by Meg Cabot
Still, Meena always made the canvas her primary destination upon entering the museum and would, when she was feeling especially disheartened or hopeless, stand for nearly an hour looking at it, in the company of similarly downtrodden souls.
But Prince Lucien didn’t lead Meena toward the nineteenth-century wing when he pulled her into the Metropolitan Museum that night.
Instead, he guided her toward the medieval art exhibit on the main floor, through the darkened, hushed Great Hall.
It was strange being in the museum after it was closed. Meena had never seen the halls so empty…or so quiet.
She could actually hear her own heart thumping steadily with the excitement of what they were doing-despite Lucien’s insistence that it was fine, she felt that there was something illicit about their being there. Of course there was!
And now Lucien was holding her hand again.
His grip wasn’t exactly warm-his fingers always seemed a bit cool to the touch-but it was oddly reassuring, the way it had been that night outside of St. George’s Cathedral.
And yet there was an almost boyish excitement about him, too, an eagerness with which he seemed to want to show her the treasures the museum held. He playfully held a finger to his lips as he guided her along.
“Are we going to set off any alarms?” Meena asked nervously, holding a squirming Jack Bauer in one arm.
“Only if you try to steal something,” the prince jokingly replied.
“Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to restrain myself then,” Meena said, teasing him back. She was pleased to see that a lively side to him was coming out. He may not have watched much television, but he knew how to have fun.
Soon they were surrounded by hauntingly beautiful triptychs of the Madonna and child, and bejeweled golden crucifixes that seemed to glow with the otherworldly light that came from their display cases. Lucien steered her away from these and toward a collection of fifteenth-century portraits and woodcuts. Meena couldn’t read the cards on the display cases attached to the portraits because it was too dark, but Lucien explained, “These are of Prince Vlad Tepes of Wallachia-you know, the man I was telling you about, the one who’s such a hero in my country. He lived in the age of the first printing presses, so there’s a great deal of historical documentation about him. His father, Vlad the Second, was a member of the Order of the Dragon-established by the king of Hungary in order to unite neighboring kingdoms against the Ottoman Empire. So Vlad Tepes was indoctrinated in the order as well…at the age of five, right before his father handed him and his little brother over as hostages to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire as a personal guarantee he wouldn’t attack the sultan while the boys were under his roof.”
“Oh, dear,” Meena said, feeling slightly deflated. This story was a bit of a downer.
She supposed she wasn’t surprised to hear of Vlad’s father’s cruelty, giving his sons over to a sultan in order to preserve peace, considering his image in the portrait. If Vlad Tepes looked anything like his dad, he couldn’t have been very nice. He had a long, sinister-looking black mustache and beady eyes.
Or maybe they just didn’t know how to draw very well back then. Meena had always avoided this part of the museum. Her tastes tended to run more toward the Romantics…
Lucien didn’t seem to notice Meena’s dislike for the subject matter, however. As a history professor, he was obviously very enthusiastic on the topic of his country’s greatest forefather.
Lucien went on. “Although his brother was a great favorite of the sultan, the Ottomans didn’t treat Vlad Tepes very well, I’m afraid. And when he finally did inherit the throne from his father and return home to Wallachia, he was still quite bitter about the whole thing…and things didn’t improve much for him after that, I’m afraid. He had an unfortunate life, filled with much sorrow. His first wife, whom he dearly loved, was a beautiful and innocent young woman. Some people even whispered that…well, that she was like an angel on earth.”
Meena raised her eyebrows upon hearing this, and she saw Lucien give her a quick smile.
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d like that part of the story.”
He took her hand and led her toward a primitive black-and-white woodcut depicting a turreted castle with a river running beneath it.
“Unfortunately,” he said in a voice that seemed carefully devoid of emotion to Meena, “it doesn’t have the kind of ending you like. Vlad and his wife lived in warlike times. Upon hearing their castle was under siege by the Turks-who were rumored to be unspeakably cruel to royal female prisoners back in those days-his young bride threw herself out an upper-story window, preferring death to what she thought she’d face at their hands.”
Meena sucked in her breath, her gaze flying to one of the high turrets pictured in the woodcut.
“She fell into the river beneath the palace window and drowned,” Lucien continued in the same emotionless tone. “That river is still referred to today as the Princess’s River.”
“Oh,” Meena said unhappily. She was liking this story less and less. “How sad!”
“It was sad,” Lucien said in agreement. “And it gets sadder still. Her husband had married her for love…a rarity in those days. He was never the same after her death. Some say he went mad. He began to treat his enemies-and even his own subjects, his own sons-in a…well, in a very regrettable manner.”
Meena looked up sharply when she heard him say the words a very regrettable manner.
Because while his tone had still been as distantly academic as ever, and probably no one else would have noticed the slightest difference in his voice, Meena knew: the prince was thinking about his own childhood. Lucien’s father had treated him in “a very regrettable manner.” She was certain of it…even more so as she watched the way his gaze seemed to burn as he stared down at the woodcut of the Princess’s River.
And Meena’s heart twisted with pity for him. Yes, he was a prince, and handsome and rich and worldly.
But she knew what it was like to have problems. Real problems. The kind that kept you up nights, stumbling around in the dark, reaching for amber prescription sleeping-pill bottles.
It was at that moment that Meena was gripped by an urge, as sudden as it was fierce, to save him…the same urge she felt with everyone she met and knew was going to die soon.
Only in this case, she wanted to rescue Lucien from the sadness she could see in those dark brown eyes, not from certain death…the same way he’d saved her that night from the bats that had come shrieking down from the spires of St. George’s Cathedral.
Only she didn’t know how. She knew how to save people only from their futures (and even that she didn’t do very well).
How did you save someone from his past?
Then, Lucien seemed to shake himself and gave her hand a squeeze and said with a smile, “I’m sorry, Meena. You said you like stories with happy endings, and I tell you this one, which is most decidedly not happy. I don’t know why I felt such a strong desire to share it with you. It’s an important story-to me. To my people. But…it’s not for a woman like you, who is so filled with life and joy.”
Meena raised her eyebrows. Boy, did he ever have her wrong.
“But the point is,” Lucien said, still smiling, “Vlad Tepes is Romania’s greatest hero…like your General Washington. We wouldn’t exist as a country if it weren’t for him.”
“Oh,” Meena said. “Well, in that case, good for him.”
But she wasn’t sure she believed him. Not about this Vlad person, whoever he was, but about the smile he’d given her. She knew it was fake. She could still sense the secret sorrow in him…
And because she knew what it was like to feel so alone, she felt that it was up to her to find a balm for his despair.
Her gaze wandered, searching for something that might help.
And a second later, she was guiding him toward an icon that glowed gold in the light from its display case.
“Look,” she said triumphantly, thinking
to herself, Oh, good. This will do the trick. “This is appropriate, considering the way we met.”
Meena smiled at the cheerful painting, on wood, of a knight on his valiant steed, his lance piercing the heart of a slithering serpent writhing beneath his mount’s hooves.
“Ah, yes,” Lucien said in the same academic tone that he’d used when discussing Vlad Tepes. “St. George. There’s the spring, guarded by the fearsome dragon, who for so long has not allowed the villagers to draw the water they so badly need…not unless they first sacrifice a maiden. But on this day, there is no maiden left in the village, save the king’s daughter. She’s bravely gone to the water’s edge, despite her father’s protests, expecting to die. But look who’s appeared…a knight called George who will slay the dragon and save her and her people. They’ll be so grateful to him, they will abandon paganism forever.”
Meena stood with her hand in his, gazing down at the icon.
Okay, she thought to herself. So, that didn’t work. He looks as depressed as ever.
And now I feel depressed, too. Thanks, St. George. Who knew you were also the patron saint of downers?
And then, just like that…
She knew.
It was crazy. It was revealing far too much of herself to him…far more than she’d ever wanted to.
But it was something, she realized, she had to do.
“Do you want to see my favorite painting in the whole world?” Meena turned to ask him.
He looked surprised…and amused. “I would love to,” he said.
This time Meena was the one to lead him…out of the medieval art exhibit and up the stairs to the nineteenth-century wing.
She was a little nervous when they approached the painting she’d loved for so long that it might not be everything that she’d remembered.
Then again, what was she worried about? This was Joan of Arc, beloved by everyone…
As they approached, she saw that she had nothing to worry about. No, the painting, as ever, was amazing…at least it was to Meena. The picture light above the elaborate gold frame was turned on and glowed down on the face of the boyish-looking peasant girl as she gazed off into the distance, while behind her, the archangel Michael beckoned. Meena was so transfixed, she actually forgot to be concerned over whether or not Lucien would like the painting.
She put Jack Bauer down on the floor and went right up to the painting, standing closer to it than she’d ever dared during museum visiting hours.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she breathed, marveling at the painting’s details.
“She is,” Lucien agreed somberly.
With a turn of her head, Meena was unnerved to discover that Lucien was standing much closer than she’d realized…
…less than two feet away from her. He hadn’t even been looking at the painting when he’d agreed that it was beautiful.
His dark-eyed gaze had been riveted on her face.
Blushing, Meena realized she might actually have found a rival for the painting’s beauty in Lucien’s tall frame and perfect features.
He also, Meena had to admit, smelled good. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what, precisely, it was that he smelled like. Jon had been through a succession of men’s colognes in his lifetime, most of them cloying and obnoxious.
But Lucien’s was light and clean smelling.
Meena wanted to pour whatever it was all over herself.
“And what is it about St. Joan,” Lucien asked, smiling down at her, “that appeals to you so much?”
“Oh,” Meena said. She realized with a pang of regret that she’d set herself up for this one.
Still. He’d asked her to trust him when she stood outside the museum.
She couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. She knew what would happen. The same thing that had happened with David. Lucien would think she was a flake. Worse than a flake, even.
He’d think she was a freak.
She wouldn’t let that happen. She was going to hide the truth from him as long as possible.
Forever, if she had to.
But she could tell him a version of the truth, she supposed, without giving too much of herself away.
“I guess,” she said, choosing her words with care, “it’s that she managed to make such a difference in so many people’s lives, despite being poor and a girl…huge handicaps for the age in which she lived. She made predictions, you know…remarkably accurate predictions that at first no one believed. But eventually she convinced enough people that she was telling the truth that she was given an audience with the king. Who believed her.” Meena squinted some more at the painting, trying to imagine what it must have been like for Joan, so determined, yet with so many strikes against her. “Of course people said she was insane. Today some people say that the ‘voices from God’ she heard were adolescent-onset schizophrenia. And as a teenager, I guess she’d have been the right age for it…”
“But you don’t want to believe that,” Lucien said when her voice trailed off.
Feeling herself blushing again, Meena looked down at her feet.
She didn’t kid herself that part of the reason she loved the painting they were standing in front of was that she, like Joan, had her own inner voices to contend with. Not that she believed that her inner voices-the feelings she had that told her how people were going to die-came from God.
But she knew she wasn’t schizophrenic, either.
“A lot of people didn’t believe Joan, either. At least at first,” Meena said finally, raising her gaze to meet his. “But eventually, she persuaded enough people of her sanity that she was brought before the king…and he believed her. How could a crazy woman trick a king whose own father had psychosis? He would have recognized the signs. No,” Meena said, looking back up at the painting and shaking her head. “She wasn’t schizophrenic. She knew things. She was the greatest military strategist the French army ever had…a teenage girl who listened to the voices inside her head and guided her men to victory again and again…”
When Meena looked back up at Lucien, she was embarrassed by the tears that had sprung spontaneously into her eyes.
“Until,” she went on, a catch in her voice, “she was captured by the enemy, abandoned by her king, and burned to death at the stake for being a witch.”
Lucien’s smile had been amused…until her tears came.
Then his mouth gave a twist, and he reached for her.
Suddenly Meena found herself pulled against him, his arms wrapped around her, her face pressed against his chest…
“You look like her,” he said into her short dark hair.
Meena, ashamed of her tears and mortified at finding herself in his arms because she was crying-and over a long-dead saint-felt herself turning redder than ever.
“No, I don’t,” she said hastily against his shirtfront. “I have nothing in common with her at all. Really, I don’t. I-”
“Yes,” he said, holding her away from him by her arms so that he could look down into her eyes. “You do. I noticed it the minute we walked up. Your hair is shorter and darker. But you have the same intensity about you. Tell me something: do you hear voices, too, Meena Harper?”
She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to burst out sobbing. She wanted to burst out laughing. She wanted to cry, Yes. Yes, I do.
Only not about you.
Which could mean only one thing. Either her “talent” was finally going away, or…
He wasn’t going to die. Unlike every other man she’d ever met before to whom she’d been attracted, Lucien Antonescu wasn’t going to die.
Not for a good, long time, anyway.
And then, before she could think of anything at all to say in response to his question, he’d slipped one hand beneath her chin and was tilting her face up toward his, forcing her to look him in the eyes.
“Meena,” he said. His voice was a gruff whisper in the darkened gallery. “What are you hiding from me?”
Her voice was as throaty as his. �
��Nothing,” she lied. “I swear.”
And then the incredible happened. His mouth came down over hers.
Meena was so shocked that at first she froze, uncertain what to do. It had been so long since a man had kissed her, she couldn’t believe it was happening at all.
And yet, there was the incontrovertible proof that she was in his arms…they were holding her very firmly to him. She could feel his lips against hers, strangely cool, like his fingers had been around hers, but so sweet, so patient, as if he’d be more than willing to wait all night for her to catch up with what was happening…
And suddenly, Meena did catch up. Her heart gave an explosive double thump, and she realized, Why, he’s kissing me.
And she rose up on tiptoe and slipped her arms around his neck, kissing him back, sinking into him, exulting in the fact that his arms were tightening around her, inhaling the crisp clean scent of him. She closed her eyes against the beauty of the painting behind him as he lifted her off her feet and pressed her closer and closer to his heart, which she couldn’t feel due to the frenetic beating of her own.
And then it was as if the ceiling overhead suddenly evaporated and the cold white glow from the stars and the moon above combined into one brilliant shaft and went shooting down toward Meena.
She’d had no idea that being kissed could feel this way.
But Lucien’s kisses made her feel…cherished. His hands cradled her as gingerly as if she were one of the precious objects around them…a vase from the Met’s Chinese art collection he was afraid might crack if he exerted too much pressure on it. His lips explored hers, gently at first, then, when he seemed to realize that she wasn’t going to shatter beneath his touch, with growing urgency.
She couldn’t help letting her mouth fall open beneath his…
And suddenly, it seemed as if something inside him burst. Something that appeared to have been pent-up for far too long, and which let loose at the touch of her tongue to his. All his polite civility was gone.
And Meena didn’t mind at all. His need for her matched hers for him. It was as if he’d asked a question.