She was his duty. She was his princess.
So Elias did what he always did. What he did best. He focused on the job.
He propped his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. “You never had any hint that you were kidnapped?”
Kelsey lazily stroked the buttery cream leather of the seat. “You mean besides the ransom note in my baby book?”
If this wasn’t his job, wasn’t literally the most important thing he’d done in his entire life, Elias would’ve snickered. But he’d been interrogating her almost since they took off an hour ago and gotten nowhere. Despite her and Mallory making friends with the attendants and trying one of every snack on the plane, he’d insisted that she sit and work with him.
So far? They’d gone in more circles than a carousel. Long enough that he could see Mallory had fallen asleep in the row just ahead.
“I’m not joking, Your Highness.”
Her eyes flicked to his, and Elias swore he could hear the sizzle behind the violet eyes that—although she didn’t realize it yet—matched everyone’s in her family. “See, to me, imagining my parents as knowingly participating in an international kidnapping is nothing more than a joke. A tasteless, horrible joke.”
They weren’t getting anywhere. Aside from his respect growing by leaps and bounds for Kelsey’s steadfast loyalty to the people who’d raised her. Despite the fact she’d clearly accepted she was, indeed, the missing princess of Moncriano. The princess just as clearly hadn’t accepted the second part of the equation—that her American parents simply could not be guilt-free in this scenario.
With tremendous effort, he softened his tone. Swallowed back the urgency that pricked at his brain. “I’m not officially making any accusations against your parents.”
Although unofficially? It was obvious they knew something. At the very least, they knew they hadn’t birthed their second daughter. Where was the explanation for that? And why had they hidden it from her and Mallory for so long?
“Good.” Kelsey sipped at her lemon seltzer, then tucked the bottle back into the holder for it beneath the window.
“Were there”—Elias paused, searching for the least accusatory word—“acquaintances of your parents? That perhaps only visited every few years? Or when they did visit, insisted on you girls being sent out of the room so they could speak privately?”
“No.” She popped a brie and sundried tomato pinwheel into her mouth. Then she poked at the last triangular ham tea sandwich.
It was difficult to tell if she was genuinely hungry, using food as a way to mask her nerves, or trying to ignore him. Especially since she’d made him stop in Times Square—pleaded with him to stop, with melting eyes that stirred an urge in him to do whatever she wanted—for the largest cheesecake he’d ever seen. It’d been half gone by the time they parked in front of the red carpet leading to the airplane.
Already frustrated again, Elias rubbed at his temple. “That’s it? You’re not going to think about it for more than one-point-five seconds?”
“No need. We come from a small town. There’s a college in it, so I won’t say that strangers never came through. But they never came to our house. We would’ve noticed. Mom and Dad both work in the hospital. They fix broken legs, give vaccinations, and do emergency appendectomies. They’re not criminals.”
Funny how she thought those things were mutually exclusive. Or not funny…optimistic. Naïve. The harshness of New York would very likely have beaten her down, or at least scarred her, in a matter of months.
No matter how you looked at it, he was doing her a favor by taking her back to Moncriano. So it bothered Elias that Kelsey looked as downcast as if her pet had died. It was his job to protect her, to keep her from being hurt. He’d been sawing at her nerves and heartstrings since they met.
God, he regretted it. There’d been no warning that this would be so hard. Elias had been sure that picking up the princess would be nothing short of triumphant. He’d grant some average American her dream about becoming royal, and be greeted in Moncriano as a hero. More importantly, he’d erase a hell of a lot of ghosts and pain that clung in every corner of Alcarsa Palace.
Instead, Kelsey made him feel like a villain. Like he was the kidnapper ripping her away from everything she knew and loved. She’d never tell him anything if she didn’t trust him.
Damn. He’d handled this all wrong.
A glance up the aisle showed that Mallory was glued to the window on the opposite side, staring at the Northern Lights. So Elias moved into her seat next to Kelsey after dumping the empty plate on the floor. Loosened his tie at the neck and undid the top button. Hopefully it made him look less official, less unapproachable.
“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been hammering at you, but I have to ask these questions. It’s my job. I’d like to get them over with now so they aren’t hanging over you once we land.”
Coolly, as if reciting facts no more exasperating than the alphabet, Kelsey said, “Then let me cut to the chase. There were no clues, no hints. Never any reason to think I was anything but the daughter of Ed and Cybill Wishner. No red flags. No guilty glances across the living room when your country’s team marched in the opening ceremony of the Olympics.” Her eyes shifted to the side. “I mean, I think not, on that last one. Do you send a team to the Olympics?”
“Yes. Every four years, winter and summer. Not the massive turnout of the Americans, but we do well enough. Especially at skiing and rowing.”
Her eyes widened. And the knuckles on the fist in her lap whitened. “I can’t do either of those things. Make that reason number eight hundred and four that I’m not cut out to be your princess. There’s no point introducing me to everyone if I’ll just let them down.”
That was…adorable. Which caught him off guard. Kelsey didn’t want the job, but she was already worrying about doing it the right way. “Being a princess isn’t like being the CEO of a company. You don’t have to know how to do everything that your subjects can do.”
“I should know something, though.” Squinting her eyes shut, she covered her mouth with long, tapered fingers still smudged with ink. Kelsey dragged in a deep breath. Then she whooshed it out and moved her hands away. “I don’t mean to be insulting when I say I’ve never heard of Moncriano.”
Her curiosity gave him hope that the princess was coming around quickly to the idea of belonging to another country. “You’re not the first to say that. It is small, tucked in along the side of Italy and Austria and a few other equally small nations. I’ll make sure you get a tourist guide to start you off with the basics. There’s a good chance your grandmother, the Grand Duchess Agathe, will put all twenty volumes of our history on your nightstand, but you can take your time with those.”