OK, I’m still insecure and paranoid. I can’t help it. Look where I am. A chilly breeze whips up and sends leaves scuttling against the mausoleum. It’s much chillier than any wind present today by far. It’s as though the ghost of Alex’s father is omnipresent, guiding the proceedings and fueling my newfound fears.
Thankfully, it is over. The casket is wheeled inside the crypt and laid into a cubicle carved into one of the walls. I am not allowed inside, but I imagine the ghosts there whispering to the Alex as he vanishes into the mausoleum, bidding his father goodbye a final time.
With a final blessing, the iron doors clang shut, never to open again until the death of the next monarch. Queens are not allowed to be interred here. It is strictly for Moldavian Kings. When we die, Alex and I will not be buried together.
I’m being horribly morbid today. Blame it on the atmosphere.
We slowly walk towards the waiting limos. Alex has his arm around his weeping mother as he ushers her to the lead car. A pang stabs my chest. The Queen must have loved her husband so, so much.
“Elizabeth Turner?” a female voice calls me.
I turn.
Alex’s sister, Marie, walks towards me. She resembles her mother – all long dark hair and flashing eyes – but somehow she does not possess the same beauty, as though she is a faded version of a beloved painting rather than the real deal. She is less austere however, as one would expect of a student from Yale. I have never officially been introduced to her because she just flew back in yesterday.
“Hello?” I say cautiously. I have already been exposed to the toxic Claire, Alex’s youngest sister. I don’t expect Marie to be much better, especially when Claire tells her I’ve been rifling through her closet.
Marie holds out her hand and smiles warmly. Well, that’s a start.
“I’m Marie . . . ”
“I know. Alex has told me so much about you.”
She scrutinizes my dress. “Moldavian, huh? Good strategy.”
“It was Madame Fournier’s idea.”
“Yes. Good woman, that.”
Her eyes do not mirror her words, and I get the impression she’s not very fond of Madame Fournier. Then she smiles again. I don’t know if I’m correct to assume this, but she does not seem overly upset that her father is dead. Or perhaps true royals behave like this. Still, perhaps she copes with her grief differently.
She says, “I do hope we’ll be able to get to know each other better. My mother told me that Alex has asked you to marry him.”
I cringe inwardly, waiting for another barrage of ‘Leave my brother alone, you lowly gold-digger’. But she continues, “I think that’s a splendid idea.”
Huh? I must have heard wrongly.
“Beg pardon?” I say. My surprise must have shown on my face because Marie throws back her head and laughs.
Several people around us turn to look. They give us severe glances. It is a funeral after all.
“I suppose my mother and Claire have given you quite the royal treatment,” she says. “Well, I assure you not all royals are like that. I certainly am not.”
She links arms with me. I’m stunned.
She says, “You and I are going to get to know each other better. And I have a feeling we’re going to be very good friends. Shall we?”
She indicates a waiting limo whose driver holds the passenger door open. He bows to her.
Oh, she wants us to go together.
“OK,” I say, still bewildered. It’s like being asked to hang out by the prom queen, especially when you are the class dork.
As I get into the limo, I catch Madame Fournier’s dark look.
It clearly says, ‘Beware’.
2
In the next few weeks, I don’t get to see Alex much in the daytime. He has his father’s estate to sort out, affairs to settle. He still comes to my bed every night. But he is visibly tired from his increasingly long days, and most of the time, I let him sleep.
I watch him sleep in my bed in the palace guest room. His long dark hair is fanned upon the pillow and his naked chest rises and falls so peacefully. He has not moved into his father’s bedchambers.
“It’s not the right time,” he says. “Besides, I can’t turn my mother out of her own bed.”
Nothing ever seems to be the right time. It’s as though we are so afraid to let the world know we are out of the mourning period. Or maybe that’s the way things work around here, and I’m being an impatient American.
Not that I want to sleep in the King’s bedchamber. I’m perfectly happy having Alex here in my bed forever. I’d be perfectly happy having him anywhere, so long as we’re together.
Alex’s dreams are troubled. I know this because he mutters and cries in his sleep. We make love, but not as often as before. I attribute this to stress. Both of us are immensely stressed.
“When is your coronation?” I asked him earlier.
“Probably a year from now,” he replies in a wry tone.
A year? Is he kidding me?
“It is not deemed seemly in this period of mourning,” he explains. “But I am still King. I don’t need a crown to tell me that.”
“I know, but a year?” I marvel.
“Queen Elizabeth was also crowned a year after her father’s state funeral. We are no longer in medieval times where the crowning of a King is essential to the seizure of power.”
I don’t know about that. I know Alex isn’t into power, but I have a bad feeling about this. The longer we wait to tell the world about our engagement and the longer it takes for Alex to be crowned, the more bad things can happen.
There’s got to be a law on it, like Murphy’s Law. If anything bad can happen in a year, it will happen on the eleventh month, or something like that.
I do, however, have a new BFF.
Maybe I should not be calling her a BFF because I’m not sure we’re going to be friends forever. (After all, look what happened to me and my roommate, Deanna). But I do sure enjoy her company because she’s closer to my age. I’m talking about Marie Vassar, of course. Unlike Claire and Tatiana, she has no queenly airs. In fact, she could have been just another American college student, even though she has technically finished her final term.
“I think it’s because I spent most of my teenage life in America,” she says. “Mother wanted me to have an American education from the start and Claire to be sent to Swiss finishing school. She wanted us to embrace separate education systems.”
Ah well. I privately think one is working out better than the other.