“It isn’t important.”
“I think it must be quite important. We’ve never discussed the painting, but I’ve long suspected that it was real. I know...I know it was controversial. I know that it concerns you.”
“Yes,” her grandmother said. “At the time it was quite controversial. Evidence that...that the princess had a lover.”
Her grandmother had been the princess then. Young. Unmarried. And it had been a very different time.
It was difficult to imagine her grandmother taking a lover. Difficult to imagine her doing anything quite so passionate or impetuous. She was the incomparable matriarch of the family. The figurehead so established, so steady, she might very well already be carved of marble, as she would now no doubt be in the future.
But if the painting existed, then she was the subject. And if that were the case, then of course it had been commissioned by a lover.
“I see,” Gabriella said. “And...did you?”
Her grandmother let out a long, slow breath, raising her eyes to meet hers. In them, Gabriella could see so much. A wealth of sadness. Deep heartbreak.
Things Gabriella had read about, but never experienced.
“It is very easy when you are young, Gabriella, to lead with your heart instead of your head. You have seen this, time and again, with your parents. And they no longer carry youth as an excuse. This is why I have always told you that you must be in possession of your wits. It does not do well for a woman to lose her mind over passion. It doesn’t end well. Not for us. Men can carry on as they see fit, but it isn’t like that for women.”
Gabriella nodded slowly. “Yes, I know.” She thought of her brothers, who most certainly carried on exactly as they pleased. Of her father, who seemed to escape the most scathing comments. The worst of it was always reserved for her mother. She was a renowned trollop whose every choice, from her wardrobe to which man she chose to make conversation with at a social event, was analyzed, was taken as evidence of her poor character.
Gabriella knew this was true. It was just one of the many reasons that she had chosen to embrace her more bookish nature and keep herself separate from all of that carrying-on.
“Our hearts are not proper guides,” her grandmother continued. “They are fickle, and they are easily led. Mine certainly was. But I learned from my mistakes.”
“Of course,” Gabriella agreed, because she didn’t know what else to say.
“Go with him,” Queen Lucia said, her tone stronger now. Decisive. “Fetch the painting. But remember this conversation. Remember what I have told you.”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of my heart getting involved on a quest of this nature.”
“He is a handsome man, Gabriella.”
Gabriella laughed. “He’s a stranger! And old enough to be... Not my father, certainly not. But perhaps a young uncle.”
The queen shook her head. “Men like that have their ways.”
“And I have my way of scaring them off. Please, tell me when a man last danced with me more than once at a social function?”
“If you didn’t speak so much of books...”
“And weevils.” She had talked incessantly about weevils and the havoc they played in early English kitchens to her last dance partner. Because they had been the subject of the last book she’d read and she hadn’t been able to think of anything else.
“Certainly don’t speak of that.”
“Suffice it to say I don’t think you have to worry about me tumbling into a romance. The only problem is... Why would he take me with him? Now that he knows the painting exists, and that it is on Isolo D’Oro, he’ll no doubt have an easy enough time figuring out where it is. And I’m sure he’ll have no trouble finding someone to impart what information they might have about it, for the right price.”
“No,” her grandmother said, “he won’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Because. Because you have the key. You’re the only one who has the key.”
Gabriella frowned. “I don’t have a key.”
“Yes, you do. The painting is hidden away in one of the old country estates that used to belong to the royal family. It is in a secret room, behind a false wall, and no one would have found it. So long as the building stands, and I have never heard rumors to the contrary, the painting would have remained there.”
“And the key?”
Her grandmother reached out, her shaking hands touching the necklace that Gabriella wore. “Close to your heart. Always.”
Gabriella looked down at the simple flower pendant that hung from the gold chain she wore around her neck. “My necklace?”
It had been a gift to her when she was a baby. A piece of the family’s crown jewels that her mother had considered beneath her. So simple, but lovely, a piece of art to Gabriella’s mind.
“Yes, your necklace. Did you ever wonder why the bottom of it had such an odd shape? Once you get into this room, you fit this into a slot on the picture frame on the back wall. It swings open and, behind it, you will find The Lost Love.”
TRULY, HIS GRANDFATHER had a lot to answer for. Alex was not the kind of man accustomed to doing the bidding of anyone but himself. And yet, here he was, cooling his heels in the antechamber of a second-rate country estate inhabited by disgraced royals.
If he were being perfectly honest—and he always was—one royal in particular who looked more like a small, indignant owl than she did a princess.
With her thick framed glasses and rather spiky demeanor it did not seem to him that Princess Gabriella was suited to much in the way of royal functions. Not that he was a very good barometer of exceptional social behavior.
Alex was many things, acceptable was the least among them.
Normally, he would not have excused himself from the room quite so quickly. Normally, he would have sat there and demanded that all the information be disseminated in his presence. Certainly, Queen Lucia was a queen. But in his estimation it was difficult to be at one’s full strength when one did not have a country to rule. In truth, the D’Oro family had not inhabited a throne in any real sense in more years than Princess Gabriella had been alive.
So while the family certainly still had money, and a modicum of power, while they retained their titles, he did not imagine he would bring the wrath of an army down on his head for refusing a direct order.
However, he had sensed then that it was an opportune moment to test the theory of catching more flies with honey than vinegar.
He did so hate having to employ charm.
He had better end up in possession of the painting. And it had better truly be his grandfather’s dying wish. Otherwise, he would be perturbed.
The door behind him clicked shut and he turned just in time to see Princess Gabriella, in her fitted sweatshirt and tight black leggings, headed toward him. She was holding her hands up beneath her breasts like a small, frightened animal, her eyes large behind her glasses.
That was what had put him in the mind of her being an owl earlier. He did not feel the need to revise that opinion. She was fascinating much in the way a small creature might be.
He felt compelled to watch her every movement, her every pause. As he would any foreign entity. So, there was nothing truly remarkable