Royal Protocol. Christine Flynn
sure as hell hope they come up with something soon,” Logan muttered over the click of the electronic lock on the door. “None of this is making any sense.”
Even as everyone murmured their agreement, all eyes swung toward the handsome young officer in uniform. Colonel Pierce Prescott acknowledged them with a nod as the door clicked shut behind him.
His gray-green eyes looked bleary as he tossed his beret on the table. “The bad news is that the courier service was paid in cash to deliver the envelope,” he began, not bothering to waste breath on formalities. “It was dropped off at their largest downtown office location which takes in anywhere from three to four thousand business envelopes a day. But,” he stressed, sinking into the nearest chair, “one of the clerks remembers it because it was the first package she checked in that day. It was brought in by an old woman with curly gray hair, big hands and a bad case of laryngitis.”
“Great,” Harrison muttered. “A guy in drag.”
“You got it. We found a wig and a housedress in the trash bin behind the building. We’re going through the netting in the wig for human hair.
“The good news,” he continued, pushing his fingers through his own, “is that we’ve identified the paper the ransom note was written on. It was run on a laser printer on the king’s personal stationery. The letterhead was cut off.”
Sir Selwyn’s dark eyebrows formed a single heavy slash. “The king’s personal stationery? The beige paper with the royal crest and banner on the side? Not the white?”
“What we have is beige,” Pierce informed him, “with remnants of a thin red line down the left side. Microscopic analysis discovered a micrometer of crimson ink that hadn’t been trimmed away.”
“But that is kept only in the royal residence.”
Harrison’s eyes narrowed at the trusted secretary’s certainty. “There is none in the royal office?”
“It’s never kept there,” Selwyn insisted. The royal offices were inside the main gates of the palace grounds. That was where the daily affairs of running the kingdom were handled by the king, his ministers and dozens of assistants, secretaries and clerks. Correspondence flowed through his staff like rainwater, all manner of memoranda and letters issued on the standard white stationery bearing the small tasteful seal of Penwyck above its letterhead. “The king’s personal stationery is used only for his most personal correspondence,” he continued. “It is always addressed from his office in his private apartments.”
Harrison took his coffee and offered it to Pierce. The younger man looked even more desperate for caffeine than he felt himself.
“Have a seat,” he muttered, and poured himself another cup as the importance of something that ordinarily wouldn’t seem significant at all turned all four men silent.
Whoever had kidnapped Prince Owen had also been in the king’s private apartments.
The conclusion was so obvious that not one of them felt compelled to mention it.
“Not to add insult to injury,” Harrison prefaced, “but was the printer used the one in the king’s residence office, too?”
Pierce had taken a grateful sip of what his colleague had offered him. Preparing to take another, he muttered, “It appears so.”
Harrison’s grip on his own mug tightened. “How do you want to handle General Vancor?” he asked, speaking of the head of the royal guard.
“I think it’s best that whatever evidence we have remain among us,” Logan asserted.
“I agree,” Harrison concluded, his voice going hard as he wondered how many other ways security might have been compromised that night. “Just tell him we have reason to believe Prince Owen’s kidnappers were also in the king’s apartments and find out how security was breached. If he doesn’t have answers from his men by this afternoon, I’ll pay him a visit myself.”
Having delegated that task, he picked up the newspaper he’d dropped onto a side chair and slid it faceup to the center of the table. “We also have another security problem.” His tone was matter-of-fact, his manner amazingly calm considering how furious he was at whoever had broken their confidence. The situation before had been delicate, to say the least. It now held the potential for disaster. “I received a call from a reporter of the Penwyck Herald about forty-five minutes ago. This is already hitting the streets.”
The bold, black headline screamed up at them all: King Morgan in Coma; Prince Broderick in Power
The other three men rose to their feet, each turning the paper so he could better see, the sounds muffled by their expletives.
Having already uttered a few oaths himself, Harrison glanced from one to another. These were the men the king had chosen to trust with his kingdom. There wasn’t one Harrison didn’t trust himself.
“We need to find whoever leaked this information.”
“What did the reporter say?” Logan demanded darkly.
“Only that he thought the palace should know before the public found out. He hung up before I could ask anything else.” To Harrison, Logan looked as if he could cheerfully choke someone. He could sympathize. Refusing to cave in to fatigue or frustration, he shoved his hand into his pocket instead. “My secretary is tracking him and his editor down now.”
“Aside from us,” Logan growled, “the only people who knew were the doctor and the three nurses tending His Majesty. They all have top security clearance and wouldn’t have anything to gain by leaking this.”
“The queen knows,” Pierce reminded him.
“Well, we know she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the Crown,” the bodyguard conceded. “What about someone in a lab somewhere? The king’s bloodwork is still being handled under an alias, isn’t it?”
“I’ll check with the doctor,” Pierce replied, fully sharing his peer’s frustration. “But questions raise questions and we need to tread lightly there. I think our best source right now is the reporter and the editor.”
“I’ll stay on it,” Harrison promised. “But who leaked this isn’t our biggest problem at the moment.” He was unable himself to imagine where the leak had occurred, though he did agree with Pierce about Her Majesty. If the queen were to confide in anyone, it would be Lady Gwendolyn, and he had already eliminated her as a suspect. Had she known, she would have immediately understood why he had to consult with the queen about the alliance. But she hadn’t betrayed so much as a hint of such knowledge. All he remembered seeing in her intriguing blue eyes was the unexpected and beguiling plea with which she’d greeted him, and the quick, damnably annoying way that sapphire blue had frosted over before she’d come to her queen’s defense.
With a swift frown, he shook off the thoughts. He didn’t need to be thinking about the ice maiden—especially while three of the most intelligent, wealthiest and most powerful men in the country were waiting for him to continue.
“The entire kingdom is waking up to these headlines,” he pointed out, determined to stave off disaster. “Press from all over the world is going to descend like locusts in less than an hour…if the pressroom phone isn’t ringing already.” The thought had him starting to pace. “The good news is that the reporter apparently hadn’t been told how long the king has been ill. As far as anyone will know from that article, King Morgan took ill last evening rather than weeks ago.
“However,” he continued, pacing behind the men, “now that the public does know the king’s condition, it is imperative that Prince Broderick cease the masquerade as the real king and make a statement to the people that he will be taking his brother’s place in a ceremonial capacity. With those headlines,” he muttered, dismissing the offending wording with the wave of his hand, “we also need to make it very clear to the public and the world that Prince Broderick is a figurehead only. In the absence of an appointed heir, Penwyckian tradition passes power to the queen.”