3 November 1958

"Is that everything, then?" Lucien asked, trying to hide his dismay at the pile of files in front of him. He'd always known that the life of a king was one devoted almost entirely to minutiae, but he had not known before now just how much of that minutiae was composed of stacks and stacks of paper. International news reports, policy updates, intelligence briefings; a wealth of information sat on his desk, couched in the most onerous turn of phrase. Lucien had half a mind to issue a royal decree that all matters requiring his personal attention should be presented to him in the form of a single paragraph summation, but even in his frustration he knew such a thing would be folly. Running a kingdom was a complicated business, and such attempts to simplify it would only result in a thorough misunderstanding, further down the line. The issues before him required nuance, subtlety; to distill them for the sake of brevity would be to butcher them beyond all recognition.

"There is one more item we need to discuss," Sir Patrick said, frowning. It was not the answer Lucien had been hoping for, but he leaned forward regardless, prepared to accept one last file to add to his stack of assigned reading for the evening. To his surprise, however, Sir Patrick shook his head.

"This one isn't written down, sir."

For the first time all afternoon, Lucien felt interested in what his crotchety Prime Minister had to say.

"I'm afraid this is a...delicate subject, and while I am hesitant to raise it, I'm afraid it simply can't wait any longer."

"Go on, then," Lucien said. He settled himself more firmly in his chair, leaning back while Sir Patrick began, almost, to fidget. Only almost; Sir Patrick was the sort of man who commanded respect, whose very being exuded a sort of latent power, not the physical might of a brawler or an athlete but the cultivated, affluent power of a man who was very wealthy, whose entire family was very wealthy and had been since time immemorial. It was the power of a man who knew that everyone and everything in the world was beneath him. Such a man did not fidget, but when faced with the one person in the kingdom who could outmatch him, he clearly felt himself a bit out of step.

"I'm afraid it's the matter of succession, sir," Sir Patrick told him, and Lucien felt his heart sink like lead in his chest. Yes, that was a very delicate matter indeed, and one Lucien had no interest in discussing, not now, not ever. He forced himself to remain silent, however, for Sir Patrick's expression was pained, as if he could sense Lucien's discontent, and yet had committed himself to soldier on. He had a duty to fulfill, and Lucien knew that it was his duty to let him.

"As you're aware, the next in line to the throne, after yourself, is your Aunt Dorothy, who is in ill health, and convalescing in a sanatorium on the coast. She is not expected to live out the year."

While obviously Lucien was aware of Dorothy's place in the line of succession he had not realized that her illness was so far advanced. He felt only the slightest pang of sympathy for her, however; he had not seen her since the day of his mother's funeral, and he could still hear the echo of his father shouting angrily at her, condemning her for the way that she and his brothers - both of whom were now deceased - had spurned Thomas and his foreign wife. Lucien knew nothing else about the woman but for years that had seemed to him knowledge enough; he had adored his maman, and any person who could have been cruel to her was a person he did not want to know.

"Dorothy's only living heir is your cousin Catherine, who is...well...she's quite mad, sir."

This, too, Lucien knew already, but it was rather bleak, having the sum total of his family laid out like that. In centuries past the royal family had been a vast, sprawling beast, but the last few generations had suffered mightily. His father had been the eldest of four; the next brother, Henry, had died as a young man, thrown from a horse. The next after him was Lawrence, an irascible man who had refused to take a wife - for reasons no one knew, though there was much speculation - and perished in the war. And then there was Dorothy, who had wed and yet borne only one child. Her daughter, Marie, had died giving birth to Catherine. And Lucien had neither brother nor sister, had known from the very beginning of his life that the weight of the kingdom rested on his shoulders, and his alone.

"There are of course various other cousins, but the relations are rather distant and convoluted, and there is some disagreement about which of them should fall in line behind Catherine."

"Surely there's a chart or something somewhere," Lucien quipped, but Sir Patrick did not smile.

"There is," he said grimly. "Technically speaking, the next in line is your cousin Edward. You may not recall the man-" he was right, Lucien didn't recognize the name - "but he was rather active in politics here during the war. He was a great sympathizer of King Edward VIII, and has been the Duke's frequent guest in France following the war."

Lucien paled at those words; Sir Patrick had no need to explain his meaning, for Lucien had, after all, served with the British army during the war. He knew precisely what sort of man King Edward was - or was rumored to be - and precisely where the man's sympathies lay. Those sympathies had not been with the Allies. The thought that his own kingdom's throne might pass to a man who had supported - or at least not openly opposed - the Axis powers was an appalling one.

"As you can see, there are those of us who would really rather the throne not fall to him. I'm afraid to say, however, that your other cousins are not much better."

Lucien scrubbed absently at his beard, trying to gather his thoughts. He had a fair idea of what Sir Patrick was getting at, and he was trying to remind himself to be patient, not to snap, not to overplay his hand with a man he did not entirely trust. It would not do to pitch a fit now, to shriek and howl his discontent, to rage against the cards that had been dealt to him; he was the king, now, and he knew what that meant. You must be the man they need you to be. Not the man that you are.

"There are rumors that many of these cousins and their supporters feel you are not the best fit for the crown."

That was not at all what Lucien was expecting Sir Patrick to say, and he sat in silence, aghast at the very thought.

"Even you must acknowledge, sir, that you have spent more time away from your country than in it, and your mother was a foreigner. There are some more...conservative elements in this kingdom who don't approve. And various factions of them have allied themselves to one cousin or another. There have already been three attempts on your life, as far as we're aware. If you die without a direct heir, chaos is unavoidable. The intelligence chaps are already calling it the war of the cousins."

Three attempts on your life…

"Bloody hell," Lucien said, stunned almost beyond the capacity for speech. He had known that his investiture would be a bit bumpy, but he had never, not even for a moment, considered that his own people might want to kill him, for the crime of having been born to the wrong woman, for having tried to make himself into his own man. "I suppose I have you to thank for the fact that I'm still breathing?"

Sir Patrick did not smile, but it was a very near thing. "Our intelligence service expanded greatly during the war. They're no MI-5, but they do all right. They managed to intercept and put a stop to the various plots they've been able to uncover. That doesn't mean that the threat has been neutralized entirely."

"What do I do, then?" Lucien asked. "Can I name a successor and put a stop to this?"

Sir Patrick shook his head. "I'm afraid that wouldn't solve the problem, sir. There's still the matter of that pesky chart. If you chose to elevate someone further down the line, or to introduce someone else entirely, their authority would be flimsy at best, and conflict would continue. Our best course of action, sir, is to keep you alive for as long as possible, endear you to the people as much as possible, and provide an heir from your direct line."

Have to give it to him, Lucien thought bleakly, the man knows how to turn a phrase. What Sir Patrick meant, of course, was you need to behave yourself, and have a child or seven as soon as you possibly can. He had couched that intent in the subtlest of words, but it remained clear. And he had, however unknowingly, placed Lucien in a rather difficult position. No one, not even Matthew, knew of Lucien's wife and child. No one knew that he'd had an heir, once, a little girl he had loved with his whole heart, a little girl who had been the very center of his world. A little girl who had been lost to the sea, as far as Lucien knew. The many years he'd spent searching, the hundreds of letters he'd exchanged with private investigators trying to discover just what had become of his family was among his most closely guarded secrets. What Sir Patrick asked of him now was unthinkable; to start a new family he would have to declare the old one dead and gone for good, and while rationally he knew that his wife and child had likely perished, a stubborn part of his heart reminded him that he had never discovered the truth for a certainty. Aside from his own emotional reasons for objecting to Sir Patrick's delicate proposal, there was a grim practicality at play; Lucien did not know for sure what had become of his family, and he could not imagine what sort of havoc it might play if he remarried and had children, only to discover that Li and Mei Lin were in fact alive, and he had become an accidental bigamist.

"You've been alone for a long time, Your Majesty," Sir Patrick said carefully. "I understand it might seem distasteful at first, but surely if you give it some thought you might realize that it could be a benefit to you, to have a wife and a family. There are any number of suitable girls-"

"I will not take some child bride to appease your sense of duty," Lucien cut him off sharply.

Sir Patrick grimaced, and ran a tired hand over his face. He looked, Lucien thought, rather like a man who had grown weary of dealing with a particularly difficult child. That did nothing to lessen Lucien's anger, however; suitable girls, indeed!

"Perhaps I misspoke," Sir Patrick said evenly. "Girls was not the right word. You need only find a woman young and healthy enough to bear at least one child. There are many...ladies of noble houses, in their late twenties and thirties, who could provide the necessary services while also being pleasant company for Your Majesty."

The necessary services! Lucien's mind rebelled at those words, furious at the very thought. To keep from shouting at the man Lucien rose to his feet and began to pace, smoothing his hand over the back of his head and trying to keep a tight rein on his tongue. He could not recall having been quite so angry at anyone in his life, save for his father. But it wasn't Sir Patrick's fault, of course it wasn't; the man was only the messenger, after all. Lucien had nothing and no one but cruel fate to blame for his current predicament.

"There's a problem with your plan, Patrick," he said, dropping the Sir, mostly because he had grown weary of courtesy. "I already have a wife and child."

Patrick gawped at him for a moment, lips opening and closing like a catfish drawn out from the depths. It was not often Sir Patrick was left on the back foot, but Lucien had just shocked the man to the core. It would have been quite amusing to see, had Lucien's heart not been in a riot. "But, sir, no one-"

"No one knew," Lucien said. "I met a girl - a young woman - while I lived in Singapore. We married in secret, and had a child. A daughter."

Li, sweet Li, bright and beautiful, the sun at the center of her father's universe, ripped away from him too soon.

"Where on earth have you been hiding them, sir?" Patrick demanded.

Lucien smiled sadly. "I wish I knew."

Taking a very deep breath he settled himself in his chair, and laid the whole story out for Patrick. How he and Derek had arranged things with the local parish priest, how Mei Lin's family had agreed to keep their secret until Lucien's time in the army was through and he and Mei Lin could return to his homeland, how the Japanese had come, how he had lost them. Lost, but not for a certainty, not yet.

"This complicates matters somewhat," Patrick said wryly. Lucien was rather inclined to agree with him. But then his mind began to turn, and latched onto a new idea. It came to him out of the blue, struck him hard and fast as lightning, and gave birth to a sudden swell of hope such as he had not known for many years.

"How about this, then?" Lucien suggested. "Let's put our intelligence service to the test. If they're worth their salt, perhaps they could do what all those private investigators couldn't. Have them search for my family. If they can find my wife and child, then you will have this matter of succession sorted, and my eternal gratitude. If they find that my family has been...lost, then I will do as you say."

It was difficult to voice those words, but Lucien knew that he must. The only thing that had stopped him from spurning the crown and returning to the life he'd made for himself was a desire for peace in his kingdom. If a wife and child were required to keep such a peace, Lucien knew it was a price he must pay. But oh, if his family could be returned to him, if the last sixteen years of heartbreak could be turned into the transcendent joy of such a reunion, he would know then that his struggles, his sacrifices had been worth it. To hold his child again, he would trade the very world.

"Agreed," Sir Patrick said solemnly. "Now, tell me again, slowly this time. When were they last seen?"