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“I can see you’re taken aback,” said the prince.
“Aye, more than a little.”
The prince tapped his fingers on the arm of his wingback chair. “How are you, really?”
Caelan sipped from his glass of whisky and took a deep breath. “Dreadful.”
The prince nodded his head. “She still doesn’t realise?”
“He pretended to hate her, at the end.”
The prince and he sighed at the same time. Caelan’s eyes gave it all away, the prince mirroring his expression. Neither one of them would ever speak of this again, not outside these walls anyway.
“Self-preservation,” said the prince.
“Maybe, or…”
The prince caught his meaning. “He knew you’d never give her up, so he welcomed death because it was better than having to watch her live her life with you.”
Caelan had double checked Eric’s medical records. Nothing about any vasectomy. He’d really gone to town severing the ties—allowing her to let go.
It was possible Eric had realised that if you love them, that’s what you do. You let them go.
Especially if you’re past the point of no return. Such as, if you met the love of your life after you’d already given up your soul to the Devil. Not even a woman like Flora might save a man from the amount of sin he’d stacked up.
The prince and he merely sat drinking in companionable silence for a bit after that. No cigars today. It wasn’t that kind of meeting. They both watched as traffic passed by outside the windows, as the world kept turning, oblivious.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, Caelan… lest it skew your judgement.”
Now he was awake again, peering at the prince. “Eh?”
“My friend Johnny Feathers who was killed in Ukraine?”
Caelan nodded that he remembered the man.
“He’d suspected Eric to be a spy. Something about him demanding it be their team that went out to collect Ogarkov. Eric had petitioned hard for it.”
Caelan knew now why the prince had been so passionate about getting to the bottom of this affair.
“And then,” the prince continued, “something about other missions across Europe having coincided with Russian state visits.” The prince waited for the penny to drop, his expression one of suspicion and certainty. “Plus, British envoys repeatedly requested Eric’s team as guard when it came to meetings with Russia. Coincidence?”
“I dinna ken,” he said, not wanting to be drawn on theories that were unprovable now. “Maybe it was Eric’s linguistics skills. He spoke Russian as the Russians do. It would’ve been useful, I reckon.”
“Oh, come on, Caelan. Was he their spy? In your professional opinion?”
The Scotsman worried his lip. “I dinna think we’ll ever ken for sure.”
“Hmm. It’d be conjecture only, I suppose. There’s no evidence.”
“Aye, there’s no evidence at all.” Caelan pinched his mouth between thumb and forefinger as he looked out on the world.
The heir to the throne took to his feet and gave a crooked smile. “I hope we don’t have occasion to see one another again for a while.”
“Me too,” said Caelan.
“What about an MBE?”
Caelan gave a crooked smile. “Aye, less suspicious. A nice MBE. That’ll do. For now.”
