That night, the interior lights glowed dimly in the back seat of the limousine, and the heavily tinted windows kept out the night and people’s stares. Plastic new car smell swirled through the cool air streaming from the vents.
Rae clutched the skirt of her sapphire, crystal-encrusted ball gown and adjusted the layers of fluff.
Wulf smiled at her but didn’t comment on her fidgeting.
“It will wrinkle,” she said.
“You look utterly beautiful.”
“They made the top too tight.” Her boobs were plumping out of the bustier cups.
“I think it looks marvelous.”
Rae fretted, “I am trussed up like a blue-ribbon pig goin’ to prom.”
Wulf chuckled. “That’s adorable. Speak some more Western for me.”
The car rolled to a stop.
Outside, a crowd fenced by barricades turned to look at the car.
“Never mind,” he said. “We’re here. A few, quick notes.”
Rae kept trying to adjust her skirt to keep it from wrinkling but she was worried about leaving damp handprints on the dark blue silk. “Why didn’t you tell me these notes in the hotel an hour ago?”
“You might have thought about them too much. I’ll emerge from the car first and walk around the back. I’ll open your door and hand you out. If you drop my hand quickly, the flashes will die down. If you touch me while we’re walking into the reception, it will provoke the photographers. I will leave it up to you.”
The heavy fabric of her dress clung to her knees like it was anticipating the joy it would get from tripping her. “Should I walk behind you?”
“Absolutely not. Walk on my right. Keep your chin up. A small smile will ensure that you don’t look scornful but will not make your cheeks cramp.”
Wulf’s door opened behind him. He stepped out and walked around, just like he said.
The time it took his long legs to cover the ground behind the car was nearly enough for Rae to give in to panic and hyperventilate, but not quite.
Her door opened. Wulf’s hand hung in the air, waiting for her to come out.
Beyond his hand and black tuxedo cuff, camera flashes sparkled.
She took his hand and, clutching the crystal-encrusted skirt of her ball gown, gingerly stepped out of the car.
He smiled at her, gently, kindly, just like always.
Wulf lifted his head to face the crowd.
His expression hardened with the intensity of a hunting falcon. His blue eyes glittered, and even though he was tall and always held himself with good posture, he seemed to grow, to take up more space, to dominate even the crowd pressing them from both sides behind the flimsy, wood-slat barricades.
Every one of the people in that throng gazed up at him. Some raised their phones to take pictures, and sparkles turned into a wave of white light.
For a second, just before the flashes blinded her, Rae saw The Dom again, the man who could intimidate with a glance, and then she saw more.
Wulf wasn’t The Dom.
Wulf had become even more imposing, more commanding, like he could ride at the head of a charge into battle with ten thousand men at his back and drive back the enemy with the force of his will.
Rae blinked, and her hands shook.
The Dom was a pale imitation of the Prince of Hannover.
The camera flashes subsided.
Shadowy shapes of the crowd shifted beyond the glowing confetti that fell through Rae’s vision from the flash bulbs.
Rae stepped backward, fully intending to get right the heck back in that limousine.
Wulf must have felt her fingers trembling because he didn’t drop her hand like he said he would. He wrapped her fingers in the crook of his elbow and held her hand there.
Rae straightened. This was a gantlet she had to run.
She inhaled, picked her chin up, and smiled.
Wulf stepped forward, and they walked between the barricades. The closest people in the crowd jostled for position and snapped their pictures with blasts of light from cell phones or tourist cameras or professional cameras with bazooka lenses. A pulse of silver flashes ran the red carpet in front of them.
The cool spring breeze funneled between the museum buildings flanking the courtyard and whipped Rae’s skirt against her legs.
Rae lifted the skirt of her ball gown in front so she wouldn’t stomp on it and rip it to shreds.
Wulf’s warm hand comforted her as they walked toward a glass pyramid that glowed in the darkness like a portal to a magic world. The pyramid was so bright that she couldn’t see inside it.
Above them, brilliant lights drowned out the Parisian stars and the flash bulbs.
Behind the barricades, people shouted and waved amid the blaze. Their mingled voices echoed off the buildings all around the courtyard.
Wulf nodded to them, still smiling, while he escorted Rae to the doors ahead.
Just before they entered the blazing pyramid, Wulf turned her toward the crowd and raised one hand in a restrained greeting. Rae kept that terrified smile plastered on her face and her chin, up.
The royal watchers went nuts, screaming and cheering. One barricade teetered, but the people behind it steadied the flimsy wooden slats rather than risk chaos.
They went inside the Louvre, away from the crowd, and Rae took a deep breath. “Can they see us in here?”
Wulf shook his head. “The lights are placed to shine outward, so that the pyramid blazes with light. We’re quite out of sight for a few minutes.”
Inside the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre museum, over the railing and below the landing, down in the subterranean lobby, dozens of round banquet tables looked like red rose-studded icecaps. The whine of violins and thunder of the chattering crowd drifted through the air, and acrid fresh paint irritated Rae’s nose. Thousands of people milled around the floors, sat around the tables, and danced. Couples waltzing to the quartet that played chamber music swirled in the center of the lobby. They swarmed counter-clockwise around the floor like a flock of gaudy birds in flight.
Three sets of escalators and staircases transported people from the lobby below, now a ballroom, to the upper passages, where more of the same crimson flower arrangements peeking over the railings meant that yet more banquet tables waited for the second tier guests.
Behind the tables, the hallways opened to The Louvre’s collections, and Rae glimpsed yet more people strolling among the glittering glass cases beyond.
Rae turned left to go down the escalators to the lower floor, but Wulf tugged her hand to the right.
He guided her to top of a staircase that seemed to float in the air and spiraled down to the lower level, but surely it didn’t float because that would be magic, and Rae didn’t believe in magic.
Wulf took cuts near the end of the line in front of his own father, who nodded to the two of them, but they didn’t speak further.
Rae nodded and smiled at Wulf’s father. He didn’t smile back.
She peeked over the railing. A few steps from the bottom of the spiral staircase, a man in a red uniform stood with a gentleman in a tuxedo and a lady wearing a dress the grayed color of peach fuzz and a pale blue sash. The man in the red uniform announced, “The Prince and Princess of Oranje-Nassau,” and his amplified voice echoed among the dancing and milling wedding guests.
Photographers gathered on the floor below. A few flashed their cameras at the Prince and Princess.
Rae said, “It looks like everyone else is already here. Are we late?”
Wulf shook his head. “We are scheduled for an eight o’clock entrance. We have ten minutes to spare.”
Seven couples stood in line in front of them. Rae’s eyes felt as wide as a newborn foal’s, and her legs were as wobbly.
Wulf was wearing some kind of mix between a tuxedo and a military uniform, which seemed moderately vampiric. Rae didn’t know enough to draw any sort of conclusions, other than it was a black tuxedo-ey thing with tails, a vest, and a white shirt. A thick, dark crimson sash crossed his white shirt and vest from under his coat at his right shoulder and was pinned on the left side of his trim waist by something sparkly. A matching crimson tie-like ribbon dangled a blue cross pendant at his throat below his white bow tie. The center of the cross was a man on horseback fighting a green dragon, and a crown linked the upright cross to the ribbon at his throat. An eight-pointed silver-and-diamond star that had the same guy fighting the same dragon shined on the left side of his black tuxedo jacket. A row of medals lined up above the star.
Dragons and vampires and magic portals, oh my.
All the people in front of them wore sashes and badges and glittering stuff.
Even though Rae was wearing the dark blue, crystal-encrusted Marchesa gown that Flicka had picked out for her and she glittered like a walking sapphire, she felt underdressed. Wulf had loaned her a set of sapphire jewelry from his castle, and her auburn hair swept around a tiara of diamond laurel leaves.
Rae felt underbred as well, but that couldn’t be helped.
Wulf wound her hand into the crook of his arm and patted her hand. “When we make our entrance, there may be a bit of a commotion. It was not announced that I would attend.”
“But they all saw you at the wedding,” Rae said. “You walked Flicka down the aisle.”
“Evidently there was some speculation that I would slip in for the ceremony. Doubtless there are mobile phone snaps of Flicka and me, but the photographers and many of the people at the reception were not invited to the ceremony. It is well-known that I am a great recluse and never attend formal functions, so there will be a moment of surprise when we enter.”
“So they’ll be looking at you here, too.” That was fine. She could handle them all looking at him.
“The fact that I brought a woman will be the most fascinating thing they could imagine. All eyes will be on both of us.”
“Oh.” The carpet waved under her feet.
“There will be more pictures. There will flash bulbs in our faces. Smile. We can’t have another picture with you hiding behind me. The barrage should fade quickly. After that, we will make the rounds and then be on our own for a few hours. There will be refreshments and more dancing, later.”
Rae could not imagine all the bejeweled and bedecked aristocrats getting down and funky.
“In a few hours, Flicka and Pierre will arrive, after they have been presented and made the rounds at the charity reception. Later, she will claim you and introduce you to the more influential dowagers and ladies.”
“This is like Jane Austen.” Rae tightened her grip on his arm, trying to hold herself up.
“Shakespeare and the Elizabethan court are better preparation than Austen.”
“With paparazzi. It’s like the Elizabethan court with paparazzi.” The air around her seemed too thin, and she couldn’t breathe in enough of it to keep her lungs from starving. She grabbed the railing. The air stretched below them.
“The facial expression that you want to display for the photographers is that you know you are beautiful, that you are loved, and that you have a secret. Flicka told me this, once.”
“Yeah. Right.” Rae gulped air. “What expression are you going to have on your face?”
His subtle smile and one raised eyebrow had vague echoes of his Teutonic evil overlord impression. “That I rule the world.”
The gentleman of the tall couple ahead of them turned back and grinned at Wulf, having overheard the comment. He was as tall as Wulf and taller than Rae, and he said to her, so Britishly, “Hello.”
Rae tried not to react like a country bumpkin but she knew who that guy was. She had seen his face a thousand times, starting with pictures of him as a baby through his wedding pictures.
That meant the woman beside him was—and Kate turned around and smiled at Rae.
Kate waved, and her quick gaze took in Rae’s entire ensemble, from the diamond tiara to her sapphire earrings and necklace set to her shoes. She smiled. “Hi.”
Rae’s lame grin was forced. Her voice quavered. “Hi.”
Kate turned to Wulf. One of her arched eyebrows rose, a question in a code that Rae didn’t understand.
Prince William had a slight grin on his face. He nodded to Rae and said something in French to Wulf, and in her star-struck reverie Rae just caught that he asked, “Are you going to beat Henri to the altar?”
Wulf retorted, in French, “Everyone will beat Harry to the altar. Is Kate still punching you when you snore? Also, Reagan speaks French.”
William laughed and winked at Rae, sending her into a silent tizzy of déclassé panic. She smiled bigger, trying to cover it up.
Wulf made the proper introductions to his cousins in English.
They both held out their hands to shake before Reagan had to decide whether to drop a curtsy or faint dead away.
Wulf said to Prince William, in French again, “I need to speak to your grand-mère.”
Prince William’s casual expression became quite interested. “Do you?”
“Oui.” Wulf’s tone conveyed nothing.
Kate’s eyes drifted up to the crystal pyramid above them, as if a confirmation of something had been offered.
“I can phone her tonight, if you like,” William said, switching back to English.
The sudden language switches were making Rae even more dizzy. She clutched her stomach, afraid of being sick.
“If we find a moment,” Wulf said with all the intensity of a comment about the phase of the moon.
Rae picked up that Wulf’s nonchalance was him being very British, maybe more so since he was standing there with two very prominent members of the British royal family, who were also being so understatedly British that Rae couldn’t figure out any of the subtext that was going on no matter how many psychology classes she had taken, so she smiled.
“Splendid.” William nodded to Rae and turned back to the gaping double doors.
Wulf mused, “I believe his French has a distinct Anglophone accent.”
She whispered to Wulf, “Those guys, those guys are here.”
“I should hope so. They were my flat mates for years, and Flicka and I attended their wedding.”
Desert rat. Desert rat.
Rae’s knees gave out. Wulf caught her around the waist as she sagged and tangoed her backward a few steps until he pressed her against the railing. Rae looked over his shoulder but all the other couples had their backs to them, except Wulf’s father, who was studiously observing a flower vase on the opposite side of the landing. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders because the room was growing dim. His scent drifted out of his clothes: spiced tea, oranges, and clean, strong man.
Wulf bent his head to whisper in his ear. “Remember: you’re beautiful, you’re loved, and you have a secret.”
“I’m none of those,” Rae whispered with desperation squeezing her voice. “I’m a plebe among the patricians.” A desert rat among the eagles: pitiful, cowering, and about to become lunch.
“You are beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, a vibrant rose among these pale, inbred, hothouse lilies.”
At least Wulf thought so.
Her heart slowed its panicked vibration. Her hands on his shoulders shook less. She held his shoulder, where the dark red sash lay over his shirt, the black storm cloud of a tattoo, and that devastating scar that all these people would know about. He was back where he was The Survivor Prince.
She couldn’t make a scene. It would embarrass him in front of all these people if she did something so silly as to faint, and it would draw yet more attention to him, which he wouldn’t want.
His whisper dropped lower, and his breath slid into the sensitive shell of her ear. “And here is your secret: I love you.”
Her heart was slowing, but she certainly couldn’t breathe.
Rae shouldn’t say anything back because her throat had clamped down tight and because it would make tomorrow so much harder. She wrapped her arms around him more tightly and nodded for fear of crying.
Mascara. Professionally applied mascara.
He said, “I would spirit you away and ravish you in the ruins downstairs, but I shouldn’t muss your hair and make-up. I want them all to hate me for being with the most beautiful woman they’ve ever seen.”
Tomorrow was going to be the hardest day of her life.
He pried one of her arms off his neck and kissed her palm. His voice dropped a half an octave and thickened with desire. “But I will have you later. Know that every time you see me, I am thinking of having you.”
Her body filled with passion for him, blurring the panic. “Again?”
“Absolutely.”
And now that she had sex-flushed cheeks and damp panties, now she was going to enter a ballroom full of princes and duchesses.
She started to smile at the absurdity of it all.
“That’s better,” Wulf said.
She smiled a little more.
“Better yet. Here’s another secret.”
She didn’t think her heart could handle any more. “Okay?”
He whispered, “I don’t give a fig’s end what these people think. There are only a few of these grand events, birthday celebrations and weddings and funerals, per year. You’ve been kind to Rosamunde, Dieter, my staff, Glenda, your parents, and even my intractable father. Rather than fall apart or freeze, you can bandage a gunshot wound and shake it off. At college, you’ve figured out how to help children rather than merely eke out a life for yourself.”
“It’s no big deal,” she said.
Yet, for a moment, she felt equal to the princesses and earls out there.
Ah, Wulf was building her up so that she wouldn’t make a fool out of herself. That made sense. He was smart like that.
And kind.
Wulf glanced ahead to the huge doorway, where the last couple ahead of them, Prince William and the Duchess of heart-stopping Cambridge, had swished down the stairs to be presented and make their entrance. Applause roared like a rockslide while camera flashes sparkled on the white railings around the landings, and a great flash of white light erupted at the bottom of the stairs.
Wulf said, “It’s time to go.”
Wulf draped Rae’s hand on his arm. The warmth from his arm filtered through the opera gloves she wore and warmed her cold hand like sunlight. He nodded, and they proceeded down the staircase into the grand lobby of the Louvre.
With every step downward, Wulf took on the imposing presence of the Prince again.
Either Rae’s panic was causing her hearing to go out, or silence spread through the lobby as they descended the stairs.
Wulf handed a card to the uniformed man standing there who was so short that he barely reached Wulf’s biceps, and Wulf leaned and muttered to him, “The Hereditary Prince’s card is behind mine.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. I had heard he never offers one,” the stocky man whispered back. He straightened and read the card. The little man stole a glance at Wulf and swallowed hard.
Rae raised her chin, and her breath caught because Wulf had said he loved her. Warmth bloomed in her heart and spread over her face as a smile. She was going to hold this night in her heart for the rest of her life.
Wulf said, “That’s good,” and he smiled down at her for that one last second. His blue eyes were kinder than she had ever seen them, and for a moment, she thought he would kiss her.
An enormous voice boomed from the short man and rang among the staircases and balustrades. “His Royal Highness Prince Wulfram Augustus, Hereditary Prince of Hannover, and Ms. Reagan Stone.”
Silver light slammed them like a tidal wave.