Love by the Morning Star

by Laura L. Sullivan

Teddy’s brow was puckered in faint puzzlement, and then he caught his mother’s disapproving stare over Anna’s shoulder. Of course! He was so relieved, he raised his hand to the orchestra and swept his love into the opening waltz.

  She was so different by daylight, speaking English with such a prim, controlled, artificial voice, that deliberate aristocratic accent that seemed to demand such effort—how far removed from her poetically beautiful German, which soared to Goethe and stooped to the gutter from word to word, language that played like a precocious child. Diurnal Anna was stiff and stilted, slightly uncomfortable. It was as if she was an entirely different person by day, and it troubled him.

  But when he saw his mother’s disapproving gaze, he realized—it was all an act. She was simply afraid of his mother, and while there was any chance the woman could observe her, Anna was desperate to paint herself as a model Englishwoman. She did things—said things—that his mother must approve of. Even when there was no danger of being overheard, she criticized servants, maintained a superior attitude that echoed Lady Liripip’s, kept her manners above reproach. Why, even though she’d promised to go gloveless, she wore them now, no doubt at his mother’s insistence.

  Those hurtful little things she said, they were just hangovers from trying to placate his mother. How scared she must be, separated from her home, her country going haywire, her parents far away and in danger, with only his own unkind mother to lean upon. She must be in constant terror of being cast out on the streets, the poor girl! He knew that his mother—horrible as he admitted her to be—would not stoop so low. But Anna did not know it, and even if Lady Liripip let her stay, she could make Anna’s life a torment.

  Now that he thought about it, Anna was a spy. He himself was learning how to mask his feelings and alter his words to blend in. Burroughs and his fellow spymasters had rigorously drilled him in remaining impassive while disgusting things were said about all the many people the Nazis hated, because when he was there, he would have to pretend to agree with them all. He had listened to the filth and learned not to give away his real thoughts by so much as a twitch. He could pass as a Nazi, the thing most antithetical to his nature. Anna was doing her best to pass as the shallow, bigoted, selfish, narrow sort of woman his mother favored. And in the way of a real spy, it was necessary to keep up the act even when unobserved. He would never have fallen in love with the Anna he saw in daytime. Oh, he might have lusted after her, but never in a million years would he marry her.

  What a beast I’ve been, Teddy thought as he glided and whirled with that divine woman. He’d acted as if they had all the time in the world. Yet they’d only known each other, all told, for a few days. And tomorrow he must leave again. But he knew, absolutely and unequivocally, that he loved her. The nighttime her, the real her, not this daytime sham. Why wait? She should know how he felt and what he meant to do. He would propose tonight. He’d make his intentions absolutely clear so she didn’t have to torture herself acting in that hateful way. His mother must have told her to dance with him first. She had always despised the Servants’ Ball. Anna was afraid to defy her, and dragged Teddy onto the floor. He’d have to explain it to Sally, but she would understand. She could have the next two dances.

  Once Anna knew that she was safe forever, she’d be herself again. Once she knew he meant to marry her, she could be her true self day and night. She could prattle in German, sing her glorious opera, say all of those things that would shock his mother, and no one could do a thing about it!

  Tonight when they met at the yew, he would propose. Then in the morning, before he left again, he’d tell his mother.

  He looked over at that formidable woman, mincing through the waltz with Coombe. He could not tell which of the two dancers looked the most uncomfortable. His mother’s face was held in a strange, sour smile, that stiff one she plastered on for those she condescended to. The sapphires around her neck gave her an artificial sparkle that seemed as false as her smile. She was cross about that, too, he knew, the mysterious disappearance of her heirloom pearls that she’d told the ladies’ maids to clean.

  Looking at the fearsome face of the woman who bore him, the woman he had long since given up trying to love and never respected but still half feared, Teddy thought: Maybe I’ll tell her when I return to Starkers next time. That would be in May, when he finished at Oxford. After that, he’d continue his spy training, and then if things went as planned, he’d be in Germany. Yes, right before he left the country would be a perfect time to tell his mother he was marrying Anna.

  HANNAH CRANED HER NECK over her shoulder, trying to see how very bad it was.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I simply can’t!”

  “You wear this or you wear your kitchen dress,” Waltraud said sternly, adjusting the fabric on Hannah’s slight curves.

  “I could wear my traveling suit.”

  “No, you can’t, because prophetess that I am, I snipped the buttons off to prevent that very thing. I knew you’d be a coward at the last minute. You’ve done the talking—now you have to put your body to work.”

  “Such as it is,” Hannah said, looking at her rather flat front.

  “Fried eggs are as delicious as melons,” Waltraud insisted. “You want a proposal? You’ll get it in this dress.”

  “I don’t need a proposal. He loves me; that is enough.”

  “It’s not the right kind of love if you’re his secret. A boy who feeds a hedgehog in the garden doesn’t have a pet. Do you want to be Teddy’s wife or his mistress?”

  “I just want to talk with him, and laugh with him, and know him—forever.”

  “A mistress isn’t forever, Liebchen. Thank goodness, for me, because I get bored in about ten minutes and then I get my farewell dress and go on the prowl again. That suits me. But you are not a mistress, love. You are a wife. A dear little Hausfrau with a herd of children and the ability to tell your mother-in-law to go to hell. Now be a man and go out there. The first dance is ending, and he’ll be waiting for you.”

  Waltraud settled the ropes and ropes of pearls and gave her a little shove.

  “Opening night at Cabaret Starkers,” she said. “You’re on.”

  Hannah Is Propositioned and Almost Proposes

  HANNAH DID NOT MAKE AN ENTRANCE. She appeared with stealthy suddenness, like a ghost, or a fox, and was with the rest before they knew it. Servants, of course, come in through the back stairs.

  When walking in the gloaming, one does not immediately notice the first star. So Hannah came among them, unremarked at first, but before long eliciting whispers and gasps. Lord Liripip, limping his way through a mockery of a dance with Mrs. Wilcox, stopped dead still and thought, If that girl does not find a royal keeper tonight I’ll eat my hat. His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, known to Hannah as Georgie, downed his cocktail and began to weave his way toward her, his eyes bright. His tastes were as varied as Waltraud’s, but at that very moment he could think of no man or woman more exciting than this girl of night and moonlight.

  “Who is she?” voices asked, and no one had the answer. Was she an actress, with those expressive brows, that Lilith look, that serpent grace? Was she one of those royals no one seems to remember, a Greek or a Swede? An upstart jeweler’s daughter with those yards and yards of pearls?

  Teddy stepped on Anna’s toe and stopped dancing. He did not mean to stare. He was with the woman he adored, and if he recognized the transformed creature as the little German kitchen waif who had briefly amused him before, that was no reason to utterly forget—for the space of only a few seconds, mind you—about the woman whom he planned to make his fiancée very soon. But he simply could not help himself. If it was put to a poll, Anna would be voted the most beautiful woman in the room by a landslide. But the kitchen maid in her remarkable dress and those pearls was by far the most interesting.

  When Waltraud had worn the dress, once, to privately entertain a visiting diplomat, she wore it right way around, so the Grecian draping plunged daringly down below
her navel, requiring perfect posture or absolute indifference as to who might see one’s bosom, both of which Waltraud had in abundance. But she knew her little friend did not possess such aplomb, so after pondering the dilemma awhile, she simply reversed the garment, lopped off the bottom, took a few stitches, et voilà!

  It was a Vionnet dress, deeply black, bias cut, draped in supple waves. In the front it was virginal, showing no more than a glimpse of those delicate hollows above the collarbones, and from there descending to the floor. But in the back . . .

  The flowing wavelike folds skimmed Hannah’s shoulder blades and dropped to the first curve of her buttocks so enticingly that every man pleaded for one more inch of flesh—just one! But the bare expanse of creamy back wasn’t stark against the black material. She wore three long strands of pearls reversed, so that in front they looked like a choker, while in back they rolled across her naked skin in a precious veil, concealing, revealing, and concealing again. Two heavy ropes were wrapped around her forearms, and another, more delicate, made a headband on her short dark hair.

  Hannah did not see the way the entire room looked at her. She saw only Teddy.

  She was confused when she saw who was in his arms, because Waltraud had been adamant that Teddy would dance first with the cook. She had heard the waltz begin, and only now was it ending. Sally was standing morosely against the wall. Why was Teddy with Anna?

  She called out to him wordlessly across the crowded ballroom, and for a moment he answered with a yearning look of his own. But then the golden woman in his arms said something and he turned his gaze away from Hannah. He didn’t look back, not for a wink or a smile.

  You were wrong, Traudl, Hannah thought. Even this dress is not enough to make him run to me before his mother and all the world.

  She wanted to flee, to cover her exposed flesh and take off the ridiculous, glorious dress that was not her at all. But the second dance? Surely he will come to me for the second dance.

  No. He didn’t look at her at all, but left Anna in the care of his friend Maurice and then pulled Sally into the Sir Roger de Coverley. Hannah watched the sprightly country dance and wondered when her turn would come.

  “You are not accustomed to being against the wall,” said an insinuating growl from behind her ear. “Or . . . perhaps you are?”

  She turned and found the handsome Duke of Kent lurking at her side.

  “Forgive my coarseness. Liripip has been stimulating my imagination with his memoirs. Are you really the sleepy little kitchen wench who knew Noel? What hidden . . . depths.” He peered down her back to see them. “Liripip says, in his usual brusque way, that you are in want of a patron. Shall we dance and talk? I require conversation, intelligent and incessant, during even the most arduous activities, so this will be a test. Not a reel, though. Something more intimate. Stay here, and if anyone tries to steal you away while I’m gone, I’ll consider it treason.”

  He had a word with the conductor of the small, versatile orchestra, and when Roger de Coverley spun to a close, the horns immediately struck up a swinging jazz tune.

  It was impossible to worry when dancing. In the first number, an easy shag, Hannah was able to keep up a panting conversation of double entendres.

  “My wife, Marina, won’t object too strongly,” he said after sufficient repartee, thinking he’d made himself abundantly clear. “We have an understanding, and get along swimmingly.”

  “She doesn’t like opera singers?” Hannah asked.

  “Or chorus girls, or chorus boys, but as long as we keep our peccadilloes discreet we are all happy.”

  Hannah smiled up at him. “Is opera a peccadillo in this country?”

  “No, but the singers are, if they’re kept in secret apartments and drive little coupes. Or would you prefer a Rolls and chauffeur? The royal treasury can support it, and if not, last season all of my horses placed, so I’m flush.”

  Still not understanding, she said, “Are you always so kind to your protégés? You haven’t even seen me perform.”

  “What you don’t know I can teach you. My tastes are simple. Well, broad but shallow, I should say.” He let his hand run down to the small of her back.

  “You can teach me opera?” Hannah asked, incredulous. “I never knew you sang.”

  “Teach you . . . oh, good lord, have I put my foot in it?”

  “I don’t know. What were you talking about?”

  “Liripip claims you’re a notorious courtesan. He might have been demobbed eons ago, but I trust his judgment where women are concerned, and if he says you’re worth it, I figured I’d get in before some other fellow does. I take it he was, er, mistaken?”

  “Rather. I’m an opera singer. Well, cabaret-cum-opera. I want to start singing here in England, but of course I know no one, and a girl who works in the kitchen all day can’t exactly go out and audition. I thought you meant to hear me sing and mention my name around. I’m really rather good. I was supposed to join the Vienna Opera soon, but . . .” She cocked her head up at him. “If you have an apartment and a coupe free and are looking for a notorious German courtesan, I know someone who would require absolutely no training whatsoever. Do you spy that Rhinemaiden in the see-through dress?”

  She promised to introduce them, but Georgie wanted one more dance. “There’s no sham with you, is there, and no shame. How very unusual. My wife would like you after all, I think, particularly if we’re not to be lovers.” He added wistfully, “We’re not, are we?”

  She glanced unconsciously toward Teddy, who had partnered Sally for the shag and now sought out Anna again. Everyone was surreptitiously watching the lovely little night-and-starlight girl charm His Highness; everyone except Teddy, who was looking like a mooncalf into Anna’s eyes, full of his new understanding of her, thinking of exactly how he would propose.

  “Ah,” Georgie said. “You do know that the best cure for unrequited love is a good—” But what exactly his prescription was, Hannah never learned, for the shag transitioned into a Lindy that was as improvisational as the music itself, and she had to give herself over entirely to the sudden dips and air steps and, dramatically at the end, a flip that made all the other guests gasp. She was in Berlin again, in the dance clubs she knew so well, with her family and friends and cabaret coworkers all around her. For a moment her body freed her mind and she was passionately happy.

  Then the music stopped, and she remembered.

  Her friends were back in Germany, dead, fled—who knew? Her family . . .

  She panted in the middle of the mostly cleared floor. Only the youngest guests had remained for the modern “rude American dances.” Another waltz was beginning, and Hannah recognized the opening measures of the Wiener Bonbons. Lord Liripip must have ordered it specifically for her. Had he really thought her a prostitute? No, what had Georgie said, a courtesan? Did he really not know who she was, or had that wicked Lady Liripip lied to him, telling him the daughter of his former love was a prostitute?

  It is not right that the world is so full of wicked people, Hannah thought. No, she amended almost immediately, looking at Lord Liripip lounging in a chair, looking inordinately pleased with himself. There are vastly more kind people than evil people. It’s only that they let the wicked people get away with so much. A great wonderful world, and what does it do about Hitler? A family of decent people, and what do they do about Lady Liripip? Nothing.

  Hannah was tired of waiting for the rest of the world to do something. There wasn’t much she could personally do about Nazis, she had no real idea how to help her parents, but she could defy Lady Liripip. Then Teddy would have to defy her too . . . or lose Hannah.

  She led Georgie to Waltraud and made a quick introduction. They took to each other right away, each with a frank understanding of what they could do for, and get from, the other. Waltraud hooked her pinky in His Highness’s and pulled him toward a curtained alcove.

  “Have fun,” Hannah said. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She gave Georgie a peck on th
e cheek, which would appear, in anonymous form, in the next day’s society column.

  Hannah weaved through the dancers, stopping directly before Teddy, who clasped Anna by the hand and hip. She didn’t know what she would say, but she had to speak now, while her courage was strong. I love you might be a good way to start. I love you, and you said you love me, and you have to tell your mother now. I do not wish to make a scene, but love is a spectacle; not a secret but a thing for the world.

  It sounded very good in her head, but all she managed, under Teddy’s perplexed half smile and Anna’s look of outright hostility (for Teddy had been murmuring something promising in her ear), was, “Teddy, I—”

  Then came the strident voice Hannah had rather suspected would be doing quite a bit of shouting . . . only not so soon.

  “Ingrate!” Lady Liripip screeched, pointing a j’accuse finger at Hannah from across the room. “Criminal! Call the police at once!”

  Hannah looked at Lady Liripip in alarm. Was the woman not only unkind, but positively mad? She had hiked up her mauve beaded gown and was charging at Hannah, her finger still jabbing the air in her direction.

  “She is a kitchen maid, an insolent trull who should have been fired weeks ago. I let her stay out of the kindness of my heart”—here Hannah could not suppress a little snort—“and she repays me with base treachery and theft!”

  “Lady Liripip,” Hannah began, thinking she might explain that she was not stealing a son but giving a daughter-in law. But she was not allowed to continue.

  “That wretched creature has stolen my pearls!”

  Hannah Learns That Pearls Mean Tears

  SINCE THERE WERE MEMBERS of the royal family in attendance, there were several unobtrusive muscular types who lingered on the fringes waiting to tackle anyone who threatened the line of succession. Hearing the alarm raised, these moved in like sharks scenting blood, surrounding Hannah, who stood alone.