Princess Ever After

EIGHT





The pounding on his suite door was a little too aggressive for late-night room service, but it mattered not to Tanner.

He’d waited forty-five minutes for his chocolate cake à la mode, and his mouth was buzzing. His stomach was rumbling. The server could bust down the door for all he cared. Just let him eat cake.

“Finally.” Tanner swung the door wide, but Miss Beswick, not a server with a tray of cake, stood in the hallway.

“Finally? You were expecting me?”

“No, but please come in.” Tanner leaned to see down the hall. No cake in sight. But oh, it was far better to see Miss Beswick. His vacant stomach would have to wait.

“Look, I know it’s late but—” She stood in the middle of the suite, a box in her hands, the attaché case swinging from her shoulder, staring at the floor. “Can you put a shirt on?”

“Begging your pardon. I wasn’t expecting you.” He reached for the dress shirt he’d left on a chair. “I was working on e-mails . . . waiting for cake. What are you doing here?”

A light knock peppered the room.

“There’s your cake.”

“Now he comes.” Tanner opened the door and the server entered, a tray balanced on his palm.

He signed for the dessert, feeling awkward for crossing lines of impropriety by standing in front of his future sovereign half naked.

“Is everything all right?” he asked when they were alone.

The server had left the cake and ice cream on the bar, but Tanner shoved it out of his mind, composed himself for king and country, and focused on Miss Beswick.

“It’s true, isn’t it? This princess business.” She trembled, a wild look in her eyes.

“Yes, it’s true.” He motioned for her to sit in one of the twin club chairs while he brought up the recessed lighting with the dimmer switch.

She cradled the box in her lap, a concerned expression bruising her beauty. She’d showered so the grease was gone, and her likeness was all the more like Princess Alice in the painting.

“My father brought me this box.” She leaned forward, handing it over, her hair flowing free, framing her face. Tanner ignored the airy sensation in his chest and focused on the box. “Gram left it for me. He was going to give it to me when I got older but . . . forgot . . . until now.” She smiled softly. “And technically, I am older.”

“Then the timing of the delivery must be spot-on.” The box was made of dark wood, plain, except for the brass hardware. He opened the lock and started to raise the lid, but when he glanced at Miss Beswick, tears gleamed in her eyes.

“Aren’t you going to eat your dessert?” She glanced back at the bar. “I don’t mind.”

“But perhaps I do.” Tanner scooted to the edge of his seat, setting the box on the coffee table. “Unless you care to share. I’ve extra spoons at the bar.”

She hesitated. “What kind of cake?”

“Chocolate . . . à la mode.”

She smiled with a wave of her hand. “Bring it. Can’t resist chocolate when I’m mulling over a problem.”


Tanner brought the cake to the table, offering Miss Beswick a spoon. For the first few bites, they ate in silence save for the “mms” and exclamations of, “This is so good.”

Then Miss Beswick set her spoon aside. “You can have the rest. I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” Tanner eyed her, eyed the cake. He was still quite famished and had to control himself from hoarding the whole thing.

“I’m sure.”

Tanner cut another bite of cake, the rich edges soaked in melting ice cream, allowing himself to relax while maintaining his guard in her presence. “Can I ask a question?”

“Depends.”

“How did your grandma die? Eloise, was it?”

“Cancer at sixty-six. She’d been a heavy smoker her whole life.”

“And your grandfather?”

“Heart failure, diabetes. Died just before seventy. I have some memories of them but they died when I was pretty young. They were Depression babies and wartime adults. Hardworking, honorable people but food and smoking moderation were not qualities they embraced.”

“What about your father’s parents?”

“Still alive. They live on a farm in Live Oak.”

Tanner raised his brow, spooning up another round of sweet ice cream and cake goodness. “Farmers.”

“You do realize you’re getting a country girl in me, don’t you?”

He stopped motion, spoon in midair, a drop of ice cream hitting his bare foot. Shoving his spoon in his mouth, Tanner snatched up a cloth napkin. “Are you saying you’ll come to Hessenberg?”

He peeked sideways at Miss Beswick. But she stared blankly toward the window, distracted with the questions Tanner knew rattled her heart.

“I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “I’m just reminding you I’m nothing fancy. Just a simple north Florida girl.”

Tanner tossed the wadded-up napkin to the table and set his spoon in his dish. “Who said we were looking for fancy? You appear to be a woman of substance to me, and I do believe that will service us more.”

“The very definition of princess is fancy.” She shook her head.

“Only in movies or cartoons.”

“I don’t know . . .” She sighed. “This morning I woke up sure of my day, my future . . . Then you walked into the barn and told me I was someone completely different.”

“Did I?” Tanner attempted one more bite, but he was done. He carried the tray with the remains of their snack to the door and set it in the hall. “Seems to me I only filled in some missing information.”

“Which yanked me around,”—she mimed a jerking move—“in a completely different direction.”

“I’m sorry the news came as a surprise. But I can’t think of any other way to inform you of your true heritage. Of Hessenberg’s need for you.”

She laughed with irony. “A country needs me. Do you know how strange that sounds? How strange it feels? My heart feels like a rock and my thoughts are running around, bumping into each other.”

“Did the contents of the box help or hurt?” Tanner pointed to the box.

“Both.” She exuded a confident innocence that fascinated him, made him want to spend the night talking to her, learning about her, watching her face, and memorizing her unique nuances. “Go on. Take a look.” She motioned to the box.

“All right.” Tanner raised the lid to see a spiral artist notebook on top, barely fitting.

“Gram wrote and illustrated a fairy tale for my sixth birthday.”

He tugged it free and turned the pages. “Your gram did this?”

“When she was ninety-four.”

She’d painted a beautiful replica of Meadowbluff Palace. “This is where she grew up. It used to be the country palace until the capital city, Strauberg, expanded into the countryside. In the winter and social season, the royal family lived in the city, at Wettin Manor.” He looked up at her. “It’s a government office now, but you will have discretion to—”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not even sure who I am anymore.” Miss Beswick slipped from her chair, pointing to the next page. “What’s this scene about?”

“I don’t know.” Tanner studied the image of a young woman fleeing through an angry forest. “There were no woods behind the palace in 1914 when the princess lived there.”

“What was it when she lived there?”

“A meadow.” He offered her a smile. “Thus, Meadowbluff Palace. The royal mews, stables, would be about here somewhere.” Tanner pointed to the top of the page. “The prince, her uncle, kept a couple of race horses there along with his automobiles.” He waved his hand over the forest scene. “All of this used to be a meadow. But after two wars and a depression, the extended grounds around the mews were not maintained. They grew wild and left to become whatever. The mews were torn down in the twenties, I believe. This whole area is actually woodlands now. It’s funny your gram would know that.”

“Maybe she saw a picture?” Miss Beswick left her chair, perched on the edge of the coffee table, and leaned over the book, leaned into Tanner’s personal space with her air of sweetness.

He exhaled, tilting away from her, quite sure his veins were visibly pulsing in his neck. “Did you find the letter? In the attaché?”

“Yes, to an Otto.”

“He was your uncle’s scribe.”

“Scribe?”

“The Grand Duke was illiterate. Probably due to dyslexia. He employed a lad to read and write for him. Otto Pritchard. His younger brother, Yardley, was a law professor of mine—”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“I am. Rather was. Now I serve Hessenberg as the Minister of Culture.”

“Right.” She rested her chin on her clasped hands. “You did tell me that.” Then she sat back, sweeping her hands through her hair. “It feels like eons since we first met.”

“Yes, eons.” This would never do, her every move fanning the small flame she ignited in his soul.

“You were saying . . .”

Yes, he was saying . . . What was he saying? “Yardley recalled his brother saying Princess Alice moved to London in the twenties, after the war, and married an RAF officer.”

“She never said a word, at least to me, about her life in London. I was four and five when my grandparents died. As I got older, Gram talked a lot about Hessenberg and her childhood love of painting . . . She had mild dementia in her early nineties so stories were interwoven with truth and fable and I didn’t pay much attention. The older I got, the older she got. I loved sitting with her, holding her hand. But by then, she was in her late nineties, hard of hearing, and sleepy.” She smiled softly. “Very sleepy.” Miss Beswick shifted her gaze to him and Tanner felt a bit like he was drowning in pools of blue. “She was the sleepy princess.”

“Leaving Hessenberg, two world wars, living in Brighton, then London, losing her husband . . . all painful seasons in her life. Maybe she tried to forget.”

“The letter to Otto said as much. That she wanted to forget her past and all of its death.”

Tanner turned to the fairy tale’s last page, his gaze landing on the Starfire #89. “Miss Beswick—”

“Okay, Tanner, please. Call me Reggie. Or Regina. Miss Beswick makes me sound like a spinster.”

“She painted a Starfire #89. Did you know her uncle—your uncle—commissioned the original Starfire #89? He paid for its engineering and production. He put it in its first race. Against Henry Ford’s #999.”

His brief time as Minister of Culture had so far centered on Augustine-Saxon history. It served him well now.

“I knew about the car but never that my great-great-great-uncle commissioned it to be made. I didn’t know about him at all.” Miss Beswick, rather, Regina studied the picture. “The princess is putting a bag of something in the trunk. Wonder what that means?”

“I’ve no idea. But this stable and the car are long gone by now, Miss Besw—Regina.” Her name felt good on his lips. “The Nazis occupied some of the island during the second war. If the Starfire was still there, they’d have found it and shipped it to Germany.”

“But there’s only one Starfire #89 in a German museum, and it’s documented as number seven, the last one made, and sold by the owner at an auction.”

“I can’t tell you.” He closed the book. “I’m your entail chap, your royal family and Hessenberg historian, but the whereabouts of an ancient auto, I’ve no idea.”

She sighed, taking the notebook and flipping through the pages. Her shoulders rounded forward with weariness.

“This stinks. How can I go back to being just Reggie, have-tools-will-restore-your-car, Beswick while the idea of being a real princess floats around in the back of my head? What am I supposed to do with this?” She waved the fairy tale at him. “I feel like half my life is a lie.”

“Not a lie, Regina. Just incomplete.”

She collapsed back into the chair. “None of this makes sense. Why didn’t she tell me?”

Tanner held up the fairy tale. “What do you think this is, Regina?”


She made a face. “Tanner, I’m too tired, too confused—”

“Regina, look. A book. An offering, an avenue of communication. Fairy tale, parable, letter, novel, e-mail, blog, whatever. Words communicate. Your gram was communicating truth to you through this story.”

“If she wanted me to know the truth, why didn’t she just come out and say it? Why hide it in a fairy tale? And the bigger question is, what did Mama know? Because when Gram painted this, Mama was alive and well and the true heir.”

“There are some mysteries we may never know the answer to, Regina.” A passion fueled his thoughts, and Tanner slipped down to one knee next to her. “But this book is for you, about you . . . You are the princess in the story, more or less. Your gram is telling you who you are. Look at the last line. ‘Believing that one day they would be found when salvation came.’ She means you. The one who can save Hessenberg, save your gram’s legacy. You are her treasure, her heritage. There’s your truth.”

Regina pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead with a deep sigh. “What truth ever started with ‘Once upon a time,’ Tanner?”

He laughed low and rose to his feet. “Resist all you want, but you know I’m right.” He retrieved two waters from the mini-fridge. “You are the princess, the heir to the Hessenberg throne. No doubt, fear, or once-upon-a-time can change the truth.”

“I keep waiting for someone to show up with an, ‘Aha, we got you!’ ” She reached for the water bottle he offered and twisted off the cap.

“If they do, I’m as goosed as you, Regina.” Tanner sat, picking up the notebook again. Something he saw on the back of the car suddenly registered with him. Yes, there on the license plate. Princess Alice was a clever woman. “See this? RAB. Your initials if I’m not mistaken. And this.” He pointed to the emblem in the top right corner of the plate. “Princess Alice’s cipher with the Augustine-Saxon crown above her initials. She’s speaking to you loud and clear. She used to mark her cipher with a sapphire ring—”

“What did you say?”

“She’d mark her cipher with the shank of a sapphire ring. I know that—”

“Like this?” Regina retrieved a small jewel box from the larger box and opened it.

“Yes, like this.” Tanner examined the ring, raising it to the light of the lamp next to him. The sapphire stone surrounded by diamonds was set in an intricate filigree setting. “The Grand Duchess ring,” he whispered. “We thought it’d been lost. Grand Duke Earnest Wilhelm fashioned this ring for his wife in 1833. The sapphire came from Hessenberg’s own mines when they were producing some of the world’s best.”

“Then take it. It belongs to Hessenberg,” Regina said.

“No, the ring belongs to the royal family, Regina. It belongs to you.”

“But I’m not a royal, Tanner.” Her protests about her true heritage were weakening. “Besides, what would I do with that here?”

“Mark your seal on . . .”—he shrugged, grinning—“a new paint job for one of your autos.”

She laughed, and he loved hearing the melody of her heart. She reached for the ring as he passed it back. “What’s this thing worth anyway? Or do I want to know?”

“A quarter of a million pounds. Roughly. See the princess—”

“A quarter of a mill—shoot, Tanner, that’s like . . .” She held up the ring, calculating. “Three hundred and fifty thousand in dollars. Roughly.”

“The old Grand Duke spared no expense. The sapphire is over two karats and cut with the rare jeweler’s cut. Same with the diamonds, all flawless with the jeweler’s cut,” Tanner said.

Regina leaned toward the lamp behind her, offering the ring to the triangle of light falling from under the shade. “What’s so rare about the cut?”

“No one knows how to fashion it anymore. It was developed by a Jewish family in Germany. All very skilled and talented artisans. All killed, every one of them, in Dachau and Auschwitz.”

The words Dachau and Auschwitz raised the blinders on history’s dark past and the sins of men.

“Then the ring is priceless,” Regina said, low and tender. Thoughtful. “So much talent and knowledge was lost in the war. You can’t kill six million people—”

“Murder.”

“Murder six million people and preserve knowledge or hold on to culture.”

Tanner regarded her. Did she hear herself? Such an observation. And spoken like a true princess. “You’re making an argument for why we need you, Regina. To regain our heritage, our culture.”

“But I know nothing of your heritage or culture.”

“You carry the blood of your gram, your uncle, within you.”

Regina regarded the ring, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, but I am not anyone’s hope of restoration.” She held the ring at arm’s length, one eye closed. “The filigree is so detailed. Like it’s trying to say something.”

“It is. It’s your gram’s cipher.” Tanner moved behind her and leaned over her shoulder. Soft wisps of her fiery hair burned his cheeks. “The shank was restyled for her when she became the Hereditary Duchess. See here? The P for Princess. Half of an A for Alice. And half of a crown. On the other side of the ring is the rest of the A and crown.”

“That’s extraordinary. And amazingly clever. I should come up with some kind of cipher for the cars we restore.” She laughed. “A brand. Sear it on the undercarriage.”

“Yes, it’s quite clever. It’s the ingenuity of Earnest Wilhelm, passed on from Grand Duchess to Grand Duchess. It was a secret. Only the royal jeweler knew the cipher was embedded in the ring. When the Duchess sealed a letter or marked an official document with her seal, she added the cipher, usually in private, so no aides or staff discovered the secret.”

“So, the royal life is fraught with secrets and intrigue.”

“More than you know.” He could lean over her shoulder all night and never tire. His lips were inches from hers and his heart was alerting his whole body to her beauty.

“Really, you should take it home with you.” Regina returned the ring to its jewel case, shoving it to Tanner’s side of the coffee table. “What do you know about this?” She reached inside the box, bringing out a rather tattered, torn photograph. “Do you know him? He doesn’t seem connected to anything we’ve talked about so far.”

Tanner pinched the end of the photo between his thumb and finger. So this was the other half of the photo he found in his box.

“Your gram loved boxes, Regina,” Tanner said, walking into the bedroom and from his suitcase dug out the box he’d found at the palace, in one of the suites. The one he had carried to the office the other day, wondering how he’d discover the mystery of the box’s unusual contents.

He set it on the table next to Regina’s box, opened the lid, and retrieved the other half of the picture.

“Oh my gosh, she tore it in half. Put them in two different boxes.” Regina sighed, but with a smile. “Gram, were you a little upset at this boy?”

“Maybe she meant to give one half to the young man,” Tanner offered, tapping his half of the photo. “And keep one for herself.”

“Maybe. Or she was brokenhearted. Otherwise, why keep it all those years? When she had two husbands?” Regina reached for the two halves, piecing them together, studying them, her questions defining her fine features.

“Perhaps it was love unrequited,” Tanner said. “There, turn over the photos. What does the writing tell us?”

“Let’s see.” When Regina bent to the light again to read the back of the photograph, her thick, sun-kissed bangs streamed over her eyes. At once she was both worldly and innocent, a tomboy with a feminine flair. Tanner breathed in and breathed out. Steady, ole boy. “Rein Friedrich . . .” She looked to Tanner. “Ring any bells? This was the spring of 1914.”

Tanner studied the man’s face while his private thoughts urged his heart to shut up about love and desire. Focus on the task at hand. “There was a Rein Friedrich who fought for the Kaiser in the first war. Jumped sides, he did, which was what the Grand Duke, Prince Francis, feared all along with Hessenberg’s young men.”

“Didn’t he fear the Germans? The Kaiser? Seems I remember something about that in a history class.”

“He did, but moreover, he feared the men of fighting age would join ranks with his cousin, the Kaiser, his rival. Francis wanted to fight with his Anglo cousins in England and Brighton. But Hessenberg’s strong Germanic influence divided the country in 1914.”

“So he abandoned ship.”

“Something like that, yes. But he wasn’t ready to lead in wartime anyway. Rein Friedrich, if this is the same chap, joined the German army, rose through the ranks until he eventually found himself in Hitler’s inner circle.”

“Gram saved a picture of a Nazi?” She moved the photo pieces apart, making a face, disgust sharpening her tone.


“He wasn’t a Nazi when this was taken,” Tanner said. “He was most likely a jolly university chap with the world at his beckoning.”

“Cocky and full of himself.”

“Aren’t all young men? Rein’s life ended with him swinging from a rope. He was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials.”

Regina dropped the photo into the box. “What about this pendant?” She rested the piece in his palm.

“Looks like it’s been cut in half. And”—Tanner dug in his box—“like the picture, I have the other half here.” Tanner matched his half of the pendant to Regina’s. “It’s engraved with her initials. It’s a cipher pendant.”

“Do you think she wanted him to have the other half?” She held up her palm and Tanner settled his half of the pendant against her skin.

“Very well could,” Tanner said. “The picture was taken in 1914 before the war. She might have fallen for Rein. Maybe she tore the picture before the family fled, leaving it behind for him.”

“Do you think that’s what the fairy tale is about? Gram leaving things behind for him?”

“I don’t think Rein would never be the ‘salvation’ of Hessenberg. Besides, he obviously didn’t go off with the box, the picture, or the pendant. I found the box in the princess suite of the palace.”

She sighed, packing up the box. “More questions. Fewer answers.” Regina stood, collecting her box. “Gram, grrr, why didn’t you say something?”

“Regina, she did.”

“If you say to me the fairy tale is her ‘saying something’ . . .” She pointed her finger at him, her chin lowered, her eyes narrowed. “I might have to punch you.”

He laughed. “Have I rattled you that much?”

“Yes . . . no . . . It’s not you . . . I don’t know, Tanner. I don’t know. I can’t think.”

“You’re tired. Go home. Sleep.”

But she didn’t move past the chairs. “What . . . what would I have to do again? And for how long?”

Tanner started down this road tenderly. Slowly. “Go to Hessenberg, of course. Meet with the king and other leaders, the prime minister and governor, go through the formalities—”

“Become the actual princess.”

“Yes, by reinstating the House of Augustine-Saxon. You’ll be the heir and princess, Hereditary Duchess—”

“Grand Pooh-bah and Chief Potentate?”

“If you’d like.” He wanted to laugh, wrap her against him, kiss the worry lines from her forehead, and promise her all would be well. She moved his heart in a way no woman ever had. Not even Trude.

He’d chide himself later about the inappropriateness of his affection, but he was tired, still famished, and on the cusp of winning her over. So he gave his heart permission to feel.

“Then what? You said something about an oath.”

“Oath of the Throne. To be the proper heir, the proper princess. You’ll pledge to protect and defend Hessenberg. I don’t think you’ll find any of it objectionable.”

“Tanner, I’m an American.”

“Yes, well—”

“I have to give up my citizenship?”

“You will be a sovereign of Hessenberg, Miss Beswick . . . Regina.” Could she hear what he whispered to her?

“Oh no, no—”

“Not even for your gram? For her people?”

“But she left Hessenberg. She left Europe. Came to America and lived like an American.”

“And you’ll return, to do what your gram couldn’t do. Return to her royal house and her people. Establish the Augustine-Saxon throne once again.”

Regina made tracks for the door. “Be sure to text me when you leave, okay?”

“You’re not coming with me?” He must not let her make her decision so quickly. “Regina, give it another day.”

She turned back and grasped the front of his shirt with lightning speed.

“Look me in the eye.”

“Steady on.”

“This is real? All of it? For real?” Determination flared in her eyes, poured forth in her words.

“You’re the one with the box, Regina. With the ring, with your gram’s fairy tale message. I’ll ring His Royal Highness, King Nathaniel II, if you’d like—”

“No.” She released him, stepping back. “I believe you.”

“Th–then you’ll come?” He adjusted his shirt, moving around to see her face. Her eyes. He was already becoming familiar with her visual messages.

“Maybe.” She went to the door and jerked it open. “I would need a couple of days to get ready.”

“Regina?”

“What?” she said, one foot in the hall, her back to the room.

“Thank you. All of Hessenberg thanks you.”

“I said maybe, Tanner. Maybe.”

And she was gone.



August 10, 1914

Meadowbluff Palace

From the Grand Ballroom and through the open windows, I can hear the orchestra tuning. The music is so lovely. And the breeze is rising up from the bay, cooling off the August heat and bringing the scent of the sea mixed with honeysuckle.

It’s nearly eight in the evening and the sun is setting, leaving a beautiful but curious white glow over Uncle’s stable. Almost like a beacon. Oh for my Brownie camera! How could I have left it behind at Wettin Manor? Must ask Mamá if Lark can take me into the city tomorrow to retrieve it.

If I cannot have a paintbrush in my hand, I should like to have my camera. There is so much beauty and wonder to capture in life.

I taught Esmé to use the camera. For a picture of Rein Friedrich and me when he came to call. But that was before . . . Oh, he’s so rude and mean toward Uncle.

Mr. Elliott brought the picture development round last evening and I had half a mind to tear up the photograph of Rein and me. Right in half, I tell you.

Though I must say, having a ball when the talk of war escalates and burdens us all does seem untimely.

But Mamá is so looking forward to tonight’s festivities. It’s been a year since Papá’s death and she longs to wear a colorful gown.

Uncle and Mamá want to present me as the official Hereditary Grand Duchess of Hessenberg during the ball as well. Though I’m a bit young yet, only sixteen.

I’ve mixed feelings about it all. About so many things.

War.

Love.

Men.

Rein.

He insists he and the other lads are restless, wanting to go to war. They are congregating in the afternoons and evenings in Wisteria Park, in the avenues, and on the university campus demanding Uncle and Prime Minister Fortier enter the fight. They ask why the grand isle of Hessenberg should sit by while our brethren in Brighton and Britain—yes, even Germany—spill their blood on the battlefields.

Uncle’s advisors, Lord Raeburn and Lord Strathem, have already joined the Brighton navy, serving as officers for His Majesty, King Nathaniel I.

I do believe Uncle’s pride is wounded, but even more he is afraid. He will not enter the war because he cannot lead Hessenberg through. He has said so to Mamá and me many times over. He claims he has no mind for military strategy..

Let the Kaiser and Tsar fight their own battles. What has it to do with Hessenberg?

But I can tell Uncle regards this as his worst failure. He fears, as do I, our English and German heritage will divide rather than unite us. We are literally cousins to them all.

So Uncle continues the summer social season as if Germany, Russia, Austria, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and Brighton have not chosen up sides and are preparing, perhaps this very hour, to fire upon one another.

It seems impossible to think our young men may fight against one another. Some decry, “Fight for the Kaiser.” While others are fighting for the king of Brighton and sporting about in their brown-and-navy uniforms.

Last week when Rein came to call, he criticized Uncle for not joining in with Kaiser Wilhelm. When I defended Uncle, Rein insisted, to my face, that Uncle was arrogant and selfish, caring only for his royal ways with no care toward the bourgeois.

Uncle has every care toward the bourgeois. He’s built three schools for the mine workers, the “ringers,” and for the poor. He charges nothing for their children to attend. He’s even begun a special program for children who cannot read well. Something about the letters flipping about on the page, or dancing around. He’s never said aloud but I do believe he suffers from such a malady. ’Tis why he employs Otto to do his reading and writing.

I suppose he does appear self-righteous regarding war, but his fears and inability to read leave him no choice.

The sun is moving farther west and elongated shadows fall on the lawn, taking my heart with it. I am remembering my friends and our days at the summer shore. Was it only a month ago we walked along the beach, kicking at the waves, holding hands, us all, singing the evening song, reminiscing of our school days? Laughing and laughing and laughing.

“La-da-da. Moonlight, sunshine, waves upon the shore—”

I think it’s my favorite evening song.

Rein asked permission to call on me tonight. I told him yes, but he must face the duke first.

“I shall make the arrangements,” he said.

Now I wonder. He was so hard on Uncle, on all of us. We shall see tonight.


Alice