Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  “I’m not, I’m not,” he assured me, but the smile lines around his eyes betrayed him.

  There was no malice in his amusement, so I said, “My friends and I tend to sit around talking, or we go to small theater plays. When we have the cash and no school deadlines. Who was that guy?”

  “Brother of a second cousin, one of her new flirts.”

  “All right, we flushed one vulture. Now what?”

  He beckoned to a prowling taxi. “I don’t know if he knows what’s going on, but I expect he’s either going to call someone, or call on us, or both. But we won’t be here. First thing in the morning we leave Zagreb.”

  And we did. Again it was Emilio, Alec, and me in the Daimler. We drove straight to the coast, to a fantastically beautiful hotel in Opatija on the Kvarner Bay, near Rijeka. I was amazed that a Communist country had once allowed such flagrant pandering to bourgeois luxury, for the place boasted of its establishment 150 years ago. Alec told me that the Dalmatian coast had been an aristo playground long before Soviet-style Communism stomped down its heavy boot; wealthy people had been going there to recuperate from their excesses for over a century.

  “Ruli’s well known here,” he said as he stopped the engine. “Her favorite retreat from . . . family surfeit, let’s say. Got her firmly in mind?”

  “Curtain up!” I waved my manicured, scarlet nails, then reached for the car door.

  He flicked up a warning hand. “Wait! Remember, she’s the daughter of a duchess. Duchesses do not open their own car doors.” So I sat there feeling like a fake while he walked around and opened the door for me.

  I had pictured myself waltzing into the hotel and handing out orders with all the panache of Auntie Mame in the Rosalind Russell movie my mother loves. But the moment I walked into that fine lobby and encountered the snooty gazes of hotel employees and guests (I couldn’t tell which was which at first glance), nerves froze my face in a smile that probably made me look like I’d had major surgery without an anesthetic. I trailed after Alec, completely unable to say anything.

  Luckily they must have known what to expect because the desk clerk began, in a solicitous voice, by asking how my mother was and then he offered me various things from drinks to some fresh fruit. When I got up to the two-room suite chosen for me, a chambermaid started a hot bath, my luggage appeared behind me, and a houseboy opened a bottle of champagne. While waiting for the elevator I had pulled out a cigarette for Alec to light, as much to give my hands something to do as anything, then I withdrew with it to a chair near the window that gave a splendid view of the greeny blue sea.

  Whenever anyone came near I waved the cigarette at them, saying thinly, “Merci, merci.”

  They took it as instant dismissal and filed out. As soon as I was alone I poured half the champagne down the sink, pitched the cigarette after it, brushed my teeth, and retreated gratefully into the bath.

  Dinner started out okay. We had a great table, great food, and after a few sips of Ruli’s favorite drink, and no shock or horror from anyone around me I slowly relaxed into the Ruli role.

  That left me intensely aware of my companion—who gave me that lovely smile, spoke with the silvery, intimate voice, and was doing his best to pretend I was someone else.

  We hit two nightclubs in the hotel complex, one of which was also a casino. There was always a fresh drink at hand, so I kept sipping. Ruli’s drinks were sweet and super-strong. I didn’t intend to get drunk. I hate getting drunk—I hate the loss of control, and drinking and driving in LA is never a good idea. But I wasn’t driving, I wasn’t in LA, and I needed something to do with my eyes so I wouldn’t be watching him. More, I needed a wall between will and desire.

  At first the liquor seemed a good idea. You know, fuzziness, numbness, yadda yadda.

  The floorshow in the second place began to revolve gently before my eyes; I don’t remember leaving. What I do remember is the touch of Alec’s fingers on my bare arm, cool and warm at the same time, the brush of his hair—as fine and soft as it looked—against my cheek when he bent to hear something I said, my awareness of his breathing, which I couldn’t hear because the music was loud enough to reverberate through bones and teeth. But I noticed the pulse at his throat, and the slight rise and fall of his shirt over his chest, all this against the constantly changing kaleidoscope of color and noise in the background.

  And so I drank more, trying to dull the effect, but what the alcohol did, as it usually does, is betray me by dissolving that wall between the bleak logic of will and revealing all the fire, charm, dazzle of desire.

  My next memory is stumbling into my hotel room, cursing when my ankle twinged. Alec’s arm went around me, and he took my weight with seemingly effortless strength. Feeling his body pressed against mine from shoulder to hip sent the blaze of promise through my sodden senses.

  I stared up into his face. “You’re cute. You are cute, you know . . . I hope I’m not helping the bad guys here. I mean, who is Black Michael?”

  “Never mind, we’re almost done,” he murmured into my hair. “Will you be all right on your own?”

  “You’re leaving?” I croaked, falling backward onto the bed. And laughed when my feet, five miles away in another city, were tickled by my shoes being gently pulled off. I held out my arms as the world gently revolved. “A good night kiss?”

  “Good night,” he said, bent, and his lips brushed my forehead, his touch cool with pale fire.

  “Oooh,” I said intelligently.

  His smile turned pensive as he moved out of my line of sight. I sighed as a counterpane dropped over me. “You’re too much a gentleman to take advantage? Or do kings disdain the commoners?”

  Way down, beneath the lake of booze, the sane part of my mind recognized that when I dried out I was going to regret making an ass of myself.

  “I don’t know,” he responded, lightly enough. “I am not a king. And you are not in any sense common.”

  The light winked out and the door closed quietly.

  THIRTEEN

  WHEN I WOKE I felt like I’d been chewing the exhaust pipes on ancient buses. Worse, I remembered distinctly the pass I’d made at him, drunk, no doubt stinking of cigarettes and liquor and sweat, for this was the Mediterranean and it was the height of summer. Makeup probably smeared all over my face.

  I groaned, wondering what monkey-butt my stupid remark about class had flown out of. Worst of all, there was no good answer. What was he supposed to say? “No, you’re not high class enough for a bash on my royal beauty rest.” Or “No, class distinctions don’t matter, I’m totally not into you.” Oh, that would make me feel so much better!

  I glared at my scarlet nails, wondering why human nature was so perverse. He’d given me a graceful compliment in turning me down, implying that I was out of the ordinary—maybe he was practiced at turning down the various women who made passes at him, and it was a standard line—but it had been kindly said. And, I’m sure, kindly meant. He could so easily have done the aristo strut and sneered, but then I could have despised him for it.

  And wouldn’t that make the rest of the journey fun!

  From now on we were drinking buddies, I resolved. Except I wouldn’t drink. No more liquor slapped back by the gallon like the night before.

  Having decided that, I sat up to face the day.

  A thousand bowling balls promptly crashed through my skull. But get up I did, and moved to the window to throw it open. “Hell!” I snarled at the bright Dalmatian morning.

  Steely sunlight and summer heat swatted me right back.

  I took a hot bath and brushed my teeth twice. Then draped a towel over my head and bent over the sink with the hot water going full blast, trying to ease my smoke-dried sinuses by breathing steam.

  I was in the midst of this when I heard a knock on the door. Tightening the belt on the rose dressing gown, I wandered slowly out.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Breakfast,” came Alec’s voice, and I shivered with embarrassment. I
t would have been better had he just taken off, I thought, feeling like a worm.

  No. It happened. I had to face him, as I’d faced the day. I opened the door, and a silent houseboy wheeled in one of those room service carts I’d only seen in movies. Alec looked alert and elegant, dark hair ordered. His fresh white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and rolled to the elbows.

  The sight of his throat, the edge of his collar bones, those strong forearms, and my knees threatened to give out. I turned away, making a business of smoothing the bedding and fluffing the—

  Pillows! Bed!

  I stalked to the window and shut it, then moved to the air-conditioning and jammed it on full blast. When I sidled a peek, Alec tipped the houseboy, and then sank down in the armchair, like he hadn’t matched me drink for drink the night before. Do kings get superpowered livers? The thought both annoyed me and made me want to laugh.

  “It’s going to be warm today,” he said. In the light from the window, I discovered his eyes were marked with tiredness underneath, his eyelids crimped underneath as if he had a headache. So maybe he did feel the effects. But of course he’d be cool and civilized in a force nine hurricane. “Tea?”

  “Yes, thanks,” I said, gulping another helping or two of the frigid air blowing out of the vent. Should I apologize for making that pass? He’d say something polite, and then what, a totally awkward breakfast?

  Better take the coward’s way out, and pretend it never happened.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Rotten. But if you are delicately referring to my beet-red face, I was snorting steam to ease my tortured breathing passages.” I winced as I lowered myself into the opposite armchair and sipped at the tea he’d poured out. It helped. After a minute or two, I sighed. “Wodehouse was right. Tea does restore the tissues after a night on the tiles. As long as I don’t move.”

  “Drink the liquids,” he said, indicating the array of filtered water, OJ, and tea on that tray.

  “Right. So, what next?”

  “You continue down the coast with Emilio. We seem—”

  His cell phone buzzed, and with a word of apology he took it out, checked the number, and a slight frown furrowed his brows. Geez, I thought, why couldn’t he at least have a ring tone by some eighties boy band, something that would restore my sense of balance through sheer ridiculousness?

  He excused himself and did not return.

  So . . . he didn’t want to be around me? Well, who could blame him? I’d totally blown it—but at least if he was gone I wouldn’t have to sit here with my stomach boiling with regret. And in the sober light of day, with calming, civilized tea in me, I decided I was glad he’d turned me down. He was too high octane for me. It wasn’t only the crown prince stuff, which I still found hard to believe. Marius Alexander Ysvorod the baseball player or the sous-chef would have been just as involved in his own world, leaving me hyperaware that I couldn’t spend a hot weekend and then leave the next day, with no regrets, and no further interest.

  I got dressed and went downstairs alone. As promised, Emilio was waiting with the Daimler for me.

  The two of us cruised down the beautiful Dalmatian coast, slowed by an afternoon shower. Twice his cell phone went off, and both times he held short, low-voiced conversations in the language of Dobrenica.

  We arrived at the next hotel well after dark, and I kept my promise to myself, holing up and doing a session with the major verbs of the Dobreni language. After that, for the first time in ages, I went to sleep with a sense of accomplishment.

  In the morning my ankle felt well enough for me to work cautiously through a series of less strenuous ballet warm-ups, and a full set of push-ups, which left my body feeling much better than it had for days.

  Alec was waiting for me when I came down to the balmy, sun-drenched terrace where they were serving breakfast. He closed the newspaper, then offered to share it with me.

  I waved it away, saying, “No thanks. It’s never anything but bad news, and that I can catch up with at home—”

  I had only a few seconds’ warning before a middle-aged couple arrowed between adjacent tables and descended on us, chattering away in French about what a surprise, and did we know you would be here my dears?

  I shut my mouth and started fumbling in my bag to find the cigarettes as Alec stood and shook hands with them. The man reached down to take my hand and kiss it, his compliments on my beauty fatuous but also the words of a non-intimate.

  Then it was the woman’s turn; she was horribly thin, with too many jewels glittering hard against her skeletal frame, her overtanned skin like a well-basted Thanksgiving turkey’s. Her mouth creased in a thin smile, her lips hardly moving a millimeter as she mooed in French, “Aurelia chérie! But how is your darling mother?”

  At that my mind blanked, then Alec’s instruction When in doubt look bored saved me. Pouting, I said, “Bored.”

  She gave a false trill. “You must remind her! We insist you come to us in Mykonos. But soon!”

  “I’ll tell her,” I said.

  They took their leave, the woman giving me air kisses. As soon as they were gone I muttered out of the side of my mouth, “Who were those people?”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “Gaston and Tuti Laszlo-Salazar are their names. Does it matter beyond that?”

  “They couldn’t possibly have anything to do with—with Ruli’s being missing.”

  “Right. Part of your moth—part of Aunt Sisi’s crowd.” He chuckled softly. “‘Bored.’ Brilliantly apt.”

  That chuckle zapped through my nerves, but I waited it out. Drinking buddies. “Brainstorm, eh?” I polished my nails casually on my sleeve. “So now what?”

  “I think we’d better move on today, but you’ll be glad to know that we are nearly done with this masquerade.”

  “Has it had any effect?”

  “Possibly.”

  I started humming the theme from Jaws. As he got up and came round to the back of my chair, there was the faintest twitch of his lips to show he’d heard it.

  Half an hour later he was gone.

  When I came down from brushing my teeth, it was to see Kilber and Emilio finishing a conference—both of them with cell phones in hand. Kilber rumbled something gravelly about Durchlaucht, gave me an unsmiling nod of greeting, almost a bow, then went silently to take my bags from the bellboy.

  Durchlaucht—I’d heard that before, but never so clearly. An outmoded title in German, but there was no irony in Kilber’s face or voice. Roughly translated, it meant “your highness.”

  Emilio handed me into the car as Kilber loaded my bags into the trunk. Then, to my relief, Emilio climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine, leaving Kilber to stride away across the parking lot.

  I had the evening to myself, which I spent working with the Dobreni dictionary.

  The next morning I rose, sober and brimming with intellectual triumph and, after a light breakfast, again worked through my ballet and fencing warm-ups—this time more strenuously, to smooth out the stiffness from the stretches the day before.

  After that I ran downstairs and took a vigorous hike along the beach, enjoying the beauty of the coast and the oddity of seeing and smelling sand, sea, seaweed, and crying gulls on a southwest facing beach, all the while knowing I was thousands of miles from these familiar things in Southern California.

  I’d almost made it back to the hotel when Alec, in slacks and shirt-sleeves, strolled out from the hotel terrace to meet me. After a speculative glance he asked, “How’s your ankle?”

  “Totally fine. I felt if I didn’t get some exercise my legs would wither up like the wicked witch’s in Oz.”

  I gave him a speculative scan of my own. He didn’t seem to have slept at all.

  He met my gaze blandly. “Shall we go turn up our noses at a couple of the shops, then get some lunch?”

  I hesitated, aware of the dull colors and lines of exhaustion in the fine skin around his eyes. He’s not your business, Kim. He�
�s the real Ruli’s.

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “Lead me to it.”

  We cruised some of the nicer stores, lingering over handmade Russian mosaics, Turkish rugs, and Greek artifacts, guessing if they were real or fake and trying to convince the other with patently fake scholarship. Nothing serious—nothing intimate. Just easy fun.

  At noon we had a long lunch out on the beach terrace. Again we shared some wine. I remembered my vow and sipped, so it wasn’t wine but the good food, the bright sun, and the reflective blue gaze across the table from me that made me heady, particularly when we made a foray into our respective childhoods, specifically reminiscing over pranks we pulled as kids. I felt this sudden, almost paralyzing wish that the moment—the day, the breeze, the company—would never end.

  But it did. And when we got up to go, I forgot Ruli’s high heels and tumbled. My hands scrabbled to clutch at the table but Alec was there first, righting me with hands that moved with remarkable swiftness to each of my arms.

  “Thanks. Forgot the spikes,” I said breathlessly, looking away from him and making a business of searching over the table for the clutch purse.

  His hands lifted and he stepped away. “All right?”

  “Whoa, I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much.” I grinned, trying to recapture the earlier mirth. “But you said Ruli doesn’t laugh. I hope I haven’t blown my character.”

  He smiled back, and his ring flashed blue fire as his fingers flicked to the single dimple in my cheek in the lightest and briefest of touches. “Not with that.”

  No time for a reaction; he went on to talk about the next resort on the list.

  But the gesture stayed with me. My grandmother used to touch that dimple on my cheek with her forefinger when I was little, and call it her kiss-spot. The memory was poignant, from living gesture to remembered. But it made me uneasy.

  The sense I was missing something strengthened as we drove about Split, looking at the beautiful light stone buildings with the grand archways, and the palm trees. Palm trees! Stupid to think I’d only find them in LA where they weren’t even native.