AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘What?’
Amelia pulled at a piece of invisible lint on her skirt and then she sighed heavily. Was she really going to do this? The truth had been like a ticking time bomb inside her for a long time. She twisted her fingers anxiously, speaking without looking at Ben. ‘About two and a half years ago, completely by accident, I found something out about myself.’ Her brow furrowed, and she looked at him, then shook her head. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you this.’
‘You can trust me,’ he said, as though he knew she needed to hear that.
‘Can I?’
‘Of course.’
He was right, she realised. Ben had turned the boat around. He hadn’t wanted to, but, ultimately, he was a good person. He was doing what he saw was the morally correct thing. He would never use this information against her. He wasn’t Daniel.
It was like a weight being lifted off her shoulders. She nodded tersely.
‘I was looking for a picture book my mother used to read me as a child. I wanted to take it with me to a hospital visit, to read to sick kids; the book was always one of my favourites,’ she said, remembering the day as though it were yesterday. ‘The attic is one of the best places in the palace. We’re not really meant to go there,’ she explained. ‘But even as a girl, I loved it. It’s where all of our memories are packed away, neatly into boxes, archived for posterity’s sake. There are these windows near the top of the walls, round and old, that let in just enough light to see all the dust motes dancing in the sunshine,’ she said, tilting her head to the side. ‘But there are lifetimes’ worth of artefacts stored, so it’s not easy to find one particular item. I started with a trunk marked books, and kept going. Occasionally, I would find a book that interested me, pull it out, read a few pages, put it back.’
Her brow furrowed; Benedetto remained quiet, giving her space to explain.
‘And then, I found a paperback novel that almost seemed not to belong with the rest.’
‘Didn’t belong how?’
She waved a hand through the air. ‘It just wasn’t the kind of book you’d keep.’ She shrugged. ‘I was interested in why it was with the old leather-bound hardbacks. And when I opened it, an envelope fell out.’
Guilt flooded her heart, her chest, her cheeks flushed pink. ‘I should have put it away without looking, but I was curious.’
‘What was it?’ Benedetto asked, leaning closer.
Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. ‘On the front, it said simply “darling”. I had no idea what it would mean. I suppose I was captivated by the romance of it. But I knew the moment I opened the envelope and lifted out the photo that I’d discovered something important. And wrong.’
Benedetto’s eyes roamed her face.
‘It was a picture taken some years ago—twenty-three, as it turns out—of my mother with the head of our stables, a man named Felipe Lamart. It was an intimate photograph.’ Amelia’s cheeks darkened from pink to red, her eyes not meeting Ben’s. ‘And in the letter, he asked if she planned to keep their baby.’
Benedetto’s breath hissed out from beneath his teeth.
‘I’m the baby,’ Amelia whispered, needlessly. ‘The King isn’t my father...my brothers are half-brothers. I’m evidence of an affair that my mother clearly wants to hide. My real father is Felipe Lamart—a man who, I discovered, died when I was ten years old. He never tried to contact me. Evidently he didn’t want anything to do with me.’ She shrugged, blinking away.
‘This is why you ran away?’
She shook her head. ‘I...was in a state of shock,’ she mumbled, the words tripping over themselves. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything to anyone, but I couldn’t make sense of it. I needed to talk to someone, to ask for advice. Or maybe I just wanted to get it off my chest, I don’t know. It was an immense thing to have learned about myself.’
‘Who did you tell?’
Amelia’s anguish was profound. ‘My boyfriend at the time, Daniel.’
Benedetto’s voice was carefully muted of emotion. ‘That’s a very normal response. What did he say?’
‘Nothing important. Not then. I decided to get a DNA test, just in case it was somehow a mistake. Daniel helped me organise it. We sent away to a lab in America, using Daniel’s address for correspondence, so it couldn’t easily be traced back to me.’
Benedetto nodded.
‘The test confirmed what I’d discovered. The King and I don’t share any DNA.’
Benedetto lifted a hand to her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, cara.’
Amelia’s voice trembled. ‘Things hadn’t been great with Dan and me for a while, and, after this, I just needed to be by myself. We broke up. I thought it was amicable, but I’d misunderstood.’ She pushed to standing, striding across the room now, so angry with herself. ‘I knew he was socially ambitious, that he didn’t have much money and was captivated by the palace and the lifestyle, but I still thought... I really thought he was with me because he cared about me. I was so stupid, Ben. So stupid.’
‘What happened?’
