Squish, bobble, fumble. Mom said, “Gran wants you to stay there. Help Alec.”
“I can sure try,” I said. “If he wants me. But I’m not really sure I haven’t become just another hassle for him to deal with. Isn’t Milo coming? If anyone can convince the von Mecklundburgs that Alec didn’t crash that car on purpose, it’s Milo.”
Mom said, “You can imagine what a bummer this is for him. But Milo can’t show up for the same reason you want him to. He can’t pull the king shtick over them, not if they want their laws to work. He’s got to park it here and wait for justice to follow its course.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, but you’d think . . . never mind. How’s Gran?”
“She’s fine. She says—”
The lights came on in the room, startling me. I closed my eyes against the glare and bent over the desk, concentrating as Dad said, “Emilio is waving, food’s going to get cold. Look, do your best. If you need to come back, then do it. If there’s something you can do there, then go for it. You’ve got good judgment. We’ll do what we can at this end.”
My throat tightened, and I couldn’t speak.
“Love ya,” Mom breathed.
The phone went dead.
I looked up, straight into Alec’s eyes.
TWENTY-ONE
NAT GAVE A HELPLESS SHRUG. “It’s his office. Couldn’t lock him out.”
I don’t think Alec even heard her.
“My parents.” I pointed witlessly at the phone.
“Got that,” he said.
Nat’s wide gaze shifted between the two of us in a way that would have been funny another time, another place, then she said loudly, “I gotta see a dog about a man.” She mouthed some words that looked like Full Monty! and the door clicked shut behind her.
As if released from a frozen spell, Alec moved to the desk, laid a stack of papers down, then crossed to the Louis XV cabinet in the corner. There he stilled, head bent.
I began to babble. “I’m so sorry about what happened. Nat and I were trying to think of ways to help, so I thought I’d call the folks.”
As I repeated disjointedly everything he’d obviously already heard, his hand stretched out toward the cabinet—then he pulled it back as if he’d burned his fingers.
Finally I said to the floor and the desk and the ceiling, “Alec, I see that it was a mistake to come to Dobrenica. I only wanted to help Ruli. She appeared to me, like I said, but I didn’t tell you that she said, Help me. Twice, in French and English.” Afraid I’d try his patience, and he’d stop listening any second, I talked quicker. “And so I came, but after Nat told me what happened to Ruli, well, the truth is, the real truth, is I wanted to see you. One more time. Even from across a room. And yeah, I totally understand that you don’t want to see me—”
He turned around so fast I took a step back. “Kim, the worst part of being a murderer is that I don’t remember getting in that car.”
Bam! The world exploded.
No, it was just my brain. Then stuff started trickling back in, first thought being, This isn’t about you at all. “You didn’t get your memory back?”
“No.” He said bitterly, “Out of three blackouts, the only one I remember is the first.”
Blackouts? “I don’t believe . . .” My voice trembled. “It was an accident. Not murder.”
“If I’m out and drink heavily, I always get Kilber to drive. Always. Always?” Alec pressed his fingertips to his eyes, every line of his body taut with stress. “It’s no use saying I can’t believe I got behind the wheel stinking drunk, because I obviously did. The burnt wreck with her in it is proof. Because she would not have driven that car, drunk or sober. She hated driving in the snow.”
We were standing across the room from one another, him by the chiffonier, me leaning against the desk, my heartbeat slam-dancing. You said you were going to deal with this peanut butter knife. So deal. “You haven’t recovered your memory.”
“No. That’s just it.” He dropped his hands and then faced me squarely. “Here is the truth. I couldn’t face you and admit that I blacked out from drinking that day. I’ve successfully avoided facing the fact that I’ve been drunk for three months. Before September, I prided myself on stopping when I willed and relying on Kilber or Emilio if I passed the limit.”
Remorse hit me, sickening in its intensity. Three months meant he’d been drinking hard since the wedding. He hadn’t changed his mind about me. Put it another way, he’d been drinking hard ever since I took off without so much as a See ya. And your wedding? Good luck with that.
I knew it wasn’t my fault that he’d been hurt. He knew why I’d gone. But there was no triumph in me to realize that yes, he did care, because what hurt him hurt me.
He went on, “When I was with Ruli, cocktail hour began at noon. It was the only thing we shared. It’s been two, or three, or four, to get me through the day, and if I had no business to keep me occupied at night, then I’d get serious.” He shook his head.
He stopped, looking down. In the back of my mind, lines of the poem I’d studied so earnestly came to me, chanted in a childish voice: Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise/(That last infirmity of Noble mind) . . .
I still did not understand how Milton’s “Lycidas” had anything to do with Alec’s life, but those words about the cost of fame? Oh yes, right here before me was the evidence of the cost of living your private life in public space.
“You blacked out?” I asked stupidly.
The low quick voice went on, dropping to a whisper of self-hatred. “It wasn’t the first time. It happened twice before. The first one was a week after the wedding. That time I sat down to—” he paused, looked away, then said, “to get obliterated. I don’t remember getting into bed, but I do remember trying to get there. Impressions before.”
He paused again, and I waited.
“I woke up sick. Had to sit through meetings with a head like death. Swore I would cut back. Thought I did, but I blacked out again around the first of December. Could have sworn I hadn’t drunk much. That scared me. I made a conscious effort to limit myself. Thought I had.” He walked on a few steps, then back.
I was trying to catch up. “What exactly do you remember from the twentieth?”
“The last thing I recollect is offering Ruli a drink in pax, after we agreed she could skip the holiday here and take di Peretti to Paris. I remember pouring the zhoumnyar into coffee the way she likes it. We hit our glasses together. I remember that. The next clear memory is waking up on that hillside with a Vigilzhi tying a rope under my armpits.”
I was going to say, So you drank a toast. That doesn’t mean you got drunk.
He’d been watching me, because he said, “Kim, I drank enough to black out. And then I got in the car and drove. I may as well have shot her.”
Wayward strands of hair fell onto his forehead. With a quick gesture he wiped them back, apparently oblivious to the cold. Or too distraught to notice.
He’d begun to prowl the perimeter of the office.
I stopped near the cabinet with the crystal decanter inside—the one he poured from when I first arrived.
He’d had to down a drink after seeing me for the first time since summer . . . days after poor Ruli’s death.
I frowned at the decanter, a desperate hope blooming. “Isn’t that lead crystal? Could it be the blackout was due to lead poisoning?”
“The whisky isn’t in this thing long enough to be poisonous,” he retorted, without any anger. “Kim, I’m grateful for the support. One of the worst nightmares has been the thought of your condemnation. Justified condemnation. This is partly why I’ve avoided you, except on Christmas, when we were safely in public. I was too much of a coward to look into your eyes and see the judgment that I deserve. And the other part is—”
“I know. You said you didn’t want to drag me into the gossip.”
“I don’t give a damn about gossip,” he said roughly. “That’s just talk. When judgment is
passed, I didn’t want to drag you down with me.”
He stood there staring at the cabinet like it was his lifeline, and I thought, You do care. Too much.
I took a step toward him. “Alec, I’m not saying that this isn’t serious, and that you shouldn’t feel the way you do about Ruli’s death, but when’s the last time you slept?”
He made an impatient movement. “I catch a nap whenever—”
Another step. “Alec. When is the last time you slept?”
“I can’t sleep.” He turned away. “There is too much to be done, and every time I close my eyes I’m sitting on that cliff watching the smoke rise from the wreck below.”
But that two-handed engine at the door/Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more. The poem again.
The tension in his hands, the pained blue gaze, brought back that dead, flat voice: I second it.
He made an effort and faced me again. “Until the trial I can keep myself busy making things ready for whoever replaces me, because the most important thing, more important than individual concerns, is a peaceful transition to a government all can accept.”
His mouth was white with pain. The blood-sport spectacle of a trial didn’t matter to him. The important thing was that in his own mind, he was already tried and convicted.
He was waiting for judgment not from the Council—to him that was foreordained—but from me.
“Let’s go somewhere warm and talk.” I crossed the last of the space between us and slid my hand around his arm. “There was steam on some of those upstairs windows, so I know you’ve got some heating somewhere.”
His muscles tightened, but he did not pull away. “Can’t go there. Not her rooms.”
“We don’t have to be in her space,” I said. “This is a palace. You’ve got a zillion rooms.”
“The only warm ones are our suite. I’m being a fool. We’ll go there.”
“Good. If I stand here any longer, my California blood will freeze me into a corpsicle.” I slid both arms around him and hugged him tightly against me, which I’d been wanting to do for an eternity in the time measure of the heart.
Swift thoughts streamed through my mind, carried by sarcastic laughter at the idea of myself being so proud of accepting him and his baggage of imminent crown princedom. Now, with it all on the verge of being stripped away, there was a steadying sense of balance. We were two human beings. And I loved him.
With that came the clarity of a paradigm shift. I’d spent all that time trying to decode “Lycidas,” looking for hidden clues, when all along it was the poem itself that was the clue. Until this past three months, poetry had been his emotional safety valve, just as it was Milo’s.
“Lycidas” was not just Alec’s favorite poem, it was also his father’s. Alec’s furniture was his father’s, his job was his father’s. His name was his father’s, as was his fame. Though Alec loved what he did—he was passionate about Dobrenica, he’d told me during our last argument along the Adriatic coast—what was the cost of having your entire life decided for you from birth, as you strove to follow in the footsteps of a hero?
I hugged him tight, breathing when he breathed. “Think you’d like the endless summer of L.A.?”
“Kim,” he whispered, and rested his brow against the top of my head.
But time cannot be suspended, even in happiness.
“Let’s go.”
I took his hand, and his fingers gripped mine as we left the office. The inner door led to a nicely furnished waiting room with a plug-in heater, now shut off, as well as one of those big ceramic stoves that someone had obviously let go cold.
Beyond that was a hall and a stairway. Alec hit a switch that killed all the lights in that suite. There was a single light at the top of the landing; the shadows were sharp-edged and long, making me wonder what it had been like for my ancestors, lighting their way up with a candelabra. Except that they were royalty, and someone would have gone before them to carry the candles.
Upstairs was marginally warmer, the old-fashioned radiator set on low. Alec touched the light control and looked around. His manner was wary, not at all that of a man coming home.
There was a museum feel to the rooms. I recognized modern settings in the way the furnishings were placed, that is, in squares or circles, rather than along the perimeter in order to accommodate a crowd of courtiers. Other than that, the only modern touches were electric wall sconces. The furniture was all simple, elegant antiques of the Sheraton sort, exquisitely carved, with rosewood inlay and satin upholstery.
This was obviously the Statthalter private suite, though a less homelike atmosphere would be tough to find.
Alec stopped then looked around, clearly in pain. “I haven’t set foot in here for days.”
“We can go away if you don’t want to deal.”
“No. I’ll have to . . .” He made a gesture that could have meant anything. “Want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“I had an annex put in.”
He led me past two more salons. The biggest one reminded me of Wedgwood dishes, all blue and white, beautiful but killingly formal.
The last room gave onto a short hall with a small kitchen off it. “We put this in for Magda,” he said. “The palace kitchens are downstairs, and Magda complained bitterly about the long walk. Ruli hated the food arriving cold.”
As he spoke, he set about filling the kettle and lit the stove, which seemed to be hooked up to a butane container. He took out a small ceramic jar that, when he opened it, filled the room with the heavenly aroma of ground coffee—though I don’t like to drink the stuff, I love the smell.
He gazed at it, brow furrowed, then said, “You prefer tea, don’t you?”
“I can drink coffee. If you have milk.”
“Plenty. Though I don’t know if it’s still good.”
The very homeliness of the task seemed surreal, as we stood there in the little kitchen in the center of a palace, snow falling so heavily outside that there was nothing visible but white framed by the long palace double window.
The milk was good enough for coffee. Soon we each had a mug, and I followed him through the kitchen into another room, which was a kind of den, with a big screen TV and DVD/VCR player, and a solid wall of DVDs.
Beyond that, to a bookcase-lined study, where he stopped short. I nearly bumped into him. My coffee sloshed.
His head lifted. “Someone’s been in here.”
He walked past the desk to an old-fashioned wooden file cabinet. The middle drawer was not shut all the way. He opened the file drawer. Then another.
He looked up, his expression bleak. “Someone’s gone through everything.”
“Servants doing some cleaning, maybe?”
“I had these rooms shut up right after the accident. Nobody has been in here but me.”
“What could a searcher be looking for?”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing private here. That is, everything here has carbons in both my offices.”
“Carbons. Wow.”
He smiled. “We do have a few computers, but as yet, they’re only networked between offices in the same building. Cables running everywhere.” He indicated the file. “That middle drawer has a broken latch. You have to lift the drawer and depress the latch to make the catch hold. Milo taught me the trick. It was his father’s cabinet.”
He demonstrated, and the drawer clicked into place. Then he stepped back and looked around again.
“Let’s go,” I said. “That gives me the creeps, the idea someone’s been sneaking around. Though I’m sure they’re long gone. Whoa. That reminds me. I was told that vampires are like shadows. Did you know that?”
“I’ve never seen one.” Next was his bedroom—a beautifully decorated space, with nineteenth-century antique bedstead and matching wardrobe and bureau. It was as impersonal as a hotel room.
“How much time have you spent in here?” I asked as we crossed it.
“Probably a week all told. If that.”
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“This suite is enormous. How long a hike from one end to the other?”
“It’s actually not that large. That is, it’s built in a square. See?” He unlocked a door on the opposite side of the bedroom, which opened onto a short hall with a guest bath, and beyond that was the big formal salon. “Ruli’s rooms are there.” He indicated another closed door. “On the other side of the den with the television. Through that door there is the formal entry, leading down into the state chambers. We came up the back way.”
“Where in the palace is this suite located?” I asked as we entered an informal salon he’d pointed out when we began the tour.
“We’re in the residence wing—the central bar, if you see the building as an E with a bent spine. We’re directly above the old royal suite.”
On the far side of the informal salon was a couch, covered in smooth raw silk the color of dull gold. I tugged him to that. “Ever sat on this thing?”
“Once. Ruli preferred to hold entertainments in the state chambers downstairs.” His smile was rueful. Bitter. “Those huge marble fireplaces were actually pretty good at heating the rooms. At least during autumn.”
I plopped down and pulled him next to me, still almost delirious with happiness, though I knew I shouldn’t be. There was too much wrong, too many mysteries, but oh, to find ourselves in rhythm again! “Too nice a piece of furniture to be so neglected.”
I turned his way. He sat there, the untouched coffee cradled in his hands, his profile tense. Some of my joy diminished.
I said, “Where is home for you, anyway?”
“Not here.” He cut a glance around the quiet, tastefully decorated room, then lifted his chin. “Home was . . . here.” The same word, but his tone had changed, a higher note, reflective, and I knew before he said it, that he meant his homeland. “Dobrenica.” He stared down into the cup. “It sounds facile, I suspect. But it was true, from the first time my father brought me.”
Lycidas. “Go on.”
“You know Ysvorod House was occupied in those days? My father and I shared a room—a cell, really—with the Dominicans.”