Affaire Royale (19 page)

“Is that an excuse for everything?”

“It’s a reason for everything.”

Her breath came out slowly. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unfair, Reeve. I don’t, though it might appear differently, even mean to be ungrateful. It just seems as though while everyone’s so concerned, so worried, everyone continues to make demands.” She began to walk as she spoke—to the window and away, to the mirror
and back again, as if she weren’t quite ready to face herself that morning. “They want me to go along with Loubet’s plan about covering up the amnesia so that there’s no panic and the investigation can go on quietly. They want you and me to go on with this deception about being engaged. I think—I’m beginning to think that bothers me most of all.”

“I see.”

She glanced up, unsmiling. “I wonder if you can,” she murmured. “On one hand I get sympathy, concern, and on the other, obligations.”

“Is there something you’d rather do? Some way you’d rather try?”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. What did Alexander conclude, then?”

“He decided to trust me. Have you?”

She looked at him in surprise, then realized how she must have appeared. “You know I trust you. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t.”

He made the decision instantly. Sometimes it was the best way. “Can you clear your schedule today and come with me?”

“Yes.”

“No questions?”

She moved her shoulders. “All right, if you want one. Where?”

“To the little farm.” He waited for her reaction, but she only watched him. “I think it’s time we worked together.”

She closed her eyes a moment, then crossed to the bed. “Thank you.”

He felt his emotions rise and tangle again. They always would, he realized, with her. “You might not be grateful later.”

“Yes, I will.” Bending, she kissed him, not in passion, but in friendship. “No matter what.”

The corridors were dim when she left Reeve’s room to go to her own. But her spirit wasn’t. She had hope again. This wouldn’t be a day where she just followed the schedule that had been set for her. Today, at last, she’d
do something to bring the past and present together. Perhaps the key was at the little farm. Perhaps with Reeve’s help she’d find it.

Quietly Brie opened the door to her bedroom, anxious to begin. Humming a little, she walked to the windows and began pushing aside the curtains so light could spill in.

“So.”

She jolted, whirled, then swore under her breath. “Nanny.”

The old woman straightened in the chair and gave Brie a long, steady look. If her bones were stiff, she gave no sign. Brie felt the patience, the disapproval, and felt the blood creep into her cheeks.

“Well you should blush, young lady, tiptoeing into your room with the sun.”

“Have you been here all night?”

“Yes. Which is more than you can say.” Nanny tapped a long, curved fingernail against the arm of the chair. She saw the change, but, then, she’d seen it days before when Brie had come back from sailing. When a woman was old, she was still a woman. “So you decided to take a lover. Tell me, are you pleased with yourself?”

Defiant, and amazed that she felt the need to be, Brie lifted her chin. “Yes.”

Nanny studied her—the tumbled hair, the flushed cheeks and the eyes where the echo of passion remained. “That’s as it should be,” she murmured. “You’re in love.”

She could have denied it. It was on the tip of her tongue to do so, when she realized it would be a lie. Just one more lie. “Yes, I’m in love.”

“Then I’ll tell you to be careful.” Nanny’s face looked old and pale in the morning light, but her eyes were ageless. “When a woman’s in love with her lover, she risks more than her body, more than her time. You understand?”

“Yes. I think I do.” Brie smiled and moved over to kneel at Nanny’s feet. “Why did you sleep all night in a chair instead of your bed?”

“Perhaps you’ve taken a lover, but I still look after you. I brought you warm milk—you don’t sleep well.”

Brie looked over and saw the thick cup on the table. “And I worried you because I wasn’t here.” She
brought the woman’s hard little hand to her cheek. “I’ m sorry, Nanny.”

“I suspected you were with the American.” She sniffed a little. “A pity his blood isn’t as blue as his eyes, but you could do worse.”

The diamond weighed heavily on her finger. “It’s still just a dream, isn’t it?”

“You don’t dream enough,” Nanny said briskly. “So I brought you milk and found you’d looked for a different kind of comfort.”

This time Brie laughed. “Would you scold me if I said I much preferred it?”

“I’d simply advise you to keep your preferences from your father for a while yet.” Nanny’s voice was dry and amused as Brie grinned up at her. “Perhaps you have no more use for the other comfort I brought you.” Reaching beside her, she pulled out a plain, round-faced rag doll in a tattered pinafore. “When you were a child and were restless in the night, you’d reach for this.”

“Poor ugly thing,” Brie murmured as she took it in her hands.

“You called her ‘Henrietta Homely.’”

“I hope she didn’t mind,” Brie began as she ran a hand over the doll’s hair. Then she went stiff and very still.

A young girl in a small bed with pink hangings, pink sheets, pink spread. White frills on a vanity table. Rosebuds on the wallpaper. Music drifting up from far away. A waltz, slow and romantic. And there was a woman, the woman from the portrait, smiling, murmuring, laughing a little as she leaned over the bed, so that the emeralds in her ears caught the low light. Her dress was like the emeralds, green and rich. It rustled musically as the best of silks do. She smelled of apple blossoms, of spring, of youth.

“Gabriella.” Nanny put a hand to Brie’s shoulder and squeezed. Beneath the thin robe, she could feel the skin, icy. “Gabriella.”

“My room,” Brie whispered as she continued to stare down at the doll. “My room when I was a girl—what color?”

“Pink,” Nanny said haltingly. “It was all pink and white, like a pastry.”

“And my mother.” Brie’s fingers dug into the rag doll, but she didn’t know it. Sweat pearled on her forehead, but she didn’t know that, either. As long as she pushed, as long as she held on, she could see and remember. “Did she have a green silk dress? Emerald green. A ball gown?”

“Strapless.” With an effort, the old woman kept her voice calm and quiet. “The waist was very snug. The skirt was very full.”

“And her scent was like apple blossoms. She was so beautiful.”

“Yes.” Nanny’s strong fingers held her shoulder firmly. “Do you remember?”

“I— She came to see me. There was music, a waltz playing. She came to tuck me in.”

“She would always. First you, then Alexander, then Bennett. Your father would come up if he could slip away, but they’d both come to the nursery before they went to bed. I’ll go get your father now.”

“No.” Brie pressed the doll close. She couldn’t hold the image any longer. It left her weak and breathless. “No, not yet. That’s all there is. Just that one picture, and I need so much more. Nanny …” Eyes brimming, Brie looked up again. “I did love her. Finally I can feel it. I loved her so much. Now, remembering that, it’s like losing her again.”

With her old nurse stroking her hair, Brie lay down her head and wept. The bedroom door opened no more than a crack, then shut soundlessly.

*   *   *

“So you’re going for a ride in the country.”

Brie stood in the main hall, looking at her father. Her face was carefully made up. The signs of weeping were gone. But her nerves weren’t as easily concealed. She twisted the strap of the purse she wore over her shoulder.

“Yes. I told Janet to cancel my appointments. There wasn’t anything very important—a fitting, some paperwork at the AHC that I can see to just as easily tomorrow.”

“Brie, you don’t have to justify taking a day off to me.” Though he wasn’t certain how he’d be received, Armand took her hand. “Have I asked too much of you?”

“No—” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Never has it been more difficult for me to be both ruler and father. If you asked …” His fingers tightened briefly on her hand. “If you wanted, Gabriella, I’d take you away for a few weeks. A cruise, perhaps, or just a trip to the cottage in Sardina.”

She couldn’t remind him that she didn’t know the cottage in Sardina. Instead she smiled. “There’s no need. Dr. Franco must have told you that I’m strong as a horse.”

“And Dr. Kijinsky tells me that you’re still troubled by images, dreams.”

Brie took a breath and tried not to regret that she’d finally told the analyst everything. “Some things take longer to heal.”

He couldn’t beg her to talk to him as he knew she talked to Reeve. Such things had to come from the heart. Yet neither could he forget how often she’d curl into his lap, her head on his shoulder, as she poured out her feelings.

“You look tired,” he murmured. “The country air will do you good. You’re going to the little farm?”

She kept her eyes level. She wouldn’t be turned away from what she had to do. “Yes.”

He saw the determination, respected it. Feared it. “When you come back, will you tell me whatever you remember, whatever you felt?”

For the first time her hand relaxed in his. “Yes, of course.” For his sake, for the sake of the woman in the emerald dress who’d tucked her in, Brie stepped forward to brush his cheek with her lips. “Don’t worry about me. Reeve will be there.”

Struggling not to feel replaced, Armand watched her walk down the long length of the hall. A footman opened the door wide, and she stepped into the sunshine.

For a long time Reeve said nothing. He drove at an easy speed along the winding, climbing, dipping coast road. Turmoil. It was quickly recognized, though the source wasn’t. He could wait.

The city of Cordina was left behind, then the port of Lebarre. Now and then they’d pass a cottage where the gardens were carefully tended and the flowers bloomed in profusion. This was the road where she’d run that night, escaping. He wondered if she realized it.

She saw nothing familiar, nothing that should make her tense. But she was tense. The land was lovely in its windswept, rock-tumbled way. It was quiet, colorful, idyllic. Yet she continued to worry the strap of her bag.

“Do you want to stop, Gabriella? Would you rather go somewhere else?”

She turned to him quickly, then just as quickly turned away again. “No. No, of course not. Cordina’s a beautiful country, isn’t it?”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” She made her hand lie still in her lap. “I feel uneasy, as if I should be looking over my shoulder.”

He’d already decided to give her whatever answers she needed without frills or cushions. “You ran along this road a month ago. In a storm.”

Her fingers curled. She made them relax. “Was I running toward the city or away?”

He glanced at her again. It hadn’t occurred to him to make that particular connection. His respect for her mind went up another notch. “Toward. You were no more than three miles outside of Lebarre when you collapsed.”

She nodded. “Then I was lucky, or I still knew enough to go in the right direction. Reeve, this morning …”

Regrets? he wondered as his fingers tightened on the wheel. Were regrets and common sense coming so soon? “What about it?”

“Nanny was waiting for me in my room.”

Should he be amused? Whether he should or not, Reeve couldn’t prevent the smile at the picture that formed in his mind. “And?”

“We talked. She brings warm milk to me some nights. I suppose I wasn’t thinking of such things last night.” Brie smiled, too, but only briefly. “She also brought me a doll, something I’d had as a child.” Slowly,
determined to be very clear on every detail, Brie told him what she’d remembered. “That was all,” she said at length. “But this time it wasn’t an impression, it wasn’t a dream. I remembered.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

“No.”

“You’ll tell Kijinsky when you see him tomorrow.” It wasn’t a question but more in the line of an order. Brie struggled not to feel resentment but to understand.

“Yes, of course. Do you think it’s a beginning for me?”

He’d slowed the car while she’d talked. Now he sped up again. “I think you’re getting stronger. That was a memory you could handle, maybe one you needed before you faced the rest.”

“And the rest will come.”

“The rest will come,” he agreed. And when it did, she wouldn’t need him any longer. His job would be over. His farm …

He thought of it now, but it seemed as if he’d been away years rather than weeks. It didn’t seem merely a quiet, serene spot any longer, but lonely, empty. When he went back, he’d no longer be the same man with the same desires.

Following the directions he’d been given, Reeve turned off the coast road and headed away from the sea. The going wasn’t as smooth here. Again he slowed the car, this time because of the uneven road.

Before long, the trees muffled, then silenced the sound of water. The hills were greener, the landscape less dramatic. They heard a dog bark, a cow moo low and deep. He could almost imagine he was going home.

He turned again, doubling back a bit on a road that was no more than dirt and stone. Then a field stretched out on one side, green and overgrown. Trees grew thick on the other.

“This is it?”

“Yes.” Reeve turned off the ignition.

“They found my car here?”

“That’s right.”

She sat for a moment, waiting. “Why do I always expect it to be easy?” she said. “Somehow I think that when I see something, when I know something, it’ll be clear. It never really is. But there are times I feel the knife in my hand.” She glanced down at her palm. “I can feel it, and when I do, I know I’m capable of killing.”

“We all are, under the right circumstances.”

“No.” Outwardly calm, Brie folded her hands. Agony was kept inside, where she had been taught personal agonies belonged. “I don’t believe that. To kill, to take a life, requires an understanding, an acceptance of violence. A dark side. In some, it’s strong enough to overpower every other instinct.”

“And what would have happened to you if you’d closed your eyes and rejected violence?” He gripped her shoulder harder than was necessary and made her face him. “Blessed are the passive, Brie? You know better.”