The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte

“Hey.”

“When I was a child, silly. Things have changed now.”

The funny thing was he wasn’t so sure all that much had changed with her. From the little bit she’d told him of her life, he had a pretty good idea of how hard she worked and how little she played. Someone ought to show her how to have a little fun.

Someone. Not him, of course, but someone.

They stopped at a small general store and he went in, leaving her in the car entertaining the baby. Minutes later he came out with a car seat in tow.

“This ought to do it,” he said, and in no time at all they were back on the road, Cici officially ensconced in the proper equipment.

“She seems to like it fine,” Ayme noted. “She’s already falling back to sleep.”

He handed her a couple of sandwiches he’d picked up in the store and she looked at them suspiciously.

“This isn’t going to be one of those strange British things, is it?” she asked. “Vegemite or Marmite or whatever?”

He grinned. “Those are Australian and British, respectively. I’m Dutch. We eat kippers!”

“What’s a kippers?”

“Kippers are canned herring, usually smoked.”

“Fish?” She pulled back the paper. “Oh, no! What is that smell?”

“It’s a great smell,” he retorted. “A nice, sea-faring nation smell. Lots of protein. Eat up. You’ll love it.”

She was ravenously hungry, so she did eat up, but she complained the whole time. He ate his own kipper sandwich with relish.

“Good stuff,” he remarked as he finished up. For some reason the fact that she was complaining so much about the food had put him in a marvelous mood. “That’ll hold us until we get in later tonight.”

She rolled her eyes, but more as a way to tease him than for real. Now that she’d had something to eat, she was sleepy again, but that made her feel guilty.

“Would you like me to drive?” she said. “You must be dead on your feet. You need some sleep.”

He shook his head. “Do you have a license?” he noted.

“No,” she said sadly. “Only for Texas.”

“That won’t work.”

She sighed. “Sorry.”

But in another few minutes, she was asleep again.

Just looking at her made him smile. He bit it off and tried to scowl instead. He wasn’t going to let her get to him. He wasn’t that easy. Was he?

When he couldn’t resist glancing at her again he realized that maybe he was. But what the hell, it didn’t mean a thing. It was just that she was so open and natural and so completely different from the women he was used to. For years now, he’d been hanging out with a pretty sophisticated crowd. And that was on purpose. He’d found out early that you could find out a lot if you hung with the right people and learned to listen. He had a very large hole in his life. He needed some very specialized information to fill it in.

Twenty-five years before, he’d been woken in the middle of a terrifying night, bundled up and raced out of the burning castle he’d lived in all six years of his young life. He knew now that his parents were being murdered at about the same time. It was likely that many of his brothers and sisters were killed as well. But one old man whose face still haunted his dreams had come to his room and saved his life that night.

Taken by people who were strangers to him from his island nation and smuggled into the Netherlands, he arrived the next day, a shaken and somewhat traumatized refugee, at the noisy, cheerful home of the Dykstra family. He was told this would be his new home, his new family, and that he must never speak of Ambria, never let anyone know anything about his past. The people who brought him there then melted away into the scenery and were never seen again—at least not by him. And there he was, suddenly a Dykstra, suddenly Dutch. And not allowed to ask any questions, ever.

The Dykstras were good to him. His new parents were actually quite affectionate, but there were so many children in the family, it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Still, everyone had to pitch in and he did learn to take care of the younger ones. He also learned how to listen and quietly glean information. From the very beginning his purpose in life was to find out what had happened to his family and to find a way to connect with any of them who might still be alive. As he got older, he began to meet the right people and gain the trust of the powerful in many areas, and little by little, he began to piece things together.

At first the socializing had just been a natural inclination. But over time he began to realize that these people did move in circles close to the wealthy and the influential, elements that might prove helpful in his quest to find out what had happened to his family—and his country. Over the years various things half-heard or half-understood sent him on wild-goose chases across the continent, but finally, six months ago, he’d hit pay dirt.

He’d been playing a friendly set of tennis with Nico, the son of a French diplomat, when the young man had stopped his serve, and, ball in hand, had stared at him for a long moment.

“You know,” he said, shaking his head, “I met someone at a dinner in Paris last week who could be your twin. It was a fancy banquet for the new foreign minister. He looked just like you.”

“Who? The foreign minister?”

“No, idiot.” Nico laughed. “This fellow I met. I can’t remember his name, but I think he was with the British delegation. You don’t have a brother in government?”

By now, David’s heart was pounding in his chest as though he’d just run a four-minute mile. He knew this might be the break he’d been searching for. But he had to remain cool and pretend this was nothing but light banter. He took a swing into empty air with his racquet and tried to appear nonchalant.

“Not that I know of. All my brothers are happily ensconced in the business world, and spend most of their time in Amsterdam.” He grinned across the net. “And none of them look much like me.”

He was referring to his foster brothers, but the fact that he wasn’t a real Dykstra was not common knowledge and he was happy to keep it that way.

“The ugly duckling of the family, are you?” teased Nico.

“That’s me.”

Nico served and it was all David could do to pay enough attention to return it in a long drive to the corner. Nico’s response went into the net and that gave David a chance for another couple of questions, but Nico really didn’t seem to know any more than what he’d said.

Still, it was a start, and the information breathed new life into his hopes and dreams of finding his family. He got to work researching, trying to find a list of the names of everyone who had attended that banquet. Once he had that, he began searching for pictures on the Internet. Finally, he thought he just might have his man.

Mark Stephols was his name. There were a couple of other possibilities, but the more he stared at the pictures of Mark, the more certain he became. Now, how to approach him and find out for sure?

He could find out where Mark was likely to be at certain public events, but he couldn’t just walk up and say “Hi. Are you my brother?” And if he actually was, the last thing he could risk was standing side by side with the man, where everyone could immediately note the resemblance between them and begin to ask questions. So as he waited for the right chance, he began to color his hair a bit darker and grow a mustache. There was no point in making identification too easy.

His highly placed social intimates came in handy, and very soon he obtained an invitation to a reception where Mark Stephols could be approached. Despite the hair dye, despite the mustache, the moment the introduction was made—“Mr. Stephols, may I introduce Mr. David Dyskstra of Dyskstra Shipping?”—their gazes met and the connection was made. There was instant—though silent—acknowledgment between the two of them that they had to be related.

They shook hands and Monte leaned close to whisper, “Meet me in the rose garden.”

A few minutes later they came face-to-face without any witnesses and stared at each other as though they each weren’t sure they were seeing what they thought they were seeing.

David started to speak and Monte put a finger to his lips. “The walls have ears,” he said softly.

David grinned. He was fairly vibrating with excitement. “How about the shrubbery?”

“That’s possible, too, of course. Don’t trust anything or anyone.”

“Let’s walk, then.”

“Good idea.”

They strolled along the edge of a small lake for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries, until they were far enough from the house and from everyone else, to feel somewhat safe. They looked at one another, then both jockied comments back and forth for another few minutes, neither knowing just what to say, neither wanting to give the game away, just in case what looked true wasn’t.

Finally, Monte said out of the blue, “Do you remember the words to the old folk song our mother would sing when putting us to sleep for the night?”

David stopped where he was and concentrated, trying to remember. Did he? What had that been again?

And then he closed his eyes and began to murmur softly, as though channeling from another time, another place. In his head, he heard his mother’s voice. From his mouth came the childhood bedtime song in Ambrian. When he finished and opened his eyes again, he turned to his brother. Mark had been still, but tears were coursing down his tanned cheeks. Reaching out, he took David’s hand and held it tightly.

“At last,” he whispered. “At last.”

Chapter Five

AYME didn’t sleep for long, and soon she was up and reacting to the beauty of the countryside.

“I don’t know why I haven’t come to Europe before,” she said. “I’ve just been so wrapped up in law school and starting a new career and being there for my family.”

Her voice faded on the last word and she had to swallow back her feelings. Every now and then it hit her hard. She had to hold it back. There would be a time to deal with sorrow and pain. The time wasn’t now.

“And boyfriends?” David was saying. “I’m sure you’ve got a boyfriend back home.”

She settled down, shaking away unhappiness and trying to live in the moment. “Actually, I don’t,” she admitted.

“Really.”

“Really.” She thought about it for a moment. She kept meaning to get a boyfriend. So far her life had just been too busy to have time for that sort of thing. “I’ve been going to college and going to law school and working, as well. There just hasn’t been time for boyfriends.”

“You’re kidding.” So it was just as he’d thought. She was a workaholic who needed to learn how to be young while she still had the chance. “Most women make time.”

“Well, I didn’t. I was so set on doing the very best I possibly could and succeeding and making my parents proud of me.”

“Your adoptive parents, right?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“Ah.” He nodded, too. So it was a classic case of overcompensation. She probably spent all her time working frantically to prove it was a good decision for them to have chosen her. “You’re the girl driven to bring home the As on her report card.”

She smiled fleetingly, pleased he seemed to understand.

“And your sister Sam?”

“Sam not so much.” She winced, wishing she hadn’t said that. She didn’t ever, ever want to say anything that even hinted at criticism of her adoptive sister ever again. She put her hand over her heart, as though she could push back the pain.

“I came over to Texas with a bunch of kids who’d lost their parents in the rebellion. We were all adopted out, mostly to American families with Ambrian roots.”

“So it was an organized rescue operation.”

“Sort of. I’ve told you all this, haven’t I? I was adopted by the Sommers of Dallas, Texas, and I grew up like any other American kid.” Her parents’ faces swam into her mind and she felt a lump in her throat. They were such good people. They should have had another twenty or thirty years. It didn’t pay to expect life to be fair.

“You don’t remember Ambria at all?” he asked after a moment.

She gave him a look. “I was eighteen months old at the time I left.”

“A little young to understand the political history of the place,” he allowed with a quick, barely formed grin. “So what do you really know about Ambria?”

“Not much.” She shrugged. “There were some books around the house.” Her face lit up as an old memory came to her. “One time, an uncle stopped in to visit and he told Sam and me about how we were both really Ambrian, deep down, and he told us stories.” She half smiled remembering how she and her sister had hung on his every word, thrilled to be a part of something that made them a little different from all their friends.

Ambrian. It sounded cool and sort of exotic, like being Italian or Lithuanian.

“Other than that, not much.”

He thought that over for a moment. He’d had the advantage of being six years old, so he remembered a lot. But when you came right down to it, the rest he’d learned on his own, finding books, looking things up on the Internet. His foster parents had taken him in and assumed he was now one of the family and Dutch to boot. No need to delve into things like roots and backgrounds. That just made everyone uneasy. They had been very good to him in every other way, but as far as reminding him of who he was, they probably thought it was safer if he forgot, just like everyone else.

And if it hadn’t been for one old man who had moved to Holland from Ambria years before and lived near their summer home, he might have done just that.

“Too bad your parents didn’t tell you more,” he mused, comparing her experience to his and wondering why such different circumstances still ended up being treated the same way by the principals involved.

“They were busy with their jobs and raising two little girls, getting us to our dance practices and violin lessons and all that sort of thing.”

She moved restlessly. This was getting too close to the pain again. She hadn’t told him about her parents yet and she wasn’t sure she ever would. She knew she would never be able to get through it without breaking down, and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. Better to stick to the past.

“They were great parents,” she said, knowing she sounded a little defensive. “They just didn’t feel all that close to Ambria themselves, I guess.” She brightened. “But being Ambrian got me a grant for law school and even my job once I passed the bar.”

He remembered she’d mentioned something about that before but he hadn’t really been listening. Now he realized this could be a factor. “Your law firm is Ambrian?”

“Well, a lot of the associates are of Ambrian background. It’s not like we sit around speaking Ambrian or anything like that.”

This was all very interesting. The Ambrian connection was going to turn out to be more relevant than she knew—he was sure of it. His jaw tightened as he remembered that he still didn’t really know why she had shown up in his apartment or who had sent her.

But of course, there was a very possible explanation. She could, even unwittingly, be a stalking horse for a real assassin. Or she could merely be the one testing the territory for someone who meant to come in and make sure David never reached the strength to threaten the current Ambrian regime. It was hard to know and he was more and more convinced that she didn’t know anything more than what she’d told him.

He remembered what she’d said about not knowing which side her parents had been on. Since she had no emotional identification with either side, she was pretty much an innocent in all this. If she was here because an enemy of his had sent her, she wasn’t likely to be aware of it.

Still, he shouldn’t have brought her along. It was a stupid, amateur thing to do. He should probably find a way to park her somewhere—if it wasn’t already too late.

Because he couldn’t keep her with him. He was due in Italy by the end of the week for the annual meeting of the Ambrian expatriate community. This would be the first time he’d ever attended. It was to be a gathering of the clan, a coming together of a lot of Ambrians who had been powers, or were related to those who had been, in the old days. He needed to be focused on the future of Ambria, not on Ayme and Cici. He couldn’t take them along.

So—what to do with them in the meantime?

He’d promised he would help Ayme find Cici’s father and he meant to keep that promise. It was bound to get a bit complicated, seeing as how his name had come into the picture, and he didn’t have much time. But he had a few contacts. He would do what he could to help.

The only thing he could think of was Marjan, his adoptive sister who was married with two children and lived in a farming town in a northern area of Holland. It was a good, out of the way place where they could melt into the scenery. Maybe even he could slip in below the radar there.

It was odd how quickly he seemed to have slipped into the cloak-and-dagger mold. But then, he supposed he’d been training for it ever since he left Ambria, in attitude if not in action. It was true that he’d never felt he could fully open himself to others in his life. He always had to hide, not only his real identity, but also his feelings about things.

“So I guess you could say,” he said, going on with their conversation, “bottom line, that you don’t really care about who runs Ambria?”

“Care?” She looked at him blankly. “I’ve never given it a second thought.”

“Of course not.”

He turned away, feeling a surge of bitterness in his chest. Was it only he and his brother who still cared? If so, they were going to have a hard time rallying others to their cause. But it was hardly fair to lay this complaint on her. She couldn’t help it that no one had bothered to educate her about her background.

And if he were honest with himself, he would have to admit that the strength of his own feelings had been greatly enhanced by his relationship with his brother. Before he knew Monte, his interest in Ambria was strong, even passionate, but diffused. It had taken an intensive experience with his brother to bring out the nuances.

It had been exciting and a fulfillment of a lifelong dream to find Monte the way he did. But it had been very difficult for the two of them to have any sort of relationship. They couldn’t trust most forms of communication, they couldn’t appear together anywhere because of how much alike they looked, they had to be aware of the possibility that someone was listening every time they spoke to each other. So Monte finally hit upon the perfect scheme—a six-week sailing trip in the South Pacific.

They met in Bali and proceeded from there, getting to know each other and hashing out the possibilities of being royals without a country to call their own. They had huge arguments, even huger reconciliations, they shared ideas, hopes and dreams and emotions, and they ended up as close as any two brothers could be. By the time the six weeks was up, they had both become impassioned with the goal of taking their country back, somehow, someday. To that end, they quickly become co-conspirators and developed a plan.

They decided to continue to go under their aliases. That was necessary for survival. Monte would travel in international circles he already had access to and try to gain information—and eventually supporters—and David would go undercover in the social jet-setting world he knew so well to glean what he could from business contacts on one side and the inebriated rich drones he partied with on the other. Their primary goal was to find their lost brothers and sisters and begin to work toward a restoration of their monarchy.

So he had a very large advantage over Ayme. He certainly couldn’t expect her to share his goals when she’d never even heard of most of them and wouldn’t know what to do with them if she had.

Their conversation had faded away by now and she spent some time watching the countryside roll past. Morning had come and gone and afternoon was sending long shadows across the land. The countryside was much more interesting now with its checkerboard fields and beautiful green hedgerows and the quaint little towns. This was more like the England she’d expected to see.

But the unanswered questions still haunted this trip as far as she was concerned. Where were they going? And why?

They stopped for petrol and David noticed a park nearby.

“Want to get out and stretch your legs?” he suggested as he maneuvered the car into the little parking lot next to a large tree. “I need to make a phone call.”

They got out of the car and he strolled out of listening range. She let him go. There was no reason to resent his wanting privacy, after all.

He looked back as their paths diverged. He didn’t want her to get too far away. But he needed to make contact with his brother.

Once he had Monte on the line, he filled him in on Ayme and the fact that he had her in tow. Monte was not enthusiastic.

“You’re not bringing her to Italy, are you?”

“No, of course not. I’m taking her to my sister’s. Marjan will take good care of her.”

“Good.”

“But in the meantime, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

“Anything. You know that.”

“Just information. First I need to know about a car accident outside of Dallas, Texas, sometime last week. A young woman named Samantha Sommers was killed. I’d like a brief rundown of the facts in the case, the survivors, etc.”

“I’m jotting down your info as we speak.”

“Good. Besides that I’d like anything you can find on Ayme. Her name is Ayme Sommers. She’s an attorney for a law firm in Dallas that has a division which specializes in Ambrian immigration issues.”

“Will do.”

“And here’s another one. There seems to be someone—probably in the greater London area—who is fathering babies under the guise of being Prince Darius.”

That gave Monte pause. “Hmm. Not good.”

“No. Do you think you can make inquiries?”

“I can do more than that. I can start a full-fledged investigation on that one.”

“Without identifying your own interest in the case?”

“Exactly. Don’t worry. I can do that easily.”

“Good. I figure he’s either found a way to make time with the ladies using the royalty dodge, or…”

“Or he’s an agent trying to flush you out.”

“You got it.”

“I’m voting for the latter, but we’ll see.” Monte’s voice lightened. “In the meantime, David…a bit of news. I’ve found the perfect wife for you.”

David’s head reared back. Despite his overwhelming respect for his brother, that hadn’t sat well with him from the beginning.

“I don’t need a wife right now,” he shot back. “And if I did, I could find my own.”

“You can find your own mistresses, Darius,” Monte said, his tone containing just a hint of rebuke. “Your wife is a state affair.”

David groaned softly, regretting his reaction. Where had his tart response come from, anyway? He and his brother had already discussed this and he knew very well that he needed a wife to help support the cause. The right wife. It was one of the obligations of royalty.

The two of them had pledged that everything they were going to do from now on was going to be for the benefit of Ambria. No self-serving ambitions or appetites would be allowed to get in the way. They were both ready to sacrifice their private lives—and even their actual lives if it came to that. He was firmly committed to achieving their goals. Nothing else mattered.

“Families are the building blocks of empires,” Monte was saying blithely. “We need you to be married and to have a solid relationship. We’ve talked about this before. I thought you were on board.”

“I am,” David put in hastily. “Sorry, Monte. I’m just a little tired and short tempered right now. Don’t pay any attention.”

“Good. Wait until you meet her. She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent. And she’s totally devoted to overturning the Granvilli clan’s totalitarian regime. She’ll fight by your side and rule there, too, when we achieve our goal.” He chuckled. “I’m not worried about how you’ll react. She’ll knock you out when you see her.”