solve the problem. Hauk was not only strong, intelligent and resilient. He was also unfailingly resourceful.

      I left the soldiers to guard the west entrance, donned the mask again and checked the other three entry doors. All of them appeared undisturbed. By then, there were soldiers around every corner. And I had yet to find anything that the intruders might carelessly have left behind.

      It occurred to me that my usefulness in the hidden corridors was ended—at least for the time being. So what now?

      Should I return to Brit’s rooms, where I was almost certain to find a strategy session in progress: Brit and Eric and Hauk, deciding what the next move should be, debating whether to immediately inform Prince Medwyn and His Majesty that palace security had been dangerously breached—or to wait for a more reasonable hour?

      No. I’d leave all that for now, I decided. There would no doubt be a formal meeting come daylight, in my father’s chambers. We’d go over everything in detail. Time enough to talk strategy then.

      I began making my way back to my suite. I knew of passageways within the secret passageways, of hidden doors from hallway to hallway, entrances and exits that I would have wagered even my inquisitive little sister had yet to find. I used what I knew, easily avoiding the soldiers who swarmed everywhere.

      And then, when I was nearly there, it came to me that I could not bear to return to my solitary, silent rooms.

      Not yet.

      I took a different turn, passed through other hidden doors. In no time I stood by the section of wall that could be opened to reveal the armoire entrance to the American’s room—and yes. I knew which room was hers.

      After the ball, after her tears, after the dance that we shared…

      It is not something I can explain. How she looked at me and saw it all. How knowing nothing, she saw everything. How in that look, in that one short dance, she gave me back something I had thought lost forever.

      Was it hope?

      Perhaps.

      Hope destined to remain unfulfilled, but hope, nonetheless.

      That night, the night we first met, it became imperative that I discover where she slept. I knew which servants I could trust—the ones who had indulged me as a boy and kept the secrets of my occasional follies as a youth. I asked and it was answered.

      Once I knew which room, I knew which hidden entrance would lead me in there.

      It was acceptable that I know it, I reasoned at the time. It was acceptable because I would never use that information. I would never actually seek the woman out in her room. It was enough, I told myself in those early hours right after the ball, to know where to find her. It was enough just to know where she slept.…

      Ah, what lies a man will tell himself.

      Chapter 6

      “So, okay, Dulcie,” I said to myself, standing in the middle of the room with all the lights on. “What now?”