Prince Incognito by Rachelle McCalla

Author:Rachelle McCalla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin (UK) Ltd
Published: 2012-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

TEN

“That can’t be right.” Lillian was grateful the horse she rode kept moving forward at a steady clip. If it had been up to her to keep herself moving, she’d have certainly stumbled. “How could my grandmother possibly be part of the royal family?” But even as she asked the question, she recalled snippets of conversations she’d overheard years before. Maybe it wasn’t so impossible.

“My father Philip was an only child,” Alec explained. “His father, who was also king before him, was the oldest of three. His two younger sisters married foreigners, but neither of them went to America, and neither of them were named Helen. We get Christmas cards from them every year.”

“My grandmother passed away eight years ago.”

“Then she can’t be the same person as either of my great aunts.” Alec looked thoughtful. “You say your grandmother Helen also had American citizenship? Where was she born?”

“In America, I believe. Her mother was from Greece and her father from Lydia.”

“What was her father’s name?”

Lillian tried to recall. “It was something foreign, almost British-sounding.”

“Basil?” Alec pulled his horse up short.

“Yes.” Lillian halted her mount as well as Alec slid from his saddle and knelt over an open stretch of sand that glimmered white in the moonlight.

“My great-grandfather’s name was Alexander.” Alec used the tip of his finger to draw a large A in the sand. “I’m named after him, so I studied quite a bit of his life story. He had an older half brother named Basil.” Alec sketched a B in the sand near the A he’d drawn.

Lillian felt her heart beating hard. If Alexander’s great-grandfather wasn’t the oldest, then why did his family inherit the throne?

Alec continued. “Basil’s mother died when he was born. His father remarried some years later, but Basil never liked his stepmother and didn’t get along well with the family. His grandfather was king then—he lived to a ripe old age—and his father was only a prince. Perhaps Basil never thought the throne would pass to him, or perhaps he didn’t care, but he abdicated and ran off to America to marry a Greek actress. He died a few years later. It seems to me that he had a daughter before he died, though.”

As he explained his family history, Alec drew a line from Basil and put an H below it. “If Basil’s daughter is your grandmother, Helen, that would explain why she had the last name Lydia—because she was a descendent of the royal house of Lydia.”

Lillian bent next to the rough family tree Alec had etched in the sand. Under her grandmother’s H she placed a D and M. “David and Michael—my uncle and father.”

“Do you have any cousins?”

“Uncle David has never married. I’m an only child.” She drew a line from the M and wrote an L to signify herself. Then she looked at the large empty patch under the letter A. “Where do you come in?”

“King Alexander was my great-grandfather.

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