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

by Blair Babylon

  The cities gave way to higher elevations and more open spaces. Gray mountains covered by a leafless forest of twigs rose on the horizon, and the SUVs and sedans holding Flicka and the Hannover entourage raced toward them.

  Schloss Marienburg, a white and dove gray fairy-tale dream, rose out of the wintry forest like a clockwork castle. Battlements and barbicans fortified the palace, which had been built in the Victorian mid-1800s as an idealized fantasy of a Gothic castle. A yellow and white flag, the standard of the House of Guelph, fluttered from the main tower that jutted up from the center of the keep, one of the few splashes of color in the silver and white landscape.

  Dieter helped Flicka from the SUV, holding her hand like a footman as she alighted from a carriage, and her father strode to meet her. Icy wind speared through her coat and clothes.

  He folded her in his still-strong arms and said, “Welcome home, my little princess.”

  She was so glad to have made it that she burst into tears.

  She tried to stop, but couldn’t.

  She tried harder to stop, but her lungs ached and the fear turned into sobs.

  Her father soothed her and led her to his sitting room, where golden chairs were set around a coffee table, to pour her an evening cup of tea.

  When Flicka looked up, Dieter was leaning against the back wall, silent and almost unseen, but he was watching her with his intense, gray eyes.

  She said to her father, “I’ve got to end this madness with Pierre, somehow. I can’t keep living like this, running away from him.”

  Her father patted her hand. “As much as I deplore a spectacle, I believe you must make a public statement of some sort. I’ll send lawyers to obtain a restraining order. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Schloss Marienburg

  Flicka von Hannover

  I’d never really looked at it all before.

  Flicka and her father sat in Phillipp’s gilded sitting room in Schloss Marienburg, chatting quietly while Flicka composed herself. Her father gazed around the room like he was drinking it in, while Flicka glanced up at the furniture and then stared at her hands fidgeting in her lap.

  Schloss Marienburg was Flicka’s home, in that she had lived there as a young child when nannies cared for her and crashed there for at least a week or two of her summer vacations between school terms. It was the place she still returned to and the place she traveled from.

  King George V of Hannover built Schloss Marienburg for his wife, Princess Marie of Saxe-Altenburg, as a summer palace for the Kingdom of Hannover. The rooms had been designed to show off the kingdom’s opulence, to display its furniture made of solid silver and provide a suitable backdrop for the court women and the king wearing the crown jewels. Delicate carvings, handmade almost two centuries before and preserved by the efforts of the servants during those centuries, ringed the tops of the walls. Ceilings loomed three stories above the furniture, and portraits of royals and noble people occupied the real estate of the walls.

  Everything was gilded and embroidered and emblazoned and embellished to show off just how rich the kingdom was.

  The Kingdom of Hannover had other palaces, of course.

  George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg built the palace called Leineschloss on the banks of the Leine River in 1636, which was the central palace for the kingdom. Leineschloss looked like a Greek temple, with the portico entry supported by six Corinthian columns.

  Schloss Herrenhausen, or the Herrenhausen Palace, was originally a manor house built in 1640 just over a mile away from Leineschloss. Sophia of Hannover enlarged it in the late 1600s to use as their summer house and built enormous gardens to rival the grounds of Versailles.

  Not that Hannover kings lived in Germany during those centuries, of course. From the early 1700s and continuing until 1901, Hannover kings ruled Great Britain and Ireland from London, in addition to the holdings in Germany. King George III renovated Schloss Herrenhausen, costing the House and England millions of dollars, but never visited the palace.

  The Royal Air Force bombed the hell out of both Leineschloss and Schloss Herrenhausen during World War Two.

  Schloss Marienburg, where Flicka now sat, was far up in the mountains and away from civilians and wartime manufacturing, and thus it escaped destruction.

  Plus, the Hannover family trust owned Kaiserhaus in the city of Hannover, where her brother had exiled their father to, a small manor house that still exceeded what ninety-nine percent of families could afford. The house required a full-time staff of at least twenty to keep it running and clean.

  The sitting room of Schloss Marienburg itself, a space dedicated to drinking coffee and tea during the day and rare liquor at night, had a larger footprint than their entire townhouse in Las Vegas.

  With her practiced eye for space management, Flicka could lay out the floor plan of their cozy Vegas condominium right in this room, the living room area and kitchen occupying just a corner of the space, and their bedrooms tucked in another corner. Lots of space was left over: the area with the unused fireplace, and the few great cabinets off to the left that displayed crystal and porcelain bowls brought back from Paris, Moscow, and farther destinations. Some were purchased for great sums during travel or had been commissioned from famous artists. Some had been seized as spoils of war.

  This oversized room and its priceless contents were the history of her family. The art, precious metals, and fragile glassware were the fruits of their extraordinary wealth and political and military power.

  The roof above them didn’t keep the rain off any better than had the roof of their cozy townhouse in Las Vegas. The palace walls covered in ornate plasterworks didn’t block the wintry wind any more thoroughly than did the walls of the cheap hotel in the red-light district of Pâquis in Geneva.

  The thick Persian carpet under their feet—hand-crafted in Persia a century before the land became Iran—didn’t keep Flicka’s feet any warmer than the red braided-rag rug that Indrani had handed down to them in Las Vegas.

  Yes, the art and objects were beautiful, but the lust for collecting and keeping them had turned into something evil. Awe of the beauty of art had mutated into avarice for more and more things, and respect for craftsmanship had fallen into an evil pride, believing that their ownership was evidence that the Hannover family was somehow more deserving of its riches than other people.

  The extraordinary uselessness of this room and the fifty or so other rooms alike in their uselessness, though they differed in the types of wealth locked away in glass cases, astonished her for the first time.

  “Tea, or would you prefer sherry?” her father asked, holding a bell to call for servants.

  “Tea, I think,” she said, still staring at the glitter and shine. It was all beautiful, yes, but the waste and miserliness of it repelled her.

  So many clichés ran through her head.

  A bowl was a bowl was a bowl. These porcelain and crystal dishes did not keep the meat from hitting the floor any better than an earthenware or hewn-wood platter, other than the crystal might contain lead that might leach and thus poison the food.

  Her noble and royal ancestors glared down from royal portraits that included elements symbolizing their wealth and power: representations of crowns and tiaras, priceless jewels, thrones, scepters, sumptuous and fashionable gowns and clothes, and the sashes, breast pins, and collars of royal orders of merit.

  Those ancestors were all quite dead, now. Most of their bones lay in the Welfenmausoleum at Herrenhausen Palace, where Flicka would probably also be buried when she died someday. No one living had any memory of them. These portraits, a list of their names and received honors, and their writings were all that remained of them.

  And their DNA, of course, DNA that ran through Phillipp’s cells and Flicka’s, and through the cells of the tiny clump that was growing in her womb.

  The money invested in these items and the upkeep could have funded her charitable foundations for a thousand years, or it could have been used to make a
significant change for many people all at once. If they liquidated all this wealth, they should divest themselves of the castle itself. That sort of money could change the world.

  But it also meant that someone else would have to buy it, soaking up that wealth, and the overall net wealth concentrated in the hands of people who hoarded it, trickling their diamonds and gold between their hands, would not change.

  The world wouldn’t really change.

  Not until wealthy people valued human beings more than shiny rocks.

  A servant wearing an identical black dress to all the other servants pushed a tea service cart into the room. The squat pot gleamed silver in the golden light. Flicka had last seen the Tiffany & Company “Chrysanthemum” sterling silver coffee and tea service at a brunch her father had thrown for some German artist he’d wanted to cultivate. She should be honored that they’d brought it out for her, but instead, she remembered that a similar set of teapots and sugar bowls had sold at Sotheby’s in New York for well over fifty thousand dollars.

  Her father poured the tea into a delicate, tall teacup. The brilliant paint depicting butterflies, berries, flowers, and dragonflies scrolled around the rim and halfway down the cup, and the handle was a shining gold butterfly wing instead of the usual curlicue.

  Ah, yes, the design was Versace By Rosenthal, Flicka remembered. Her father had ordered and received the new china set just before Wulfram had thrown him out of the Marienburg Castle and cut off his funds. She’d liked the butterfly-wing handles at the time. So innovative, for a teacup.

  The Tiffany & Company pot had brewed the tea adequately, and the Versace By Rosenthal cup did indeed keep the tea from spilling into her lap.

  In her mouth, the tea was smooth and tangy, and she recognized it as Da-Hong Pao, a loose tea that cost more than thirty times its weight in gold, often more than ten thousand dollars per pot for the aged tea from the original mother trees.

  Even the tea her father served was an obscene waste. He didn’t even like tea that much. At the very least, a real tea aficionado should be drinking this tea. There weren’t many of the original mother trees left, and this tea would be extinct someday soon.

  Tears flooded her eyes again. She wanted to throw this waste across the room, but she sipped the tea.

  “Cookie?” her father asked, holding out a plate.

  Lemon cookies, from the warm, citrus scent that wafted from the plate. She forced her mouth to say, “No, thank you. Carbs.”

  “Yes, I understand.” He lowered the plate and also didn’t take one.

  God, she wanted a damned cookie. Maybe she would stop crying if she ate a cookie.

  Maybe the staff would eat the untouched cookies in the kitchen, though they might toss them in the trash, wasting them.

  Her eyes burned more.

  When she looked back at Dieter, he was resting against the wall and staring at his feet, but his shoulders were nearly to his strong jaw. His hands clenched into hard fists.

  Flicka turned back. “Can I borrow a phone? I need to call Wulfie.”

  Her father blinked. “I don’t know why you would want to call when I’ve already informed him that we would be retrieving you and will be occupying Schloss Marienburg for the foreseeable future.”

  “I just want to talk to Wulfie.” Her throat tightened, and she was mortified at how desperate she sounded.

  “Here. Use mine. We’ll procure a phone for you tomorrow.”

  Her father’s phone was the newest version of the very best phone. Three icons dotted the home screen: contacts, phone, and texts. He probably didn’t know how to use it as anything other than a phone.

  She dialed Wulf’s phone number with her thumbs, and it rang only twice before he answered sternly, “Father.”

  “Wulfie, it’s me. It’s Flicka.” Her voice broke.

  Wulf said, “Tell me a word.”

  “Fiddlesticks,” Flicka said.

  Her father frowned at her across the Tiffany silver tea set, and one of his silver-gold eyebrows rose.

  She told Wulfram, “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  Wulf’s relieved sigh was audible all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. “Are you at Schloss Marienburg?”

  “Yes, with father and all his staff. Every, single one of them.” While she was fairly certain that the reason her father had sent his staff en masse to retrieve her was due to some sentiment on his part, the maneuver may have turned into an attempt to re-occupy Schloss Marienburg.

  “Is Raphael Mirabaud with you?” Wulf asked, his voice serene and neutral.

  His choice of the name Raphael Mirabaud contained his anger.

  Dieter still stood against the back wall, his hands curled into fists at his sides as he watched Flicka, her father, and the other security staff. Golden light from the sconces played over his blond hair and the black leather of his jacket.

  Flicka said, “Yes,” and nothing else because everyone in the room could hear her.

  Wulfram said in her ear, “You didn’t get permission from me and Aunt Elizabeth.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I don’t care.”

  “You should care what he is,” Wulfram said. “You don’t remember the Archangel raids. You were too little, and there’s a world of damnation in only that. During the Archangel raids, when we were living up in Rolle, Switzerland felt like a war zone. It was worse than when that lone maniac with a gun killed Constantin. They locked down Institut Le Rosey. Every day, there was news of arrests, murders, and crimes revealed. The whole of Europe was under siege, from the Port of Rotterdam to Constantinople. The police raided warehouses, ships, and offices. People were shot. Police were murdered in their homes. Le Rosey had armed guards patrolling, and father sent more security for us.”

  “I just remember not being able to play outside on the playground,” she said.

  Oh, that sounded bad.

  “Right,” Wulf said. “Indoor recess and gym for months because it was too dangerous to go outside.”

  “That wasn’t his fault, and it was over a decade ago.”

  Dieter turned and looked at her, his face impassive and his eyes glinting like steel.

  The phone whispered in Wulf’s voice, “We’ll arrange for an annulment.”

  “No,” Flicka said. “No. Don’t. Not at all. I just wanted to tell you that I’m safely with father at Schloss Marienburg, and now I have to go.”

  She hung up the phone and handed it back to her father. He was watching her, but she didn’t think he’d heard what Wulfram had told her. She said, “I’m so tired. I’m so exhausted that I’m out of sorts. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss whether I should do something on social media.”

  Her father nodded and rang the bell again. “I’ll have someone guide you to a room, and I’ll see that your servant has a room tonight.”

  Flicka glanced back, but Dieter was shaking his head, heading her off from defending him.

  She told her father, “Thank you.”

  Flicka went to sleep that night in one of the suites of Schloss Marienburg, a sumptuous bedroom draped in velvet and silver, an ostentatious display of yet more useless wealth.

  She’d been asleep for an hour or so when, once again, the locked door clicked open in the dark, and Dieter crawled into bed with her. She knew it was him from the clean scent of warm musk, and the slight French accent in his hoarse whisper, “Don’t cry. I’ll make sure you’re all right. We can leave, if you want to. I’ll make everything all right. Don’t cry.”

  In the dark, Flicka wrapped her arms and legs around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “I’m all right now that you’re here. Please don’t leave. Stay with me. Please don’t leave.”

  “I’ll figure out how to make Wulfram all right with this.”

  “That’s not your job. He’s my brother. I’ll deal with him. Just don’t leave.”

  “I won’t leave. I will never leave you. Don’t cry, my love, my Durchlauchtig.”

  He made love to her that night in Schlo
ss Marienburg, slowly and sweetly and whispering in her ear that he loved her.

  A Public Statement

  Flicka von Hannover

  It was an act of desperation

  and of love.

  The next morning, back in the sitting room in Schloss Marienburg, Flicka looked into the lens of the phone Dieter Schwarz held. He was holding it out and away from his face at eye level, which was slightly above the top of her head.

  Good.

  If you hate someone and want to sabotage a picture of them, want them to look truly hideous and make it look as if they have gained fifty pounds or more, drop your camera below their chin. It makes everyone look like a goblin. That’s why everyone who knows what they’re doing takes selfies with their arm raised in the air and to the side.

  Dieter asked, “Are you ready for this?”

  Flicka took a deep breath and shook her shoulders a little, trying to release the tension. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes.” She stared straight at him. “It’s time to burn it all down.”

  They had set up a chair in her father’s sitting room near the windows, where the morning sunlight would glow on her skin. She knew selfie tricks like that. Instead, the sunlight caught the gold and amber highlights in Dieter’s hair and short beard and caressed his tanned skin, distracting her utterly from thinking about what she was going to say.

  Behind her, the camera shot would include the sunlight striking the opulent excess of the sitting room: the gold-leafed chairs, the sumptuous velvets and silks, and the oil paintings displayed in gold frames so ornate that they looked more like royal crowns than an edged platform to hold a painting onto a wall.

  “Okay.” Dieter tapped the phone screen and held it with both hands, trying to keep it perfectly still. “It’s connecting.”

  Flicka lifted her chin.