Prince Incognito. Rachelle McCalla
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both over the railing and scrambled to standing on the deck.
“Lily.” An older woman reached for the girl he’d rescued, but she shook her head and shoved him toward a doorway that led down stairs to the lit cabins belowdecks. He obediently headed in the direction he was pushed.
“Lillian.” A man stepped in front of them, barring the way.
“He can have my room.” The waterlogged young woman pleaded, her voice trembling. “Let him be. We can leave him at the next port.”
But the man looked angry, and regarded him with a scowl.
Straightening to his full height, he returned the man’s glare. He couldn’t remember who he was, but he was nearly certain he could take the older man if it came to a fight.
The man must have realized it, too, because he stepped aside, his mouth set in a grim line.
She pushed him ahead of her, down the stairs, and guided him into a comfortable-looking full-size berth and en-suite bathroom.
He spotted a waterproof chair and slumped down on it.
“Lily?” The older woman was at the door again. “What are you thinking, letting that man in your room?”
“He’s too big for the guest room. And this way, he’ll have his own private bathroom.” Lily left the door open a crack and addressed her through the gap. “I’m just going to re-dress his bandages. I’ll move to the guest room for tonight.”
“Fine.” The woman shrank away with a resigned sigh, and Lily closed the door.
He caught his breath as Lily approached him, her movements cautious.
“Do you mind if I remove your bandages?”
“Please.” He sat still as she peeled the soaking wet red-stained gauze from his head.
“I need to run upstairs and get the first-aid kit. I’ll be right back. If you feel light-headed, you can lie down.” She disappeared, and returned quickly with a suitcase-size first-aid kit. Perching on the edge of the bed beside his chair, she gingerly dabbed his face with ointment, her touch gentle.
“Your name is Lily?” He repeated the name he’d heard the other woman use.
“Lillian Bardici.”
He tried to think. Bardici. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place it. But then, he didn’t even know who he was. Everything had happened so quickly, and he had far more questions than answers. “Do you know who I am?”
“No. Don’t you remember?”
He closed his eyes and tried to think, but the throbbing in his head drowned out all his thoughts. “I don’t. The last thing I can recall is being thirsty, and you gave me a drink. How did we end up in the water?”
“My father threw you overboard. I jumped in after you.”
“To rescue me?” He couldn’t imagine that the slender woman would have had much success dragging him aboard if he hadn’t awakened, but at the same time, he felt grateful that she’d tried.
“Yes.” She squeezed more antibacterial ointment from a tube. “To try, anyway.”
“Why did your father throw me over?”
“It’s kind of a long story.” Lillian sighed as her gentle hands eased the salt-sting on his wounds. “My parents and I have been living on this boat for the past month—that’s a long story, too. We sailed from New York to Lydia to visit my father’s older brother, David. He’s a general in the Lydian Army. I don’t like my uncle at all. He’s extremely bossy, and he pushes my dad around. My uncle told my parents that we needed to leave Lydia before the state dinner tonight.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Lillian wiped ointment from her fingers onto a towel before trimming a length of clean gauze to cover his injury. “At the time, I just thought he was being controlling. But maybe he had some inkling about what was going to happen.” She looked at him thoughtfully.
He studied her face, trying to read what she was thinking. Her blue eyes were streaked with pale gray and green, giving them an almost aquamarine undertone, stunningly beautiful, like the Mediterranean Sea.
Lillian shrugged and continued her story. “I wanted to see the royal motorcade pass by. The kingdom of Lydia has a royal family, but news about them rarely reaches the United States. I’ve seen pictures of the princesses—they’re so elegant, and always promoting humanitarian causes—but the rest of the royal family is fairly private. I just wanted to catch a glimpse…”
“Did you?”
“Hardly. Soldiers pushed everyone back, and then explosions started going off everywhere. I was afraid we’d all be killed.”
Explosions, yes. He pinched his eyes shut, shadows of memories taunting him from beyond the pain-filled recesses of his mind. Slivers of memories fell down like dust motes shaken free. “They were diversion grenades—classified as nonlethal.”
“What? You remember?” She looked startled, maybe even frightened. “How do you know that?”
But the memory melted away like a snowflake in the sun, evaporating to nothingness even as he reached for it. “I don’t know how I know.” He shook his head, wishing he could as easily shake loose the thoughts held prisoner inside. He sighed. “That might explain why I can’t remember much—the trauma from the blast must have temporarily wiped out my memory.”
“Temporarily.” Lillian repeated. “How soon do you think it will be before you get it back?”
“Hard to say. Hopefully not long. Stun grenades aren’t mean to inflict permanent damage.”
“How is it that you know that, but you don’t remember your own name?”
He thought carefully before answering. “I remember how to speak. I remember how to swim.”
“I’m grateful you remembered that much.” Her small smile seemed intended to encourage him.
It warmed his heart. He wished, for her sake, that he could remember. That he had answers to give her. She’d already helped him so much, and he’d done nothing but get her in trouble. “The concussion may have only affected one area of my brain—my personal memories. Hopefully the blast wasn’t too strong, and I’ll recover my memory soon.”
“Maybe that explains why you weren’t injured any worse than you were.” Lillian taped a bandage securely into place. “Whatever those explosions were, I thought for sure we’d all be killed. I saw you in an alley, and ran for my bike just as you did. When you climbed in the backseat I pedaled for the yacht, dumped you onboard, and we got away from Sardis as quickly as we could. But—” she took a deep breath “—my father talked to my uncle, who told him to throw you overboard.”
“Why?”
“He said you’re dangerous.” Lillian sat back, her hands on her knees as she leaned away from him as though she thought he might be dangerous, too.
“Dangerous?” He mulled over the thought.
“My uncle said you were involved with the insurgents who ambushed the royal motorcade.” Her voice grew thoughtful. “You knew what kind of grenades they were shooting.”
Sensing the uncertainty Lillian struggled with, he scrambled to think of something reassuring he could tell her. But everything beyond the last ten minutes was covered by a dark cloud, and the circumstances she’d found him in certainly sounded suspicious. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”
She let out a breath and blinked at the floor, finally meeting his eyes again. “I don’t know.”
Hope flirted with the doubt in her eyes. She wanted to trust him. He wanted to be worthy of that trust, but he didn’t