Wulf exited the cramped lavatory a few minutes after Rae, fooling no one.
The plane thrummed around him, and he drew deep breaths to tamp down any emotion that might leak around the edges of his demeanor.
In the center of the plane, his men were drawing up security plans for Paris in his absence, efficient as always.
Rae sat on the couch near the front of the plane, twiddling with her phone. She flicked the screen with one finger, still reading the Proust, most likely. She was probably not reading gossip websites about Flicka through the plane’s wifi. He prayed she was not.
Once back at her dorm, she would. Such curiosity was natural.
He had to tell her who he was, what he was, and soon, or she would discover it on her own.
The blood-soaked pictures from the day Constantin was murdered would be the least of his problems.
Wulf twitched his head at Dieter, who followed him to the back of the plane. The stewardess sat in the jump seats ahead of the galley, reading a magazine.
Among the clinking cupboards and whirring refrigerators, Wulf bowed his head near Dieter’s and whispered, “You might win the pool yet, Dieter. She’s horrified that Flicka’s marrying a Prince and is worried about Flicka dying like Diana or having children with hemophilia.”
The rumble-whine of the jets covered their whispering.
“Good Lord,” Dieter said. “What will she say when she discovers that Queen Victoria was your four-times-Great Grandmother?” His dry tone just veered away from sarcasm.
“I can only reassure her that, since I am descended from the male line and am healthy, there is no chance that I carry the sex-linked gene for hemophilia.”
“Just like your cousins.”
“Even so.”
“There’s always the Habsburg jaw.”
“Off with your head, Dieter.”
“Will we be stopping in London to see your cousins?”
Wulf touched his temple. “No, but they will attend Flicka’s wedding, and she believes that I should go, too. She says that she will attend the wedding with me, if I go.”
Dieter rested his hand on Wulf’s shoulder, a gesture between them used only in exigency. “I’m sorry, Wulfram. She’s a sensible girl. You know that she will throw you over eventually.”
“I know.”
“Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.”
Everything has an end. Only a sausage has two. The dour German humor suited Wulf’s dark mood.
Dieter’s voice rose carelessly. “You’re going to have to find yourself a nineteen-year-old idiot with princess delusions to marry you.”
Wulf glanced up the plane, but Rae seemed absorbed in her reading. The pale, overhead lights shone on her hair, deepening it to the color of dark fire. “She’s no idiot, but I had hoped she would overlook my dynastic problems.”
Dieter’s voice became still louder. “There’s not that much love in the world, Durchlaucht.”
Wulf rubbed his eyes in dismay at Dieter using his official style of address, which translated loosely as Your Serene Highness and colloquially to Your Transparency, suggesting the serenity of deep, still water. “Don’t use that.”
“She doesn’t speak German.”
Dieter’s callous remark struck Wulf to his core. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s had no advantages in life—a rudimentary education, not even the benefit of encouragement—yet she speaks three languages and, given the first opportunity for advancement, not only snatched it up but conceived of way to fundamentally change the lives of children even less fortunate than herself, and it’s a damn good idea.”
“A bit of business sense.”
“Her phone’s book app is rife with the Western canon—philosophy, science, the great books—and quite a bit of other cultures, too, and she’s read and annotated all of them.”
“How would you know that?”
“I perused her phone when I took it away from her at the office.”
“You broke into her phone?”
“She has no password on it.”
Dieter rolled his eyes. “Operational security with her in Paris will be a nightmare.”
“Her notes on Shakespeare were insightful. She’s reading Proust in French to brush up. She read Don Quixote in the Spanish.”
“You’re impressed only because it’s one of the few languages you don’t speak.”
“Given just one opportunity, she educated herself. She is naïve and unexposed, but she’s a remarkable woman. In three months, I could have her speaking German. If we matriculated her to a major university, she could change the world with her heart alone.”
“Good Lord, Wulfram. It sounds as if you’re falling in love with this girl.”
“Of course not,” Wulf scoffed. “I’ve been assured on several occasions that the surgeons were mistaken and did not remove half my lung, but my entire heart.”
“That’s good,” Dieter said. “It would be terrible to have a half-lung and a broken heart.”
It would be more than Wulf could endure.