thought, making it a curse. As a choice of after-dinner videos, it was perfect. She’d been wrong about the ordeal being nearly over: The meal was only the beginning.
Roland tried to say something as they left Angbard’s rooms. “Hush,” she said, leaning on his arm as they descended the grand staircase. Her back ached and she was wobbling on her heels. “Just get me back to my room.”
“I think we need to talk,” he said urgently.
“Later.” She winced as they reached the corridor. Take lots of little steps, she thought. The ache in her back was worst in the region of her kidneys. She felt drunk. “Tomorrow.”
He held the door open for her. “Please-”
She looked into his eyes. They were wide and appealing: He was a transparently gallant, well-meaning young man-Young? He’s only a couple of years younger than I am-with a great ass, and she instinctively distrusted that. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly, then winced. “I’m tired. Maybe after breakfast?”
“By all means.” He stepped back and Miriam turned to close the door, only to find the head maidservant, Meg, standing ahead of her.
“Ah. Meg.” Miriam smiled experimentally. Glanced at the bathroom. “I’ve had a long day and I’m going to bed shortly. Would you mind leaving?”
“But how is you to undress?” Meg asked, confused. “What if you want something in the night?”
“What’s the usual arrangement?” Miriam asked.
“Why, we sleep inside the door here, against your needs.” She dipped her head.
“Oh my.” Miriam sighed, and would have slumped but for her dress, which seemed to be holding her upright. “Oh god.” She took a stride toward the bathroom, then caught herself on the door frame with one arm. “Well. You can start by undressing me.” It took the combined efforts of two maids ten minutes to strip Miriam down to her underwear. Eventually something gave way and her ribs could move again. “Oh. Oh!” Miriam took a breath, then gulped. “’Scuse me.” She fled dizzily into the bathroom, skidding on the tiled floor, and locked the door. “Shit, shit…” she planted herself firmly on the toilet.
After a moment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her gaze fell on the dictaphone and she picked it up. “Memo to self,” she muttered. “At a formal banquet the pain in the small of your back might be the chair, but on the other hand it might be your kidneys backing up.” Four, no five, glasses of wine. She shook her head, still wobbly, and took another deep breath. “And the breathing trouble. Fuck ’em, next time-if they want formal, they can put up with whatever I can buy off the rack in Boston. I’m not turning myself into an orthopaedic basket case in the name of local fashion.”
Miriam took another deep breath. “Right. More notes. Margit of Praha, middle-aged, looks to be a chaperone for Olga Thorold, who seems to be senior to her. Olga is a ditz. Thinks a Swiss finishing school is higher education. Main ambition is to make a good marriage. I think Angbard may have been showing her to me as a role model, fuck knows why-maybe that’s what high-born women do around here. I think Vincenze is just horribly shy. May be some sort of all-male schooling for menfolk here. Their English is better than the women’s. I wonder if that means they get out more.”
She hit the “pause” button, then finished with the toilet. Standing up, she stripped off, then luxuriated in the sensation of having nothing at all in contact with her skin.
A thought struck her. “I’m going to have a bath,” she called through the door. “Don’t wait up for me. I don’t need any help.”
It was Miriam’s third bath of the day, but it didn’t strike her as excessive. Her skin itched. She poured expensive bath salts and perfumed oil into the water without remorse, then slid down into the sea of foam. “Memo: The bath obviously came over from the other side. That means they must have some way of moving heavy items. I need to find out how. If some asshole cousin is going to try killing me because of my name, I’d like to know whether they’re likely to use a pistol or a B-52.” A thought struck her. “It looks like they’re stuck in a development trap, like the Gulf Emirates. The upper class is fabulously rich and can import luxury items to their heart’s content, and send their kids for education overseas, but they can’t import enough, uh-stuff-to develop their population base. Start an industrial revolution. Whatever.” She leaned back, feeling her spine unkink. “I wish I knew more about developing world economics. Because if that’s what this all boils down to, I’ll have to change things.”
She put the recorder down and soaped herself all over, trying to scrub away the sweat and stress.
“Personal File: Roland. He’s too damn smooth.” She paused, biting her upper lip. “Reminds me of the college jocks, same kind of clean-cut hunky outdoors thing, except he’s painfully polite and doesn’t smell of beer or cigarettes. And he’s trying to hide something. Second cousin, which means, um. I have no idea what that means in the context of this extended Clan-family structure thing, except he treats me like I’m made of eggshells and soap bubbles. Great class, behaves like a real gentleman, then again, he’s probably a gold-plated bastard under the smooth exterior. That, or Uncle Angbard is trying to throw us together for some reason. And he is a tough cookie. Right out of The Godfather. Trust him as far as you can throw him.”
She leaned back farther. “Next Memo: sexual politics. These people are basically medievals in suits. Olga is the giveaway, but the rest of it is pretty hard to miss. Better not talk about Ben or the divorce, or the kid, they might get weird. Maybe I can qualify as an aged spinster aunt who’s too important to mess with, and they’ll leave me alone. But if they expect me to lie back and act like a, a countess, someone’s going to be in trouble.” And it could be me, she admitted. Stuck in a strange land with weird and stifling customs, under guard the whole time-
“Memo: The locket is not unique. Duke Angbard owns its twin. He gave it to me to keep and talked about a doppelgangered house. And the family trait. Which means they know all about it-and about how it works and how you use them. Hmm. Find out what they know before you start messing.”
There was a lot to think about. “Most kids sometimes play make-believe, that they’re actually the long-lost prince or princess of a magical kingdom. Not fucking Ruritania with poison-tasters, armed guards, and Dallas reruns as the height of sophisticated after-dinner entertainment.” She hummed tunelessly. “I wonder where they get the money to pay for the toys?” Something Paulette had said was trying to surface, but she couldn’t quite remember what.
The bathtub drained and Miriam caught herself yawning as she towelled herself dry. “Maybe it’ll all go away in the morning,” she told herself.
Miriam jolted awake with her eyes open and a strong sense of panic. Incoherent but un-pleasant dreams dogged her: goggled soldiers looming over her bed, limbs moving through molasses, too slow, too slow…
The bed was too big, much too big. She groped for the side of it, floundering across cold white sheets like an arctic explorer.
“Aagh.” She reached open air, found herself looking down at the floor from an unaccustomed height. Her arm hurt, her mouth tasted horrible-something had obviously died in it the night before, and she ached everywhere but especially in a tight band across her forehead. “Mornings!” The air was distinctly cold. Shivering, she threw the comforter off and sat up, then jumped.
“What are you doing in here!” she squeaked, grabbing the covers.
“Excuse, ma’am-we required to attend?” The maid’s accent was thick and hard to make out: English clearly wasn’t her first language, and she looked shocked, though whether it was at Miriam’s nakedness or her reaction to her presence wasn’t clear.
“Well.” Miriam held her breath for a moment, trying to get her heart under control. “You can just wait outside the door. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“But how is you to be dress?” asked the woman, a rising note of unhappiness in her voice.
“I’ll take care of that myself.” Miriam sat up again, this time holding the bedding around her. “Out. I mean, right out of my chambers, all of you, completely out! You can come back in half an hour. And shut the door.”
She stood up as the door clicked shut, her heart still pounding. “How the hell do they manage?” she wondered aloud. “Jesus. Royalty!” It came out as a curse. It had never occurred to her to sympathize with the Queen of England before, but the idea of being surrounded by flunkies monitoring her every breath gave her a sinking feeling in her stomach.
I’ve got to get away from this for a while, she realized. Even if I can’t avoid them in the long term, they’ll drive me mad if I don’t get some privacy. Domestic servants were something that had passed out of the American middle-class lifestyle generations ago. Just the idea of having to deal with them made Miriam feel as if she was about to break out in hives.
