by Anne Perry
When it was his turn to be introduced, and he walked forward, he saw that she was actually of no more than average height, and closer to, it was her eyes which startled and froze. They were clear aquamarine, neither green nor blue.
His name was announced.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed.
“Count Lansdorff tells me you are a friend of Stephan von Emden, Mr. Monk,” she said, surveying him with chilly courtesy.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He met you at the home of Lord Wellborough, where my unfortunate son met his death,” she continued with no discernible emotion in her voice.
“I stayed there a few days,” he agreed, wondering what Rolf had told her and why she had chosen to raise the subject.
“If you are a friend of Baron von Emden’s, then possibly you are also acquainted with the Countess Rostova?”
His instinct was to deny it for self-protection. Then he looked at her cool, clear eyes and was startled, even chilled, by the intelligence in them, and by a glimpse of something which might have been emotion, or simply force of will.
“I know her, ma’am, but not well.” To such a woman the truth was the only safety. Perhaps she knew it already.
“A woman of dubious tastes but unquestionable patriotism,” she said with a ghost of a smile. “I hope she will survive this present storm.”
Monk gasped.
“Are you enjoying Felzburg, Mr. Monk?” she continued as if they had been discussing something of equal unimportance. “It is a most agreeable time of year for concerts and theater. I hope you will have the opportunity during your stay here to visit the opera.”
It was an indication that the interview was at an end.
“Thank you, ma’am, I am sure I shall find it excellent.” He bowed again and withdrew, his head swimming.
* * *
He should have looked forward to the evening immensely. It was a ball to which Eugen had seen he was invited and where he knew Evelyn would also be present. All too soon he would have to return to London and to the reality of his life as it was. Whatever it had been before he had left it to go into the police force, that luxury, that easy acceptance of pleasure, was part of a past he could never relive in memory, much less return to. At least for the time left to him, he would, by act of will, forget the past and the future. The present was everything. He would enjoy it to the fullest, drink the cup of it to the last drop.
He dressed with care, but also with a sense of satisfaction, almost delight. He surveyed himself in the glass and smiled at his reflection. It was elegant and at ease in its beautiful clothes. The face that looked back at him had no diffidence, no anxiety. It was smooth, slightly amused, very sure of itself.
He knew Evelyn found him exciting. He had told her just enough to intrigue her. He was different from any other man she knew, and because she could not understand him, or guess what was really behind the little she could see, he was dangerous.
He knew it as clearly as if she had said it to him in words. It was a game, a delicately played and delicious game, the more to be savored because the stakes were real: not love, nothing so painful or so demanding of the self, but emotion for all that, and one that would not be easily forgotten when he had to leave. Perhaps from now on something of it would be echoed in every woman who woke a hunger and a delight in him.
He arrived at the magnificent home of the host for the ball and strode up the steps. Only a sense of dignity stopped him from racing up two at a time. He felt light-footed, full of energy. There were shimmering lights everywhere: torches in wrought iron holders outside, chandeliers inside blazing through the open doors and beyond the tall windows. He could hear the hum of conversation almost as if the music were already playing.
He handed in his invitation and hurried across the hallway and up the stairs to the reception room. His eyes swept over the crowded heads to find the thick, dark hair of Klaus von Seidlitz. It took him a moment or two. Then someone turned, taller than the others, and he saw Klaus’s face with its broken nose and heavy features. He was talking to a group of soldiers in bright uniform, recounting some tale which amused him. He laughed, and for a few moments he was a different man from the brooding, almost sullen person Monk had seen in England. In repose his face had seemed cruel; now it was genial, and merely crooked.
Monk searched for Evelyn and could not see her.
Rolf was standing not more than a dozen yards from him. He looked polite and bored. Monk guessed he was there from duty rather than pleasure, perhaps courting a political interest. Now that Friedrich was dead, where did the independence party pin its hopes? Rolf had the intelligence to lead it. Perhaps he would have been the person behind the throne if a plan to reinstate Friedrich had succeeded. Maybe he had always intended to rule.
Who would be the rallying point now, the person with the popularity, the image people would follow, would sacrifice their money, their houses, even their lives for? That kind of loyalty attaches only to someone with either a royal birthright or a character of extraordinary valor and passion—or to someone who can be seen as a symbol of what the people most desire. It does not matter whether that loyalty is born of truth or fiction, but it must ignite a belief in victory that overrides the defeats and the disappointments, the weariness and the loss.
Rolf had not that magic. Standing on the last step and looking across the heads of the guests at his strong, careful face, Monk knew it, and he imagined Rolf did too.
How deep did Rolf’s plans run? Staring at his steady, fixed gaze, his square shoulders and ramrod back, Monk could believe they might well be deep enough to have murdered Gisela and created out of Friedrich the hero he needed—the rightful heir, bereaved, repentant, returned to lead his people in their hour of greatest peril.
Only the plans had gone disastrously wrong; it was not Gisela who had died, but Friedrich himself.
“Mr. Monk?”
It was a woman’s voice, soft and low, very pleasing. He turned around slowly to see Brigitte smiling at him with interest.
“Good evening, Baroness von Arlsbach,” he said a little more stiffly than he had intended. He remembered feeling sorry for her at Wellborough Hall. She had been very publicly rejected by Friedrich. Hundreds of people must have known how deeply the royal family had wanted him to marry her, and that she had been willing, even if only as a matter of duty. But he had steadfastly refused, and then had been prepared to sacrifice everything for love of Gisela.
And Brigitte was still unmarried, a most unusual circumstance for women of her age and station. He looked at her now, standing a few feet away from him. She was not beautiful, but there was a serenity in her which had a loveliness that was perhaps more lasting than regularity of feature or delicacy of coloring. Her eyes were steady and straight but had none of the ice of Ulrike’s.
“I did not know you were in Felzburg,” she continued. “Have you Mends here?”
“Only new friends,” he replied. “But I am finding the city most exhilarating.” It was true, even if it was due to Evelyn’s presence in it rather than any qualities of the city itself. The industrial cities of northern England would have been exhilarating for him had Evelyn been there.
“That is the first time I have heard it described so,” she said with amusement. She was a big woman with broad shoulders, but utterly feminine. He noticed how flawless her skin was, and how smooth her neck. She was wearing a king’s ransom in jewels, an unusual necklace of cabochon star rubies and pearls. She must hate Gisela, not only for the personal humiliation but also for what she had taken from the country in luring away Friedrich, who would fight for independence, and leaving Waldo, who seemed genuinely to believe in unification. And she had been at Wellborough Hall.
The thought was repellent, but it could not be swept away, no matter how hard it was to believe, standing there on the steps overlooking the ballroom and seeing the peace in her face.
“You don’t find it so?” he asked. He thought of sounding surprised, then ch
anged his mind. She would think it affected, perhaps even sarcastic. She was as aware as he, perhaps more so, that it was a very small city compared with the great capitals of Europe, and almost provincial in nature.
As if reading his thoughts, she answered. “It has character and individuality.” Her smile widened. “It has a vigor of life. But it is also old-fashioned, a little resentful of sophisticated people from our larger neighbors, and too often suspicious because we dread being overshadowed. Like most other places, we have too many officials, and they all seem to be related to one another. Gossip is rampant, as it is in all small cities. But on the other hand, we are hospitable and generous, and we do not have armed soldiers in the streets.” She had not said she loved it, but it was there far more eloquently in her eyes and her voice. If he had been uncertain of her loyalty to independence before, he was not now.
Suddenly exhilarating seemed a false word to have used. He had been thinking of Evelyn, not the city, and it was patronizing to speak falsely of thousands of people’s lives and homes.
She was looking at him curiously. Perhaps she saw something of his thoughts reflected in his face.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, and this time he was sincere.
“Must you leave?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I have business in London which will not wait.” That was truer than she could know. “Perhaps you will do me the honor of allowing me to accompany you in?”
“Thank you.” She took his proffered arm and began down the steps. He was about to tell the footman who he was when the man bowed deferentially to Brigitte and took Monk’s card.
“The Baroness von Arlsbach … and Mr. William Monk,” he announced.
Immediately there was a hush as heads turned, not to Monk, but to Brigitte. There was a murmur of respect. A way parted for them to enter the crowd. No one pushed forward or resumed their previous conversation until the couple had passed.
Monk realized with a rush of heat to his face how presumptuous he had been. Brigitte had very possibly not aspired to be queen, as apparently Gisela had, but her people had wished it. She was revered next only to Ulrike, and perhaps better loved.
His earlier pity for her faded. To be one man’s passionate love was perhaps a quirk of nature no one could create or foresee. To be loved by a country was a mark of worth. No one who held it should be thought of slightly.
The music was beginning in the room beyond. Should he invite her to dance? Would it be insulting now if he did not, or would it be a further presumption if he did? He was not used to indecision. He could not remember ever having felt so gauche before.
She turned to face him, holding out her other hand. It was gracefully done, an unspoken acceptance before he had time to make either mistake.
He found himself smiling with relief, and led her onto the floor.
It was another half hour before he was able to find Evelyn. She was as light in his arms as a drift of silk, her eyes full of laughter. They danced as if there were no one else in the huge room. She flirted outrageously, and he reveled in it. The night would be far too short.
He saw Klaus looking melancholy and rather bad tempered, and all he could feel was a vague distaste. How could such a miserable man expect to hold a creature like Evelyn, who was all wit and happiness?
An hour later, dancing with her again, he saw Klaus talking earnestly with an elderly man Evelyn told him was a Prussian aristocrat.
“He looks like a soldier,” Monk agreed.
“He is,” she replied, shrugging her lovely shoulders. “Almost all Prussian aristocrats are. For them it is practically the same thing. I dislike them. They are terribly stiff and formal, and have not an atom of humor between them.”
“Do you know many of them?”
“Far too many!” She made a gesture of disgust. “Klaus often has them in the house, even to stay with us in our lodge in the mountains.”
“And you don’t care for them?”
“I can’t bear them. But Klaus believes we will ally with Prussia one day quite soon, and it is the best thing to make them your friends now, before everyone else does and you have lost your advantage.”
It was a peculiarly cynical remark, and for a moment the laughter faded a little, the lights seemed sharper, glittering with a harder edge, the noise around him shriller.
Then he looked at her face, and the laughter in it, and the moment passed.
But he did not forget her story of Klaus’s deliberate courting of the Prussians. Klaus was for unification, perhaps not for his country’s sake but for his own. Did he hope to emerge from such forced union with greater power than he now held? Friedrich’s return would have compromised that. Had he feared it, and killed Friedrich to prevent it? It was not impossible. The more Monk considered the idea, the more feasible did it seem.
But it hardly helped Rathbone. Then again, nothing that seemed even possible, let alone likely, would help Rathbone. The only person who seemed to care about Zorah was Ulrike. That curious remark of hers came back to his mind.
At midnight he was drinking champagne. The music was lilting again, strictly rhythmic, almost willing him to dance. Until he could find Evelyn, he asked the nearest woman to him, and drifted out onto the floor, swirled and lost in the pleasure of it.
It was nearly one when he saw Evelyn and contrived to end the dance close enough to her, and she had equally contrived to be away from Klaus and had laughingly passed by her previous partner before he could invite her again.
They came together moving to the music as if it were an element of nature and they simply were carried upon it, as foam upon a current of the sea. He could smell the perfume of her hair, feel the warmth of her skin, and as they spun and parted and came together again, see the glow in her cheeks and the laughter in her eyes.
When at last they stopped for breath, he lost count of how many dances later, it was at the edge of a group of others, some fresh from the floor, some sipping champagne, light winking in the glasses, flashing fire on diamonds in hair and on ears and throats.
Monk felt a sudden surge of affection for this tiny, independent state with its individual ways, its quaint capital, and its fierce desire to remain as it was. Maybe the only common sense, the only provident way forward, was to unite with all the other states into one giant nation. But if they did so then something irreparable would be lost, and he mourned its passing. How much more must these for whom it was their heritage and their home mourn?
“You must hate the thought of Prussia marching in here and taking over,” he said impulsively to Evelyn. “Felzburg will be simply a provincial city, like any other, ruled from Berlin, or Munich, or some other state capital. I can understand why you want to fight, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“I can’t!” she replied with a flicker of irritation. “It’s a lot of effort and sacrifice for nothing. We can always go to Berlin. It will be just as good there … maybe better.”
A footman passed by with a tray of champagne, and she took a glass and put it to her lips,
Monk was stunned. He looked beyond Evelyn to Brigitte, who was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were aching with sadness, and even as Monk watched she blinked and he saw her breast rise as she breathed in deeply, and the moment after turned to the woman next to her and spoke.
Surely Evelyn must see that. She could not be as shallow as she had sounded.
“When are you going back to London?” Evelyn asked, her head a little on one side.
“I think tomorrow, perhaps the next day,” Monk answered with regret.
Evelyn looked at him, her brown eyes wide. “I suppose you have to go?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I have a moral obligation to a friend. He is in considerable difficulty. I must be there when his time of crisis comes.”
“Can you help him?” It was almost a challenge in her voice.
Beyond her a woman laughed, and a man proposed a toast to something or other.
“I doubt it, b
ut I can try,” Monk replied. “At the very least I can be beside him.”
“What purpose is there, if you can’t help?” Evelyn was looking very directly at him, and there was an edge of ridicule in her voice.
He was puzzled. It seemed a pointless question. It was simply a matter of loyalty. One did not leave people to suffer alone.
“What sort of trouble is he in?” she pressed.
“He made a misjudgment,” he replied. “It seems as if it will cost him very dearly.”
She shrugged. “Then it is his own fault. Why should you suffer for it?”
“Because he is my friend.” The answer was too simple to need elaboration.
“That’s ridiculous!” She was half amused, half angry. “Wouldn’t you rather be here with us—with me? At the weekend we go to our lodge in the forest. You could come. Klaus will be busy with his Prussians most of the time, but you shall find plenty to do. We ride in the forest, have picnics and wonderful nights by the fire. It is marvelously beautiful. You can forget the rest of the world.”
He was tempted. He could be with Evelyn, laugh, hold her in his arms, watch her beauty, feel her warmth. Or he could return to London and tell Rathbone that if Friedrich had been the intended victim, then Gisela could not have killed him, but Klaus could have. However, it was far more likely that actually it was Gisela who was meant to be the one who died, and it was only mischance that it had been Friedrich, which doubly proved her innocence. Lord Wellborough could have been guilty, or someone acting for Brigitte or, far worse, for the Queen. Or Zorah could have done it herself.
He could attend the trial and watch Rathbone struggle and lose, watch helplessly as the lawyer damaged his reputation and lost all he had so carefully built in his professional life.
