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  And then, after what seemed like hours, the door opened and Dr. Abby Burnett came out. There was a grim expression on the physician’s usually amiable, plain face.

  Weston was on his feet immediately. The chair almost fell backwards from his momentum. “Well?” he asked eagerly. “Is the prince…?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Burnett told him. “I’ve just now finished stitching him back up.” She pressed her lips together, obviously wrestling with something. She nodded at the chair behind him. “Your Majesty, perhaps you’d like to sit down.”

  Weston frowned, dismissing the suggestion. “I have been sitting down. Sitting down so long that I’m fairly certain I have permanently flattened your cushions.” He drew his shoulders back, momentarily looking like the formidable ruler he had always been. “Now, out with it. What have you discovered?”

  There was a wealth of information to dispense. The doctor picked her way through it carefully. “That your son did not die a natural death. That he didn’t even die accidentally by his own hand.”

  “There was no drug overdose?” Weston made no effort to cover his eagerness for the confirmation. This, at least, would take his son out of the realm of being just another careless drug abuser. He didn’t want that to be Reginald’s legacy, that he’d died accidentally while seeking an artificial rush.

  “Unless, of course,” the medical examiner added dryly, “Prince Reginald intended to ‘accidentally’ poison himself.”

  “Poison?” Amelia echoed, trying to process the information.

  She knew of the adult Reginald predominantly through what she had read in the newspapers and magazine. Even the most charitable, conservative accountings made the man out to be difficult to deal with. How many toes had Reginald stepped on, how many people had secretly plotted getting their revenge against him? It looked as if one of them had finally succeeded. But who?

  Amelia glanced at her husband and wondered if they would ever get to the bottom of it or if this was destined to remain one of those unsolved mysteries that teased armchair detectives from time to time.

  “Poison,” the medical examiner repeated. Her tone left no room for argument.

  “What kind of poison?” Russell wanted to know. If they knew what kind and its strength, maybe they could track down its purchase and with that, perhaps discover the name of the killer.

  “Did he suffer?” Weston wanted to know before the medical examiner could answer Russell’s question.

  The look in the doctor’s eyes told Russell that Dr. Burnett was torn. Torn between ethics and empathy. Between telling the king the truth and allowing the monarch to seek solace within a comforting lie.

  But then the medical examiner raised her head as if she had made up her mind. Her expression told him that she was going with the truth. Lying, even for the best of reasons, would only undercut her ultimate value to the king. He had to be able to trust her. To know that he could believe what she told him.

  The king was not a stupid man. Once the pain of hearing what she had to tell him had worked its way into the tapestry of his life, King Weston would realize that no one simply fell asleep after ingesting poison. That before death claimed the despairing soul seeking an end, there came the feeling of being strangled, of suddenly realizing that you were about to die and that there was nothing that could be done to avoid the inevitable.

  Dr. Burnett placed a comforting hand on the monarch’s shoulder. “Somewhat, I’m afraid.”

  Amelia slipped her hand into Weston’s, pretending not to see the tears gathering in the man’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty,” she whispered.

  “But there is something more.”

  Dr. Burnett’s words sliced through the pain winding itself around his heart. Weston stared at her.

  “More? The word no longer has any meaning to me, doctor. There is no ‘more.’ I’ve lost my son, my only son. For me, there is only less, not more.”

  “Well, Your Majesty,” the medical examiner went on almost wearily, as if bracing herself for a very steep uphill climb, “that’s just it.”

  “What’s just it?” Russell asked, cutting in. He exchanged confused glances with Amelia, who shook her head, indicating that she had no more of a clue about what was going on than he did.

  “It doesn’t look as if you’ve really lost your only son,” Dr. Burnett went on, only to have the king interrupt her again.

  “What are you talking about?” Weston demanded. “You just dissected him in your clinic. You just came from there.” He gestured toward the clinic’s doors.

  Dr. Burnett slipped her slender hands deep into the pockets of the lab coat she had thrown over her operating livery. “I dissected someone,” she agreed, “but it wasn’t your son.”

  Amelia was trying to make sense out of what was being told to them. “Someone switched the bodies?” she guessed incredulously.

  Dr. Burnett’s eyes shifted toward her. “Yes, but not right now.”

  “I don’t understand,” Russell interrupted. What she was suggesting wasn’t possible. The clinic had been secured. The palace was always secured and never more so than now. No one short of a magician could have come in and switched the bodies before the autopsy. Besides, there was also the fact that Weston had just been with Reginald earlier today, paying his final respects. The doctor had to have made some mistake. “When could this so-called ‘switch’ have taken place?” he challenged.

  Her answer floored them all. “My guess is thirty years ago. At the hospital right after the queen gave birth.”

  For the first time in days, color rose to the king’s cheeks. “What are you talking about?” he demanded heatedly. “That isn’t possible.”

  “I’m afraid that it is,” Dr. Burnett said calmly. “That it has to be. There is no other explanation.”

  The calmer she sounded the more agitated Weston grew. “No other explanation for what?”

  The medical examiner took a deep breath and began. “Your Majesty, as a matter of course, a blood panel and tox screen were performed on the sample of blood I took from the dead man.”

  “My son,” Weston interjected sternly.

  She nodded politely and went on. “For whatever reason, someone in the lab accidentally did blood typing, as well. The man on my autopsy table had type O negative blood. You and your late queen were both AB positive. There is no way that man in my clinic is a product of a union between you and the queen.”

  “Someone made a mistake,” Weston insisted.

  “No mistake, Your Majesty. I ran the second test myself.” Dr. Burnett looked to Russell and Amelia for support before turning her attention back to the king. She remained unshakable in her conviction of the findings. “I have no idea why this was done or who was behind it, that’s not my job. What I do know is that the man I performed an autopsy on wasn’t your natural son and that if there was a switch—”

  Russell cut in, as the full import of what the medical examiner was saying hit him, “Then the Prince of Silvershire is still out there somewhere.”

  “I have a son? Another son?” Weston looked like a man shell-shocked as the question dribbled from his lips in slow motion, just the same way his gaze drifted from the doctor to Russell. It was clear that he didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or shattered by the news.

  “No, not another son,” the medical examiner corrected. “Your only son. I don’t know who the man on my autopsy table actually is or was, but the fact remains that he couldn’t have been your son.”

  “You’re right,” Amelia cut in, trying to come to grips with what the doctor had just told them. “If a switch was made, it had to have been done in the hospital. Most likely as soon as the newborn baby was taken from the queen to be cleaned up.”

  It all sounded so far-fetched, so unreal. “Why? Who?” Weston cried, stunned. He looked at Russell, wanting something logical to hold on to. Feeling like a man who had just been given hope and had his soul condemned at the same time, with the very same words.

  The re
al prince was still alive. This meant that he couldn’t take the crown, Russell realized. The thought brought with it a wave of energy that filled his heart. He didn’t have to be king, didn’t have to suffer through the kind of life that was examined and reexamined on a daily basis. The relief he felt was incredible.

  “We don’t know why or who yet,” Russell told him, “but we are going to find out.” He looked at the sovereign. “I promise you that, Your Majesty. We’ll find out who he is and why he was taken. And why we haven’t heard anything about it until now.”

  It would seem to him that if there was a royal abduction, whoever had done it would have tried to take advantage of the situation. Yet in thirty years, there hadn’t been a single word about it. Not a demand for ransom or even a hint that it was done. Why?

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that something dire was about to happen.

  Reginald’s poisoning took on a different perspective. Perhaps it hadn’t been done for some personal wrong. Perhaps poisoning the prince had been the first step in the present reign’s undoing.

  “Your Majesty?” Amelia prodded when the king made no reply. She slanted a glance toward Russell, concerned about the monarch’s state of health. “Would you like to lie down?”

  Very slowly, Weston turned his head toward her, as if unable to move his eyes independently. “I—I—”

  He couldn’t go on, couldn’t force any more words from his lips. There was no air with which to move them. His heart was hammering too hard for him to catch his breath. What there was of it was quickly fading from him. And his head, his head was doing very strange things. Lights were winking in and out, blurring his vision, making him see things out of his past. Things that were not there.

  A baby. His wife. Both appeared to him in flashes and then were gone. And all the while, there was this pounding in his brain. A pounding that grew ever louder.

  Weston’s knees gave way, failing him.

  Like a crumpled doll, the king collapsed. He would have hit the floor had Russell’s reflexes not been so keen. He grabbed the monarch just before the latter hit the floor.

  Propping him up, Russell looked at the king. “Your Majesty, can you hear me?” Russell cried. Weston’s eyes rolled back in his head.

  Dr. Burnett was at his side immediately. “Bring him in here!” she ordered, leading the way into the clinic. Russell picked the unconscious man up in his arms and followed her. Amelia was right beside him.

  An alarm was sounded. Instantly, there were technicians and equipment materializing from all over the fully stocked clinic. Russell placed the king down on the gurney that had been brought over, then stepped back. Amelia shadowed his movements, her eyes never leaving the king’s crumpled body.

  “Is he—?” She couldn’t get herself to finish the question.

  “He’s still alive,” Russell told her.

  The staff did what they could. The defibrillator paddles were not necessary. The king’s heart went on beating, but despite all their best efforts, the king remained unconscious.

  Maybe it was better that way, Russell thought, watching as the king was taken to a private room. Everything that had happened in the last few minutes had been too much for the monarch to process. The man needed his rest. His body needed to fight its way back to health. To grow strong enough to handle the adverse situation it found itself in.

  “Inform whoever needs to be told that the king is staying here tonight,” Dr. Burnett told Russell.

  “Do you think a hospital might be better for him?” Amelia suggested.

  “The king has been fighting off the effects of the flu,” the doctor told her. “We’re running some tests, but perhaps all he needs is a little rest. We can tell more in the morning.”

  Russell nodded. In the meantime, he thought, he had answers to find and a potential king to track down.

  “We’re not going to Gastonia just yet,” he told Amelia.

  Gastonia’s princess threaded her fingers through her husband’s as the doctor drew a curtain around the king’s bed. They would be going home soon enough, she promised herself. Right now, Russell needed to be here. Needed to stand by his king and help him. His sense of duty and responsibility were among the things she loved about him.

  “I know,” she murmured. Her tone told him he had her full support.

  A man could not ask for more. Not even if he were a king.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1740-3

  THE HEART OF A RULER

  Copyright © 2006 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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