Silver in the Blood (12 page)

Sitting between Marcela and a stately brunette named Flora, Dacia discovered just how startled the Radescus and their guests were, and with good reason. She and Lou exchanged looks, but didn't interrupt the especially chatty Marcela, who actually had a few answers for them.

“We're all so excited to meet you, you know,” Marcela said. “The Florescu family is famous, of course, but they never go about in society! And you're from America! It sounds so exotic and thrilling! What is America like?”

Dacia was temporarily at a loss for words. How do you describe an entire country? Not to mention the fact that she'd been born there, and for her it was simply home. Lou, however, had no trouble.

“Big,” she said in a wistful voice. “Everything is much bigger. And newer.”

Marcela nodded, as though that was just what she had expected. “And then you come here, and of course you spend your time with Prince Mihai. But we didn't expect him to bring you to the opera! Or for you to pay calls on other families!”

“Why is that?” Dacia was quick to ask.

Both Marcela and Flora looked at her in surprise. “Why, because you're Florescus,” she said as though that explained
everything. “You don't entertain, and the only society you keep is Prince Mihai's family, the Draculas.”

Dacia still wasn't used to hearing Prince Mihai's family name, and it sent a cold prickle down her spine. Dracula was such a strange name! In Romanian, it meant either “son of the dragon,” or worse, “son of the devil.” It seemed insulting.

“We don't know why, do you?” Flora interjected. She smiled at Dacia and Lou. “You're very nice, and your aunt looks like a duchess, or a queen . . . Why do you think your family stays so cloistered all the time?”

“I heard a rumor that it's because they're only supposed to marry into the Dracula family,” Marcela told her friend, as though Dacia and Lou weren't sitting right there. “But that can't be true, or why would they have sent Miss Florescu away?” She made a tiny gesture with her fingers to indicate Aunt Kate.

“Wait—who sent Miss Flor—Aunt Kate away?” Dacia leaned in close and whispered the question. Over Elisabeta's shoulder, she could see that her aunt was busy discussing the new motorcars and hadn't heard anything. Yet.

But Marcela recognized that she'd gone too far. “Oh, I hate to bring up old gossip.”

“Please do,” Dacia urged her. “No one tells us anything.” Lou nodded, eyes wide, and Flora moved in closer, an eager expression on her face.

“Well . . .” Marcela shot her own look at her mother and Aunt Kate. “You, I just heard . . . I might be wrong, but . . . the rumor was that Miss Florescu was sent to America with her sisters
because she was in love with Prince Mattias Dracula, Prince Mihai's uncle. They wanted to marry, but both families objected, and she was sent away so that they couldn't elope.”

Dacia couldn't keep her voice to a whisper. “The man on the train!”

 

FROM THE DESK OF MISS MARIA LOUISA NEULANDER

29 May 1897

Dear Grandmother Neulander,

I hope that this letter finds you in the best of health. I am myself quite well, and nicely rested now after our long journey. Romania is very beautiful, and it is lovely to meet my Florescu relations and find out all the little details of their lives that weren't included in their letters over the years.

I hope that you got my postcard of the Tuileries. You were right: they were simply lovely. I also took a trip on the Seine, as you recommended. I wish that you could have come with us! Perhaps next year your gout will not be as severe and we could make the trip together. I would love to tour the boulevards where you went as a young girl, and hear your stories about the handsome young Frenchmen who wooed you!

Give my love to Grandfather, and know that I am missing you both.

Your devoted granddaughter,
LouLou

It was plain that Aunt Kate did not want Lou and Dacia to have a chance to talk in private, Lou thought with frustration as they drove back to the house on Rua Silvestre. They had paid two more calls, and during both calls Aunt Kate had sat between the cousins, her demeanor discouraging all conversation.

Then they had accepted an invitation to lunch at a hotel with the last family they had called upon. It had been very nice. The family, the Gradeszys, had sixteen-year-old twin sons who were good fun, and a fifteen-year-old daughter who was equally vivacious. They made a merry party for lunch, and it gave Lou hope that her twin brothers might grow up to be more socially acceptable, though she doubted very much that they would ever be quite
that
nice.

But this gossip that Miss Marcela Radescu had repeated was simply burning its way through Lou's brain, and she wanted to discuss it with someone—anyone!—but most especially Dacia.
Her aunt Kate had been in love, her family had sent her away rather than allow the union, and that man was Prince Mihai's own uncle! If she didn't want Kate and Prince Mattias to marry, why then was Lady Ioana throwing Dacia at Prince Mihai? And did Mihai know? Where was this uncle now? And had he ever married? Or was he truly the man from the train who had been kissing Aunt Kate? That seemed the most likely answer.

Dacia looked positively giddy, and the one thing she'd managed to say to Lou on the subject was, “Some answers at last!” But Lou didn't think they'd gotten answers so much as more questions, which they hardly needed.

But there was no time to even think, because the Gradeszy twins and their sister set out to please Lou and Dacia, whom they had exuberantly declared their new favorite friends. Their family had an estate in the mountains, and they tried to extract a promise that Dacia and Lou would come and visit them when they went there to escape the coming summer heat.

“We shall see,” Aunt Kate said in a repressive voice, overhearing the offer. She had been listening to all their conversations since they'd left the Radescus. “We will be retiring to our own estate very soon.”

“Oh, but they must come,” Mrs. Gradeszy said cheerfully. “It will be our pleasure to have them stay!” Her forehead, smooth and soft despite her age, creased lightly in thought. “Now, where is your estate?” she asked. “Ours is near Bukovina . . .”

“We are near Bran,” Aunt Kate said. “Quite some distance, I'm afraid.”

“Oooh, have you heard about the new palace?” Miriam, the
Gradeszy daughter, had shining eyes at the very mention of it. “The king's new palace is near Bran! And it's quite, quite modern, with a boiler for heat, and a telephone and electric lights!”

“Truly?” Dacia looked impressed. “Have you seen it?”

“No,” Miriam said, sighing. “But I would love to! When the family is not in residence, they allow visitors to tour the palace, even though it's not quite finished, you know.”

“We shall go sometime soon, I promise,” her mother said indulgently. She turned to Lou and Dacia. “Have you been presented to His Majesty?” They shook their heads and she smiled at them. “Oh, but you must be presented! King Carol is the kindest of men, and his dear queen is like a mother to us all! They do so love to meet the young gentry!”

“I should like that very much,” Dacia said.

Lou just smiled weakly. She thought meeting any king, no matter how kind, sounded terrifying. She had a difficult enough time finding conversation among people her own age and status; what on earth would she say to the king?

Lou wanted very badly to invite the Gradeszys to stay at the Florescu estate, and suggest that they all tour the new palace together, but didn't dare. She had, of course, never seen the family's estate near Bran, and it wasn't her place to be inviting friends to visit. It was the kind of impulsive thing that Dacia would do, and she gave her cousin an encouraging look, but Dacia was staring at Aunt Kate. Lou followed her gaze and saw their aunt giving Dacia a look that bespoke horrible, swift retribution if she said a single word. Lou sighed, much like Miriam, and Dacia echoed her.

By the time they parted from the Gradeszys, with many promises to go driving and to the theater together, it was getting late in the day. They rode in the open carriage in silence back to the mansion, and arrived at the same time as two coachloads of their cousins, aunts, and uncles.

There was a great deal of hugging and kissing and loud proclamations about how long it had been, or in the case of Lou and Dacia, what a shame it was that they had not yet met. All their Florescu cousins were boys, so a double line of young men ranging in age from ten to twenty began to form, to greet Dacia and Lou with grave smiles and stiff embraces. Radu appeared, along with Uncle Horia and their other five uncles.

The party filled the entrance hall and spilled into the library, and the aunts kept shrieking with the excitement of it all, which made Lou jumpy. She noticed that the aunts came in two sizes: short and stout or tall and slim. Since she had no hope of ever being tall or slim, it seemed that her lot was to be of the other kind of Florescu woman. She had some hope when an aunt whose name she didn't recognize (she was only recently married to the youngest of the uncles) came forward to embrace her. She was almost as tall as Dacia, but had a beautifully curved figure unlike any of her fellow willowy aunts. But when she hugged Lou, Lou felt the aunt's bust squash and move in a way that told her it was entirely padding.

“There's no hope,” Lou said to herself, and Dacia gave her a puzzled look.

Lou did her best to paste on a smile, and tried to extract herself as best she could, ready to sneak away as soon as Dacia gave
any sort of signal. But Dacia didn't give a signal. The relations kept arriving, and there seemed to be no way they could leave without raising a hue and cry.

The volume only increased when a footman arrived wearing Prince Mihai's scarlet livery. He had a gift for Dacia, which the entire family gathered around to watch her open. It was a bracelet of carved gold in the shape of a dragon with the head of a lion. The family all gasped in admiration, except for Uncle Horia, who immediately announced that she could not accept such an expensive gift.

Dacia read the note aloud: “The symbol of your ancestry and namesake, this could grace no other wrist, nor find an owner as beautiful. Mihai.”

“It is the symbol of the Dacian people, the ancient people of Romania, and your namesake,” explained Uncle Daniel. He had a pedantic air, and Lou thought that he was a professor, but couldn't remember. One of her uncles was, anyway.

“Then surely it's all right to keep it,” said Dacia airily, and she put it on her wrist. She beamed at the footman, and told him to tell his master that it was lovely, and to expect a letter from her in the morning.

And with that it was time to dress for dinner at last, but their rooms were being used by some of the aunts to change, and so Lou found herself standing with Dacia in Aunt Kate's bedroom, getting dressed in her new Romanian costume alongside Dacia, Aunt Kate, and her own mother.

Hardly the right time for a confidential discussion.

Lou's mother was flushed with excitement, and helped Lou
into her new ensemble without even asking if she wanted any assistance. It was a simple enough style of dress, but her mother pulled the drawstrings with great ceremony. She tied them with fingers that shook, her eyes misty with delight. Lou knew that she should feel the same: this was her family, her heritage . . . but instead she felt suffocated. She wanted to hide, or open the window and somehow fly away. Instead she pasted on a smile and did her best to keep it there.

“Not so big, LouLou, you're looking ghoulish,” Dacia whispered, and Lou amended her expression as best she could.

They went down to dinner arm in arm, but without being able to speak. Lou was practically vibrating with the need to talk privately with Dacia, and she could feel the tension in her cousin's arm as well. The gold bangle with its heavy carving trembled on Dacia's slender wrist, making her look like a pagan princess being sent to her doom.

Lou's and Dacia's hair had been put into two braids woven with scarlet ribbons, and Lou's mother wore a white lawn headscarf that floated behind her as she walked. She looked like a bride. When Lou's father saw them, he grinned and kissed his wife despite the crowd of relations watching. He held out one arm to Maria and the other to Aunt Kate. The dining room was not large enough to hold the entire family, so tables had been set up in the gardens, and lanterns were strung from the branches of the trees.

It felt very strange to be outside her bedroom without her corset on. Lou had to fight the urge to fidget and make sure her apron was tied correctly. She felt like she was wearing
nothing more than a nightgown, and the breeze blew through her skirt in a most alarming manner as they took their places. On the other hand, with no bustle or demi-train, she could sit far more comfortably on the narrow wooden chair.