“I am sorry,” the maid said, her face nearly scarlet with embarrassment. “Oroszlán, you see, loves visitors. We do not have many.”
Herr Steinberg helped me to my feet. Grandmama was laughing, though she tried to hide it in a cough. The dog—Oroszlán?—bounded over to Herr Steinberg and put his paws on the man’s shoulders. Herr Steinberg looked discomposed but said nothing, merely lifting one paw at a time off his person and then excusing himself, saying he would be more comfortable in a nearby csárda, but he would return the following day to see how we got on.
Grandmama watched him leave, then turned back to the girl. “It is a very handsome animal,” Grandmama said in German. “Is it yours?”
“Yes.” The maid laughed. “He thinks he is a lion, a king of everything.”
The serving maid keeps a dog in the house? Mama would never have allowed such a thing. Nor would she have permitted a maid to keep her guests talking in the entryway when they were newly arrived from a long journey.
I squared my shoulders. I was tired, I was hungry, this palace was both dusty and smelly, and if Grandmama would not say anything, I would.
“Bitte,” I said, using the German a decade of governesses had drilled in me. “Will you tell the family we are here?”
The maid turned her blue eyes on me in astonishment, her chin lifting. “Oh! I am sorry. I supposed you knew. I am your cousin Noémi.”
I stared at the girl. How could this dusty, disheveled creature be my cousin?
Noémi flung herself around and marched, shoulders stiff, through a doorway and up a twisting staircase fringed by a wrought-iron railing. We trailed behind her. The staircase terminated in a relatively plain hallway: I caught a glimpse of gilt and mirrors in something that might have been a ballroom to my right, but my cousin was already disappearing down the hallway and through a series of high-ceilinged rooms. Many of these stood empty, the plaster of the walls chipped and peeling, only a few chairs remaining from the last century, their woven covers faded and worn.
I’d stepped into a fairy-tale enchantment—a kingdom waiting for a hero to awaken it from its curse. This house had been beautiful once. Grandmama had told me the entire Viennese court had come here with Empress Maria Theresa to listen to Haydn play. Now it appeared nearly abandoned.
At last we came to a small parlor, the walls lined in pale green brocade. Unlike many of the rooms we’d passed through, it was well cared for. A ceramic stove dominated one corner, its mock marble finish and gilt flourishes gleaming in the fading light.
In a corner near the stove, an older gentleman with an impressive mustache puffed away at a pipe, his arms resting on the round bowl of his stomach. A pair of Lumen lights hung in the air beside him. He set his pipe, still smoking, on a side table and greeted Grandmama with an old-fashioned kiss on her hand.
Grandmama introduced him as her cousin János, and then they began chattering together in the Hungarian of their childhood. As Mama had deemed German sufficient for foreign tongues, I knew only a few homely phrases in Hungarian from Grandmama. I stood awkwardly near the door until Noémi gestured to a high-backed chair near my grandmother. I removed my bonnet and sat, wondering at my cousin’s look. The mulish cast of her lips suggested she was still upset with me, perhaps because of my unintentional slight at the door. But it was a silly thing to take offense at. Anyone might have made that mistake.
“Noémi,” János said, switching back to German for my benefit, “send word to Cook we want something to eat, now our company has arrived.”
Noémi cast a quick glance at me, a blush rising up her neck and into her cheeks. “János bácsi, it is Cook’s half day, remember? I will bring some bread and cheese, if you like.”
“No need. Send the maid for it.”
Noémi only nodded and disappeared from the room.
János watched her leave with a bemused expression. “I cannot seem to persuade her that she does not need to do the maid’s work.”
“Of course she does.” A new figure breezed into the room. “When one of the maids is down with the toothache and the others have gone home to prepare for Pünk?sd, what else would my sister do but help?”
“Mátyás! Dear boy. Come, meet my cousin, Lady Irína Zrínyi, and her granddaughter, Miss Anna Arden.” János smiled, the waxed tips of his mustache quivering. “My grand-nephew, Mátyás Eszterházy.”
Mátyás turned around to face me, and I got my first good look at my distant cousin. He was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a light wool coat with embroidered seams, and no more than a handful of years older than I. He was not unpleasant-looking, with his high, broad forehead and strong chin, but the slightly rounded cast of his cheeks and his sleepy-looking eyes made him seem somehow childish and unformed, despite the golden mustache he bore. If I had harbored a faint hope that flirting with Mátyás might drive away any lingering longing for Freddy, I was disappointed. This was not a face to haunt my dreams.
I stifled a sigh.
Mátyás bowed, loose-limbed and graceless. “Welcome to the heralded family estate,” he said, sitting down at János’s feet. His German was flawless, better far than mine. “How were the roads from Vienna? Interminable? Marshy?”
I smiled. At least, if not precisely a scintillating wit, my cousin had a sense of humor. Grandmama answered Mátyás’s question at length, describing our route, the hotels we’d visited, and the lovely time we’d had at Vienna.
Sometime during Grandmama’s discourse, Noémi returned with a serving platter filled with breads, cheeses, and some dried fruits. She handed me a plate, and I attempted to apologize in careful German. “I am sorry, cousin, if I offended you earlier. I had supposed you were the maid.”
Another of those unreadable expressions flickered across Noémi’s face. “Please do not apologize. Do not patronize me because you are the fashionable English lady and I am the poor cousin.” She pulled a small packet of letters from her pocket. “These came for you.”
Then she moved on to János. Watching the stiff line of her back, I marveled I had ever mistaken her for a servant.
Ginny ran a brush through my snarled dark hair. Her fingers were gentle, the repetitive motion soothing.
My eyes swept the high arched ceiling with its delicate tracery of roses. The room was grand enough, but the furnishings were sparse. A four-poster bed, a small rug on the floor, a vase of dried lavender on a bedside table. The vanity where I sat was carved with rococo exuberance, but the gold paint was beginning to flake and the wooden legs were battered.
Ginny set my brush on the vanity and squeezed my shoulder encouragingly. “It will come right, Miss Anna. You’ll see. I have a good feeling about this place.”