Royalty Exposed

Chapter 43

When Carter and I finally left the hotel to start our day of sightseeing, it was almost lunchtime. Katharine had canceled our lunch with the local government official, whose name I could not recall at the moment, since we had eaten a late breakfast and weren't going to be hungry enough to eat anytime soon. But we were still going to meet with him. She had instead arranged for us to meet him for tea and coffee sometime after one.

That meant that she had to rearrange some other things that we had to do as well as cut some sightseeing out. We still had a lot to do today though. It was only a few hours that we had lost, not half of the day or most of it which probably would have been nicer because our day was jam packed.

I think Carter would have preferred to stay back at the hotel today instead of going out since he had tried to get Katharine to cut down our schedule to where it was only the things that we had to do, but Katharine wouldn't cut out more than she had to. He wasn't in a good mood to deal with anyone who was a stranger and I knew that he not only wanted to talk to mother but also talk about her with, but Carter wanted to do the latter privately. And we weren't going to get a private moment to ourselves for a while.

So, he was going to have to wait until later to deal with his mother and find out what she wanted as well as wait to talk to me about her. I was also pretty sure he didn't want to be around Ethan at the moment either, but hopefully his mood would improve after some sightseeing. I was pretty sure that's why Katharine was keeping the extra activities.

"Have you heard anything from my mother yet?" Carter asked for the third time since we had left the hotel almost an hour ago. I wasn't sure if he was actually trying to annoy Ethan or if he was just checking to see if she had called yet.

"No, I haven't. I'll see if I can have someone get in touch with her though," Ethan said. He was trying to keep his voice from getting frustrated with Carter. Ethan was still unhappy about Carter going out running without any guards, but he was trying to stay civil so they wouldn't end up in a fight while we were in out in public.

"Thank you," Carter replied as he stared out the window. We hadn't arrived at the first stop on our schedule yet, but we only had thirty more minutes before we could get out. Maybe a little space from Ethan would be good for Carter.

Of course, Ethan wouldn't be that far behind, but he would probably be on his phone trying to see if he could find out if Carter's mother still wanted to meet with us. So, Ethan wouldn't be talking to Carter for some time since it probably wasn't going to be a quick answer from Julia. She never made things easy for anyone. We weren't the only ones who needed to know if Julia was going to still be meeting with us later.

Ethan and the rest of the staff needed to know so that they could prepare for her. Our original meeting time with her might have to change as well since our schedule had been moved around.

"Here we are," Katharine said sometime later as the car rolled to a stop in front of a large old stone castle, which was no longer in use as a home. It was just a tourist attraction now, but it was still being properly cared for despite no one living in it anymore.

The car door opened up and I got out of the car, taking a few steps away from it so the door could be closed. A few seconds later there was a hand on my lower back as I swung my purse over my shoulder and I looked over to see Carter standing next to me, staring up at the old castle.

"Did the palace ever look like this once?" I asked him. He looked down at me and shrugged his shoulders before saying, "That is something we'll have to ask my father. He probably knows the answer to that question. Although I think the answer would be no."

"That's what I was thinking. Your family probably lived in a castle like this once but moved into something more modern as time passed by," I replied. Carter nodded his head as he looked back at the castle. If his family had ever lived in a castle like this, it was long gone. There was nothing like this where we lived. Someone had decided to tear it down instead of preserving it like this one. It was such a shame too. Castles were so beautiful.