“That can’t be true. I recall having read about others in the papers.”
“Alejandro said those were all instigated by his father for publicity.”
“His father. How revolting.”
“It is disturbing, to be sure.”
“Is that what is bothering you then, love? It seems to me you have everything to gain from this relationship.”
“Quite true, Grandmamma.” Nicolette murmured. She knew she should be grateful. Prince Alejandro might yet be able to save her career. If she didn’t lose her life first.
And yet, she was distracted, dismayed, irritated, and just plain petulant!
She was ashamed of her own behavior.
“Please tell me what then, I grow weary of this guessing game.” Lady Elaina frowned.
Nicolette leaned back in her chair. “Monsieur Beaumaris as much as told me my solo career is finished if I don't sing for the prince. Can you imagine? It is the most humiliating experience of my life. I, who have worked night and day to be true to my art must now lower myself to politics!”
“Politics makes the world go 'round, my dear. One must merely use it to one's advantage.”
“That is precisely what is happening, Grandmamma. And why I fear I will be ill.” Nicolette closed her eyes momentarily. “Music must never be used. She must be felt. She must be revered. It is positively unholy.”
“Oh, my dear girl, really. Is there the slight possibility that you might be over-reacting?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Or possibly this is about you rather than the music, my dear? Quite understandable given the events of last evening.”
“I am the music, Grandmamma. And it would be one thing if my esteemed audience appreciated the honor, but I assure you that is far from the case.” Nicolette stood up suddenly and began pacing around the room, her fists clenched. “He holds me in contempt at the same time he wishes to receive my gifts.”
“Nicolette, I saw you with his royal highness, and I am quite certain he does not hold you in contempt.”
“Oh, but he does.” Nicolette wheeled around to face her grandmother. “His attitude towards women is positively ancient. The Neanderthal has no advantage over him.”
“Prince Alejandro does strike one as old-fashioned. It is not a crime.”
“He is insufferable. Worse, I do not even think he reveres the music. That I cannot forgive above all else. He views it rather like a disgusting medicine which must be taken. My singing: a necessary evil. Oh!” Nicolette threw her arms in the air.
“Calm yourself, my dear. It is only one night, after all.”
Yes, yes. And then it will all be over. Alejandro will be gone.
“I will offer up the fruits of my labor, a divine gift, to…to…such an ungrateful imbecile! I am beside myself with rage.” And he will be gone. Nicolette burst into tears again. She swayed her arms and the bishop sleeves of her pale aqua India silk dressing gown flared in every direction.
“I am astonished to learn it, my lamb. I had been in some doubt of your true feelings.” Lady Elaina took a sip of tea, her manner relaxed and her expression one of revelation. After all, the eye of the storm was the safest place to be. “It seems to me you are upset because you want Prince Alejandro to adore you.”
And why should he not?
Not to mention she had thrown herself at him—after he lured her in with his charm—and he had as much as discarded her.
Nicolette had suffered insult upon insult at Prince Alejandro's hand. She, who had men practically swooning to pick up her handkerchief!
“Prince Alejandro is far from adoring me, I assure you, Grandmamma. He does not deserve to hear me sing. It is positively revolting.” Nicolette faced Lady Elaina who was now comfortably seated at the breakfast table watching her intently.
“No one deserves to hear you sing I am sure. It is the nectar from the gods.”
“His royal highness,” she emphasized with causticity, “has ordered me about and diminished me from the first moment of our meeting. And now I am being required—me, Lady Nicolette Huntington—required to perform my best for someone who misunderstands and judges me.”
“Now really, Nicolette, you have been a performer for people whom you don't know who don't know you—thank goodness—for many years now.” A chuckle escaped Lady Elaina's lips. “An ill-informed audience is nothing new for you. This is what you do.”
“What do I do, Grandmamma? I would truly like to know this.”
“You show them a glimpse of heaven.” Lady Elaina buttered a piece of toast.
“I have never in my life had my devotion to giving my best performance so challenged.”
“Who is requiring you to perform at your best, Nicolette? Simply do what is required and leave,” offered Lady Elaina matter-of-factly, taking a bite of toast.
“I require it, Grandmamma.” Nicolette fell onto her bed and placed a pillow over her head. Her muffled voice exclaimed, “He is positively the most infuriating man I have ever met!”
“I had thought . . . I had heard . . . the prince has a reputation with the ladies,” Lady Elaina remarked delicately, clearing her throat. “And yet you do not appear to find him irresistible, my love.”
Certainly he does not find me so.
“Prince Alejandro has a remarkable self-control. He is the most imprisoned person I have ever known.” Nicolette removed the pillow from her head before she fainted and threw it across the room. “Don't stare at me so, Grandmamma. He is the type of man I dislike to the extreme.”
“Because he has self-control?” Lady Elaina stared at her incredulously, her piece of toast pausing in the air.
“Certainly not. He’s a rake.” Where all other women are concerned.
“But I thought you said…?”
Nicolette began to pound her remaining pillow.
“I must remember to ask your mother to have some new pillows sewn.”
Nicolette sighed heavily. “Prince Alejandro has no difficulty keeping his distance from me. He has all the depravity without any of the emotion, the sensual feeling, the poetic fervor, which might cast his darker side in an appealing light.”
“This strikes me as contradictory. Do you think that his reputation is deserved, Nicolette?”
“It is difficult to believe this man is able to attract any woman from the manners he exhibits. In my company, he is starched, closed, contemptuous—and censoriously abusive.”
“He has not tried to woo you?” Lady Elaina continued unrelentingly in her characteristically pointed manner.
Nicolette laughed disdainfully. “Far from exerting the slightest effort to woo me, he doesn't care how much he snubs me.” Clearly he didn't feel anything in her presence, didn't even like her, she thought with indignation. She was accustomed to bedazzling men, to eliciting their best behavior.
“I begin to wonder if we are living in the same world, Nicolette. His behavior towards you is the farthest from a snub I have ever observed.”
Nicolette ignored the remark. “As for charm, I can recognize charm, and, I am sorry to say, the crown prince of Spain does not have it. His attraction to women must be his money and his power, because he doesn't have an ounce of charm in his entire body.”
“Truly? Again, having met Prince Alejandro de Bonifácio I must strenuously disagree.”
Nicolette moved to her window to glance upon her distant neighbor on the north side of the park, the Palais du Luxembourg originally built for Marie de Medicis, mother of Louis XIII. During the French Revolution, the palace served as a prison.
A dark gloom began to descend upon her as she was reminded of her own prison when out of nowhere she saw a Marsh Harrier in flight, its wings stretched, soaring across the sky. Just as suddenly the majestic bird abandoned its flight path and alighted on the statue of Saint-Geneviève, patroness of Paris.
Lady Elaina cleared her throat. “If this is what you believe, then do only the minimum amount required. Go, perform, leave.”
“He needs me, Grandmamma,” Nicolette whispered.
“Oh?” asked Lady Elaina. “And what concern is that of yours, Nicolette?”
“When I speak of joy, Alejandro looks at me with a blank expression.” Nicolette shook her head, turning away from the window. “He has no concept of himself apart from his role in society, apart from his position in life as the future king of Spain.”
“That is ludicrous, Nicolette. Everyone has a concept of self.”
Nicolette shook her head. “Alejandro has no experience of separateness, of himself.” She moved to sit beside her grandmother at the small table, still allowing a view of the garden. She held her teacup to her lips, still warm, her hand shaking.
Concern crossed Lady Elaina's face, but she said nothing.
“Alejandro has no sense that he is loved, that he is a beloved child of God, that he is…magnificent. A beloved, amazing, irritating, glorious, thoroughly annoying man!”
“Magnificent and annoying? Hmmm . . . “
“Prince Alejandro…” Nicolette smiled slightly as she gazed out the window. “…does not give himself permission to thrill in his own existence.”
“He seems to be enjoying his existence, as you put it, with a certain vigor. He seems a most enterprising and dynamic young man.”
“Alejandro believes everyone else's needs are more important than his own.” Nicolette shook her head. “Except mine, of course, which he thinks are quite unimportant. He is distanced from himself, accustomed to suppressing his thoughts and feelings, his reactions to everything.”
“Possibly it pleases him to do so.”
“I am not convinced he even knows what he wants anymore. It has been immaterial to him for so long.”
“My love,” Lady Elaina broached slowly, “our impression of the young man is strikingly opposite. At any rate, what does it have to do with you? Possibly Prince Alejandro is quite unhappy, most people born into those circumstances are. But I do not see how it concerns you.”
“Because Grandmamma …” Nicolette stared at Lady Elaina for a long while. “because I have the conviction I can help him.”
“Oh? I sense a great plan unraveling in your mind.”
“I have a plan. Whether or not it will work, I cannot say.”
“Do tell.”
“If the prince has a moment of joy, he suppresses it. If he feels delight, he suppresses it. If he thinks he might like a certain experience, he turns from it. Generally when one exercises a particular personality characteristic, one does so in every arena of one's life. The focus of his entire being is to suppress. No, to annihilate. He has learned to annihilate himself.”
“And you, Nicolette, live to express yourself,” remarked Lady Elaina with a knowing smile.
Nicolette nodded, forcing herself to take a bite of toast, inadvertently enjoying the flavor of the melted butter and wheat. She dabbed a teaspoon of fresh raspberry jam on a corner of the toast.
“You are joy and he is duty,” Lady Elaina pronounced. “These characteristics are deeply ingrained no doubt.”
Nicolette shrugged, indifferent to the causes.
“And yet, dear heart, he has a different calling than you do. It is refreshing to learn of a ruler—a politician—who actually has a sense of responsibility. Perhaps this is the way he needs to be to do his work. Can the tortured artist create such great works without his pain?” She tapped her index finger on her cheek. “Often our faults are necessary to our achievements.”
“I must disagree, Grandmamma.” Nicolette pursed her lips. “When someone is suffering before me, I can never agree this is the ideal or God’s plan, no matter the impersonal merits which may be attributed to it. If one counts oneself as the enemy, one cuts off the channel to God and to all one's gifts. This can never be beneficial.”
“Not to the individual, but perhaps to the whole. Who can speak to the grand scheme of things?”
“One can only truly serve out of one's authentic self,” Nicolette countered, shaking her head vehemently. “Prince Alejandro will never be the ruler he can be if he does not form an acquaintance with himself. If he expunges every thought and feeling, he will likewise discard that which he needs to see.”
“Ah,” nodded Lady Elaina, eyeing her granddaughter with interest. “The proverbial baby with the bath water.”
“Yes, Alejandro’s devotion and discipline are necessary to his rule, but he cannot rule well with a severed channel to both his wisdom and his spiritual resources.” She ran her fingers along the white roses in a red crystal vase, a gift from Alejandro.
“One might argue that the future of an entire country is more important than the pleasure of an individual. In some cultures, there truly is not a concept of 'I'. The community is all that matters.” She chuckled. “I know this is a difficult concept for you to fathom, my sweet.”
“Very true, Grandmamma.” Nicolette pronounced resolvedly. “I don't give a flying leap about Spain or Prince Alejandro's rule or one's duty. He deserves to feel happiness. It is deplorable that he should never know joy. To crush oneself is to slap God in the face, to diminish His beloved child.”
“But you must consider that Alejandro’s goals are not your own.” Lady Elaina grew reflective. “The Spanish culture is particularly communal and family-oriented. No doubt you noticed that when you were in Spain. Or possibly the cigarette factory was not the best representation of family life?”
“I saw it, Grandmamma, very strongly,” Nicolette replied. “The Spanish people are extremely loyal to each other, no matter how poor they are.” She paused, shaking her head. “But even within the context of community, there is a positive feeling about oneself, an unspoken acknowledgement that one matters, that without one, the whole is less. Children in farming areas who work even at five years old are well-behaved and happy because they know their families depend on them. That, without them, the family suffers. They are important.”
“You see, my dear. You must see Alejandro within the context of his own culture.”
“No, this is different. Alejandro's invisibility to himself is not about family or community. Quite the opposite. It is about the lack therein, I would stake my life on it.”
“It must be the Austrian and German blood in his heritage.” Lady Elaina brought the teacup to her lips. “Which also accounts for his height. Amidst his masculine Spanish features, his dark hair and chiseled features, he has the height of another bloodline. And the upbringing.”
“I would not blame the Austrians or the Germans for Alejandro’s upbringing.” Nicolette rose from the table and went to her window, searching the skies for the bird she had seen earlier. She whirled around, her silk dressing gown flaring. “This is the fault of individuals.”
“I suppose it always is.”
“When one has the absence of parenting—or truly bad parenting—one learns to take care of oneself and can lose that openness to outside influences. Prince Alejandro is a person who has had both bad parenting and is the heir to a throne. Is it any wonder he is independent and strong-willed? And yet, there is an openness about him, a cry to learn to receive.” Nicolette placed her palm on her cheek, deep in thought. “He is asking for help, Grandmamma.”
“Admirable, my dear, but remember, he is who he is. Surely you don't propose to change the prince of Spain? Do you actually think you can teach him to be anyone else?” Lady Elaina waved her index finger at her granddaughter.
“Oh, no, Grandmamma. I cannot teach him anything.” Nicolette sighed. “I cannot even illustrate by example.”
“What can you do then, love?”
“I can make him live it.”
Lady Elaina nodded, a slow smile forming on her lips.
“And anyway, I don't wish him to be anyone else. I wish to enable him to be himself.”
Nicolette glanced at herself in the mirror; she saw her eyes glistening with the promise of what she knew she could do.
I hope with all my heart I might succeed.
“You do specialize in magic, Nicolette.” Lady Elaina sighed as she watched her.
“Perhaps, Grandmamma. Or perhaps I specialize in reality.”
“Quite so, my dear. You make magic real.” She cleared her throat. “But you have still not answered my question. Why?”
Nicolette sighed as she picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair. She stared at herself in the mirror, her dark hair falling over shoulders. She wished with all her heart Alejandro could see her as she was.
But he never would. She was invisible to him and would remain so.
Her eyes began to water and her image became blurred. Alejandro was somehow able to respond to her gift, but he would never know her.
“Nicolette?” Lady Elaina repeated. “Why do you do this for him? You should never do anything unless your heart is in it.”
“Because his is a sensitive soul which has been discarded. At odd and unexpected moments I have seen the kindness in his heart, the feeling.” Nicolette observed Lady Elaina's troubled expression, wondering if she was indeed very foolish. “And, Grandmamma, my heart has never been more in anything in my life.”
“If I did not know better, I would say you are in love with Prince Alejandro,” remarked Lady Elaina softly.
“What a ridiculous thought, Grandmamma.” Nicolette came to attention, aghast. “In the first place, as we have established, the man does not know how to love. He can't even merge with himself, so how is he going to touch me?”
“It seems an insurmountable obstacle.”
“In the second place, he wouldn't have me. I am not worthy of Spain.” Her ire was growing in leaps and bounds, but she managed to contain herself.
“Quite offensive. The man does not deserve you, without question.”
“But no matter, I would not have him. And I certainly would not give up my vocation.”
“I wouldn't consider it if I were you. Men are like fragile butterflies. Look to yourself for your happiness.”
Nicolette crossed her arms resolutely in front of herself and nodded defiantly as a sudden sense of purpose washed over her. “I must give him everything that I have to give, Grandmamma.”
“Indeed?”
The Serenade: The Prince and the Siren Page 28
