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‘No, you don’t. And if you’re asked what took you so long, just tell them,Prince Julius needed to discuss the events of this morning. You know how to fob people off—I’ve watched you do it. Many times!’
He opened the top stable door and light flooded in, but he did not let Beatrice bolt out. Instead he invited her to sit.
‘Where?’
‘Stand, then.’
He sat on the floor, his back against a wall and his knees up. Finally she joined him, but sitting with her back to the opposite wall and her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.
‘I have had sex in the stables,’ he told her, from a very safe distance.
‘Of course you have.’
‘But I was young and it was night-time.’
He gave her a brief smile, but then he was serious. ‘I’ve heard the reason you’re leaving.’ He looked right at her now. ‘The security checks?’
‘No, it’s because we slept together.’
‘We hadn’t when you turned down the job offer.’
‘Come off it, Julius, we were always going to.’
‘Fair enough,’ he agreed. ‘So did the security checks have anything to do with it?’
‘No, Jordan just took it that way, and I let her.’
‘Only, youwereupset when you came back from Trebordi.’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters. Come on—you told me about your friend, that you went to look for her but couldn’t face it. Now I’ve heard that when you were nineteen you changed your name from Festa to Taylor.’
‘I hated the name Festa. I was named after the festival which they assumed my mother had visited, given...’ She waved at her blonde hair. ‘I went back and Alicia had gone—the festival too.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I told you—it was my fault we lost touch.’
‘I meant about your parents.’
She was silent.
‘Look, I can’t imagine... I mean, God, my relatives are everywhere. There’s one who was born in 1754—you can see him in the Great Hall. He looks like me...’
‘Was he a prince?’
‘Yes. Bonny Prince Julius, I call him. He’s my doppelgänger, but in tights and with a hair ribbon...’ He looked at her. ‘Have you tried searching for your mother?’
‘Why would I?’ she lied. ‘I think she made her intentions quite clear when she dropped me off at the baby door of the convent.’
‘Beatrice, she must have been terrified. I’ve spoken with some families whose relatives were left at the convent here, and—’
‘Please don’t,’ Beatrice said.
‘Did she leave anysegni di ricooscimento?’ he asked.
He clearly had spoken to those families if he knew about signs of recognition.
