“There have been some. I’ve loved and lost.”
“Like me?”
Aubrey thought for a moment of that day in Iowa. The crash, the smouldering wreck, and the burnt, twisted body of the man she had loved, however briefly. Loved with all her heart. They had never really gotten started, never took off, as he would have said. She would have been happy with him. She had had her own crash not long after that. Those months in the hospital recuperating, she had mourned his loss. And there was more than one occasion when she had reflected on her own brush with death. Had it been deliberate? Nonsense, she always told herself. The downdraft that had caught her was more powerful than any she had ever experienced. Any pilot would have been put in the dirt by that.
“No,” she said to the count. “No, not like you.”
“Here’s hoping you never will. Tell me, that man I saw you with, the reporter from the Berliner morning paper—how do you know him?”
“We met just before I met you, at the entrance to the exhibition.”
“I see. What do you know of him?”
“Not much. He’s a journalist.”
“I was told that you were seen with him, just as the riot broke out.”
“We were having a coffee, a chat.”
“They said he appeared to be quite drunk.”
“Was he arrested as well?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then how would they know?”
The count tilted his head, winked.
“Because I was being followed. Right.”
“Or maybe he was?”
“Why?”
“He’s a reporter who works for what was once a radical left newspaper. It should have in reality been shut down. He was one of their leading exponents of anti-Hitlerism.”
“Is that a real word?”
“I’m not sure, but it fits. He could be classified as an enemy of the state. He may still be yet, if he doesn’t learn a proper attitude.”
“This doesn’t sound like you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you’re sounding more and more like that bastard who tried to kill me. Do you have one of those black uniforms in your closet?”
“No. I am a party member, of course, but I am not in the SS. They tried to offer me an honorary rank. I turned them down.”
“Really? I’ll bet that didn’t go over well.”
“They’ll come back to me for sure. I can only resist for so long. It will cause offense eventually.”
“So, one day you will be strutting around like that animal in Berlin?”
“Perhaps. But that is enough of this subject. I will not be berated for my views in my own home by an outsider, a foreigner, a…”
“Woman?”
The count stood up. He went over to a desk and spun a yellow-coloured globe around and around. “What do you really think of me, Aubrey Endeavours?”
“I think you’re a fascinating man, certainly very handsome, caught up in a new wave of optimism. And ambition, like you said.”
He spun the globe one final time, and it teetered on its stand but did not fall over. He came across the room to her and grasped her so hard she almost dropped her drink.
“I am developing feelings about you, ones I haven’t had for a long time.”
She could only gulp and stare up at him.
“I don’t want you to go back home. Not even to Berlin. We can stay here. I know it’s a fantasy, but I want it to be true, at least for tonight. And perhaps tomorrow.”
“Fine. It is true, for tonight, then. Perhaps tomorrow.”
22
Aubrey retired to the master bedroom alone. Helmut had explained that there were customs, appearances that must be maintained. Protocol. This had been his wife’s domicile, after all, and the memory of her tragic death still permeated the place. He assured Aubrey that there would be a knock on her door later, when everyone else was asleep.
She found it all terribly romantic but admitted the large, comfortable bed was heaven to be in alone. She stared at the door for an hour, anticipating that knock, but eventually the wine and the fresh mountain air overcame her, and she fell into a deep sleep. She only roused when Helmut sat on the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. She rose to embrace him.
In the early morning hours before the sun came over the eastern mountains, Helmut slipped away. Aubrey was exhausted and filled with a warm glow of exhaustion and love. She had made a half-hearted attempted to keep him in her bed, but those damn appearances had to be maintained.
One of the servants knocked and came into Aubrey’s room at seven. She had clothes folded over her arm, trousers of thick cotton and warm turtleneck sweaters. The girl spoke only German and from what Aubrey could gather, they were compliments of the count. The clothes were feminine in design despite their rugged functionality, and Aubrey surmised they were further remnants of the countess’s wardrobe.
The maid gathered up the clothes Aubrey had had on since her coffee with Richard Fuchs and the awful encounter with the street thugs and took them away to be washed. Aubrey tried on the loaners; they were comfortable and worn in and appropriate for the climate. She went down to breakfast and found the servants preparing a table. There was singing coming from outside, and she went to investigate.
Reinhardt was sitting on the railing of the lodge’s enormous front porch, singing to the songbirds perched here and there in the trees. They seemed content to sit there and listen to him; he must have them trained, she thought. But upon Aubrey’s emergence onto the porch, they startled and flew away.
“Ahh, good morning, Fraulein. I trust you slept the sleep of queens and princesses last night?”
With a start, she realized Helmut was there as well, sitting in a wooden chair close in design to an Adirondack, reading a newspaper. He peered over the top of it at Aubrey’s response.
“Yes. I hope my snoring didn’t shake the timbers,” Aubrey said.
The count smiled. He had not
