Prince of my Panties (Royal Package 2)

“I do know,” I assure her. “And it’s terrible and unfair, but—”

“And my family are among the worst of the worst,” she says in a harsh whisper. “In the seventeenth century, Queen Gertrude the First made it illegal for Romani women to have children. Which they inevitably did, of course, because it was the seventeenth century and women didn’t have any kind of reliable birth control, not that a queen should have the authority to outlaw having children, of course. But anyway, when they did have babies, Gertrude sent troops to steal them right after they were born. No one knows what happened to those children, but I can’t imagine it was anything good or even humane.”

I clench my jaw. Have I made a mistake, springing this on her without warning? But my gut still insists this was the only way to get her to talk to members of this community. “I know. But you aren’t Queen Gertrude, and you aren’t accusing anyone of a crime. The opposite, in fact. You said the woman who took you was trying to help you, to warn you about the curse so you could guard against it.”

“I don’t know if that’s why she told me,” Lizzy says, growing still more agitated. “I can’t speak to her motivations. Maybe she just wanted to warn me not to put off living my best life. Or not to have any babies I didn’t want to leave orphaned when I died in my mid-twenties. I don’t know what was—”

“But if you explain to the healers here that she seemed to have good intentions,” I cut in, not wanting to let this spiral any further, “they won’t feel threatened or attacked. And they might want to help you, too.”

“How,” she demands, “by telling me the woman was crazy? That’s what you think will happen, right? That they’ll tell me the woman was mentally ill and there’s no such thing as curses?”

My lips part on a denial, but I think better of it. “Isn’t that the best possible outcome?”

She frowns harder.

“But we’ll never know anything about this woman if we don’t ask questions,” I say. “Not about her trustworthiness, or her state of mind when she took you. All questions that, quite honestly, should have been asked a long time ago.”

Elizabeth shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“You’ve been hiding long enough, Lizzy. The Romani have been living in this area for decades, and you knew it. Why haven’t you made inquiries here before?”

“Because I was a child,” she says. “A confused child. I thought something had happened, but my sisters and nanny said it hadn’t. How was I supposed to—”

“But you haven’t been a child for a long time. You could have followed up on this at any point in the past few years. You could have gone to the police and had them help you. There isn’t a statute of limitations on kidnapping in Rinderland.”

She blinks up at me. “Seriously? Do you have any idea the scandal that would have caused? The division? There are plenty of Rindish people who don’t care for my family, but there are far more who hate the Romani. It would have brought even more pain to these people, and how can I even think about doing something like that? Especially when my family has already caused them so much suffering.” She gestures to our left. “My ancestor tried to annihilate that little boy’s people. If Queen Gertrude were alive today, she would have ripped him away from his family when he was a baby. He would never have had the chance to grow up, let alone ride a bike.”

“They didn’t have bicycles in the seventeenth century.”

She scowls. “That isn’t the point, and you know it. And if I had gone to the police, I have no evidence that the abduction even happened. My sisters were both there on the playground that day. They didn’t see anyone take me and insisted I was only gone for a few minutes. People around here can be superstitious, but they don’t believe in magic. The Romani are the only ones who even sort of buy into that kind of thing.”

I hold her gaze, waiting for her to make the next logical step on her own.

It only takes a moment before she sighs, and her shoulders sink away from her ears. “Fine, I see your point. But not all Romani people do. I’m sure plenty of them would think my story sounds crazy, too.”

“Maybe,” I agree, “but women running a traditional healing and cultural preservation center will likely know the folklore, whether they believe in it or not. They might also be more likely to know about a woman who believed in magic so intensely she felt compelled to kidnap a little girl to warn her about a curse.”