Royal(24)

But she didn’t want money, she wanted Annie, the baby that she loved, and they didn’t know existed. They would never miss her, and if Lucy gave her up now, she knew it would break her heart. Remaining silent now would mean depriving Annie of life as a royal princess, but whatever she did now, Annie’s mother was still dead. She could give her up to a life of palaces and royal blood, but Lucy firmly believed she could give her a mother’s love as none of the royals would. And if things had been different and Henry had loved her, Annie would have been their child, not Charlotte’s. This was a way of keeping Henry close to her forever, but more important, she could lavish love on his child. Annie would never know that she was the granddaughter of a king and queen, and if she took Annie’s birth certificate with her, no one would ever know. They would never know that there was a child, when they came to get Charlotte’s belongings and remains, and Annie would never know of the life she had missed. Only the earl and countess and Henry and Charlotte had known the truth of who Annie was, by birth, and now Lucy had discovered the secret. She stared at the birth certificate long and hard, and her hands shook as she decided what to do. She knew she had no choice. All she wanted in the world was within her reach. She could let the servants at Ainsleigh continue to believe that Annie was an orphaned love child with no relatives except the very remote cousin who had inherited the estate and wouldn’t want her either.

The royal family knew nothing about Annie’s existence, and never would. There was no one left alive to tell them, and no one in the world knew that the baby’s mother had been a royal princess, third in line for the throne. If Lucy took Annie with her, no one would ever suspect that she wasn’t Lucy’s child. The king and queen would never come looking for a baby they didn’t know anything about, the servants at Ainsleigh didn’t know of her royal connections or who her mother really was, and there was no one to stop Lucy now. Whatever she could have gotten for selling Charlotte’s secrets to them, the baby she loved as her own was worth far more to her.



With sudden determination, she decided to keep the letters and documents, the marriage certificate and Annie’s birth certificate, and carefully put them all in the royal leather box. She took one of the blue ribbons off the letters from the queen to her daughter, locked the box with the key, slipped the key on the ribbon, and put it around her neck, where no one would take it from her.

In the box, she had everything she needed to guarantee that Annie would be hers forever. All trace of her bloodline had been removed, thanks to Charlotte keeping all her secrets to herself. Everyone who had known the whole story was now dead. The only remaining evidence was the infant herself, and Lucy intended to bring her up as her own, her very own royal princess. Her Royal Highness Anne Louise Windsor. Lucy would always know that the little girl she loved was royal. Her very own princess, whom even the king and queen knew nothing about. Their youngest child was dead, but her baby daughter was Lucy’s now, to love forever, and no one would ever take her away. Lucy couldn’t bear the idea of another loss if she gave the baby up. For her sake, and Annie’s, Lucy was certain she was doing the right thing, and told herself she was. A mother’s love was more important than riches and royal lineage. She would love Annie to her dying day as they never could. To Lucy, it justified everything. She realized that she could have destroyed the contents of the box, but the papers seemed too important to do that. She wanted to keep them in the box.



With an iron will, and no hesitation, she picked up the locked leather box, containing all the letters and papers. The desk was empty. Lucy carefully turned off the lights in what had been Charlotte’s final bedroom, and all her secrets belonged to Lucy now, along with her child. There was an element of revenge, since Charlotte had stolen Henry from her. But she forgave her for that now. She had Henry’s daughter, which meant more to her than Annie being a princess. Annie was Henry’s final legacy to her. The child that should have been theirs. Annie was her baby now, and always would be. No one could take Annie from her. Once back in her room, she put the locked leather box in her suitcase, and touched the key around her neck. She had Charlotte’s gold bracelet with the heart on her wrist. Annie was asleep in the crib in Lucy’s room, where she had slept for months now, and from that moment on, Annie, the little princess no one knew about and never would, was hers.





Chapter 5





Two days after Lucy had packed all of Charlotte’s papers into the leather box and slid it into her suitcase, she announced that she was leaving. She said she was ready to go back to London. She bought a gold-plated wedding band in a jewelry store in York, slipped it on her finger in her new role as war widow, and the next day, she packed up Annie’s things, said goodbye to the staff at Ainsleigh Hall, with a character from the housekeeper, and took Annie with her on the train to London. Her heart was pounding when she left, afraid someone would try to stop her. But no one did. The remaining maids, housekeeper, and hall boys all thought it was a good thing that Lucy was taking Charlotte’s baby with her. Without Lucy, where else would she go? Most likely to an orphanage. They hugged Lucy and Annie, and wished her luck. She promised to let the housekeeper know when she found a job. But no one would be writing to her in the meantime. The only people she knew were the staff at Ainsleigh Hall. All of her school friends had died in the bombing of London, and she’d had few friends anyway, working at her father’s cobbler shop every day.