Later in the night, after the formal dances and proper ceremonies, Flicka drew Rae into a small knot of beautiful young women and introduced her around, first names only.
Rae suspected that, again, a whole bunch of royal titles were being omitted.
Each woman shook her hand and smiled, so Rae smiled back even though she considered curtsying all the way down to her knees.
Through the crowd, Rae caught a glimpse of Wulf, who was standing with his cousin, Prince William, over by the bar. William held his cell phone out to Wulf, who took it and contemplated the bright screen for a moment. The glare lit his face from below with blue light.
Between Rae and Wulf, the crowd of nobles chattered like a flock of thousands of peacocks, and the orchestra, determined to he heard, thundered and wailed in the ballroom. Rae had no chance of hearing what the men were saying from across the lobby of the Louvre, so she watched.
Wulf held William’s phone, and the conflict in his body was like he wanted to buy it but didn’t have the money. She saw his shoulders rise and fall in a huge sigh, and he tapped the screen once. When Wulf brought the phone to his ear, his posture straightened, and he stood at stiff military attention.
Beside her, Flicka craned her neck to see what Rae was looking at, and she watched them, too.
People crowded between them, and Rae stretched to look over their heads and tiaras. It was good thing that she and Flicka, and William and Wulf, were all tall people. It made spying on him so much easier.
While Wulf spoke on the phone, he stared straight ahead, keeping eye contact with William. William rested his hand on Wulf’s shoulder, not looking away.
Rae had the feeling she was watching something important and very intimate, but she didn’t understand it, kind of like the whole rest of the night. “They’re really close, aren’t they?”
Flicka nodded. “They have a lot in common.”
Rae glanced at Flicka, who was watching the two princes like she would like to run over to them but didn’t dare.
Wulf nodded with the phone still at his ear, and William clapped him on the shoulder. After another few lines of conversation, Wulf handed the phone back to his cousin, who spoke seriously on it for a moment before he hung up.
When all that was over, William jostled Wulf with the hand he still held on Wulf’s shoulder, grinned, and offered his other hand to shake. Wulf shook, and then they hugged in the quickest of shoulder-bumps before they broke apart and looked around to make sure no one in the throng of people surrounding them had noticed, which of course they had.
Flicka’s sad tone caught Rae’s attention when she said, “That should have been Constantin.”
“What was he doing?” Rae asked.
Flicka’s green eyes widened with exaggerated innocence. “I’m sure that I have no idea.” She smiled, and she looked beautiful, and loved, and like she knew a secret.
These Hannover royals and their secrets were going to make Rae’s head explode one of these days. “Come on,” Rae whispered. “Give it up.”
“Moi?” Flicka asked. “Je ne sais pas quoi que ce soit, but I need to talk to you, quickly, before he comes back.”
They both looked over and saw Wulf and William separate and push through the crowd. Wulf glanced up and caught Rae’s eyes. He began swimming through the swarming people.
“Merde.” Flicka lowered her head to whisper by Rae’s ear. “Quickly. Listen to me. I do not want to influence you in this most personal decision, but if you need to tell him no, please be kind. I am begging you, be honest, but kind. You can hurt him so badly.”
“I don’t ever want to hurt him, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know about Constantin and the shooting, right?”
Those were facts. “Um, yeah.”
“You know about his memory, right?”
“Uh, I couldn’t say.”
“I’ll take that as yes. It’s better than he has told you, no matter what he has told you. He hides it. He puts up a false front so that no one will know.”
Rae nodded. “A shiny, mirrored shell.”
“Yes, just like that. I didn’t realize why until I was sixteen, and I think I’m the only one who knows the extent of it. I was a terrible person at sixteen. A monster.”
“Everyone is. It’s developmentally normal.” So Wulf had been twenty-five when this happened. Rae looked over the crowd that glittered with jewels and shined with satin.
Wulf edged closer.
Flicka’s whisper was harsh with emotion. “I was a spoiled brat of the worst kind. Too much money, too early. I developed a habit of methamphetamines.”
“Oh, Flicka! Are you all right?”
She whispered faster, “Listen to me. I smuggled some from Helvetica to England when I visited Wulfram for Christmas. He found it and was incensed. I did the most terrible thing. I hit him where I knew it would hurt him the most.”
“Constantin,” Rae said. She looked up, and Wulf smiled at her. She smiled back while Flicka whispered in her other ear.
“I told him that Constantin had died seventeen years before and he needed to get over it, and so Wulfram told me what he remembers.”
Rae watched Wulf sidle past the dukes in their white-tie tuxedos and the princesses in jewel-colored ball gowns, closing on where Flicka whispered horrors to Rae.
“He remembers everything,” Flicka said. “Not just numbers, not just facts, everything. Every moment, every comment, every glance, every emotion, absolutely everything. Everything is as fresh and present for him as if it has just happened a moment ago.”
“Oh, my.” No wonder counseling hadn’t helped him.
“Our parents were distant at best, especially for the twins. Wulf remembers his deep, innocent bond with Constantin, his brother, his twin. He remembers every day that they had together, even the first moment when both of them knew that they only had each other in this life, when they were three. Their favorite nanny had been let go, and they knew that everyone else around them might leave. He remembers every second of the morning when Constantin was killed. He can recite the conversation they had. Wulf wanted to slip away and play outside, but Constantin convinced him to go to class. He remembers where each drop of blood flew and the ghastly warmth when it hit his face. Nothing fades for him.”
“Oh, no.” When Wulf had found that picture of Constantin and himself on her phone, when he had looked up at her with eyes as tranquil as deep, blue water, despite his calmness, Rae knew she had hurt him.
Oh, what she would do to take back that moment.
“That’s why he never discusses it and why he doesn’t even say Constantin’s name.”
Rae started to contradict her but she bit her tongue. Her chest clenched like a shaking fist. “What happened, after he told you that?”
“I was making a mess with crying. He forgave me. He’s not cruel with it. He will forgive anything, but he cannot forget.”
Flicka looked up and followed Rae’s line of sight to Wulf, only three rows of people away. He dodged left, going around a rotund woman in emerald green.
Flicka whispered quickly, “Please, if you have to tell him no, please be kind. That moment will stab at him for the rest of his life.”
Flicka stood up. “Wulfie! I was just telling your friend here how beautiful she looks.”
Tears misted Rae’s eyes, and she looked up at the glass pyramid soaring into the dark sky far above them to keep the tears from falling.
Lord, she had been so emotional the last week, crying at anything and everything. She was all weepy when she saw Wulf’s desk and his money. She was practically hysterical when Wulf finally came clean about being the Prince of Hannover and the Duke of Earl and five other titles. Tears were wiggling in her eyes all the frickin’ time.
Growing up, her four brothers and hyper-macho father had made sure that she didn’t cry like a girl. She got mad, but she didn’t cry.
She needed to seriously cowgirl up and stop this mushy nonsense.
Rae hadn’t cried this much since she was thirteen and completely crazed by that puberty-associated estrogen surge. The year she had gotten her periods had been a rough one for the whole ranch.
Speaking of which, this was the last week of March. Shouldn’t she have—
“Reagan? Are you all right?” Wulf’s lazy smile faded.
“I’m fine,” Rae said.
Wulf glanced at Flicka, who evidently had inherited the Hannoverian trait of snapping on a perfect shiny shell. Flicka smiled serenely at him.
With that denial, Wulf took Rae’s hand and led her back over to their supper table, where the wait staff had cleared most of the leftover plates. Flicka followed them over.
Wulf was just leaning down, whispering, “What did she say to you?” when Dieter met them at the table.
Dieter’s right arm was bulky with a bandage under his black suit. “Ms. Stone.” He held her phone out to her with his left hand. “You’ve had a phone call on your mobile.”
“I did?” She glanced at the screen. Her brother’s phone number still showed.
Something must be wrong, really wrong, for him to call.
Rae said to Flicka, “I need to make a phone call. Is there someplace quiet, someplace private?”
“There are a thousand little rooms in here. I’ll have someone take you up.”
She signaled one of the waiters, who called a man in a black suit, who escorted Rae and Wulf up the elevator to the top floor of the Louvre. Dieter rode the elevator with them.
The Louvre security guy showed her into a room filled with French paintings of women wearing ball gowns. Wulf whispered to Rae that he and Dieter would wait at a reasonable distance.
Rae held her cell phone and stared at the dark walls lit by spotlights on the paintings. Lemon polish drifted from the floor, and the oil paints gave up their last vapors of linseed oil.
The portrait that caught Rae’s attention was of a woman sitting at a desk, surrounded by books and holding manuscript paper. Behind her, a guitar neck stuck up from a couch. Blue-white powder dusted her hair like in pictures of Americans during the Revolutionary War. Light illuminated her face, and Rae thought the woman was beautiful, but she also looked smart. No one had told this woman that education would ruin her.
Far below and away, the reception murmured on without her, and the small orchestra played something soothing. Her heart tripped and beat faster, out of sync with the serene music.
Rae had to call her brother. She took a deep breath, stretching the gown’s tight elastic and whalebones that cinched her waist. The phone screen glowed blue, daring her to call.
She tapped the phone screen to call up her contact list.
Nothing happened. The blue glow remained unperturbed.
The phone wasn’t responding.
A moment of panic washed through her. Tapping the blue buttons again didn’t work.
Rae chastised herself for being a bloomin’ idiot, stripped off her gloves that went past her elbows, and dialed the dang phone.
After a lot of beeps and a pause—during which Rae felt ridiculous holding a cell phone and standing in a gallery of paintings that were hundreds of years old—a woman said, “Hello?”
That voice had awakened Rae from sleep every school morning for thirteen years. “Momma?”
Her mother asked, “Reagan? Where are you?”
Rae stared at the fussy gilt frames and portraits of noble ladies wearing impossible gowns. “In a museum. Is everything okay?”
“Why haven’t you come home?” her mother asked. Her small voice sounded oceans and continents away. “Didn’t Hester tell you?”
“Yeah, she told me, Momma.”
“Why didn’t you come? Reverend Stoppard is asking where you are.”
“I can’t right now.”
“Why not? Are you kidnapped? Is someone keeping you?”
“I’m fine. I’m safer than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Then why wouldn’t you come home? I know in my heart that Reverend Stoppard is wrong, that you haven’t become too worldly, that you’re still an innocent sheep in the Shepherd’s flock.”
“I need a few more days, Momma. I just need to think.”
“I can’t buy you another couple days.” Panic lit her mother’s soft voice. “Get in your car and come home, now, or you can’t come home. Do you understand me? They won’t let you come back if you don’t come home right now!”
Rae steeled herself and looked at the paintings of royalty on the walls. She knew that she didn’t fit in with them, but she was a sticking-out sore thumb in Pirtleville, too. Even if this thing with Wulf didn’t work out, and it wasn’t going to, she wanted a full life, with love and helping people and using her own power to change the world. “I’m not coming home, Momma.”
Relief swept through her like the wind had been knocked out of her for her whole life, and she had finally drawn a deep breath.
Wow. She had kind of expected to collapse into a pathetic heap of hysteria.
Her mother whispered, “What?”
“I want to help autistic kids, Momma. They’re locked into their own worlds, and they’re trapped.”
“It’s that man, Dominic, isn’t it? He’s a worldly sort, and he’s tempted you with his evil ways. He drinks alcohol, doesn’t he?”
Rae continued, “I can see how Daniel flails around, scratching to get out of his own head. I can help him, all of them. If I finish my degree, no matter what else happens, I can figure out how to start that clinic.”
“No, no, and no. You come home right now. I won’t have my daughter traipsing around, making a fool of herself, playing with some psychology witchcraft.”
“I want to change the world, Momma. I just want to make the whole world a better place, and I want to start with those children because they desperately, desperately need my help.”