Revenant Eve (53 page)

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
.

V
IOREL 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.”

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.

“He said nothing at all, Countess,” Aurélie said.

“
Donnerwetter!
So simple a thing.” And as Aurélie waited politely, Irena fidgeted with her painted fan, then said, “It seems that the queen herself negotiated your marriage with Jaska. Or, you negotiated it with her, and if so, I commend your skills.”

Aurélie made another slight curtsey.

“I must beg your forgiveness, I see. I do. I misunderstood what was before my eyes. You arrived with the barest vestige of a respectable entourage, but I didn’t know you were ahead of French pursuit. Jaska might’ve told me,” Irena said darkly. “But he was ever such. The last time I saw him, it was in this very ballroom. I was turned sixteen, and my father wished us to cement the betrothal. Jaska had only to speak the words, and what did he do? He bored on the entire night about the differences between the
uhlans
and the winged hussars, their tactics upon the battlefield, and how such was useless in our mountains.”

Aurélie put her hand to her mouth, but it was too late.

“You laugh,” Irena stated, her brows raised. “Do you find that interesting? Is that how you attached him, with such talk?”

“No, not at all,” Aurélie said, valiantly trying to subdue her mirth. It betrayed her only in an added huskiness to her voice.

Irena flung a curl back from her neck in a grand gesture. “It is an impossible subject. He never talked of anything but war when he was a boy, either that or he nattered with Marcus von Mecklundburg and Shmuel Ridotski about philosophy, every bit as boring. Very well! It’s done, and I profess to be well rid of him. But there’s so much talk of how Domnu Zusya, the angel of the battlefield and of the violin, refuses a barony. Why should not the Chevalier Hippolyte de Vauban be so fortunate? That is what I ask. It is a simple enough thing.”

Aurélie blinked in surprise at the introduction of Hippolyte from out of the blue.

Irena was scowling at her hands, which gave Aurélie a second or two to recover. She said, “Am I to understand, Countess, that you have formed an attachment to the Chevalier? So gallant a man,” she added, and Irena bridled with such pleasure, that the question was answered before she spoke a word.

“You don’t know, then?” Irena seemed amazed, as if everyone in the country was aware of her love life. Maybe they were. “My father expects my brother or me to marry one of the Dsarets. At least, it cannot be both. There is a law against brothers and sisters of the same family marrying here, though I don’t know what obtains in France.”

“So…your brother is to marry Princess Margit?”

“That’s what Father wants. He and the king spoke of it when Father served as one of the sponsors at Jaska’s baptism. But neither Mikhail nor Margit want to marry the other, and so there was also the possibility of Jaska coming back, in which case Father regarded me as honor bound.”

“Does your brother have someone in mind?”

Irena scowled again. “Of course, and she’s impossible. A beautiful face, and no birth. But he is the heir!
He
can do what he wants. If Father cuts him off for a year, at the birth of a grandson he welcomes him back. But I? I’m told I must marry at least a baron, if I fail to become a princess.”

“And if the Chevalier became a baron?”

“That’s what Mikhail was to ask you. A favor for a bride, so simple a thing for Jaska to agree to! But I see he failed me. Tchah!”