Rae almost rolled her eyes, but her father-in-law was the type to insist on that.
Prig.
No, that was too unkind. This was Wulf’s father.
A masculine voice that sounded eerily like Wulf, but hoarser, came out of the speaker, “Ja? Grand Duchess Josephine?”
“Um, yes, sir. I wanted to tell you that you were correct. I approached Wulfram on the ski slope this morning, and he said that he was breaking it off with the other woman, that he had already broken it off and was interested in forming a new attachment.”
“Splendid,” he said in Wulf’s voice again. “I knew that he would tire of the commoner.”
Josephine winced and bit her lip, but Rae waved her off. She hadn’t expected anything else. Indeed, she was counting on him underestimating her.
Josephine said, “And he said that he is thinking of marrying someone of his own status very soon. He asked me to have hot chocolate with him to discuss it.”
“Good,” Phillipp said. “I am pleased he is being logical about this. Marriages should be for logical, dynastic reasons, not personal ones.”
“Indeed, I’ve always thought that, sir.” Her green eyes laughed with Rae, who had sucked her lips into her mouth to keep herself from giggling.
She was enjoying this far too much and would probably be ashamed of herself when she got around to it.
Someday.
Josephine continued, “And so I had chocolate with him, and he asked me to marry him, and soon! In a few weeks!”
“Splendid!” he said. “I am glad to welcome you into our family as a properly bred daughter of the House.”
“We’re having supper tonight to finalize the details.”
“Perfect.”
“Thank you for alerting me to his situation.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Josephine.”
Josephine tapped the phone and asked Rae, “How long should we wait?”
“Just a few minutes,” Rae said, reaching behind herself to the room service cart for another donut. “Hot chocolate sounds good. Should we call room service for a pot?”
“Yes, please,” Josephine said.
They each had a cup of the creamy hot chocolate from the kitchens, and Rae leaned back, twiddling her fingers on her softening belly. The three of them had probably all been at Le Rosey, the Swiss boarding school where Wulf had developed such a taste for his twice-daily hot cocoa. She sipped her cup, the rich chocolate gliding over her tongue. The dark scent reminded her of kisses stolen in his office at home.
Rae cleared her throat. “Marie-Therese, your turn.”
Marie-Therese pushed her black curls behind her shoulder as she took her cell phone from her purse and dialed. “Monsieur von Hannover? This is Marie-Therese Grimaldi, and I wanted to let you know that I have spoken with Wulfram.”
“Yes?” Phillipp asked. His tone was positively chipper, which should have pissed Rae off because she knew exactly why he was so damn chortley.
Rae smiled. Here came the second punch of the jab-jab-uppercut.
Marie-Therese continued, “He said that he had broken it off with the other girl—”
“Yes, yes.” He sounded impatient with the rehash, but Marie-Therese should have no idea that he had already heard this story.
“—because she didn’t understand him, and he was very interested in renewing our relationship.”
“He did?” All the chortle had gone out of Wulf’s father’s voice, and confusion took its place.
“Yes, he said that he had had a revelation.”
“Yes, about the commoner.” His dismissive tone amused Rae because he really should be paying much closer attention.
“No, about God,” Marie-Therese said.
“God.” Phillipp’s voice had gone flat.
Across the phone, Marie-Therese’s black eyes flashed with laughter at Rae. “Yes, and he said that if I were open-minded, we could discuss a very important matter at supper tonight.”
Josephine clapped her hand over her mouth when Marie-Therese said supper, and her thin shoulders shook with giggles.
“Supper? Are you sure that he said supper?” Phillipp asked.
“Oh, yes. He said he had reserved a table for four at a private room in the restaurant.”
“For four?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I have to go. I’ll call you tonight and tell you how it went.”
“Wait! Are you sure he said four?”
Marie-Therese hung up on him.
The giggles that Rae had been holding down bubbled up in her throat, and she laughed. Laughing was so much better than screaming and crying.
With a little luck, if word of this got out, Rae might never have to fend off another interloper. Wulf thought that upper-crust social intrigues were oh-so devious, but this was nothing compared to the machinations of a small town cut off by culture and distance from most forms of entertainment.
Kira smiled at Rae, a small, regal smile of reserved amusement. “When shall I call?”
Rae checked her own phone for the time. Wulf would be home soon, and she wanted to clear these women out before he came back. No use explaining this to him. Wulf had enough emotional baggage, and Rae didn’t need him to fight her battles for her, not when she had an army of princesses to do just that. “Let’s give it a minute.”
Marie-Therese’s phone rang with a German number, so she let it go to voice mail while the four of them giggled at what must be happening inside Schloss Marienburg. Rae only hoped the castle’s servants weren’t bearing the brunt of it.
Rae’s phone clicked over to the next minute, and her predatory smile widened. “Kira, your turn.”
An evil light flashed in Kira’s pale blue eyes.
She might actually be enjoying this, and a joyous energy filled Rae that she had been even a small part of Kira’s rebellion.
Kira said into the phone, “Herr von Hannover? ’Tis I, Kira Augusta. I have happy news for you.”
Chapter 6
Wulf
Wulf emerged from the elevator and crossed the hallway, flanked by his men. Hans opened the door to the suite and preceded him in.
Inside, a scene out of some of his most vivid nightmares took shape.
No, not those nightmares, not the blood-soaked morning when Constantin died nor any of the times that a bullet rang beside his head, nor beside Rae’s, nor beside his younger sister Flicka’s.
Other nightmares also haunted Wulf, and surely, his beautiful Rae surrounded by two of his ex-girlfriends and the woman whom his father had attempted to pressure him to marry ranked among the worst of them.
The other women encircled her.
Having failed to dissuade him, they might be filling her ears with lies.
Cold dampness gathered beneath his suit. If she looked at him with pain in her huge brown eyes, he would fly to Germany and take his father apart with his bare hands.
Kira, a Princess of Prussia, held a cell phone out flat, like they all were listening to the speakerphone. They had drawn up chairs to sit with their knees touching, and Kira said into the phone, “Yes, I’m as shocked as you are, but this is what you and my parents planned. I’m just worried about the veil.”
The other three women—Viscontessa Marie-Therese Grimaldi, Grand Duchess Josephine Alexandrovna, and his own wife—clamped their hands over their mouths, repressing giggles, while their eyes danced merrily and threatened to break Kira’s concentration.
Relief washed over Wulf at Rae’s laughter. He drew in a deep breath.
Rae and the other two silent women inhaled hard through their noses so as not to laugh out loud. They were so intent on the phone that they didn’t notice Wulf as he walked over the wooden floor to them.
He leaned into their circle—the light floral scent of their rose and jasmine perfumes rose like a mist around them—and said, “This can’t be good.”
Kira looked up first. Her pale blue eyes met his. She said into the phone, “I must go. I’ll speak to you soon.”
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Her finger was just falling toward the phone’s screen when Wulf heard his father’s voice squawk out of the phone, “You can’t mean it! Surely not!”
Oh, God in Heaven. Wulf plucked the phone out of Kira’s hand before she could hang up. “Father, what have they told you?”
“Wulfram!” his father’s voice, beginning to sound hoarse around the edges, grated out of the phone.
Wulf straightened and held the phone near his mouth. “What did they tell you?”
“Three different women have called me and said that you had thrown over the commoner but that you had converted to Islam and you have proposed to all of them to live as your multiple wives! And they all accepted! Good God, Wulfram!”
The four young women now had their hands clapped over their mouths, though their giggles leaked through. They were enjoying his father’s agony far too much, especially his own wife whose gleeful snicker threatened to erupt into full-blown evil laughter.
Wulf was aware that his father’s own prejudices were causing both his mortification that Wulf might have converted and his predicament that Rae had used to her advantage.
Brilliant.
He should have expected nothing less.
Wulf said to Rae, “You masterminded this.”
She nodded, still giggling irrepressibly.
“Remind me never to cross you.”
Through the phone, his father begged, “It isn’t true, is it? You haven’t converted to Islam and aren’t taking three wives!”
Wulf hesitated.
Every instant that he failed to deny it was flaying his father alive, but the man had brought it upon himself.
He delayed his answer a little longer, mostly to admire Rae’s evil plot. She had given his father everything he wanted, indeed, she had given him all three of the women he had sent to disrupt Wulf’s marriage.
Wulf held the phone away from himself so his father couldn’t hear and told Rae, “I can’t decide if you would have made a better Machiavelli or a Borgia.”
“Borgia,” Rae said through her fingers, her warm brown eyes dancing. “Definitely a Borgia.”
“Then I am forewarned.” Anguished squawking still emerged from Kira’s phone in his hand.
Surely his father had been tormented enough in revenge for this escapade.
He brought the phone back to up to speak.
His father yelled through the phone, “Wulfram, I forbid this! You will leave those women at once and return to Germany now.”
If Wulf had still been a teenager, that would have incited rebellion, even though he had been legally emancipated at fifteen.
Wulf sighed, delaying further.
His father blustered, “Islam! The shame of it! You have brought shame to our family name and our House! I will take back the Head of House from you!”
That was an elected position, not something his father had bestowed. Wulf wondered just how long he should dally before he ended his father’s suffering.
His father yelled, “You’ve always been impetuous and impulsive and disobedient!”
Yet when he said things like that, Wulf needed to take a breath and examine the snow-blanketed hills outside the floor-to-ceiling windows for a few more moments to regain his composure, or consider his options, or at least decide his strategy.
“Wulfram! I demand an answer!”
The women were still squirming with giggles.
He shouldn’t let this go on any longer. “Father, I have not converted to Islam and have no plans to do so. You have been played in an intrigue suitable for the Elizabethan court. You should be ashamed at being taken in so easily.”
Sputtering emanated from the phone.
The women dropped their hands, and their laughter rang through the small suite, echoing off the crystal chandeliers and cold-brittle windows.
Wulf walked into the bedroom, taking Kira’s phone with him, and closed the door gently behind him.
He dropped into German to make himself perfectly clear. “More importantly, if it were known that you had involved these young women in your machinations, they would have been ruined. No one would have trusted them, not after allowing themselves to be used in such a scheme.”
Virginity and chastity had not been demanded of princesses for generations, but naiveté and attempting to steal someone else’s husband were simply not tolerated.
His father shouted, “For the love of God, Wulfram! Did you truly not convert to Islam?”
Wulf hesitated again, fully aware that every second of agony he was inflicting was due to his father’s unconscionable prejudices. “No. I have not.”
“Thank God.”
Wulf wondered if his father was aware of the irony. “You must not speak of this stupid attempt to anyone. Those women deserved better from you. If you tell anyone, you’ll look like an idiot for being so expertly manipulated by them.”
“So you have not thrown over the commoner?”
“Certainly not, and you are very aware that we have already married her. I informed you the morning before the ceremony.”
His father barreled on. “Why would you marry such a woman? She is beneath you.”
Wulf’s sharp tone cut through the air. “I have never been so insulted, both on her behalf and for your insinuation that merely throwing women at me would dissuade me from marrying her.”
“We have nothing in common with her.”
Wulf rubbed his eyes, sore from squinting against the snow glare. He shouldn’t tell his father anything because it would make no difference, but he could not help himself. “I can talk to her. I can tell her anything and she understands. She is kind, and her heart will change the world. And she can outwit you and everyone we know.”
He scoffed, “She’s just a commoner.”
Anger shook Wulf. “You have destroyed every woman you have had in your life, and I know of dozens. You are careless and cruel with them. I thank God every day that I took Flicka away from you before you could destroy her.”
He heard a click behind him, and he pivoted. Reagan was standing in the bedroom doorway, her eyes wide on her astonished face. She asked, “Are you okay?”
Wulf switched to English. Rae needed to hear this, lest she fear otherwise. He said to his father, “Stay away from me, and stay away from Reagan, or I swear to God that I will stop you. I will sell Schloss Marienburg out from under you and donate the money to charity.”
“You would not dare!” his father roared.
Wulf kept his tone low and icy. “I will. That residence has a deeply negative cash flow and I keep it only to humor you.”
“Where would my cousin Elizabeth have her birthday parties if we didn’t hold Schloss Marienburg?”
“Buckingham Palace, I rather imagine. I can also reduce or eliminate your allowance from the House’s investments. Your income would be cut by greater than ninety percent if you had only your personal investments to live on.” Wulf looked straight into Rae’s horrified eyes as he spoke to his father. “My point is this: do not attempt to disrupt my marriage nor my wedding next weekend nor the rest of my life or there will be repercussions. I will not stand for any more interference.”
His father sputtered something.
Wulf’s voice dropped. “Also, you’re to be a grandfather sometime before Christmas. Goodbye.” He thumbed the red bar on the screen to hang up and hefted it in his hand to smash the phone against the wall.
But it wasn’t his phone, and he was surely too civilized to do something so demonstrative and juvenile. He slipped Kira’s phone in his pocket rather than succumb to the temptation.
“Wulf, are you all right?” Rae’s eyes were still wide on her face.
“Honestly, I’m fine,” he ground out.
She was beside him in an instant and took his hand. “You’re shaking.”
“I am not.” Utterly impossible.
Her hands caressed his arm and slipped up into his hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
He leaned his cheek agains
t her palm. “Josephine found me on the slopes today and told me what my father had wrought. I thought it had ended there, but when I saw them sitting with you, I was tormented that you might be in distress. I’ve never been so relieved to see you laughing. It astonishes me that my father would try such a thing, that anyone would attempt something so vile. I had thought better of him, but I was mistaken.”
“Well, he got what was coming to him.”
“Quite.”
She smiled at him. “I invited them for supper tonight, around eight.”
Wulf rubbed his aching forehead. “That is exceedingly civilized of you.”
“They went back to their rooms to wash up.”
“Splendid.” Wulf looked up. Past the sheer curtains over the window, the snow was absorbing the peach and scarlet light of the setting sun. “One thing continues to elude me.”
“What’s that, honey?” Her fingers trickled down his shirt.
“The early snow fell last week. We made these reservations only a few days ago.” The fresh snow glittered outside the window. “How did he know we would be here?”
Chapter 7
Rae
At that precise moment, Rae didn’t particularly care how Wulf’s father had sussed out that they would be in Argentina for June skiing. She wound her fingers through Wulf’s fingers that were still cool from skiing.
Wulf wrapped her in his arms. “When I walked in and saw them gathered around you, I thought that since they had failed to dissuade me, they might have told you terrible things.”
She snuggled closer to his chest. Evidently, he had showered at the ski lodge before coming back to the hotel because he smelled clean, a whiff of soap and clean masculine musk, but his usual cologne was missing. Rae leaned her cheek against his shoulder and inhaled near his neck, breathing in the earthy scent of just Wulf. It was almost intoxicating. She said, “I trust you.”
She touched her lips to his neck and felt the quick intake of his breath. “Why on Earth would you trust The Dom of the Devilhouse?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling against her lips. “I am hedonism incarnate.”
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