A Royal Internship | Complete

Chapter Twenty

I had changed into a cocktail length dress and taken off my ornate jewelry before Clarence escorted me to meet Princess Madeline in a large room decorated with a long line of family portraits that, according to my brief trip around the room, dated back over seven hundred years.

"Hi, Genevieve!" Princess Madeline sang from behind me. "I'm so sorry I kept you waiting."

"It's okay." I smiled and walked towards her because she made no move to walk towards me.

She looked around. "And I'm sorry my brother tossed his chivalry out the window and decided to leave you here alone."

"I wasn't here long," I told her, following her through an arch and into a hallway.

"Oh, good." She pointed into an alcove to show me a statue of a man holding a pile of apples with a pear on top. "This is one of my favourites. My great-great-great uncle Arthur apparently got into a lot of shenanigans, including trying to sell someone pears that were actually apples."

I didn't see how that was that big of a deal, so I forced a slight chuckle out of my mouth and smiled. "Sounds scandalous!"

"Oh it was," she assured me, picking up the pace and leading me down an exceptionally dimly lit hallway. "Apparently pears were quite a delicacy, and he swindled several people out of a lot of money. The king at the time was my great-great-grandfather, and he was furious."

"Hence the statue." I laughed genuinely this time. Royalty or not, siblings are siblings.

"Exactly." She stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around.

I stood silent while she looked, feeling my heart bouncing around my chest until it settled somewhere between my ears.

"Oh, I think we've gone past it." She sighed and turned back the way we came, running her hand against the rough stone wall as though trying not to get lost. I jumped back with a start when her hand disappeared into the darkness of the wall.

"Don't worry," she laughed. "It's just a hidden tunnel. It looks like all the other alcoves, so sometimes I miss it."

"Maybe if we moved the statue of great-great-great uncle Artie, we'd be able to find it."

"I think it's probably a bit heavy," she spoke absentmindedly. "Plus, it's kind of supposed to be hidden." She led the way into the tunnel and I followed her.

"That's probably a good thing when it leads to crown jewels," I said aloud. When Madeline didn't answer, I explained, "I mean, the door being so well-hidden." I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Thank goodness for the darkness.

"Oh, yes. Probably a good feature." She picked up an electric lantern off the shelf and handed it to me before taking one for herself. "But as you'll soon see, it's pretty impossible to break in even if you know where to go."

I couldn't see her face, so I wasn't sure if she was insinuating I shouldn't try it or just making conversation. At any rate, I used my lantern to light the way as I followed her down a very narrow and winding set of stone steps. Even with the lantern, I was doing it almost by feel when we reached the bottom.

"Brace yourself," Madeline said, putting down her lantern on a shelf and sliding open a door.

"For what?" I asked, putting my lantern down. But my question was answered as soon as the stream of bright light stung my eyes. I yelped and covered my eyes with my hands. "Who made that so bright after the dark stairwell?"

I could hear her chuckling, but I couldn't see her through the blinding light. When my eyes finally adjusted, I looked to see her beckoning me to go through the door.

"I think it's probably a defence tactic," she answered me. "As you probably noticed, it's pretty hard to see."

She held my hand and led me down a maze of hallways. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed it was all artificial. I couldn't see a single window.

"Where are we?" I looked around for anything to orient me, trying to shove the panicked feeling down.

"We're in the... I guess you'd call it a basement." She pointed to a door ahead of us. "And that is where all the pretty sparkly jewelry awaits us!"

The door opened automatically as we approached it, and two guards greeted us with a small bow.

"Welcome, Your Highness," the one to my left spoke for both of them. "We will wait outside." Silently, they slipped out the door and it closed behind us.

The room was smaller than I expected, and rather than jewelry cases and luxurious fabrics, the room was relatively austere and looked like the vault of a bank, complete with deposit boxes.

I must have let my disappointment show on my face, because Madeline caught sight of me and smirked. Stepping in front of me, she pushed a button on the wall and entered a code, followed by something else she didn't let me see.

And then, the sophisticated technology worked its magic as the wall slid away, slowly revealing a gigantic room hidden behind it.

My jaw dropped at the opulently decorated room in front of us. "Those safe deposit boxes are just for show?"

She shook her head. "No, they're real. They just don't contain anything important."

I pulled my eyebrows together. "What?"

"My family of pranksters back in the day thought it would be funny if it looked to thieves like they had found the treasure when, in fact, they had not. The story goes they filled those safety deposit boxes with false documents and costume jewelry in hopes that thieves would run off with that and leave the genuine stuff be."

I gasped.

She laughed. "Of course, back then it was operated by a crank and a chain and a lot of guards, whereas now it's mostly electric."

"Somehow your mother left it out of her very thorough palace tour." I stepped closer to examine a very sparkly diamond tiara. "I really can't believe Clarence didn't tell me about any of this!"

"Probably because my dear brother didn't show up to study it." She shrugged. "He was always doing that. For someone who loves history so much, he sure skipped out on our tutoring a lot."

"That sounds like him," I said without thinking.

Thankfully, Madeline let it drop and led me around the room. "Let's find you something to wear for tomorrow, shall we?"

How does she know about this dinner and I don't? I stuffed the thought down and nodded. "Yes, let's."