The Prince

“The trees…” Kingsley said, gazing out the window onto the lawn.

“What of them?” Søren asked, still steadfastly refusing to cross the threshold and enter his old room.

“Whoever got into your room came from the trees.” Kingsley stood at the window and pointed. “He couldn’t have come through the doors. Elizabeth keeps them locked and alarmed. Had to come in the window. To avoid the cameras, he must have come through the woods. No other logical possibility.” Kingsley looked back at Søren. “Shall we?”

Søren didn’t answer. He stepped from the threshold back into the hall. Kingsley followed him down the stairs and out the rear door. They strode across the lawn in silence.

“I can go look alone if you prefer,” Kingsley offered. “I know this isn’t your favorite place.”

“It’s in the past, Kingsley. All in the past. If Elizabeth can stomach living here, I can certainly survive a day on the premises.”

“When did you come here last?”

“My father’s funeral…years ago.”

“Did you go into your room then?”

“Yes. My father was dead. It seemed a fitting celebration.”

They stopped speaking when they entered the copse of trees adjacent to Søren’s old bedroom window. The forest ground did seem recently disturbed, but with Elizabeth’s two sons living in the house, there was no telling if it had been done by them or the perpetrator.

The two men wandered a few minutes through the woods until they came to a clearing. Kingsley saw footprints in the dirt, small ones. Most likely Andrew’s—Elizabeth’s eleven-year-old son. They could belong only to a boy or a very petite woman.

Kingsley gazed up at the trees and breathed in the scents of the forest.

“Pine…” he murmured. With a deep inhalation, he took in another lungful of the clean, sweet air. Closing his eyes, he became sixteen years old again. He’d been scared that day in the forest, more scared even than today. And out of fear he’d run deep into the woods. He’d run then not to get away, but only to build the anticipation, to delay the inevitable. And to save a little face. He’d wanted it to happen, but there was no reason for Søren to know quite how much. But then…he’d been caught. He could still feel that iron grip on his neck, those fingers against his throat. The hard forest floor biting into his back and the mouth at his ear.

“Kingsley, really.”

Laughing, Kingsley looked at Søren. “I can’t help myself. The memories are too potent.”

“Try,” Søren said, although Kingsley could see the hint of a smile on his lips.

“Do you never think of it?” Kingsley asked, leaving large bootprints in the marshy soil as he strode toward him. “That night in the woods at school? That day changed us both, changed everything.”

“No good will come of us discussing this, as you know. The past must stay in the past.”

Kingsley shook his head. “Non. The past will stay in the past unless it doesn’t want to. Something in your past doesn’t want to stay there.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was Eleanor’s file that was stolen, out of the thousands of files I have. It was a photograph of you and me that I received in the mail. And it was Elizabeth’s house that was broken into and defiled. Eleanor, Elizabeth and me...what do we all have in common?”

Søren glanced down at the prints on the ground. Right next to Kingsley’s large bootprint was a much smaller bare footprint, lined up side by side.

From there Søren looked up to the heavens and closed his eyes. Kingsley said nothing and let him pray.

Slowly, Søren exhaled and opened his eyes.

“Me.”

SOUTH

For the second time that night, Nora’s jaw hit the ground and stayed there.

“Wes.”

“Nora?”

“Seriously?”

“What?”

“You said you stayed in the guesthouse.”

“This is the guesthouse.”

“It’s bigger than my house in Connecticut.”

“We have a lot of guests.”

Nora dropped her bag in the foyer and gazed around. The guesthouse looked nothing like the main house, but was no less grand in its own smaller way. The rough stone exterior masked an exquisite interior replete with plush tan and black furniture, well-matched and comfortable. Nora counted two stories, although she sensed a basement lurking underneath them. One entire wall in the living room consisted of a massive stone fireplace that climbed all the way to the ceiling.

“Wesley, this is a little ridiculous. What is this place?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“These are the old slave quarters. Refurbished, obviously.”

Nora’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “Kentucky was a slave-holding state. We didn’t secede during the Civil War so the Emancipation Proclamation actually didn’t apply to us.”

“You’re telling me that you live in actual slave quarters? Actual slaves lived in this house?”

Wesley grimaced. “Well…if you can calling it living.”

Nora gazed around and nodded in approval. “Kinky.”

“Come on. I’ll show you your room.”

“Is it a slave room?”