Chapter 8:
Regrets of the Past
GILES LEFT THE TERRACE behind him and was escorted to the royal reception room, where he found the crown prince. Just as Fiona had predicted, Richard was also in the room with the crown prince.
“Sorry to call you away from the party, Lord Lowell,” said the prince.
“Not a problem, Your Highness. Sorry it took me so long to get here.” It was then that Giles noticed that there was another person in the room. “Oh my… Good to see you too, Your Highness.”
It was the king’s younger brother, Prince Grenville. His presence was the biggest surprise of all.
What is he doing here at the ball?
Grenville lived out of the public eye and minimized his involvement in royal affairs as much as possible. It was strange to see him at the royal ball at the White Palace. As the current king’s younger brother, he and his nephew (the crown prince) were considered rivals for the throne. In truth, the crown prince and Grenville got along just fine, but they typically maintained a safe distance from one another so as not to needlessly stir the waters between the warring factions. If not for the feud over the line of succession, the mild-mannered crown prince and his reclusive intellectual of an uncle would have been great friends.
“It’s all right, drop the pleasantries,” the crown prince said, interrupting Giles’s formal vassal’s bow. “This is an informal meeting.” He gestured to a seat, which Giles took gingerly. “So, let’s get right to it: My uncle needs to speak with the both of you.”
I figured as much, Giles thought, exchanging a glance with Richard. Why else would the king’s brother be here?
Grenville took a breath. “This is going to take a while, so please listen closely.”
In other words, nothing from this “informal meeting” was to leave the room. Between that and the assortment of faces in the room, Giles had a strong guess as to what the meeting was about. There was only one thing that Giles, Richard, and the king’s brother all had in common.
“It’s about Otto Gordon.”
Right again. Giles gave an understanding nod.
The king’s brother lifted his gaze, his violet eyes, unique to the royal family, fixed on Giles and Richard. “First, a disclaimer: What I’m about to tell you comes from me, not my brother. The king knows nothing about this, and I want it to stay that way. I only told my nephew about this just the other day.” He waited for Richard and Giles to nod their understanding before continuing. “You boys worked on Minister Saquille’s case, so I’m sure you know about Justine Poiret. Gordon is…her son.”
“That possibility had occurred to me, yes,” Giles admitted after a brief pause. Justine Poiret, the unfortunate artist who was known for her still life paintings of flowers. Gordon’s possession of the Poiret originals and the flower sketches in his design book all pointed to a connection between himself and the phantom artist. Based on Gordon’s age, the logical conclusion was that he was her son.
Prince Grenville’s gentle, tanned face became strained. “It is my belief that Gordon’s father was the former king—my father.”
Giles and Richard’s jaws dropped. “Prince Grenville, are you saying—”
“Yes. He is my younger half brother.”
This statement was unexpected, but Giles had considered the possibility that there was someone else backing Gordon in addition to Minister Saquille. Gordon’s past was locked so tight that they’d turned up no answers, despite all their searching. His hideout was impossible to find, and he had that mysterious connection to Minister Saquille… Gordon had a way of speaking that made it easy to convince oneself that all of these things had rational explanations, but none of them made sense for a common art dealer.
He also hadn’t seemed upset at all by the puppet master Saquille’s fall from grace. In fact, he seemed happy to provide testimony at the trial to put the minister away. The events had stirred up discord between the political factions, yes, but Giles had theorized that Gordon’s goal was to part ways with Minister Saquille.
The problem was that we could never prove it.
“Would you boys indulge me by letting me tell you a little story about the past?” Grenville asked. His brows were knit together, and he had a distant look in his eye. “I wasn’t as competent as my brother when he was crown prince. I was particularly poor at academics, and I often skipped class.”
He went on to explain that it when he ran around the palace searching for places to hide, he met and became acquainted with Justine Poiret, the court painter.
“She was an extraordinarily unique woman. Her paintings were so detailed and beautiful, yet also bold and courageous. Well, she would have to be an extraordinary woman to be able to make a living painting, and do it in a foreign land.” His eyes were distant, focused on the past. “She was dazzlingly brilliant. I idolized her. But I wasn’t the only one who felt that way… Not long into our acquaintance, she became my father’s lover.”
“I’m sure you already know the former king is exactly what I aspire not to be,” the crown prince said, a pained smirk on his face.
The former king had been infamous since childhood for behaving badly and seeking out conflict. Shortly after he ascended the throne, wars broke out all over the continent, and his own government could hardly have been called peaceful either. But he possessed an extraordinary intellect and powerful charisma, and his role as a unifying force was a necessity in times of war. Because of this, his inner circle turned a blind eye to his most intolerable behaviors in his private life.
“She never loved my father. That much was clear,” Prince Grenville said. As strong as Poiret was, she was a guest from another land. It was impossible for her to defy the king when he set his sights on her. She was the king’s favorite, but she couldn’t join his harem—which was still legal at the time—and their affair had to remain a secret. “I don’t know what was going through my father’s crazy mind. But when the queen found out about their affair, he didn’t lift a finger to protect Poiret.”
Understandably, Poiret’s position in the palace became more and more precarious.
“And when war broke out with the nation she came from, she was suspected of espionage…and sentenced to death in an unofficial trial. She was innocent,” he spat out, his voice heavy with bitter regret. “I loathed my own helplessness. I watched them trample an innocent woman’s body and spirit, yet I could do nothing to stop it. I was just a child, but that was no excuse.” He clenched his fist tightly. “In the chaos that broke out when the enemy reached the royal capital’s outskirts, I mustered up everything in me to help her escape.”
He didn’t investigate whether she had made it safely back to her own nation until after his father had passed and the war came to a close. But in the fragmented confusion of the war’s aftermath, he found no traces of her.