Reluctantly Royal(81)

My father was sitting in a large wingback chair near the fireplace. The glass tumbler held loosely in his fingers was half empty. Rachel and an elderly man in an expensive suit stood up from their seat on the couch and bobbed a bow and curtsy.

“Your Highness, my lady, I am Daniel LeFave. I handle most of the legal matters for Her Majesty.” The man held his hand out to shake. “I’m sorry for your loss. I know this has been a difficult time.”

“Thank you.” I shook his hand before taking one of the open seats across from the lawyer.

“Okay then. Since we’re all here, let’s get started.” The old man clapped his hands together and smiled. “Prince Maxwell, I assume that you are here in an official position as your mother’s witness?”

“Yes.” He moved so that he was standing just behind my chair, and my father snorted.

“Isn’t there supposed to be a witness? Someone who watched my old man lose his mind?” My father’s voice was scratchy and annoyed.

“Yes, sir.” Gerard closed the door and moved to the corner of the room. “I am present.”

“The butler.” My father chuckled darkly into his drink.

“Thank you, Gerard.” I looked at the man who had done so much to take care of our family. He nodded his head before looking back at the lawyer.

“Okay, there is a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo, but if you’d like, I can cut straight to the meat of things.” He opened his folder of papers and pulled out a piece of Thysmer letterhead. “The late Duke of Thysmer wrote this out himself, which I then translated for him into the proper legal form.”

He passed me the paper, but before I could get a good look at it, my father was across the room and snatched it out of my hands.

“I’ll take that.” He set his empty tumbler on the table and scanned the paper quickly.

I watched as his face turned pale and then bloodred. My heart managed to lodge itself in my throat as I watched the veins in his neck strain against his skin. The paper shook in his hands as he looked up at me with furious eyes.

“As you can see, your father left very specific instructions.” Mr. LeFave clasped his hands in his lap, his eyes trained on my father.

Max placed a hand on my shoulder and stepped around the chair as if he were going to shield me from my father’s anger.

“The queen accepted his terms and has agreed to them,” Rachel said quietly.

“How can he do this?” My father turned slowly to look at the woman on the couch. “He can’t do this.”

“What is he doing?” I licked my lips and scooted forward on the chair. “What are you talking about?”

“Basically, your grandfather has divided the title between the two of you, but with conditions.” Mr. LeFave explained. “For your father to retain any of what has been left to him, he must successfully complete a course of addiction rehabilitation.”

Every cell in my body froze. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing as I stared at the lawyer across from me. In one fell swoop, my grandfather had simultaneously validated my worry about my father and then turned around and ripped my dream out from under me. How could I be a performer and a duchess?

“She can’t just take my title away because I don’t go to rehab! That’s ridiculous.” Spittle flew from my father’s mouth. “I don’t need rehab. That’s rubbish.”

“We could schedule a consultation with a specialist. They could evaluate you and determine if you needed help or not.” Rachel kept her voice cool and pleasant.

Everyone in the room was so calm. Very calm. Except for the vibrating exposed nerve that was my father.

“You expect me to trust a specialist you pick? This is some kind of ploy to take away what is rightfully mine.” He turned his glare on me. “You’re behind this, aren’t you? You’ve been trying to push me out of the way for a long time.”

“I’ve been covering for you for a long time.” Something inside my chest snapped and my own rage boiled to the surface. I stood up and clenched my fists at my sides. “You see nothing but yourself, what’s best for you! Granddad must have realized that you would hurt this town and our family. You think I want to stay here and babysit your drunk ass? Listen to you bitch and moan and abuse me or the staff? I haven’t been trying to push you out; I’ve been trying to escape you.”

My father stood there, fury running rampant across his face. The letter in his hand crinkled as his hands shook.

“We haven’t gone over everything,” Mr. LeFave offered. “The financial settlement is not based on your sobriety. Excepting the money from taxes that is used for the township, the family inheritance has been divided between Arthur, Meredith, and young Marty.”