Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

  Everything seemed off-kilter from those innocent trees to the crowded city drenched in the strong Mediterranean sun, so like that at home. The car insulated us from the crowd yet bound us into intimate space. I kept myself busy looking at ancient cathedrals and the boats floating out on the sea, anywhere but at the guy who would soon be out of my life forever.

  We stopped for dinner at a hilltop Greek restaurant from which the aromas of roast lamb and spices like cardamom and ginger and saffron drifted all the way to the road, free but powerful advertising.

  We didn’t talk much. He seemed even more tired than I was, and he was definitely preoccupied, stilling every time his cell phone burred, and it burred a lot. He was too polite to take calls while we were dining (or too private) but when I came out of the restroom, he was talking fast, his expression tense.

  He clapped the phone shut as soon as I rejoined him.

  Afterward we went to an exclusive hilltop night spot, packed with a crowd in designer clothes, the guys with burnished tan-framed white grins in Hollywood Hustler duds: flowered silk shirts open to Gucci belts, ultra-tight pants, folds of high-denomination bills in gold or platinum money clips slid snugly into flat pockets. Some of the guys wore super baggy gangsta threads. The women were thin, with brittle movements like angry butterflies, and dark-painted eyes and blood-colored lips.

  I felt like I was on Mars in the disguise of a Martian. Disorientation unsettled me as we passed a mirror and a strange woman glared back at me, cold-faced in chic makeup, clothed in an uncompromisingly high-fashion dress, and wary-stepping in strappy high-heeled shoes and a tiny, matching bag.

  Alec looked remarkably self-possessed and stylishly unobtrusive against this backdrop. He found us a table with his usual magic (I’m sure it was the magic of money, it’s only that I never saw him do it), ordered drinks, and was lighting my cigarette for me as I breathed, “Curtain up,” when we got our first visitor.

  Three guys in a row swooped down and kissed me, but none (after exchanging greetings with Alec who sat smiling and unmoved) tried sitting with us. The last one, a rakishly handsome Italian, was the most caressing. He shot Alec a smiling glance of challenge, then pressed me to dance with him.

  This was a first. I shot my own look at Alec, but he sat there drinking, giving me no clues. Surely Ruli danced. Anyway, I never turn down a chance to dance, and hadn’t for ages, and so I got up.

  The band was playing an irresistible reggae blood-pounder, and with initial pleasure I saw my partner knew what he was doing. Hips and shoulders moving in slow, controlled circles, we prowled around each other, then he took hold of me in a cross between swing and tango. When he pulled me in close I spun away on my toes, my dark green silky skirt flaring about me.

  Ah, it was good to be dancing again; my partner was no more than an adjunct, like the band. Eyes turned to watch, but I did not care, and nothing punctured my fun until a soft kiss pressed, warm and moist, behind my ear. Startled, I turned to see my partner’s face inches away, surprise mixed with a possessive smirk. Does Ruli dance differently?

  Well, too late. We whirled and twirled and swayed, then once again my enjoyment chilled when he started touching me, longer and longer caresses, his body heat, his breathing, closing me in a cage of smothering lust. I stared up into suggestive dark eyes.

  What if she likes him? I couldn’t shove him away, but I could dance away.

  Turning with practiced ease, he stepped close. Hands explored my back as he breathed into the hair above my ear, “You move as if inspired, sweet Ruli.” His hand slid with skill under my arm to brush my breast as he whispered intimately into my ear, “You were always so stiff. So cold, when we danced. Now you are . . . hot.” On that last word he shifted from French to Italian, breathing the syllables into my ear. I tried to ease out of his grip, but he was like an octopus, tentacles wandering over my body. “When do you leave the formidable Alexander?” And then he tongued my ear.

  Ruli. The urge to smack him turned into panic. This guy was one of Ruli’s lovers. I shrugged his tentacle off my boob and tried for neutrality, since I couldn’t manage friendliness: “Haven’t decided yet.”

  “Can I convince you to come tonight?” He pressed against me again, but with a twist of my hips I twirled under his arm and away. And smiled.

  “If I change my mind I’ll know where you are, won’t I?” I said, hoping it was true enough (and yet ambiguous enough) to keep him at bay.

  He gave me a smug grin that made my palm burn to smack it off his face. This guy was her sweetie. She liked him. I kept my own face strictly bland, and my hands at my sides, and contented myself with keeping free of his grasp for the minute or two remaining of the dance.

  At the end he took me back to Alec, who gave me a mildly considering glance and said, “You all right?”

  “Another minute and you would have had to ask if he’d be all right,” I stated through smiling lips.

  Simmering annoyance made me breathe hard, then Alec added softly, “He never doubted your identity.”

  I nodded, the last of my annoyance vanishing. That guy had zero interest in Aurelia Kim Murray, which meant I was convincing as Aurelia-who-likes-to-be-called-Ruli, right up close and personal.

  Alec shifted his chair slightly toward mine, his posture subtly intimate. I sensed at once that he was not closing me in so much as closing everyone else out. For his hands stayed where they were, and his eyes gave no clue to the thoughts behind them.

  He said in English, “I think we’re done. We’ll go on to Dubrovnik in the morning. You’ve earned that cruise, twice over. Where would you like to go?” He lifted his head to glance around. In French, “Another drink?”

  A cruise—the reward to the good sport. Thank you and good-bye.

  It was straightforward, it was exactly what we had agreed on, and I’d known it was coming. But that didn’t stop me from feeling truly horrible.

  He was waiting for an answer.

  I shrugged. “Yes. No. I hate this place,” I muttered like a sulky teenager, and I struggled to get a grip.

  “Shall we stroll through the casino?”

  “Sure.”

  He put a hand on my arm, protective rather than possessive. No one else came near us as we descended into the thickly carpeted gambling room.

  Watching the intensity of people’s focus on the turn of cards, the flash of wheels, was no longer any fun. I excused myself to go to the restroom.

  I stood at the mirror repairing the lipstick and glared at my mouth to see if the red line was even. As I grimaced that shadow in my left cheek winked in and out. Alec’s touch that morning burned my flesh in memory, a palimpsest over the memory of my grandmother . . .

  Oh God. Oh God.

  Who did not have the dimple.

  I bared my teeth at the mirror. My mother had the dimple, the same lopsided smile as I had, which transformed her round and serene face into unexpected charm and whimsy . . .

  Ruli has the dimple.

  “Grandfather,” I said to the mirror. How long had I managed to go without seeing the obvious connection? Because Gran had said of the dimple, “It’s a family characteristic.”

  She had never said which family.

  Pressing my fingers into my eyes, I tried to remember—anything—I’d been told about my grandfather, Daniel Atelier. I heard scraps and snippets of voices . . . Gran’s . . . Mama’s . . . Alec’s.

  My focus broke when two matrons armored in silk and pearls flanked me determinedly, spearing me with glares of disapproval for hogging the mirror. I fumbled around lighting a cigarette, hoping they would leave, but they stood there, obviously outwaiting me, so I walked out.

  Alec leaned on a rail gazing down into the gambling pits. At my approach he straightened up, and said quietly, “What is it?”

  I jabbed my painted forefinger into my cheek. “You said Ruli has it, too. From whom did she get it?”

  The curve of his mouth tightened slightly, though his eyes did not change. “Fro
m her mother.”

  “And she from—?”

  “From her father.”

  “Her father. What did the wicked Count Armandros look like?”

  When Alec first told the story I’d pictured some tall, cold guy with slick dark hair and a monocle, a villain in a melodrama. Despite all the obvious evidence surrounding me.

  And so I was heartsick but not surprised when Alec said, gently, “He was tall. Blond. Slim. Athletic. Light brown eyes, and a distinctive smile, with a long dimple on one side. He was photographed in the traditional uniform when he came of age.”

  “He was Daniel Atelier? But he couldn’t be!”

  He plucked the forgotten Ruli cigarette out of my fingers, and flicked it spinning into an ashtray stand before it could burn me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  FOURTEEN

  HE DROVE UP to the palisades overlooking the sea, pulled over to the side of the road, and parked. We were alone there along the barren road, us and the rocky plateau. Below us the sea, above the clear night sky.

  “You have a right to know the whole story, but I did not want to be the one to tell you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because, under the circumstances, everything I tell you seems to worsen the personal consequences.”

  I shot back with instant hostility, “My mother and I can handle the consequences of the truth. And it’s no one else’s business.”

  Alec showed no reaction at all. He was staring out through the windshield at the bright stars glimmering peacefully in the sky, the distant fairylike twinkle of boats and buildings along the shore.

  I got a grip on my temper. “I’m sorry I snapped. It’s so—so disturbing. My grandmother’s life—so awful. So . . . Please go on.”

  He was silent a few seconds longer, then said, “When Princess Lily renounced her title she told her father if she could not marry the man she had chosen she would not marry anyone, and she stayed true to her promise.”

  As usual, all the implications were slow to hit me. I said, “So he followed her to Vienna, is that it?”

  “He took her there, and found her a place to live. He visited her in secret afterward, though not often, as the war made it increasingly difficult to travel.”

  “But what about Princess Rose, Gran’s twin?”

  “He married her. No difficulties, as far as Lily was concerned: when she left the country she told Armandros henceforth to leave mention of Dobrenica, its affairs, and its people back in Dobrenica. She intended to make a new life, which meant severing the old. This gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted.”

  “And so he did, and didn’t get caught. What a sleazebag,” I fumed. “I take it the old—ah, the king gave Rose permission to marry him?”

  “No. They married first, then came to the king begging for forgiveness. It was well managed by her family.”

  “And she wasn’t disinherited?”

  “From the title, yes. That was passed to my father, as I told you.”

  “So Rose had a daughter, who was not a crown princess.”

  “Elisabeth Aurelia. Her nickname is Sisi—”

  “Which is the nickname of Emperor Franz Joseph’s wife. I know that.”

  “The nickname was chosen to remind the world that Sisi was, or so they thought, the last descendent of the twin princesses.”

  “Yeah, a political boost there, eh? But she’s a von Mecklundburg, not a Dsaret. And I suppose Sisi’s son, Ruli’s brother, what’s his name again, is another Armandros—”

  “No. The von Mecklundburg heir always has a double first name, beginning with Karl, in honor of the emperor who first granted them their title. He was born Karl-Anton, but he’s Tony to everyone except his mother, who is a stickler for formality.”

  “Okay, got that.”

  “Armandros was a second son, heir to his brother, who had no sons. They both died in the war. Sisi married the second cousin who inherited the title, so she is now the Duchess of Riev Dhiavilyi. Her son Tony is now heir, which makes him Count Karl-Anton.”

  “Okay. And you two Ysvorods—there are only two of you?—are both Marius Alexander, but senior is Milo and junior is Alec. Got it.”

  “Right. I should mention that Princess Rose, your grandmother’s twin, died three months after my Aunt Sisi’s birth.”

  I gasped. “How awful! What happened?”

  “It was winter, she was ill, and rumor had it she became terribly thin by refusing to eat so she could resume court life at Christmas in a new Chanel gown. As soon as Sisi was born, Rose had her packed off to the Eyrie on Devil’s Mountain, where she remained until the family decamped to England. In the people’s eyes, this cemented the fact that Sisi was a von Mecklundburg, not a Dsaret.”

  “So she was definitely not a princess.”

  “Right. Not long after he abdicated, the king died. My father never had an official coronation, because by then the Germans held the country, but he’s generally regarded as king.”

  “Generally. Not universally?”

  “Can you guess which family doesn’t?”

  He had turned to face me, his right arm stretched along the back of the seat, the signet glinting with cool blue light inches from my tense arm, his palm turned politely away. “That portrait you described was taken of Armandros in the old Dobreni uniform, as I said. There’s a bigger portrait hanging in the family castle on Devil’s Mountain. The print that your grandmother has was probably made from the photograph hanging in the memorial museum in Riev. Armandros was one of the leaders of the Dobreni freedom fighters, young as he was.”

  “So he ran back and forth between Gran and Rose?”

  “Flew back and forth. He’d learned to pilot after he won a small plane in a card game. He ran a series of bombing raids against the Germans, desperately and brilliantly risky, considering how little we had in the way of materiel and trained men. But in the last days when the Germans had been beaten back, it seemed our world was about to end and the coup de grace was to be delivered by the advancing Russians—with the collusion of the Allies. Much as he hated the Third Reich, he felt that the Nazis were finished. At that point Germany was fighting for its existence. He joined an offshoot of the Ostlegionen under the name Mecklund, in hopes of slowing the Russian advance, until he was shot down.”

  “So I was right about the Ostlegionen.”

  “But wrong about his name. It was right before he made this desperate gesture that he finally communicated with my father, telling him that your grandmother had parted with him, and gave him her address. He knew he’d never come back alive. Maybe he didn’t intend to.”

  “She dumped him? Gran? I don’t believe it!”

  “They disagreed on ideological grounds. He saw a distinction between Germany and Nazism, and further that the Soviets under Stalin were now the biggest threat to all of Europe, not only to Dobrenica. After Rose died, he couldn’t get back across Europe to Paris. So he went to the one person he knew could be relied on to take care of Lily. Four months later Armandros was dead.”

  “I see,” I said, but I didn’t yet, not at all. “And so, by the time your father got around to checking—”

  The even voice did not increase in volume or sharpen in tone, nevertheless Alec cut across my sarcasm. “He was in the midst of the battle at home, and by the time he made it across the ruins of Europe to look for her, he found the rue de l’Atelier had been bombed, and the people were beginning to deal with the aftermath.”

  The facts began to make sense, puzzle pieces drawing slowly together. But the reasons, the motivations still were a mystery.

  “He tracked down a few dazed former inhabitants, none of whom could account for Madam von Mecklundburg and her daughter. People shrugged, said that they must have been among the casualties, if there was no sign of them. He searched for several weeks, until forced to return to his work at home. There were no leads whatsoever, and so he was forced to accept that she was dead.”

  “That kinda goes with what M
om remembers about Paris,” I said, feeling chilled to the bone as images fled through my mind, memories of photographs I’d seen of Europe in ruins—followed by memory of Gran’s quiet face. “So, my grandmother never knew about Rose dying?”

  “All I can tell you is that she never communicated with anyone in Dobrenica again.”

  “But what about the name Daniel Atelier? She would not have made that up. It doesn’t sound like her at all.”

  “The flat your grandmother first moved to was on the rue de l’Atelier. She must have adopted the name when she fled France, which helps explain how they disappeared. They had lived in Vienna, then in Paris, under the name von Mecklundburg.” The light, careful voice finished, “The name Daniel probably was adapted from Danilov, Armandros’s second name.”

  “I wonder how she managed to get on the refugee ship,” I said.

  “I suspect the pearl gown your mother was photographed in as a baby was the Dsaret baptismal dress,” Alec said slowly. Like he was feeling his way. “For two or three generations the heir had been baptized in it. It vanished when your grandmother did—she must have felt it was hers, but sold it to fund the journey to the United States.” Again that tone, like he was waiting for a clue from me.

  I took a deep breath. “So he was a bigamist and never got caught. Poor Gran!”

  “There was no legal marriage,” he said, so carefully his tone had flattened. Like he was hiding his emotions. Judgment? Against Gran? “Armandros confessed as much before he went off to be killed.”

  “I don’t believe it.” I smacked the dashboard. “I can’t. She wouldn’t have. Not Gran, not in those days—not at any time. Even if the guy she married was a louse and a slimebag, Gran is too old-fashioned. She’d never do one thing and preach another. I have no proof, obviously—” I faltered as something flickered in my mind, too quick to catch. I shook my head, fighting a tide of grief. “Not Gran. Never.”

  Alec was still and silent. The roof of the car cast a shadow over his face so I could not see his expression; starlight glowing softly on his shirt showed not even the shifting of breathing. He could have been a statue.