LITMIR.BIZ

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hours. Right. It was a rather long time to be saddling—or rather, saddled with, she hastily corrected herself—the man.

      Best to think of something else, Sara, she told herself.

      She glanced down to see that Mr. Cordello held only one small canvas bag. “Is that all you’ve brought? Don’t you have another bag?”

      He, too, glanced down at his burden—unburdensome though it may have been—then back up at Sara. His expression now indicated that he found her question unusual. “Will I need anything more?” he asked. “I didn’t get the impression I’d be staying in Penwyck very long. Just long enough to get this ridiculous story straightened out.”

      During her phone call this morning, the queen had explained to Sara all the particulars of the ridiculous story, as Mr. Cordello had referred to it. But Her Majesty wasn’t as ready to dismiss the situation as such. Not yet. There was, at present, compelling evidence to suggest that twenty-three years ago, the newborn sons of Queen Marissa and King Morgan of Penwyck were switched at birth with a pair of different twins.

      The way it had been explained to Sara, King Morgan’s resentful brother, Broderick, jealous of Morgan because he ascended to the throne when Broderick thought the position should be his, was claiming that he had arranged twenty-three years ago to have the king’s rightful heirs kidnapped and placed by adoption with a wealthy family in America immediately after their birth. In their place, he said, he’d had a different set of newborn twins passed off as the king and queen’s sons, knowing that neither would be qualified to take control of Penwyck because they weren’t descended from royal blood. And that would be the day that Broderick saw his revenge on his brother fulfilled. In the meantime, he’d relished the knowledge that the boys Queen Marissa and King Morgan had raised as their own weren’t, in fact, their own sons at all.

      Now the queen was beside herself with worry over whether or not Broderick was telling the truth, and whether or not he had been successful in carrying out his plan, and she wouldn’t rest until the mystery was solved. The allegedly switched twins had been traced to the Cordello brothers in America, and Her Majesty was adamant that they join her in Penwyck until all was made clear. Marcus Cordello was already in Penwyck, having been accompanied there by Lady Amira Corbin, who had been sent on an errand similar to Sara’s. Now it was up to Sara to bring the other Cordello home.

      If, in fact, Penwyck was truly his home.

      “You don’t think you may be one of Her Majesty’s missing sons?” Sara asked her Cordello now.

      “Hell, no, I don’t think so,” he retorted. Immediately, however, he looked chastened. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Pardon my French.”

      Sara bit back a smile. “I’m fluent in several languages, Mr. Cordello, one of which happens to be French, and I didn’t detect any French in what you just said. However, I accept your apology. Though I assure you, you needn’t feel as if you must coddle me. I’m made of firmer stuff than that, I promise you.”

      He grinned again at that, but this time it was a grin that told her he didn’t believe her for a minute. But that was all right, Sara thought. She knew most men—those who didn’t know her well, at any rate—looked at her as if she were a delicate porcelain doll who should be kept constantly under glass. What would Shane Cordello say, she wondered, if he knew the master’s degree she was just completing in public administration included minors in tae bahk do and M-16s? Ah, well. No reason to overwhelm the poor man. They’d only be together for—she gulped inwardly—sixteen hours.

      “Well, there is apparently substantial evidence, Mr. Cordello, to suggest that the men raised as Prince Dylan and Prince Owen were switched at birth with the rightful heirs to the throne, and that you and your brother, Marcus, may very well be the true princes of Penwyck.”

      “Horse doodoo,” he replied mildly. “To put it bluntly.”

      Sara laughed. “Thank you so much for sparing my tender sensibilities,” she said. And as she said it, her gaze met Shane Cordello’s again, holding firm this time, and something in the air between them seemed to crackle and fizz and very nearly explode.

      Not good, she thought as a strange heat rippled up her spine and into her chest and down into parts of her that in no way needed warming right now. Not good at all. For sixteen hours, she would be seated beside this man on a very small jet, with no one to bother them save two pilots and two attendants. Pilots and attendants who were trained specifically not to bother the jet’s occupants unless those occupants pushed the call button on the arm of their very plush seats.

      Sixteen hours, she thought again. Oh, yes. It was going to be a very long flight back to Penwyck indeed.

      Two

      By the time their jet took off from LAX, it was past one-thirty, so backed up was the air traffic. The moment the wheels left the ground, Shane reminded himself he’d be trapped in this little metal bucket for sixteen hours with only a few infrequent breaks, and told himself to relax. Better yet, he thought, sleep. It had been one helluva day—hell, two helluva days—and God knew he was close to exhaustion. But something kept him wide awake—gosh, he couldn’t imagine what—so he remained wide-awake, assessing his situation instead.

      He replayed everything in his head that Marcus had told him the day before, correlating it with everything the two of them had discussed the last time they spoke. But much of it still made no sense to him. Adopted. That, of course, was what was spinning fastest and foremost in his brain. Marcus and Shane had been adopted as newborns, his brother had told him yesterday, because their mother had been unable to conceive. Neither parent had ever seen fit to tell the boys, evidently. The opportunity had never arisen. There had never been any cause. The timing was never right. Take your pick of lame excuses. But Marcus had assured him that their father had verified it when he’d asked for the facts. Still doubtful, however, Shane had tried to call their mother to hear her version of things. But he’d been unable to reach her, and she hadn’t returned his call by the time he left his apartment. He’d had to leave a message for her instead.

      Adopted. It didn’t seem possible, but in hindsight, it explained so many things. Deep down, he believed what his brother had told him. But he hadn’t had time to process it all. Adopted. Shane still wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On one hand, it changed nothing about his life. On the other hand, it changed everything.

      But even that was the least of his worries right now. Because in addition to having been adopted as a newborn, there was a chance—a reasonably good one, evidently—that Shane and Marcus had been born in Penwyck to its rulers, and that they had been switched at birth with a different pair of fraternal twin boys born at roughly the same time. The mother of those boys, then a recently widowed friend of the queen’s, had died in childbirth, and the queen had arranged for them to be adopted by a wealthy American couple—Joseph and Francesca Cordello.

      Somewhere along the line, though, everything had gone awry. The queen’s brother-in-law, Broderick, disgruntled that his brother had inherited the throne instead of him, had instigated a switch of the twins, replacing Owen and Dylan Penwyck with the orphaned boys, and sending the infant princes off to be adopted by the Cordellos in Chicago instead. At least, that was what Broderick was claiming. Queen Marissa, who had known of her brother-in-law’s intentions, thought she’d thwarted the plan before it could be carried out, but now, apparently, she had reason to think otherwise. Now, apparently, she had reason to think that maybe the boys she had raised as her own were not her own, and that the American Cordello twins might very well be.

      Frankly, the whole situation made Shane’s head spin. Even after having had two days to mull it all over, he was still trying to figure out the whys and wherefores and what-the-hells. That was another reason why he had agreed to this trip to Penwyck—just to have explained to him once and for all, hopefully with audiovisual aids, what the hell was going on. He honestly couldn’t believe that he and Marcus were the missing heirs to the throne. His gut told him no, and his gut was never wrong. Queen Marissa, too, seemed to think it unlikely, though she did grant there was a possibility. That was why she had insisted on Shane’s and Marcus’s coming

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