Coronets and Steel (8 page)

As the water dribbled in I turned my attention to the stuff The Enemy had made available for my use. Since I had no clothes or supplies my scornfully high-handed repudiation of Alec’s offerings would have to wait for another opportunity.

Two thick, neatly folded towels sat on top of an also neatly folded dressing gown of a soft, extremely expensive combed cotton. I shook it out and held it up, hoping there would be a barbaric dragon embroidered on the back, or at least some vulgarly ostentatious intertwined initials over the breast pocket, but it was unrelieved deep midnight blue. In the case were soap and shampoo, pricey French brands, and a comb and a silver-backed brush—the frame probably a hundred years old, judging from the etched patterns, the bristles new and natural.

The water was deep enough to climb into, so I peeled off the clammy, gritty clothes, unpinned my hair, and lowered myself into the water. Oh, that felt good! I lay there, soaking long enough to feel my aches and bruises ease. Even my ankle and shoulder felt considerably better by the time I reached for the soap and shampoo and began to degrime myself.

Rinsing thigh-length hair in a bathtub with water pressure a step up from a drip required patience. Then it was time to turn my attention to my clothes. My underthings and top were easy to wash out, but the jeans presented a challenge. Not sure if I should use soap lather or shampoo I finally used both. Big mistake. Ever tried to wring jeans out by hand? Especially with blistered palms? Finally I gave up, hoping they’d dry by morning.

I used a towel to wrap my hair into a turban, straightened up the bathroom, and put on the dressing gown. It was roomy; I wrapped the sash firmly around my waist, rolled the sleeves back to my wrists, slipped the comb into one of the huge pockets and my hairclip into the other pocket, then hobbled out.

Madam and her minions were gone. The door to the parlor was open. Alec sat with a teacup in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He, too, wore last night’s clothes.

“Which is my room?” I asked truculently, to cover my embarrassment.

“There.” A nod behind him.

I opened the door to a small, charming bedroom with a high four-poster single bed, a table and chair, and a wardrobe in the corner. The door latched on the inside. I draped my wet clothes over the chair and table and the bedposts, then limped back into the makeshift sitting room and sank into a large upholstered armchair next to the table.

Despite the situation, a sense of well-being suffused me when I discovered a fresh pot of tea waiting.

Alec excused himself, and for a long time I sat back in the deep, comfortable chair with my fingers wrapped around the warm teacup, staring at the window across the room and ignoring the growling of my stomach.

When I finally raised the cup, my lip against the rim, I thought, what if there’s something in it?

Down crashed the cup, and my mood.

That was when Alec reentered the room, damp clean hair swept back from his brow, the rest of him elegant in a pair of charcoal slacks and a white dress shirt.

His eyes were marked with tiredness, his gaze light and cool and alert as he addressed me in that pleasant, curiously familiar tone. “I ordered dinner to be brought up at eight because I thought you’d be a lot longer in the bath than you were. But then, without your usual battery of cosmetics I suppose there isn’t much to do beyond the basics, is there?” He dropped tiredly into the other chair.

“My usual battery of cosmetics?” I repeated. “I’ve never worn makeup, except for dance recitals. You keep
doing
that. I would like to know who the hell you think I am.”

“And I would like to know if it’s money, fear, or perversity that inspired you to run this game on us. Or is your brother behind it, as I’ve suspected all along?”

“First tell me who my brother is supposed to be, and I’ll tell you if I’ve ever met him,” I retorted. “Seems to me you’re the one running games, all this yap about brothers and makeup. Take the clue bus, Gus! I. Am. Kim. Murray.”

“Aurelia—” he began.

“All right,
Aurelia
Kim Murray. How did you know that, anyway? I never use it.”

His face tightened, even more skeptical. “You’re enjoying this charade, damn you; do you know what it’s done to my father, to your parents?”

“
My parents,
” I stated, revving up for battle, “are happily at
home,
waiting for my latest postcard to hear about my
wonderful
trip to Europe,
and they will be furious
when they hear what happened to me, and by the way, what did you put in the tea? Is this supposed to be round two?”

A ridge of color touched his refined cheekbones, but he pressed his lips tight, as if holding in his own nuclear-powered comeback.

I went on with exaggerated patience, “I’m beginning to think it’s a waste of time, and what I should contact is not an embassy but the guys with the straitjackets. Look. For the millionth time I am Kim Murray, born and bred in Santa Monica, California—”

“Yes, so it states in that fascinating pile of fiction I found in your valise. What I want to know is where you managed to obtain such a realistic passp—”

“You
did
thieve my stuff! You thieved it, and you
nosed through it!
”

His mouth twisted. “And most interesting I found it.”

“You rat bastard!” I exploded out of my chair, fist aimed straight for that scornful face.

He flung up a hand and caught my wrist.

For those two glorious seconds I’d forgotten my hurt ankle, until it promptly collapsed under me. But for Alec holding my arm I would have fallen into his lap. His grip kept me upright but the jolt caused the towel turban rocking unsteadily on my head to tumble off, and my hair rolled down over my shoulders and across his chair.

The effect on Alec was so odd my rage shifted into overwhelming confusion. I stared down at his face, which had changed from sardonic disbelief to astonishment and then blankness. Devoid of any expression whatever.

So there we were for a long moment, me leaning on the chair, him sitting in it, my wet hair draped in limp wet waves over us both as his eyes traveled slowly up the hair to my face, and then to the clean pink part on my scalp.

He released my wrist, pinched his fingers to his brow, and rubbed his eyes slowly. His expression was the remote one I’d first seen at the ballet.

And when he spoke, the scorn and disbelief were utterly gone.

“What was your mother’s maiden name?” he asked.

“
A
TELIER,” I SAID NUMBLY.

He watched in silence as I sank back into my chair, pulled the comb out of the dressing gown pocket, and began to comb out the tangles. His eyes followed the movement of my hand with the comb, his expression still blank. Finally he said, “Where was she born, and when?”

“During the war. We’re pretty sure in Paris, but it might have been Vienna. That’s one of the things I was there to find out.”

“Your maternal grandparents’ names?”

“Aurelia and Daniel Atelier. Are you going to tell me why you ask?”

“Yes,” he said, his gaze flicking from my face to my hand to my face again. “Go on, please.”

“There isn’t much more.” I shrugged. “Mom thinks she has an early memory of a flat in Paris that had a lot of flowers, though she’s not certain. Her first real memory is aboard the ship coming over to the States, probably when Gran was widowed. All she knows about my grandfather is that he was sent to fight against the Russians.”

“Does your mother remember him?” he asked quietly.

I frowned in concentration. “Maybe. She doesn’t know if it was real or a memory she made up from looking at his picture, which always sat on Gran’s bedside table. Said he was tall. Thin. Laughed a lot. Smelled like tobacco, which would be a real memory, wouldn’t it? Gran never smoked.”

I hesitated, sure I was being boring, but Alec listened intently. So I went on. “I have a copy of the picture in my suitcase . . . which is out in a field somewhere, argh, argh, argh. Anyway, she also has a picture of my mother when she was a toddler, but I didn’t bring a copy of that, as I didn’t think it would lead anywhere. Mom’s wearing this amazing antique-looking baby dress, all lace and pearls, that I guess had been Gran’s. Mom thinks they sold the dress during the war.” I shrugged, but he was listening closely.

“Your grandmother and mother came across to the States when?”

“In forty-five, right after the war ended.”

“Were they alone? How did your grandmother survive once they arrived?”

“They were alone, and Gran first was a governess, teaching French and deportment and the like to some rich girl. When that family came to Los Angeles, she quit and taught piano for years and years.”

Alec let out a low whistle, his eyes narrowed. “Easier to believe—no.” He shook his head, rubbed his eyes again. He muttered something short and pungent in that Slavic language I’d heard a few times, then his hand dropped. “I haven’t slept in four days. I can’t think.”

He gave me that real smile again, but this time between it and any sense of aesthetic appreciation lay the matter of a superlatively rotten twenty-four hours. “I knew that powder was a stupid idea, but I didn’t know how stupid until this morning. This afternoon. Now.” His hand passed over his face, fingers briefly pressing his eyelids. “I beg your pardon. For everything, beginning with that damned dosed wine.”

I stared stonily back at him. “Not that it makes it okay, because it doesn’t, but you had a reason?”

He leaned his head back against his chair and said, “Aurelia von Mecklundburg is probably capable of imitating an American accent, and she could have bought a forged passport, the California clothes, and all the rest, but the one thing she could not have done is grow her hair a meter and a half in less than six months.”

“Aurelia von Mecklundburg?” I repeated, totally confused.

He nodded, his blue gaze appraising. “You are her size, and shape, you have the same complexion, and you’ve got the same eyes the color of honey. You’ve even got the same single dimple in your left cheek when you laugh and the same mole on the nape of your neck. You could be her twin. You could be her!” And, as I stared in disbelief, he went on with some of the old irony, “I wondered what had inspired her to whack three years off her age in the passport, yet dress like—well, like a student from California. But Aurelia—or Ruli, as she likes to be called now. Still trying to get used to it. She’s what the French call BCBG.”

Bon chic bon genre
—not merely the height of fashion, but always perfectly put together. I nodded, for neither observation would fit me. “Well, I must confess my style in haute couture could best be summed up by ‘LA laid-back.’” I laughed. “Meanwhile, is craziness contagious?”

“So you’ve never heard of Aurelia von Mecklundburg?”

“Never.”

“Armandros Danilov von Mecklundburg?”

“Nope.”

“Marius Ysvorod?”

A shake of my head. “Wow, when they were first graders, did it take half a week to write their names?”

“How about—” His tone softened, more tentative. “—Maria Karoline Sofia Aurelia Dsaret?”

“Nada. Except the name Aurelia, of course. Must be a more widely used name than I’d thought.”

“Particularly in Dobrenica. Heard of it?”

I rubbed my forehead, trying to call up an image of the age-battered European map tacked to the wall above my desk. “I think, um, ah I might have heard of it. Only there was something funny about it, but I don’t remember what. It would be one of those little Eastern European burgs swallowed up by the Germans during the war, and the Soviets after, right? Somewhere in the Carpathians?”

“Somewhere in the Carpathians,” he repeated, smiling.

Then I remembered the train, and I said slowly, “You weren’t taking me there, were you?” And at his nod, the comb dropped out of my numb fingers. “What?” I moaned. “Nothing makes any sense at all.”

He glanced down at his watch. It was a thin, discreet type that cost a year of my parents’ salaries. “We’ve a few minutes till eight. Why don’t you drink your tea. I could use some myself.”

He leaned down, poured a cup of the now lukewarm tea, and drank it straight down.

I picked up my own cup and gratefully sipped.

He put the cup down and said, “I’ll give you the rest of it over dinner. No interruptions. Right now I’d better see to some things.” He held up his cell and left.

I reached for the tea, then heard clatters and thuds lumbering up the steep stairway. Madam and her helpers toiled in, bearing heavy trays of food. They set places for two; Alec reappeared as they finished. No sign of Mr. Big.

Alec sat down, politely said, “Bon appétit,” and I devoted myself, with the dedication inspired by nearly twenty-four hours of enforced abstinence, to a splendid dinner. Slovene-style veal stew with corn dumplings, sharply spiced, and savory chicken
Djuvec, Sarma
in cabbage leaves . . . My mouth waters today when I think about how good that meal was.