Silver in the Blood

by Jessica Day George

  As she was handing the man the correct amount of lei, the prickling returned. She turned her head slightly and saw a tall figure blocking the glass in the upper half of the shop door. She knew it was the person who had been following her before, knew it deeply and without a doubt.

  Thanking the shopkeeper, Dacia tucked the packet of ribbon firmly under her arm and stalked to the door. She whipped it open, staring up at the man on the step. He was taller than she was, with great broad shoulders that strained the seams of his dark coat, and offensively bright red hair. The footmen were just standing there like simpletons, so Dacia jabbed the tip of her parasol firmly into his breast.

  “Who are you, and why are you following me?”

  “Hmm, and why do you think I am following you? Perhaps I am merely shopping for ribbons like any young man on a fine day? Do you perhaps think too much of yourself, Miss Dacia of New York?”

  He spoke English! And he knew her name! Dacia squinted at him, and then she drew back and whacked him on the shoulder with her parasol as hard as she could.

  “Radu! You bad thing,” she berated him. “Did you try to frighten me on purpose?”

  The young man laughed and blocked her next blow with his forearm. “Ouch! I’m a bad thing? You are the terrible cousin; you didn’t even recognize me!”

  “It’s been eight years since you visited New York,” Dacia protested. “And none of your letters mentioned that you’d turned into a giant!” She turned her face up to him. “You may kiss the royal cheek.”

  Radu sighed and shook his head, but leaned down and kissed her on one cheek and then the other. Then he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed for good measure. The footmen pretended to look elsewhere, but the shopkeeper was staring out the window without shame.

  “Now you may take the royal arm, and buy Her Highness lemonade,” Dacia instructed.

  She unfurled her parasol and then waited while Radu clutched at his heart and pretended to be honored beyond words. She finally slapped him lightly on the elbow, and he held it out for her. Radu was the only one of her Romanian cousins whom she had met. He had come with his father, Uncle Horia, to visit New York when Radu and Dacia were both ten. His father had called Dacia and Lou “the little princesses,” and it had become a game between the cousins. They had exchanged many letters over the years from “Their Highnesses to the lowly servant Radu” and from “the humble Radu to the royal ladies.”

  “Why haven’t you come to see me before?” Dacia demanded as Radu led her up the Calea Victoriei to a café. “I’ve been here for days and days, dying of boredom. Aunt Kate won’t let me go anywhere, and we’ve had not one single visitor!”

  “We’ve all been traveling,” Radu said, looking around vaguely.

  “Traveling? Where?”

  “Nowhere important,” he replied, but the tips of his ears were pink. “Just getting things ready for your visit. Ah, here is a good place.”

  “Radu, are you being evasive?”

  “I? Never!”

  He seated her on the terrace of a café, and the footmen sat down on a bench across the way, looking relieved to be in the shade. And to have turned over her care to Radu, as well, Dacia thought, settling her bustled skirts carefully on the tiny café chair.

  She scowled at her cousin as he ordered them lemonade, and when he turned back from the waitress, he saw Dacia’s expression with great surprise. He was clearly baffled by her dour look and the way she was impatiently tapping her gloved fingers on the tabletop.

  “Radu, I need to have one person here I can trust,” Dacia said, very serious now.

  “What are you talking about? Whom can’t you trust? You have Aunt Katarina, my father, the other cousins and uncles and aunts . . .” He trailed off, fussing with his napkin.

  “Radu.” Dacia stopped and fiddled with her gloves while she put her thoughts in order. “Radu, I know that you’ve probably heard about the Incident in London.”

  He snickered, indicating that he had, but wisely did not comment as she went on.

  “But even before that, it seemed that Mother and Aunt Maria and Aunt Kate were keeping secrets. Lou and I were supposed to come later, in the autumn, and then go back to New York after Christmas. But suddenly we’re being sent here now, months ahead of schedule, and not told when we will return to New York. They’re behaving as though I did something truly disgraceful when you know it wasn’t that bad! Not bad enough to permanently ruin my reputation, anyway.

  “I asked Aunt Kate if we could wait in Paris for Lou and her parents,” Dacia went on, struggling to keep her voice under control now. “But she insisted on coming around the coast as fast as we could travel. I thought she was simply eager for us to reach Bucharest. Yet now that we’re here, as I’ve said, she won’t leave the house, nor do we have any visitors.

  “It’s terribly strange, and I don’t like it,” Dacia finished. “I need to have one person I can confide in, until Lou gets here, at least.” She frowned. “And Lou is having a difficult time as well. In her last letter she said that a strange young man approached her on the ship, and was very impertinent.” She toyed with her gloves. “In all honesty I thought that’s who you were just now, and I was prepared to have you arrested!”

  Radu was clearly baffled by this last item. “Someone being fresh with LouLou is hardly a crisis, Dacia, unfortunate as it is.”

  “Well,” Dacia said, refusing to let this insult to her beloved Lou get tossed aside. “He said some odd things to her, things that made her uneasy. And they’re making me uneasy as well. It’s a shame that Uncle Cyrus wasn’t there to chase that cad away!”

  Radu patted her hand. “From now on, she’ll be under the protection of her Florescu family,” he said. “She will not need to worry about anyone bothering her again!”

  The waitress brought their lemonade, and Dacia sipped at hers. It was far too sweet, but she didn’t care. The day was really quite warm, and she didn’t want Radu to see how discomfited she was by all that had happened, and most especially what he had just said, and the rude way he had dismissed Lou’s father. Dacia worked very hard to appear like a sophisticated young woman, and it didn’t help that she had outbursts of scandalous mischief that she couldn’t seem to control, like the Incident in London. She was hardly going to start weeping in an outdoor café because she’d had an emotionally trying day.

  “Dacia,” Radu said, once more covering her hand with one of his enormous paws. “I promise you, no one is keeping you locked up to hurt you. We are merely . . . planning many things. There is to be a big celebration for you and LouLou, when she arrives, which is why I haven’t been to see you. We were at the estate planning the celebration.

  “But the family . . . business . . . has also suffered some upsets recently, and many of the uncles and older cousins are working on that. I am very sorry that you feel neglected.” He gave her a one-sided smile. The waitress nearly dropped her tray, and even Dacia found herself smiling back. Even with the impossible hair, Radu was quite the charmer and he looked like he knew it, too.

  “The princess must never be neglected!” he cried. “So we must find a way to entertain her at once! What is your will, Princess?” He tried to bow despite the fact that he was sitting at a table, and knocked over his glass of lemonade.

  Dacia shrieked and jumped to her feet before the wave could reach her, throwing her napkin at it to try and stop its progress as it ran over the side of the little marble-topped table. Radu swore in Romanian, leaped up, knocked over his chair, and nearly unseated the man behind him, who also swore. Dacia started laughing helplessly. Radu turned bright red, handed far too much money to the waitress, and then hurried Dacia off the terrace and onto the street.

  “Oh, my parasol!” She started to turn back.

  “I’ll buy you a new one,” Radu said, still blushing.

  “That parasol was a gift from Lou,” Dacia said. “Bring it to me right now, silly boy!”

  “Allow me, miss,” said a smooth voice in pe
rfect English.

  Dacia turned and saw the most handsome young man she had ever seen in her life. He was holding out her parasol and smiling at her. His teeth were white and perfect, and he had black eyes, lashes Dacia would have killed for, and curling dark hair that brushed the collar of his impeccably tailored Savile Row suit. He smelled like money and masculinity.

  The waitress, on the other side of the little terrace fence, was no longer looking at Radu, but gazing at the young man as though she were about to fall into a swoon, a reaction that Dacia understood completely.

  Dacia reached out a shaking hand and took her parasol from him. As she did, her fingers brushed against his. Despite the gloves they both wore, a charge of electricity ran through Dacia and she nearly did swoon.

  But strangely enough Radu growled, and the hair on the back of Dacia’s neck stood on end. She was about to look at her cousin, sensing the tension radiating from him, but the beautiful young man laughed and Dacia’s whole attention returned to him.

  “What a pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Dacia,” he said. “I am Prince Mihai, and I know precisely how to entertain you here in Bucharest.”

  THE DIARY OF MISS MARIA LOUISA NEULANDER

  20 May 1897

  I never have been much for keeping a diary. I know that Dacia is faithful in her recording of each day’s events, but then, Dacia’s life has always been much more exciting than mine, even though we are always together. Perhaps it is in how she views the world? I often fear that someone will find my diary, read it, and then I shall be humiliated. But no matter. I must tell someone, and I have already sent a letter to Dacia, but who knows when it shall reach her?

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have written to Dacia, for now I begin to think that I was mistaken, and she will think that I am the silliest person on earth. But if I am not mistaken, does this mean that I am going mad? First I am repeatedly hounded by That Awful Man, no matter where I am, though no one else seems to ever see him. Then I am surrounded by the smell of lilacs, when there are no lilacs in sight. Perhaps it is a popular perfume here in Paris? Yet I smell it when I am alone, or out on the street, and never in company. And then there is the face that I keep seeing in my mind: a man, perhaps twenty years old, with dark hair and beautiful eyes, but every word he speaks is red, as though it bleeds. What a horrible fancy this is that has struck me! And why? I am not certain how much longer I can bear these secrets on my own. I am nervous about the trip to Bucharest, and about staying there—so far from New York and home!—for so long, but at the same time, I am filled with anticipation at seeing Dacia again, and Radu, and meeting the rest of our family.

  But what if That Awful Man follows me to Bucharest?

  And what if the dark-eyed young man of my dreams is real? What does he want of me?

  Too many questions, but it is breakfast and I must go.

  THE TUILERIES

  “Are you feeling better, LouLou?” Lou’s father sat down at the breakfast table opposite her and smiled.

  Lou smiled back, a genuine smile for the first time in days. She was feeling better. Writing in her diary had relieved some of her tension, and she had gotten a letter from Dacia, always a treat. Traveling by sea from New York had not made her ill, precisely, but the food on board the ship had not been as delicious as their cook’s at home, and so she had lost a little weight, which made shopping with her mother all the more pleasant.

  Dacia ate like a starving bear (although with considerably better manners) and was almost unfashionably slender, but Lou, no matter how many sweets she passed up, always felt a little too plump. Her parents told her that she was beautiful, and Dacia was frankly envious of her figure, since Lou had a very trim waist and curvy bust and hips. Lou had never been quite happy with it. But now that she’d even had Parisian dressmakers compliment her figure, she suddenly felt light as a bird.

  “I’m very well, Papa,” she said, smiling as she looked up at her father in the golden light of the hotel suite’s dining room. “And how are you this morning?” She took a slice of toast and a boiled egg, but ignored the quince jelly and croissants. She disliked quince, and croissants were too messy.

  “I am well, because my girl is well,” her father said, and opened the paper. “And perhaps, if she has done enough shopping, she will condescend to tour the Tuileries with me today?” He lowered one corner of the paper and eyed her over it.

  “I would be honored, sir!” Lou blew her father a kiss.

  “Excellent!”

  “Where are you going, dear?” Lou’s mother bustled into the room. She was a small, stout woman, vastly different from her two tall, slim sisters. “Take the boys with you, wherever it is.” She put two croissants on her plate and got a cup of coffee from the urn.

  Lou felt a red flush rise up her cheeks. She wanted to go to the Tuileries with her father, just the two of them, just this once. Her twin brothers were ten and extremely rambunctious. They would probably run amok in the gardens and get the entire family arrested.

  The need to protest rose in her chest, and she fought it down. She wanted to argue, to shout that it wasn’t fair and that the boys should stay home until they learned to behave like civilized human beings and less like heathens, but she didn’t. She never did. Dacia would have, but Lou just couldn’t.

  “Maria,” Lou’s father said coolly from behind the paper, “I am taking LouLou to the Tuileries. Just LouLou. Then we shall go to lunch. The boys may stay here with their tutor and learn to speak French. And attempt to sit still for five minutes without starting something on fire.”

  Lou made an unladylike noise, trying not to giggle at that. Or to shout with triumph.

  “But boys need their father—” Maria began.

  “Those boys need a good whipping,” their father observed. “But since you will not let me do so, they will have to live with being confined to the house until they can show that they are fit to be seen in society. Yesterday I tried to take them to the Louvre, but David took it into his head to have a swim, climbed a railing, and nearly leaped into the Seine before I stopped him.”

  “He’s very high-strung, and you must be gentle with him,” Maria scolded her husband.

  “He’s an awful little brat, and so is Adam,” her husband said in his mild voice. “And I am resolved to stop being gentle, because gentle is getting us nowhere. Meanwhile,” he went on, “our daughter has turned out to be a beautiful and charming young woman, and it will be my pleasure to reward her always delightful behavior with a treat today.”

  Lou glowed with pride.

  “Our daughter I am not worried about,” Maria said sharply. “Louisa’s place in this world is secure. Our sons, on the other hand . . .” She trailed off, muttering darkly into her coffee.

  Her father lowered the corner of his paper again, winked at Lou, and then raised it.

  Lou winked back, but her father couldn’t see it. She felt a surge of elation that he had refused to let the twins spoil their day together. She felt guilty about it, but she just couldn’t enjoy having her brothers around. They seemed to multiply, as though they were quadruplets, and they made enough noise for a whole herd of small boys.

  Although at night when they were scrubbed and sleepy and tucked into bed, they could be very sweet. Occasionally.

  After breakfast, she put on her hat and walking boots and got her gloves, purse, and parasol. Her father, in a straw hat and a smart new spring jacket, looked very dapper as he took her arm. He had been very young when he married her mother, only eighteen, and Maria herself had been only seventeen. A handsome and still-young man, from one of the best families in New York, which showed in his clothes and bearing, he drew many admiring glances from women as they walked through Paris. The confidence that came from knowing That Awful Man would not dare to approach her with her father so near made Lou smile, her cheeks flushed with color and her eyes sparkling.

  The Tuileries were magnificent. The early-summer flowers were blooming, the grass was very green, and the sky abov
e them very blue. Lou wanted to gather the flowers and the sky together into her arms and simply dissolve into the crystal air. Dacia had confided to her of that feeling of restlessness she sometimes had, a feeling that came on so strong at times that Dacia wanted to run and run and never stop. She had tried to prod Lou into feeling the same way, but Lou never did. Instead, in moments of great happiness, or even in moments of distress, she simply wanted to break apart and float onto the breeze, something that Dacia understood even less than Lou herself.

  As she was bending down to admire some pansies, Lou heard a familiar voice behind her, a strange thing so far from home.

  “Don’t move, fair one, for I shall paint you just as you are!”

  Blushing, she disobeyed, and straightened to face a young acquaintance from New York, William Carver. Dacia fancied herself to be madly in love with him, and everyone expected them to become engaged soon. Seeing him now, Lou thought of Dacia’s letters from London, filled with stories of a handsome young lord named Johnny Harcastle, and she blushed even more. She felt inexplicably guilty, though she was sure not a flicker of guilt would cross Dacia’s mind if she were here.

  “No, really, Miss Neulander, I would like to paint you,” he said, frowning, but not as though he were angry. He was holding a large drawing board and a handful of pencils. “Perhaps if you stand just there, and I sit here?” He backed up until he reached a small bench, and then sat on it. “Turn your head to the left, and then don’t move,” he instructed.

  Lou sighed. William Carver was determined to be an artist, and he was always trying to get people to hold still so that he could sketch them. It was quite tedious, but she would never admit that to Dacia. Nor would she admit that she didn’t think his paintings were very good, because she admired his need to do something with his life. He would never have to work a single day to earn a living, so he had tried to find himself a vocation to take up his time. Lou rather wished he would do something more useful, like study medicine, but art was apparently more suited to his temperament, if not to his talents.