Wulf’s gait had the bearing of an angry tyrant as he marched through the polished stone corridor of the Basilica Sacre-Coeur, determined to have it out with his father. Seventeen years ago, while their mother lay dying, Wulf had lost the month-long, vicious argument about sending Flicka to Institut Le Rosey at the beginning of the term. Even though the slated departure day had turned out to be just one damned day after their mother died, one day, their father had packed the child off to boarding school on schedule.
Wulf would not allow their father to ruin Flicka’s wedding.
The leftover anger from Dieter’s summary of his father’s conversation with Rae boiled below the current problem. His father and Rae had been getting along swimmingly as she had a perfect measure of naiveté salted with admiration for bravado, and then his father cocked it up, cloaking his refusal to engage with noble prejudice. Rae’s daughter-in-law quip brought a smile to Wulf’s face because she had evidently considered the possibility and because more people should stand up to that old narcissist.
One of these days, his father would crash that race car and not walk away. Wulf only prayed that it was another light pole rather than a grandstand. The problem with a death wish is that, eventually, the wish will be fulfilled, leaving everyone else to deal with the damage.
Wulf paused and braced himself against the wall, feeling the cool stone under his palms and fingers. Wulf wasn’t a raging teenager any more. This must be handled properly.
The hot-headed emotionality of the Americans was the wrong track. A blowout would serve his father’s purposes, which was to derail the wedding.
Icy German sangfroid would be useless. His father wouldn’t notice an appeal to logic through his self-absorbed haze.
The imperious demeanor of the Prince of Hannover would backfire. His father might be shocked but would also resist any authoritarian overture.
Wulf must be subtle, and he must be obeyed.
So he had to be British.
Wulf found a door near the altar rail that led into the basilica. The neo-Roman architecture with its towering columns was a bit rococo for his taste, but Flicka loved it. Considering that construction on the basilica had begun as a reactionary measure after the German occupation of Paris by Bismark’s Prussian army, and Bismarck had deposed their ancestor George V of Hannover in the 1860’s because George V had chosen the wrong side of the Austro-Prussian War, Wulf had approved of the basilica. My enemy’s enemy, and all that.
The gold-gilt statues and vibrant icons were still a bit much.
His father sat in the first pew, thumping a hymnal on the wood beside his leg and scowling. His black sling for his arm cast matched his morning suit’s jacket. The buttons in his vest strained at their buttonholes over his waist, Wulf noted as he sat down beside his father, and the crimson cravat did little to draw attention from that. He must not have bought a new morning suit, an indication that his intention to interrupt the wedding had been planned.
“It’s too late, you know,” Wulf said. “They’re already married.”
“A civil union can be annulled if we don’t proceed with the religious wedding.” His father thumped the hymnal harder, jarring the pew under Wulf’s backside. “I never liked Grimaldi.”
“Of course not. There’s nothing to like about such an unsuitable match,” Wulf lied. Pierre and Wulf made time for drinks whenever they managed to find themselves on the same continent, though Wulf was not particularly happy about Flicka marrying Pierre.
His father said, “I told the girl not to entertain that social climber, but she did, behind my back.”
“Young people, these days.”
“Indeed.”
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Wulf wanted to take that hymnal away from him. “Yet, backing out of the match at this late date, having to arrange for a French annulment, all these would be beneath our dignity.”
“Yes, but I cannot countenance this marriage. She’s too young. Her mother was twenty-two, and our family still has not recovered from that disaster.”
Ah. The shock of seeing Flicka in her wedding dress had probably dredged up all of this. Pale, blond Flicka, with her green eyes and willowy figure, looked so much like their mother that it had caused Wulf a pang of memory in the bride’s room. Flicka’s slim wedding gown differed from their mother’s bouffant bubble of a dress, but her eyes, her face, and hopefully her happiness, all these would shine like in the pictures of their mother on her wedding day thirty-five years ago. “You must let her go. It’s the natural order of things.”
“I will not approve of this marriage.”
Reagan had grown up on a ranch. Perhaps she could hog-tie a seventy-three year old man. “Then let us think of a way for you to express your disapproval and yet not incur the shame of an annulment.”
His father stopped banging the hymnal and turned it over in his hands. “I could leave. If I don’t attend, people will infer my disapproval.”
Too much. Even after everything, Flicka would be as devastated as when their father had missed her skiing championships and university graduation. He was here, damn it.
Wulf nodded. “You could do that. People would wonder where you were, however, more than they would know your mind. When you are presented at the reception tonight, it might convey a mixed message.”
He frowned. “What then?”
“If you attended the ceremony but didn’t give her away, it would be a more subtle message of disapproval. You would be the soul of discretion and propriety.”
His father nodded. “So she would walk down alone.”
“I could give her away,” Wulf said, making sure it sounded like an offhand comment. “People might notice the substitution more than a simple absence.”
“Excellent,” his father said.
“The service should begin in a half-hour. You could stay here. Not walking in with the wedding party would further confirm your stance on the marriage.”
His father nodded.
Wulf left his father sitting in the pew, contemplating God.
When Wulf passed Dieter at the door, Wulf whispered, “Three men on him. If he so much as draws a deep breath, remove him from the church out this side door.”
Wulf wondered how people without their own paramilitary force coped with recalcitrant relatives.