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It wasn’t Narnia, but it was an escape, nevertheless.
Guinevere walked silently down the corridor, turned to the left and continued to walk until she came to the end of it. The darkness didn’t bother her now, and she didn’t need light to find her way around—not when she knew every inch of these corridors like the back of her hand.
A small lever pulled aside part of the wall and she stepped through the opening and into her favourite place in the whole palace: a tiny, forgotten room that no one knew about except her.
It was a small library, with bookshelves and a fireplace, an ancient, uncomfortable sofa and a deep window seat with a curtain over it that one could pull across and be shielded from anyone who might glance into the room.
Guinevere pulled another lever so that the bookshelf that had slid aside to open the doorway slid back into place. Then she went across to the window seat. Over the years she’d gathered lots of blankets and pillows, and other pretty little things, taking them into the little library, turning the window seat into an extremely comfortable bed where she could sleep or read or do anything else, hidden from everyone.
Safe.
She crawled into it now, making sure the curtain was drawn across so no one would see her, then curled up under a blanket and did what she always did when she couldn’t escape her fear.
She fell asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
The day afterhis somewhat casual coronation Tiberius expected to start the morning with a meeting involving all his advisors, who would then help him with the important work of sorting out the mess Renzo Accorsi had made of Tiberius’s kingdom.
What Tiberius did not expect was to be informed that his brand-new wife and queen was missing. That somehow she’d managed to get out of the royal apartments—which had been locked—and had apparently vanished into thin air.
It put him in a foul temper—not helped by the fact that he hadn’t slept well the previous night. He never slept all that much as it was, but last night his sleeplessness had been entirely due to his body plaguing him with inappropriate urges. For some reason the little mouse had ignited something within him and he didn’t like it one bit.
Clearly neglecting his sexual needs had been a mistake which now had to be fixed. The fact that he was a married man was of no consequence. The union was purely political, and he was sure Guinevere wouldn’t have a problem with him satisfying his hunger elsewhere. He had no intention of remaining celibate.
So what he wanted this morning was to start work, then perhaps in the evening find a willing woman to deal with his other needs—not to search the palace for a missing Accorsi.
After their marriage the afternoon before he’d spent the rest of the day and the evening sorting through a game plan for his country, then drafting a public announcement of his marriage with his press secretary, including a date for their first royal appearance. However, there couldn’t be a royal appearance if he was missing a royal, so find her he must. If she’d somehow managed to escape the palace entirely, then time was of the essence.
Whether he liked it or not, her presence was needed. She was now a vital emblem of unity, the final piece in the strong foundation he hoped to rebuild Kasimir upon, and he wasn’t going to let her escape like the rest of her cowardly family.
Deciding to inspect the royal apartments himself, since apparently his men couldn’t keep one small woman from straying, he strode in, his temper vile. But after a close survey of each room he realised he couldn’t fault his guards. There did, indeed, appear to be no way for Guinevere Accorsi to have escaped, yet the fact remained that she had.
He stood for a long moment in the Queen’s empty bedroom, thinking about how she could have got out. Then it hit him—something he should have thought about before and hadn’t because he’d been too busy focusing on other things.
The secret passageways. That was the only way she could have got out of this room unseen, which must mean that there was an entrance to them in the royal apartments somewhere.
Tiberius reviewed the floor plans in his head, piecing together a map of the palace and the corridors in order to determine the most likely place for a secret entrance. Then he started methodically looking around for anything that might give away a secret door.
It didn’t take him long. A cursory examination of a huge, ornate wooden armoire revealed a kicked-in panel at the back which led into a gap in the wall behind it. He stepped into the gap and the darkness beyond without hesitation.
He wasn’t claustrophobic—which was a good thing, because the corridor was a narrow fit and pitch-black. He didn’t find the lack of light a problem either. He’d been in worse situations when he’d been in the military, after all.
A couple of minutes later he came to a branching of the corridor, but after a pause to consult his memorised plans he was pretty sure one branch led to the throne room—and surely she wouldn’t have gone there, not when it was full of cleaning staff—so he took the one leading in the opposite direction.
Soon the corridor came to a dead end, but feeling around in the dark, he soon found a lever that must open a door. He pulled it—clearly it had been in recent use, since the mechanism moved smoothly—and the wall in front of him slid aside, dim light spilling into the narrow corridor.
He stepped through the doorway and found himself in a small room—a library from the looks of things. There were bookshelves stuffed full of books, an old couch sitting before a fireplace, magazines and a book of crossword puzzles discarded on the cushions. A jug of wilted flowers was on the mantelpiece, along with a glittering pile of what looked like jewellery, a few crystal bottles of perfume and a silver-backed hairbrush.
He frowned, noting the signs of feminine occupation, and yet not seeing the little Accorsi anywhere. Then he noticed the curtains drawn across the window—odd, because it was morning—so he went over and pulled them aside.
A deep window seat lay behind them, and curled up on it, in a nest of blankets and pillows, was his new wife.
She was asleep, her hands tucked beneath her cheek, her curly blonde hair lying in tangles all over the cushions. The morning sun spread like liquid gold over her, bathing her in a kind of glow, and despite himself he felt his breath catch.
So. She hadn’t left after all. Likely there had been too many guards for her to escape the palace entirely, so she’d found a place to hide. Maybe she’d been waiting for a better opportunity to escape and had fallen asleep before she could.
Her sleep looked to be deep, and there were faint dark circles under her eyes. In fact, if he hadn’t known better, he would have said it was the sleep of someone exhausted.