Here was the black and white marble checkerboard floor that I vividly remembered from a sword battle I would have two centuries into the future…I hoped.
Greeting the queen with deep bows and curtseys were the duke and his wife, Princess Maria, Gabrielle’s parents. The duke was a fair-haired middle-aged guy who didn’t look the least like the von Mecklundburgs I knew. His wife looked like a gray-haired version of Margit, only stouter. Next to her, in a row, stood her three children: the heir, tall and square-jawed with a winsome smile, Count Karl-Friedrich, whom everyone called Fritzl; Father Marcus, a Benedictine; Gabrielle, looking like a fairy princess all in white gauze and lace; and next to her, a short, muscular guy with curly dark hair who turned out to be her betrothed, Baron Ilya Carolos.
Once we’d passed the reception line, the queen was helped, with great tenderness, to a vast state guest room to recover from the journey.
Aurélie’s suite of three rooms was not far. About four doors down from it was the suite through whose window I’d once jumped while trying to escape the horde of bad guys chasing me. Aurélie opened the French windows of her outer chamber and stepped out onto the marble balcony. She peered into the garden below. “Observe those statues,” she said. “They look so real in the moonlight.”
Viorel said in a low, thrilling voice, “Those are vampires, turned forever to stone by the daylight.”
“Vampires!” Aurélie exclaimed, drawing back as if the statues could pop into life again.
“There was a terrible attack during my grandmother’s day,” Margit said from the doorway of the adjoining chamber. “Riev was under siege by the Inimasang, the Dobreni word for vampires. You will find that every house has its hawthorn wreaths during winter, roses during summer, and crystal charms the year through. That reminds me, you’ll need protections. But didn’t Domnu Zusya say you have one?”
“I do,” Aurélie said.
“That’s as well, though no one has seen any Inimasang for years. But people relate the strangest rumors about this mountain. Come, Jaska says they’re gathering for dinner, and no one can eat a bite until we’re there. We’ll have dancing after it’s done. What are the popular dances in Paris? The gavotte, I am certain, and the minuet?”
“The waltz—” Aurélie began as she started out with Margit.
“What is that?”
“You dance in pairs, twirling.” Aurélie held up her arms and danced lightly across the bedroom, turning on her toes.
“Pairs of what?”
“A man and a woman,” Aurélie said, looking surprised.
“Touching?” Margit tsked. “That is impossible.”
“Then there is the quadrille.”
“That is a pattern for horses. Do people prance around like horses?”
“It is very complicated, and popular, I assure you. It is again danced in pairs.”
“Our court dances are done in pairs, but the folk prefer to separate men’s dances from women’s. The May dances especially. Weapons have been forbidden in the men’s dances for generations. They sometimes use fans, but the women still dance with flowers.” Margit added, “I do so like to watch a man who can dance well, or is that outré in Paris?”
“Oh, no,” Aurélie said with feeling. “The officers are all dressed up, and everybody is watching them, I assure you. And they are watching the ladies.”
“Officers? It’s all officers?”
“That’s all I ever saw at the Tuileries and Saint-Cloud, with a few diplomatic exceptions.”
FORTY-TWO
THERE WAS A LITTLE DANCING AFTER DINNER, but most people, in preparation for tomorrow’s wedding, were resting up in expectation of a long day and night following.
When she returned to her room, Aurélie found Viorel proudly laying out the just-finished ball gown. For extremely formal affairs, the fashions in Dobrenica were closer to late eighteenth century tastes than the skimpy, low cut Parisian fashions. The skirts were full, the waist slightly raised and sashed, the skirt a swooped polonaise that revealed an underskirt of silver tissue. The bodice and overdress were white, embroidered all over with green leaves and tiny crimson clusters of berries, the neck and sleeves edged with silver lace and spring green ribbon.
The headdress to go with it was a wreath of silk flowers, and crimson ribbon hanging down the back. It looked terrific against her black curls.
Viorel stood by, smiling expectantly, then flushed with pleasure when Aurélie heaped her with praise, going over every detail. They did a last fitting, the maid twitched and pinched here and there, then the gown was swept off for finishing touches, as Aurélie went to bed. I think she was asleep in less than a minute.
Her life experience—with the Kittredges, travel, lady-in-waiting—so far had made her an early riser. She’d bathed and was about to take her coffee and pastry out onto the balcony when there was a soft knock at her door.
Viorel ran to it, then turned around eyes wide. “It’s his highness,” she said, turning back and curtseying hastily.
At Aurélie’s gesture, Viorel let Jaska into the outer chamber, and he joined Aurélie out on the balcony. “I thought you might also be up early,” he said.
“Shall I call for more coffee or pastry?” Aurélie asked.
“I ate. Thank you.” He stared down into the garden.
“I’m trying to pretend that the vampire statues are carvings,” she said.
“That one is a carving,” Jaska replied. “See? No vampire’s going to pose with a lyre as the sun rises.”
Aurélie stood on tiptoe to peer over, and I could see the neo-Roman mythological figure below. Probably Orpheus. “Oh,” she said. “Now I feel foolish.”
“The rest of the garden really is full of stone vampires,” Jaska said. “A few of them from my grandmother’s day. There was a conflict with them in seventeen twenty-two.”
Aurélie shuddered.
“But it’s daylight now, and even after the sun goes down, it’s unlikely any vampires roaming free would disturb a gathering this size, especially with everyone wearing charms, and in a castle full of weapons ready to hand.” His smile became one of inquiry. “My mother sought me out to say how much she enjoyed the journey.”
He sounded pleasant, his eyes kindly, but even though she was only eighteen, she had become attuned to him. I could see that she sensed his question by the way it mirrored in her troubled glance.
She had been playing with the porcelain coffee cup, turning it around and around so that the gilding on the lip glinted in the morning sun rising over the distant mountains of Russia. Then she set it down with a ching of decisiveness. “I think the time has come to tell you something,” she said, and watched him carefully.
The issue was trust. They both knew it, I could see it so plainly. But she had to be free to speak. He was trying hard not to put any pressure on her.
She said, “I thought I’d wait until we visit the Eldest and get answers to our questions.”
“Before you can speak to me?” he asked, leaning a little forward, one hand resting on the table.
“I don’t have a question so much as a confession,” she said, her brow puckered. “I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I’m not who you think. My birth is…not noble.”
His expression eased, and he leaned back. “Is that all?”
“‘Is that all’?” she repeated. “What is ‘all’? That I have no claim to de Mascarenhas as a name? That in fact, I do not rightly know what my name is?”
“That was disclosed by Fouché’s secretaries before I brought you that letter from Jamaica,” Jaska said. “An English secretary at one of the island offices traded the information for something Fouché needed: According to them, your mother’s people are gentry folk from somewhere in the southern part of England, and her mother was a French émigré as a result of the Gallican heresy. Your father was a privateer, and it was said born a slave, though slavery was afterward abolished in Saint-Domingue. No one understood whether Bonaparte’s orders were to rein
stitute it or not, but in any case, the last I heard he was losing his battle there anyway, and I have to say, I rejoiced to hear that a large number of the few Poles to escape death had joined the side of the defenders.”
Aurélie gazed at him in astonishment. “You knew?”
He opened his hands. “Can you forgive me for knowing?”
Aurélie blinked away tears. “I was so afraid…how you might react.”
“Do you trust me so little?” he asked whimsically, but his eyes were sad.
“No! Yes!” She clasped her hands tightly and set her chin on them. “Oh, I’m not making sense. It’s just that it mattered so much. More than anything. I don’t know quite how it happened, but so it is. And I could not bear the idea that you would be disgusted, and tell me to go back to Paris, or…”
“Or abandon you, as apparently your English relations did?” Jaska added. “Last night, when my mother discovered that I already knew, she told me that she thinks the Dsarets will be better for the blood of a privateer captain and a seer.”
She gave an unsteady laugh.
He went on. “I can’t blame you for not telling me, as I’d kept my own secret for quite a while. I kept thinking I ought to tell you, but then I’d tell myself to wait, that you deserved a true courtship. The truth is, those days of walking and talking so freely, just Jaska and René, two musicians, became so precious to me that I would willingly have walked to Moscow, if only nothing else were at stake.”
“I don’t want a courtship,” she murmured, low and fervent, “if it means talking nothings in a stuffy ballroom, constrained by strict etiquette. Oh, how I loved our days of travel!”
“How I love you,” he said, so softly it was barely above a whisper.
She looked from his eyes to his hands as he stretched them both out to her. “I love you, too, oh, much! I did not see it at first, but when we were in Vienna, I knew it then.”
His sudden smile transformed his face, making him seem younger. “Will you marry me, Aurélie?”
Their hands met, touched, fingers entwined. Jaska began to pull her toward him—and then halted. “She is there, isn’t she?”
“Duppy Kim?” Aurélie asked, blinking.
“I am very sorry,” I said with heartfelt sorrow. “If I could shut my eyes, I would.”
“I don’t care,” Aurélie said and flung herself into Jaska’s arms.
He gave a laugh as unsteady as hers and closed his arms around her. As they fit themselves together with the awkward tenderness of a first kiss, sorrow and joy swooped through me. Though I could not measure time, it seemed forever since I had felt Alec’s arms, and I thought, Am I done yet, Xanpia?
No. Because I was still there.
I tried not to see as they whispered and cuddled, and time mercifully blurred. I found them leaning side by side on the balcony, arms twined around one another. His hand ruffled through her curls as he said, “There is much we can say when we can be truly alone. I look forward to it. Less of a pleasure is the task facing me. Us.” He lifted her hand and traced his fingers over her palm. “It might be too soon, but you know what threats we face. My mother said she explained the Blessing. Aurélie, are you ready for the burdens that come with a crown? If this is too soon to speak of it, I understand.”
“I want to marry you,” she said quickly. “I have known since Vienna that every day with you in it would be a good one, and every day with you away would have to be endured. These other things,” she gave a little shrug, “the palace and the crowns…I have an understanding now of how Madame Bonaparte must feel.”
He lifted his brows in mock affront. “You find me similar to Bonaparte?”
She chuckled. “You don’t make people stand around for hours while you talk and talk and talk.”
“I probably will, some day.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to put me on my guard, because no one ever tells a king he’s boring. As for the other matter, once we’re married, no one will remember de Mascarenhas, a name no Dobreni can pronounce. Aurélie Dsaret, how beautiful that sounds!”
“Except that few can say my given name, either,” she replied, laughing.
“Can you become accustomed to Aurelia Dsaret?”
“It doesn’t sound like me, but what does? Now I understand what Nanny Hiasinte was telling me about names. I am me, whatever others call me. Bon! Aurelia Dsaret I shall be. It is pretty and sounds like what a proper princess ought to have as a name.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it, then gently let it go as he got to his feet. “There is much to be done if we’re to bring everyone peacefully together by September. I’ve seven years of absence to make up for. Oh, how good it feels to know that you’ll be with me! But speaking of burdens, there are people waiting. I had better go.”
She walked him to her outer door. He kissed her hand then left.
When the door was shut, she pressed her hand against her cheek, then walked to the mirror. “I know what I must do,” she told me. “Try to make his task easier.”
The von Mecklundburgs had arranged several entertainments. Some locals did dance exhibitions. There was shooting and riding in the practice yard beyond the stable, and in the middle of this, the good weather ended at last. As clouds began sailing in from the west, most of the women went inside where parlor games were played, like Hunt the Slipper and various guessing games.
Aurélie played along, but she seemed increasingly distracted, and when people began to go upstairs to rest or spend quiet time before getting ready for the ball, she retreated to her room. She found it lit with a fire on the grate. The temperature was already dropping, judging by the way she plucked up a heavy shawl.
She stared at the white and gold escritoire set between the windows, then went to the mirror. “What do you think of this idea? I’ve been forming it all day. As the future bride of a crown prince I’ll write Aunt Kittredge, and tell her that if she doesn’t give my dowry to Diana I’ll take it up with Parliament through the diplomats. How does that sound? I know it won’t come to that, because she worries so about what others might think.”
“Excellent idea,” I said heartily.
“And I’ll write to Diana. I won’t tell her about the dowry. Let it be a surprise, if my aunt complies. I’ll only tell her that I’d very much like some of those English roses from the garden. She’ll know the ones I mean. I loved those roses! And if I’m to write as a future princess, my aunt will assuredly not dare to destroy my letter, do you think?”
She got right to work, grinning from time to time as she underscored words. On the outside of the papers she wrote their names above Undertree, in Hampshire, England, then folded the letters with a flourish. But the escritoire did not have seals. She pulled tiny drawers out one by one to find them all empty.
She dropped the folded letters onto the desk and moved to the armoire on the other side of the room, but just as she opened the door Viorel knocked to let her know the bath was ready, and she had her majesty’s hairdresser waiting.
Aurélie bustled off to get ready for the ball. When she was done, she paused to admire herself in the long framed mirror. When Viorel ran out to do something, Aurélie pulled up her foot, rolled down her stocking, and removed the necklace.
She clasped it on and stood back to admire the effect. The gold glinted in a graceful arc, accentuating the equally graceful line of her neck. The stones picked up the colors in the embroidery and in the flowers of her wreath. She truly looked like a princess.
As she walked out, I thought, one down—they’re pledged—one to go, the danger thing. But the Blessing would take care of that, right? After speeding through the years from 1795 to 1803, I could hang on a few more months, right?
Alec, here I come.
FORTY-THREE
VIOREL REAPPEARED. Her mouth dropped open when she saw the necklace. I could see from the way she stared at it that she badly wanted to ask where it came from. “I am to tell you they are gathering on the landing, Donna Aurélie.”
&nb
sp; The queen was already seated in the gigantic ballroom, in the place of honor. Jaska and Margit awaited Aurélie, he in silver-gray brocade with rose and gold accents, and Margit in white, with crimson and gold touches. “One on each arm,” Jaska said, crooking his elbows. “And if my knee objects to these stairs, I expect you two to keep me from pitching down.”
A fanfare pealed out. Liveried guards alternated with King’s Guard at intervals, bracing to attention.
The three descended the stairs, Aurélie’s whole being alight with joy, her bearing regal yet softened by the style she’d learned from Josephine.
A minuet opened the ball, Jaska and Aurélie in the lead, Margit with Fritzl behind, and the bride and groom after. Then Jaska retired from dancing, murmuring with regret that he could not hop the gavotte.
That signaled open season on Aurélie and Margit. After dancing the gavotte with Gabrielle’s baron, Aurélie found herself confronted for the country dance by the formidable Mikhail Trasyemova, dark-browed and black-haired, his skin only a shade or two lighter than Aurélie’s.
He scowled the entire time, not speaking a word. Aurélie maintained the silence, her expression somber when the end came at last, and they performed the bow and curtsey.
A rumble of tambourines, the wail of woodwinds, and a distinctively Russian melody spun a bunch of guys out onto the floor, dancing on their toes, whirling and kicking.
Aurélie glanced across the ballroom to where Jaska stood in a small knot of people, talking animatedly. She began to make her way around the perimeter, trying to step behind those watching the dancers. She’d progressed about ten feet when she found herself face to face with the Countess Irena.
Aurélie made a slight curtsey, the set of her shoulders ready for a duel. But it turned out battle was not on Irena’s mind.
“Did my brother speak to you when you danced?” Irena asked, her cheeks flushed, her chin high.
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