Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  “Yes, just like that. It’s Durchlauchtigste. If you’re going to be Dieter Schwarz, we simply must work on your German conjugations. I thought you were just stubborn.”

  “You’ll always be my Durchlauchtig.” He slid his arms around her and drew her slight body against his chest. Her sweetness in his arms comforted him, draining away the anger and boiling pain. He buried his face in her hair in the darkness. “And I am stubborn as hell.”

  Near his ear, she whispered, “I need you to be Dieter Schwarz, the strong, skilled man who always saves me from assassins and from myself. I need that rock-solid man of honor to be the father for our child.”

  He nodded, rubbing his cheek against the silk of her hair. His eyes burned harder. “I will always be there for you.”

  “That’s my Dieter,” she murmured, stroking his back. “That’s my Lieblingwächter.”

  He clenched the alpine mountaineering pin in his fist, trying not to bend the wires. “You are everything to me, Flicka. You’re my whole life and my soul.”

  “And so, who are you?”

  “I’ll be Dieter,” he whispered. “I’m Dieter Schwarz.”

  Country French

  Flicka von Hannover

  Found one.

  Flicka sat straight and upright in a cozy armchair, watching Dieter Schwarz sleep. Sunlight streamed in the wide living room windows of the little French farmhouse, touched his golden hair, and slowly brightened the room.

  The sun was almost directly above the house and the bare trees outside, but the light was moving across the sky and toward the western horizon. This living room faced west, so the sunbeams reached farther into the brightening room with every passing minute.

  The couch they’d slept on, spooned tightly together, was dark blue with cheery yellow pillows, and the rest of the furniture was lightly worn and rustic. The overall effect was a tasteful, sweet country French, which should not have surprised Flicka at all, considering that they were actually in a French farmhouse, out in the countryside.

  She had awakened a few hours before. Not even being pregnant could make Flicka von Hannover sleep more than eight hours.

  Her abdomen still lay flat under her evening gown, and she smoothed the beaded silk. Soon, if everything went right, her body would swell as their child grew.

  It still felt unbelievable.

  Dieter stirred and rubbed his strong hand up the side of his face. “What time is it?”

  “About one o’clock,” she said. A grandfather clock stood silently in a corner.

  He grunted. “I didn’t sleep much the last few nights. I guess I made up for it.”

  She smiled at him, amused at his rationalizing. “It’s not like you slept through the whole day.”

  Dieter yawned and stretched, his black tee shirt stretching tightly over the round muscles of his arms and chest. “It’s probably better that I got some sleep, anyway. We can drive through the night, tonight. How long have you been up?”

  “A little while, but I napped in the car while you were driving last night.”

  He pushed himself up to sitting and yawned. “Yeah, you do that same thing that Wulf does, where you don’t sleep much.”

  If anyone might have noticed, Dieter had been around them both enough to do so. “It’s a Hannover family trait, like hemophilia. My father is a short sleeper too.”

  “Does everyone in your family have insomnia like that?”

  Flicka’s cousins included many night owls and early risers. “A lot of us. It seems to be an autosomal, dominant genetic trait.”

  His smile at her was lop-sided and sleepy. “And you’ve studied the genetics of not-going-to-sleep, have you?”

  “When history blames your family’s genes for the downfall of most of the royal house of Europe and the murder of the Romanovs, you tend to pay attention in sophomore biology class. Royal hemophilia is a recessive, sex-linked trait. I memorized that. It’s kind of important. I looked very, very carefully at those family pedigrees of Queen Victoria and her many children, and I figured out that because Wulfie and I are descended from Victoria’s uncle King George the Third who did not have hemophilia and from one of her healthy sons, that means I can’t be a carrier of the disease. All our other links to Victoria are through healthy males, too, so no bad genes from them, either.”

  He reached over the arm of the couch and grabbed her hand, pulling her to standing and wheeling her around to sit beside him. “And just how many times does your family tree loop back to Queen Victoria?”

  At least three times. Maybe more. “I’m not sure.”

  Her family tree looked like a couple of octopuses, fighting each other.

  Dieter said, “Wulf should have been tested for that before he and Rae started having kids.”

  “Oh, he can’t be a carrier. Royal hemophilia lies on the X chromosome, so if a male has the gene, he has the hemophilia disease because he doesn’t have a second X chromosome like a girl does. Wulfie doesn’t have the disease or the gene. My father doesn’t have the disease, so I can’t be a carrier, either.”

  Dieter gathered her close under his arm and kissed her temple. His fingers stroked over her tummy. “So, there’s no chance this little person in here could have hemophilia?”

  She watched his fingers meander over her stomach and the black silk of her dress. “Not royal hemophilia, anyway.”

  “Could they have that not-sleeping thing?”

  Flicka had stopped taking naps when she was nine months old, and she hadn’t slept more than five hours a night since she was a year and half. Imagine an eighteen-month-old who refuses to go to bed for longer than a few hours and then is awake, horribly awake, all the time.

  She didn’t want Dieter to run, screaming, out of the French farmhouse. There would be plenty of time, later, to discuss how they would deal with an insomniac Hannover toddler. “Nope. Hardly any chance.”

  “Should Rae know she may have just given birth to a baby that will never sleep?”

  “Somebody should probably mention it to her, but I’m not getting into that with Wulfie.”

  “I’m still having trouble believing it, that you’re pregnant with our child.”

  His fingers tickled through her silk dress. “Me, too.”

  He nuzzled her hair with his nose, a silly caress but one he’d done when they’d been together in London. “I still can’t quite believe this is all real, that we’re married, and we’re going to have a child. This is the other life I never dared dream about, the one I had no right to dream about.”

  She said, “I didn’t dream about it. It felt like a part of me had gone dark.”

  He sighed, and his arms tightened around her. “I’m sorry I left. I’ll apologize for the rest of our lives. We could have had these years together, and I screwed it up.”

  “You did what you thought was the best, the thing that should keep me safe.” She snuggled more deeply into his arms, closer to his chest. “You did the Dieter Schwarz thing. It may have been hard, it may have been painful, but it was the honorable thing to do.”

  He mumbled, “I missed you every day.”

  “Me, too. I missed you so much, all those years and while I was in Monaco. But I don’t want to go back to Monaco, so right now, I think we should get in the car and keep driving north.”

  Dieter said, “I wonder if these people left a tube of toothpaste, so I could use my finger to brush my teeth.”

  Flicka stood and stretched hard, her body creaking from sleeping on a sliver of the couch and then sitting without moving for too long. “Sure, we can take a look around. I feel bad about staying here even a minute longer than we need to, so let’s get moving as soon as we can. Holy cow, what’s that?”

  Dieter sprang to his feet, fists held low and in front of him. He growled, “What?”

  On the corner of a small table shoved against a wall, a thin, black cord led from the outlet to a tiny silver rectangle.

  Flicka asked, “Is that a cell phone?”

  D
ieter stood. “We shouldn’t use it. We should continue on.”

  “It probably won’t be of any use to us. They are all protected with passwords or thumbprints or retinal scans or something, these days, anyway. I kind of regret that I didn’t take all those computer classes at school instead of languages and music. There was this guy, Arthur, who probably could have plugged that phone into a jack in the back of his skull to hack it or something. He was a freaky computer genius. I can barely dial a phone number.”

  “I’ve got a guy like that too. Too bad one of those guys isn’t here.”

  “I could ask it nicely to open up,” she said, “or negotiate with it.”

  “I could threaten it with a gun and see if that does something.”

  Flicka chuckled. “Let’s take a look at it.”

  Dieter said, “Wait. Before we even pick up that thing, we need to consider operational security. Monaco has reciprocal treaties with France, like extradition treaties. Pierre could have notified their police or intelligence services to be on the lookout for you. I think we have to assume he did.”

  Flicka wanted to stomp on Pierre’s head. “And tell them what? That I escaped?”

  “That you were kidnapped.”

  “Well, I’ll tell them that I wasn’t.”

  Dieter shrugged. “That might not matter. If the head of a foreign state with special treaties says you were kidnapped, then maybe as far as the police are concerned, you were kidnapped.”

  “Well, I’m not going to call the police. I’ll call someone else, someone who can help us get away from Pierre.”

  Dieter frowned at the phone. “I’m not sure what tech France’s intelligence services have or how much they would be willing to use, though if Pierre pressed hard, they might do everything within their capabilities. It’s possible they have voice recognition software scanning the lines, both cellular and landline, and sampling telephone communications. If you make a phone call, we might have to assume that the French police might quickly pinpoint our location.”

  They’d have to use it and run. “So calling Wulfie wouldn’t work. He’s probably at home in the US right now. He couldn’t help us. He couldn’t get back to France fast enough.”

  “I think you’re right. Hey, at least after all this, I think we found that mole in the Welfenlegion.”

  Flicka laughed out loud at that. “Yeah, I noticed. Jeez, I could not believe Julien Bodilsen would sell Wulf out. Wasn’t he in ARD-10 with you?”

  Dieter visibly flinched like someone had slapped the back of his head. “There was less loyalty in ARD-10 than I thought. Basch Favre was in ARD-10 with Wulfram and me.”

  “The guy whose phone number I remembered for you, right?” Flicka asked. She knew, of course. She was just being polite.

  He nodded. “He’s the Geneva police chief, now. He was supposed to save you and Alina, but he ended up being a sell-out to Piotr Ilyin. I want to strangle that bastard.” His strong hands flexed.

  “I guess we don’t have to worry about having a spy in the Welfenlegion anymore.”

  “There’s that, I suppose,” Dieter said. “But the real question is, even if that phone were usable, who would we call? Who would be so helpful that we could risk being found and detained by the police for French intelligence?”

  “Rogue Security?” she ventured.

  “Too predictable. Surely, the French police will still have my security employees under surveillance, if not in custody.”

  “It’s probably got a password or something on it anyway.” Flicka picked up the phone and thumbed the side button to turn on the screen.

  The screen lit up. Rows of icons lined up on the front.

  Flicka gasped. “It doesn’t have a password. We can call someone. We can get help.”

  Dieter stood beside her and craned his neck over the phone. “The call should be as short as possible. You should say as little as possible, and it should be someone we know can help us. Someone we can rely on, someone we can trust.”

  Flicka bit her lip. “Maybe you should do the talking, if they’re looking for me.”

  “Interpol was alerted when I traveled on my Swiss passport to the States. I’m more of a risk than you are.”

  “Okay, maybe we could search for news on me, first. Maybe we don’t even have to sneak around. Maybe no one’s looking for us.” Flicka’s thumb flew over the screen, searching for her own name.

  As she’d feared, many news stories had been posted, all with headlines designed by the Monegasque public relations department.

  Princess Flicka kidnapped at gunpoint from winter ball!

  Princess still missing!

  Armed men storm Prince’s Winter Ball, Kidnap Princess.

  Have you seen Princess Flicka?

  Princess Flicka hotline.

  Dieter stared over her shoulder at the phone screen. “I figured he’d try something like this.”

  Dammit. Flicka said, “I’ll call my dad.”

  “What? I can’t believe that’s the best course of action.”

  “He’s in Hannover, Germany, and they won’t be expecting me to call him. At least he’s on this continent.”

  Dieter frowned, hard. He looked pissed. “Wulf has said a lot about him over the years, and so have you.”

  Flicka pressed the screen to dial his number, her bright manicure slipping over the glass screen. “My father is a toxic, crazy old bigot, but I’m his daughter.”

  “He kidnapped you.”

  “Oh, that. He was trying to keep me from marrying Pierre.”

  “You were already married to Pierre. He was trying to disrupt Wulfram’s wedding to Rae.”

  Flicka waived her hand in the air like she was fanning away nonsense. “He was trying to tell me the truth about Pierre so I would leave him.”

  “Your father should be happy now that you’ve divorced Pierre.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic.” Flicka hadn’t meant to sound quite that sarcastic, but the moment called for it. Her father would never be pleased about undignified actions like divorce. “Schloss Marienburg is a castle, a real castle. If we can get there, Pierre won’t be able to get to me.”

  “That’s probably what he thought about the Prince’s Palace.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s different. This has to stop. This has to end. He can’t keep chasing me the rest of my life. I have to end this somehow.”

  Dieter said, “Your father might not be thrilled you married me.”

  Flicka paused before her thumb tapped the last number on the screen, thinking about that, but she hit the seven anyway. “That’s none of his business, that old goat. If he wants to make an issue of it, we’ll discuss it then.”

  “There’s no way he could know. We don’t have to mention it.”

  Unless Wulf had spilled the beans. “If he brings anything up, I’ll sure as heck mention it.”

  In her ear, “Hello?”

  She replied, “Hello, Papa!”

  Over the speaker, the voice of His Royal Highness Phillipp Augustus, the Hereditary Prince of Hannover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, sounded weaker and older than Flicka remembered. “Flicka? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Papa. It’s Flicka.”

  “Are you all right? Where are you?”

  “I’m all right. I’m hiding.”

  “Wulfram said that he couldn’t find you, that you were missing, that it had been months, and then you were in Monaco.”

  “Yeah, well, long story,” she said, “but I need help.”

  “With what? What can I do?”

  “I need somewhere safe to go, somewhere Pierre and his Secret Service can’t get to me.”

  “I’ll call Wulfram. We’ll use Schloss Marienburg. It’s a goddamn castle. Let’s see him try to get in there. Who is with you?”

  Flicka looked up, her eyes asking the question.

  He took a deep breath and said, “Dieter Schwarz. Tell him Dieter Schwarz is with you.”

  She felt a smile growing on
her face, and she reached out and held one of his hands with hers. “You remember Wulf’s chief of security, Dieter Schwarz? He broke me out of the Prince’s Palace in Monaco and saved me from Pierre.”

  Her father said, “Dieter Schwarz? I always liked him. He’s a loyal retainer, I can tell. Good, stout, German lad, even if he says he’s Swiss.”

  Flicka squeezed Dieter’s fingers again. A real smile grew on Dieter’s face as she tried not to laugh.

  She said, “Don’t say anything specific over the phone in case they’re listening, Papa, but how can I get there?”

  “Do you remember the old place, the place where your brother and I so vehemently disagreed about, the day after your mother died?”

  After Flicka’s mother had died from breast cancer, her father had sent her away to Le Rosey boarding school the very next day, as scheduled. Wulfram, then just fifteen years old, had been furious, and that had been the beginning of their continuing animosity. “Yes.”

  “Can you get there?”

  Institut Le Rosey was located in Rolle, Switzerland, about half an hour northeast of Geneva. “Yes.”

  “I’ll send people to meet you. About how long?”

  The farmhouse where they were hiding was outside of Montpellier, France, which was at least four hours away from Geneva by car. “Five hours or so. Maybe more.”

  Dieter said, “Tell him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. We’ll create some diversions in the meantime.”

  Flicka told her father.

  “Good,” Phillipp said. “I’ll have people there. Be safe.”

  Flicka hung up the phone and wiped the metal and glass vigorously with her skirt. The glass beads on her skirt bit into her palm. “What diversions are you planning, Lieblingwächter?”

  Dieter said, “I’ll tell you in the car. We need to leave now. Maybe I have one minute to brush my teeth, but we need to leave right after that.”

  Like Divorce

  Dieter Schwarz

  Until we weren’t.

  Yeah, that got to me.