Coronets and Steel (9 page)

The atmosphere had altered from anger to truce. For a while neither of us spoke, except about easy things—the food, the rain. At last I sat back, toying with the last few bites of the layered apple
gibanic.
He was already finished.

One of Madam’s waiters brought fresh coffee, steaming tea, and a small golden bottle of cognac. He set these down on the low table, carted away the dishes, then he left.

Alec passed me a cup of tea then poured himself some coffee and laced it liberally with the cognac.

I settled back, curling up my feet, and cradled my cup in my hands. “Well, that was a great meal,” I said. “But. I’m not ready to be grateful. Good as it was I’d rather not have to whet my appetite with a hundred-mile hike.”

“A hundred-mile hike,” he repeated. “I thought it was typically perverse of you—being, as I thought, Aurelia—to have learned courage at this late date. Imagine poor Emilio’s shock on entering that train compartment with a peace offering of tea to find you gone and the window open—”

“Hah!” I gloated. “So what is this Aurelia von Whatever’s terrible crime?”

“She disappeared without word or trace about a month ago. A couple of months before she and I were to be married.”

“Married? You?” I snorted, almost slopping my tea, and as he signified assent I could not resist adding, “Well of course she’d take off! Who wouldn’t?”

Humor creased the corners of his eyes. My cracks had no power to provoke, now that I wasn’t his Aurelia.

I sighed. “So the next question is, why are you chasing after somebody who has obviously changed her mind?”

“Because it’s not so obvious.”

“What? If your courting manners are much like what I saw today . . .”

He made a quick, impatient gesture. “You do not understand the situation. She may not have changed her mind. I think it’s been changed for her. If it has been changed. When we spoke in March she was willing enough to get on with it—” He set his coffee down, got up, and moved to the window. He glanced over his shoulder and added, “—though no more enthusiastic than I was.” He flashed that sudden smile again. “The motivation for this event, I feel constrained to add, is mostly political.”

“Political?” I squawked. “Politics? Political marriages these days? That’s stupid.”

“But politics are always stupid,” he retorted promptly.

“He shoots, he scores!” I gave him a double-finger point-and-shoot. “Okay. So we know I’m not involved in whatever mess you’ve got going. I guess you could say it’s none of my business. But I’m curious, and—” I patted his dressing gown significantly “—not going anywhere, and since you’re the reason why I’m not going anywhere, I think you owe me an explanation.”

“I do owe you an explanation,” he agreed, as outside rain began tapping gently at the window again, and far away lightning flickered. “You said you know little about Dobrenica.”

“An isolated country like the Falklands and Granada and Kuwait that you never hear about until the superpowers steamroller them in their own pursuits, except this one doesn’t always show up on old maps. I’ve always assumed that that was because of the way kingdoms swapped borders and allegiances back in the bad old empire days.”

“Yes,” he said—somewhat ambiguously.

At the time, I didn’t notice, but plowed right on, eager to show off my two cents’ worth of knowledge. “Apparently they speak a weird combination of ancient Latin and Slavic that drives the purists nuts when they try to isolate origins. The USSR controlled it, right?”

“Yes. Until relatively recently, too. To sketch in the background, Russia is the ancient enemy, persistent enough through medieval times that Dobrenica became part of the Hapsburg Empire somewhere in the fifteenth century. For one reason or another—” He hesitated, then went on. “The empire’s control was nominal. As a kingdom protected by the Hapsburgs we existed in relative peace until the empire and its world crumbled after World War One. There succeeded a number of desperate years—”

“Like the rest of Europe.”

“Yes. Germany overran Dobrenica early in the war. The Dobreni conducted a constant losing guerrilla war, using long outdated weapons. And at the end of the war Stalin rolled over us from the east.” He lifted a shoulder in a slight shrug, but anger tightened his lips. “Those leaders who could left the country to make plans for regaining independence. We were prevented from gaining freedom as much by internal conflict as by being overrun by the Soviets.”

“But now you’re free, right?”

“Yes. Mostly. There are some dodgy treaties, but leave that aside. To Aurelia. Two families have been traditionally involved in Dobrenica’s affairs—”

“You mean, like, ruling families?”

“Yes. There are five ‘ruling’ families, with numerous cadet branches, but since the treaty with the Hapsburgs two families, the Dsarets and the Ysvorods, have been predominant—with the von Mecklundburgs their equal in ambition and influence. The former two traditionally passed the crown back and forth until the early twentieth century when the Dsarets ruled.”

“So Aurelia is a—a lost princess?” I had to laugh at the unlikelihood of such a thing existing in a world dominated by fast food and reality TV.

“No. But she is descended from an important ducal family, which is why the marriage was proposed. An attempt to unify the two families. And factions.”

“Wait a minute. What’s your last name?”

“Ysvorod.”

“So the title went from the Dsarets, to—your father?”

“Yes. That is, he was never formally crowned, but he didn’t lay down the title. Since the war and occupation he’s been king-in-exile.”

“So.” I tried not to laugh. “That makes you a crown prince?”

He smiled as he leaned on the back of his chair, the signet ring glinting cool blue. “Is that so astonishing? Or did you expect golden spikes to protrude from my skull like antlers?”

“You have to admit crown princes are a dying breed,” I said. “Particularly in the States.”

“Oh?” he replied. “I thought that’s where a lot of them ended up after the revolutions at home.”

“Only if they didn’t keep the royal treasury. I think the rich ones all go to Paris. Or buy islands. So you and Aurelia are the high-born scions of two venerable houses. But how’s the Romeo and Juliet stuff relate to politics? I mean, does it matter to anyone outside your social circle which heir marries which heir?”

He gave me his ironic smile. “Step down for a moment from the democratic high ground and consider the nature of power and of the reasons why men follow other men, even to their deaths—”

“Or women. Okay, go on. Though, as far as ruling families are concerned I feel like thrusting a caveat in here, from your own Lord Acton. Uh, yours as in where you were raised, not born—”

“Superficially correct but fundamentally unsound,” he said. “Even with the oft-forgotten modifier
tends to.
Power is not the equivalent of corruption. You can find enough examples of rulers who had unlimited power and who ruled with a steady hand. Charles the Fifth comes to mind. The type of man, ah, person, if you will—”

“I will.”

He flicked his fingers up in the fencer’s hit. “And you are right, even if the roads to power used to be different for women than for men. Anyway, the type of person who usually seeks power is corrupt from the start, or at least carries the seeds of corruption among his motivations, if not in stated intentions.”

“We definitely see that at home,” I said. “No royal families, but there sure are powerful ones. Go on.”

“I am not arguing that birth selects for the best rulers. I don’t believe there is any foolproof system. Human nature is too wild a variable.”

“With you so far. So . . . back to your princess.”

“We are in many respects back in the nineteenth century in Dobrenica. Earlier, even. For good and not so good reasons. The people still have faith in their rulers and the rulers are still trained for their positions from birth. This being the case, the leading families serve more strongly than ever as the symbols of freedom, of independence. I will not go into the background alliances and personalities, but suffice it to say the marriage would be the equivalent of a truce between two factions, a badly needed truce. We were splintered during and after the Second World War by more than Hitler and the Russians.”

“Tell me, where does Aurelia’s so-called rotten brother fit in?”

“I didn’t say he’s rotten, but he represents his family’s views . . . to a degree.”

“By which you mean he’s against this ‘truce’?” I made air quotes. “And against you?”

“Yes, to both.”

“So he’s corrupt, and you’re not?”

His brows went up slightly. “What is it you have in mind?”

“I’m thinking,” I stated, “of drinking a last glass of wine and waking up on a train.”

“
Q
UITE RIGHT.” Alec returned to his seat. “Iapologize again. It was inexcusable.” He reached for the coffeepot, his brow tense, then he said, “Shall I replace the generalities with specifics?”

“I’m here.”

“In March Aurelia agreed to the marriage, which was to take place on a national holiday, September second. She left in spring to visit Paris to buy new clothes.”

He paused again, obviously considering his words.

“A month ago I got a frantic phone call from her mother. They were to meet on the Côte d’Azur for their customary holiday together. No show, no word. Messages flew all over the map. Since her brother Tony was apparently somewhere in the Baltic, or the Mediterranean, or the south of France, her mother begged me to find her, and I had to drop everything and go search. Aurelia has always been predictable. Never vanished like this. I got people to search all her family connections, from Greece to Paris.”

I leaned forward. Weird as it sounded, his story was at least beginning to come together.

“From Aurelia to you. Few days ago while I was in Florence I got a call from Emilio to say he found you in Vienna. Standing in Schwedenplatz, waiting for a streetcar, and you walked right past him as if you didn’t know him. He followed you around while I extricated myself without causing alarm. The planes were down because of weather so rather than wait, Kilber and I drove like hell for Vienna. Meanwhile you were behaving in a manner that seemed peculiar in the extreme.”

“Peculiar,” I exclaimed. “Yeah, right.”

Alec smiled. “She would never walk nor visit tourist sites. Nor would she ever take the underground. When she shops or calls on people she hires a car or takes a taxi. You went out to Schönbrunn. He followed with great care, then picked a moment without witnesses, on top of the Glorietta monument, to approach you.”

“And I thought he was trying to proposition me.”

“So I gather,” Alec said, smiling. “Poor straitlaced Emilio! That pretty much left him gobsmacked. He followed you back, even more cautious than before, to discover that you were staying under a false name at a cheap pensione rather than the family flat. The only thing you did that restored his faith in his sanity was to go shopping at one of Aurelia’s and Aunt Sisi’s favorite stores on Mariahilferstrasse—”

“
The account.
” I snapped my fingers. “I wondered if I’d heard wrong. And I only picked that place because I saw him! No, wait. Was that after?” I remembered that weird poke in the neck, but I wasn’t about to talk about that. “Never mind. Sorry. Go on.”

“He asked the clerk what you bought and was told you’d paid cash for a frock in order to attend the ballet. The ballet? Aurelia never attends the ballet, unless it’s a gala. We could not figure it out. I asked Emilio to find out if tickets were sold through your pensione. Yes. One. So I told him to get a ticket for the next seat so that one of us could meet you there. Talk to you.”

“Huh.”

“I arrived in Vienna after driving through without stopping. Emilio begged me to be the one to meet you, so I stopped long enough to change for the ballet, expecting—anything but to be treated as if I were a total stranger. I began to think I’d gone mad. Not possible we found the wrong person. You look the same, you speak French with that same perfect Parisian accent she’s gone on about all these years. Not the idiomatic French of people our age, but the posh accent of a generation ago, the accent my aunt thinks proper for someone in our position.”

Gran’s accent, I thought.

“I’m thinking, perhaps you’re carrying on like this because someone is watching. Maybe I’ve interrupted some expected meeting. This is precisely Tony’s type of game, so when you refused to go to the bar with me, I took off to wait for a better time, out of the public eye.”

He set the coffee cup down.

“Kilber watched the pensione all night while I dealt with a lot of phone calls—meanwhile you didn’t go anywhere else, or meet anyone. Your window finally went dark. The only thing left was to try to contact you again. While I was on the phone all morning, Emilio followed you and hovered while you scribbled postcards. But our cloak-and-dagger efforts stop short of tampering with the mailboxes. Then—to the Royal Crypt? Once again we were expecting a rendezvous. We watched. No one except tourists went in. Kilber mentioned carrying sleeping pills. They used the ground pills in wine during the Soviet days when things got desperate. Said if you’re in trouble you can’t get out of, it’s one way to get you out with a minimum of fuss. He backed me up, watching for—anything—as I tried once more to contact you.”