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ELIZABETH
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IT WAS CRAZY HOW QUICKLY everything had started feeling normal. When the following morning Brian kissed my hair and, noticing I was awake, whispered, “I’m about to change. Go back to sleep,” I rolled to his side and dozed off as if he’d said he was going to buy bread and milk.
A much more mundane worry made me spring out of bed half an hour later. Today I’d meet Brian’s parents.
Today also was Rosie’s birthday, an informal, happy whole day event for family and friends.
Jacob and Lottie were to arrive at Red Cliffs around noon, as well as the Canagans’ guests from Winston. Morgaine, the famous ellida of Gelltydd Coch, had come the previous day.
I took a long shower and washed my hair. Wrapped in my terry robe, I took my position before the vanity mirror and set to the laborious task of straightening my hair.
It refused to cooperate. Of course. The more I tried, the worse it looked. As soon as I would remove the thick round brush, it would curl back. After a while, it was all curly and dry, so I had to wash it again and start the whole torture from the beginning.
Not to mention my agony about what to wear.
Brian found me in front of the mirror, on the verge of tears, several round brushes sticking out from my hair.
“They won’t like you less if your hair is curly,” he said and embraced me from behind. The touch of his skin on mine triggered the familiar sensation, calming me down.
“Here. Let me take them out.” One by one, he gently pulled the brushes out of my hair. “Your hair is beautiful as it is. Let it curl.”
I picked up one long lock and ran it through my fingers. “It curls less when it’s shorter. Maybe I should have it cut.”
“No! For Chrissake, don’t do that!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Brian looked as horrified as if I’d held scissors in one hand and a lock of my hair in another. “Let me try something,” he said. He grabbed a flat brush from the vanity and started combing my hair.
“I like it straight and smooth,” I said.
“But you have curly hair.”
“My hair’s not curly; it curls. It’s the humidity.”
“Did I mention that I’d worn my hair long, up until recently?”
“Did you wear a wig?” I asked. “Back in the time when you befriended Voltaire and the Holy Roman Emperor?”
“Ah, the eighteenth-century fashion. A nightmare of shapes and colors. No. My hair was only lightly powdered and tied with a black bow.”
I watched in the mirror the skillful, quick motions of his hands, imagining him dressed in the flamboyant attire of that magnificent epoch. Elaborate waistcoat, a linen shirt with laced frills, breeches and smalls, stockings. Black cloak when he went outside, tricorn hat, jackboots and buckled shoes ... I tried to visualize him a century later, with a top hat and a cane, perhaps? Mustaches? Or a beard, some time later? He looked hot and sexy no matter which image I conjured. Always tall, always strong, so vital, so full of life.
My lover. My sexy beast.
“When did you cut it short?” I asked, catching a breath.
“When I started turning back to human.”
“Are you going to let it grow again?” I asked as I watched him in the mirror. He was making love to my hair brushing it in long, slow motions, letting it slip between his fingers, touching my neck, my temples, the sensitive skin behind my ears.
“Do you think I should?” he asked, his voice a whisper.
I nodded. It would make him even sexier, if something like that was possible.
“I think I’m going to do that. It’s me. So, what’s wrong with curly hair?” he asked as he gently pulled my hair into a ponytail, divided it into three parts and started plaiting it.
Would he find my reason silly? “When it’s straight, it’s like my mother’s hair. I sometimes look in the mirror, and I see a glimpse of her.”
He kissed the crown of my head. “There’s more than a glimpse of your mother in you, cariad. I’ve seen her pictures in her books. Do you have a small hairband?”
While I was rummaging through my hair accessory bag, Brian said, “Zana once said you got your curls from your great-grandmother or something, only she was blond.”
“Ash-blond. Her hair was striking: thick and heavy and so long that reached her back,” I said. “Her husband was the captain of Josef II’s personal guard. I wondered if you knew him, perhaps. Or her.”
Brian’s hands had gone still. “Ildi,” he whispered, ghost pale. “Countess Matilda von Branderberg, the most beautiful woman of her time.”
The fragile sense of normalcy I’d been so pleased with only a few hours earlier had disappeared. I was back to Alice’s Wonderland.
“My grandmother said the emperor was in love with her, but it might be just a family legend,” I said, lightheaded.
“The countess was a smart and exceptionally well-educated woman for her time. Fierce,” Brian said, regaining his composure. “Half of the court was in love with her, including the emperor.” He smiled. “The other half were women.”
“And her husband?”
Brian took the forgotten hairband from my hand and secured my braid. “Rainer was a good-looking man, brave and intelligent, but a bit hot tempered. He was devoted only to two people: his emperor and his wife.”
“Did she succumb to the temptation?” I asked. “The emperor was one of the greatest men of his time, and fairly comely himself. It had to be an irresistible combination.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. If something did happen, it stayed between Ildi and Josef. Rainer was loyal to him to the end. Well, to the official end. Countess Ildi broke his heart, but not beyond repair. He fell in love with another woman, married her and had a son, Gerd’s grandfather.”
“Ildi’s portrait hangs in the sitting room in my house in Boston,” I said. “There should be another one, painted by the same artist, Franz Gottemeyer, but it vanished.”
“You’re right. Rainer commissioned Ildi’s portrait from Gottemeyer. When Josef heard about it, he asked him to make one for him, too. It was smaller, but as beautiful as the first one, maybe even more so.” He scratched his head. “I handled all the details of the commission on Josef’s behalf.”
“Who were you back then? What was your name? How come you were so close to the emperor?”
“Whoa. Slow down a bit. I was Fredrich von Rosenberg. For a decade, I was his emissary, troubleshooter and behind-the-scenes advisor.”
For a moment, I was speechless. “No kidding. Did you make it to the history books?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. I took great care to remove every proof of my existence.”
“Now, what happened to the second painting?”
He shook his head. “This is unbelievable. The second portrait is closer than you think. You can see it when we visit Gerd Falkenstein. It’s on the wall in his sitting room.”
The fact that my great-great-great-great-grandmother’s portrait was here, in Colorado was as mind-bending as the story of the Langaer. I didn’t believe in coincidences. I knew there was a reason for that. I was connected with this place and these people. Why? How?
Echoing my thoughts as if he could read them, Brian said, “You’re not here by chance, Elizabeth. We might not understand all the reasons, but it would be hard to deny them.” He lifted my chin, studying my face. Providence has never been so precise in picking a vardanni.”
He took my chin and looked at my face. “Now that I know, I can see Ildi in you. If your hair were light and your eyes silvery-blue, the resemblance would be stunning. Funny, I’ve looked at her portrait many times yet didn’t make the connection. Interesting that Gerd didn’t see it either.”
Brian’s phone hummed. With one hand under my butt, he lifted me up while he fished for the phone with the other.
“My mother,” he said. “Hi, Mom ... Yes, she’s awake. She’s fine. We’re getting ready ... Of course I can drive, Mom. We’ll be there in one hour.”
He disconnected, shaking his head. “Can you believe she told me not to drive too fast?”
“I can. Motherly concerns are universal.”
“Are you okay to go, Elizabeth? I’m quite rattled; you must be too. We can go later.”
I sighed. “No, I’ll be fine. It’s just that you don’t learn every day your lover was smitten with your eighteenth-century relative.”
“Come on! I wasn’t smitten with her.” He smirked. “Not that much.”
“Oh, well. It was long ago anyway,” I said. “Right now, this isn’t my biggest concern.”
Brian pulled me onto my feet and closed his arms around me. “What is it then, cariad?”
“What should I wear today?” I said in a voice that sounded like a helpless squeak. “And what if your mother doesn’t like me?”
“You’ll be okay, sweeting. Just don’t let my mother monopolize your time.”
“Yeah, right. I’m immediately going to set boundaries.”