A/N: I didn't expect to finish this story so quickly after the last one, but I did, so here it is. For a while I'm going to try to get back into regular FI-style stories. Once I post this first chapter I'm going to pop in a Season 3 DVD and see if I can get a few ideas. I still have some unused fantasy ideas floating around, so I think it'll be a good time to work with those. Meantime, enjoy...
§ § § - April 26, 2009
Karina and Susanna were thrilled about their new baby sister; Tobias stuck out his lower lip in disappointment. "I wanted a brother," he muttered. "Daddy, can you and Mommy have another baby so I can have a brother? It's not fair I'm the only boy."
"You should talk to Aunt Anna-Laura," Christian told him. "When I was growing up, she was the only girl, so she knows how you feel. I wanted to come here and tell you about your new sister, but I'm going back to the hospital to stay with your mother, so that if she wakes up, she won't be all alone in the hospital."
"Where do we sleep?" Susanna asked.
"You three will be going to your cousin Gerhard's house so you can play with Matti and Toria," Christian said.
"Oh good...someplace there's another boy," said Tobias, a little mollified. "What's the baby's name again?"
"Anastasia," Christian pronounced it slowly.
"Can we go to the hospital with you? Just to see Mommy and An...Annie-stah-see?" asked Susanna hopefully, tripping over her baby sister's name.
Christian laughed and tousled her hair. "I wish I could take you, but rules at the hospital say you have to be at least thirteen before you can go visit, and you three aren't even five yet. But look here, I did this for you before I came out." He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, found the photo he had taken of a sleeping Anastasia in her hospital crib, and showed it to the triplets. They stared at it with great interest.
"She looks like a tomato," Tobias said eventually.
"How come she's so red?" Susanna asked.
"Most babies are red when they're first born," said Christian, chuckling at his children's reactions. "What do you think, Karina?"
"What's her name again?" Karina asked, squinting at the photo.
Christian shook his head a little, grinning. "Anastasia."
"No, I mean her whole name. Like my name's Karina Skye," his daughter clarified.
"Ah, I see. Her full name will be Anastasia Gabriella Julia Martina. Gabriella is for your cousin who died last year. Julia and Martina are the names of my grandmothers."
"How come she has more names than me?" Karina asked, pouting.
Unable to help himself, Christian burst into laughter; when he saw Karina's offended look, he pulled her into a hug. "I'm sorry, lillan min, I didn't mean to laugh, but when you were born, there were so many of you, there weren't enough names to go around." He winked at her, and she began to giggle, climbing into his lap to hug him back.
"Hey...Daddy..." Tobias began tugging at Christian's sweater sleeve. "Now that the baby's here, when do we get to go home? I like it here, but I miss Grandfather."
"And we have to show Annie-stah-see to Grandfather," Susanna agreed.
Before Christian could comment on that, someone tapped on the door and a moment later, Anna-Kristina stuck her head in. "Hallå då, Uncle Christian—they said you came back here with the others."
"So I did. What are you doing here?" he asked with interest.
"Stina!" Susanna yelled excitedly at her cousin. "We got a new baby sister!"
"I heard about it!" Anna-Kristina said with a grin, coming in to sit down beside Christian. "Did your pappa take a photo of her for you?"
"Yeah, wanna see it?" Susanna neatly twitched the phone out of Christian's hand before he realized what she was about, and gave it to Anna-Kristina, who gave her uncle an apologetic look and examined the picture.
"She's a little sweetheart," Anna-Kristina said, handing Christian's phone back. "So when do they leave the hospital?"
"I think Leslie will come home tomorrow," Christian said. "I'm going back to stay in her hospital room with her, so I'll bring her back myself. Anastasia's another matter; they've asked to keep her for about two weeks, so we'll be here at least long enough to celebrate Leslie's birthday here."
She nodded. "I was going to ask when you thought you'd be leaving, now that the little one's here. Anastasia." She shot him a look of mock reproof. "You should tell Leslie for me that she stole the name I wanted to use in case I ever gave birth to my own little girl."
"You should have chosen it for Natalia then," Christian volleyed, hiking a brow. "I was told Louisa considered the name for Katta as well. Apparently it was popular enough to be in the running but not to be a final choice. It's funny you should ask about our travel timetable. These three here were just informing me we need to introduce Anastasia to her grandfather. No doubt Leslie would agree with them."
Anna-Kristina nodded. "Well, if you're going back to sleep in the hospital tonight, what about the triplets?"
"We're going to Gerhard and Liselotta's house so we can play with Matti and Toria," said Karina. "We're gonna have fun."
"I think you will too. Actually, I'm planning to visit too, and Natalia's with me, so you can play with her for a while as well. Congratulations on Anastasia, Uncle Christian." She smiled, arose and left the room.
Christian put a few things in a tote bag he found among the triplets' things, and commandeered a castle sedan to return to the hospital on his own. Leslie was still asleep, so he left the bag on the cot that had been set up for him and returned downtown to browse a bookstore for some reading material, then had a meal at the café where he had so often eaten when he lived in the city. By this time there was a third generation of Dannegårds involved in the café's operation, and he cheerfully acknowledged the introductions before Lukas Dannegård inquired, "Is there some reason you've come here, Your Highness?"
"Haven't you heard?" Christian said playfully. "The press leaped on it not two hours ago. Leslie and I have a new daughter."
He accepted their congratulations, filled them in on the details, and was finally left in peace to enjoy his meal. Sleeping at the hospital was a non-event, as Leslie was still out when he got back and slept through the night. However, she was awake before he was, and smiled at him when he lifted his head to check on her. "Hi, my love."
"Good morning, my Rose," he replied, smiling back. "I trust you slept well."
"I sure feel a lot better," she said, and his smile became a grin. "Gosh, such service—they brought you an actual bed to sleep on! R.H.I.P., I see."
"R.H.I.P.?" he repeated blankly, swinging his feet off the cot and settling on the side of her bed to gather her hands into his.
"Rank hath its privileges," she explained, grinning at him. "I'm glad you stayed here. Did you sleep okay?"
"Fine," said Christian. "Much better than in that wicker chair when the triplets were born. Speaking of whom—they've informed me that it's imperative we take Anastasia home to introduce her to your father. So I suppose the question is when we plan to depart; I know we'll be here for your birthday, because of the hospital's timetable on Anastasia's release, but after that I presume the issue is up to Dr. Salomonsson."
Leslie nodded. "That makes sense. What'd the kids think of Anastasia?"
"Tobias was disappointed that she wasn't a boy, but he perked up quickly enough when I told him they were going to Gerhard and Liselotta's for the night, since he could play with Matti. They were surprised at her redness; in fact Tobias compared her with a tomato." They both laughed. "How do you feel, my Rose?"
"I'm fine. I feel about forty pounds lighter, and a lot less achy, and..." She hesitated for a moment, turning inward while he watched her curiously, then focused on him and said with some wonder, "I feel happier. It's really weird...you hear about so many women having postpartum depression, but I had it before Anastasia got here and now I just feel so much better. I think maybe I'll be able to face it better when we get home and Father explains to us exactly what's going on."
"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that," Christian said wholeheartedly, pulling her into a hug. She returned it, nestling her head on his shoulder. "I don't think I have the stomach to go through this yet again. Tobias wants us to try again so he can have a baby brother, but something tells me we're finished having children. When I made the announcement of Anastasia's birth for the press yesterday afternoon, I told Rudolf I'll be lucky to have the energy to play with our future grandchildren."
Leslie giggled. "I don't think I want to do this again either. We really weren't expecting Anastasia as it is, but four's quite enough. What amazes me is that I got pregnant a second time. I figured once the triplets came, that was it. I wonder if we're going to have to use birth control from now on."
"Perhaps," Christian said, laughing. "We can always discuss that later when you've fully recovered from bringing Anastasia into the world. Let's see if they're willing to bring you some breakfast, and perhaps the morning newspaper as well."
As they had expected, the headlines were enormous, trumpeting the birth of infant Princess Anastasia of Lilla Jordsö. There was a photo showing Christian making the birth announcement, with several members of the family surrounding him; the article mentioned hoping to have a photo of Anastasia within a few days, though it also said that Christian had let it be known that since Anastasia was about a month premature, she would be in the hospital under observation for a while. They were surprised to find some quotes from Rudolf and Roald included in the article; Rudolf had passed on Christian's remark about having enough energy to play with any grandchildren, which made Leslie laugh and Christian roll his eyes and mutter something about payback for Rudolf.
After Leslie had been served a hospital breakfast—surprisingly good, she commented when she'd had a few bites—and Christian had eaten a quick frykostfikka in the cafeteria, they were given a chance to visit Anastasia. The newborn was asleep, but when she was settled into Leslie's arms, she awoke, blinking half-blindly up at her mother. Christian pulled up a chair and did as Leslie had done the previous day, tracing his newest child's face with the lightest of fingertip caresses. Leslie talked softly to the baby. "Hi there, sweetie, it's your mother and father! That's Daddy touching you right now. You'll get to come home in a couple of weeks or so, and then you can meet your older brother and your two older sisters, and lots of other relatives. Aren't you just adorable?" She stroked Anastasia's downy cheek with the back of one finger, while Christian worked his own index finger into a tightly furled fist and smiled broadly as soon as the miniature fingers closed around it.
"What the newspapers and online news services wouldn't give for a photo of this," remarked a nurse, catching the parents' attention. "It's such a beautiful scene."
Christian chuckled. "They'll get enough photos when Anastasia's cleared to come home with us. I'd like to see her keep those blue eyes. They remind me of the ocean outside the atrium during the summer."
"She probably won't," Leslie said a little ruefully, "but at least she'll have them for a few months. Oh, look..." The baby had turned her head toward Leslie, her bud of a mouth puckering, clearly searching for sustenance.
"Were you going to try to breast-feed her?" Christian asked.
Leslie nodded. "Let's see if I have anything for her." She began to pull her top up while Christian extricated his finger from Anastasia's fist and lent some assistance. But the baby was only a day old and Leslie's system hadn't started producing milk yet; they watched as Anastasia latched on like a pro and began to suckle with surprising energy for a baby nearly a month premature. It had been more than long enough since Leslie had weaned the triplets that she had to get accustomed to the sensation and the pain of the infant's enthusiastic tugging, and winced several times but managed not to complain.
In a few minutes Anastasia had had enough of trying, and released her mother; the nurse assured them both that this was normal. Leslie gave Christian a look of exaggerated sorrow. "I guess that means I'll have to wait another nine or ten months before I can eat swordfish again," she kidded, and Christian laughed. It was a soft sound, but it seemed to surprise the baby; she turned her head toward him and stared in his direction.
"That's right, Anastasia, that's called laughing, and just wait three or four months, you'll be doing it too," Christian said with a grin. He turned then to the nurse. "I know that it's generally accepted, at least in this country, that breast-feeding is preferable to bottle-feeding, especially for premature infants. But if Leslie is to be released before we can take Anastasia home, how are we to establish a routine?"
They worked out some logistics, deciding that once Leslie's milk started flowing, she should come in at least three times a day to feed the baby. It made Christian say something about wishing he still had his flat in the city, since it was much closer than the castle, but in the end they worked things out so that Leslie could instead come in twice a day and other-wise employ a hospital breast pump so that Anastasia could get the benefits from mother's milk that she could never obtain from formula. They put a schedule together, made arrangements for Christian to bring Leslie in the next morning around ten, and retreated to the hospital room. There, the doctor who had attended Leslie and actually delivered Anastasia gave Leslie a full examination and deemed her ready for discharge.
They stopped at Gerhard and Liselotta's house to pick up the triplets, who greeted Leslie with happy shouts and enthusiastic hugs. All the way back to the castle, they bombarded their mother with questions about their new sister, till finally Christian called a halt and suggested they tell Leslie what they'd done with their cousins the previous night.
At supper, the family seemed to be unable to talk about anything but Anastasia, and it was brought to a halt only when Susanna reminded the group at large that they needed to take the baby home to meet Roarke. As it turned out, that resulted in another kind of family discussion entirely; after the children were in bed for the night, they gathered in the sitting room and settled in for the duration. Gerhard and Liselotta had come over to join in, as had Margareta and Gudrun, and Kai and Anna-Kristina.
"So rumor has it that maybe it wasn't so wrong, about your coming back to Lilla Jordsö to live," remarked Gerhard quizzically, once they had been settled and servants had come and gone, leaving apple wine, sparkling juice for Leslie and Adriana, and assorted snacks of both the sweet and savory varieties. "And this after you two categorically denied you'd be coming home."
"I made the categorical denials, not Leslie," Christian said with a crooked grin at his nephew, "but that seems to be the gist of it. Someone should make an announcement that if this goes beyond the castle, the servant or servants who are responsible will face consequences. I'm fed up with the media taking a simple statement and exploding it into all kinds of insane extrapolations." He sighed and let himself fall back in the chair he had insisted on sharing with Leslie, who huddled beside him with a preoccupied look about her. "That said, we do need to talk about all this, and with the possibility in mind, I thought it better to have everyone in the family involved. Since Mr. Roarke seems to have been handed some sort of ultimatum—retire or else—that means enormous changes in store, and we have less than a year to make decisions and implement them."
"What's it done to poor Aunt Leslie?" Anna-Kristina asked, gnawing on her lip as she stared at Leslie. "She looks as though she's not quite here."
Glances were exchanged, and Christian tapped Leslie's thigh, making her blink and turn to him. "Are you all right, my Rose? You need to be with us for this. You and I will be the most affected of all, perhaps even more than the triplets, just because they're so young and thus more resilient."
She heaved such a huge, weary sigh that he shifted in the chair and wrapped both arms around her from one side, pulling her to him. "I guess it's time to start facing up to it," she murmured, dropping her head on his shoulder.
"We've had a tremendous blow delivered to us," he told her in a soft, shushing tone, under a second conversation that had started up. "The object here is to discuss the options so that we can make as well-informed a decision as possible when the time comes. We'll have to speak of it with our Fantasy Island friends as well, so don't think it all ends here with our family."
She heard the slight but definite emphasis he put on "our", and smiled, glad to see his eyes light at the sight. "I haven't had siblings since I was thirteen years old," she told him with a sheepish chuckle. "I'll have to get used to being able to say 'brothers and sisters' again, in relation to me rather than the kids."
He grinned at that, but before he could comment, Rudolf's voice rose. "The point here is that Aunt Leslie will be a complete newcomer. Just because she's visited before doesn't mean she's prepared to live here, if they decide that." Christian and Leslie looked around to see him addressing Margareta. "She can speak some of the language, but you know she still isn't totally comfortable with it."
"More so than you think, Rudolf," Christian said, catching everyone's attention. "We try to speak it at home as much as possible; that's why the triplets are fluent in it, because I use jordiska with them, particularly if Leslie isn't with us. They actually hear me speak English rarely enough that they automatically address me in jordiska when they turn to me for anything. I've taught Leslie a fair amount of the language, and she seems to have picked up some as well. So while she isn't necessarily fluent, she can make herself understood, and I think she's quite good for someone who didn't start to learn it till her forties. What brought up the subject of the language?"
"The fact that Aunt Leslie still has trouble with it," Margareta said. "When she had to talk to the press, on television, about what you both saw when Briella died, she kept turning to you for word prompts. That's all right if she doesn't live here, but if you end up moving back here, she'll have to learn the language properly."
"I think, Magga, that Leslie is as well aware of that as anyone else here," Christian said with gentle sternness, and Margareta got pink and aimed an apologetic smile at Leslie. "I ödets namn, Gudrun, I don't know how you put up with that niece of mine, as abrasive as she gets sometimes."
Gudrun grinned. "I simply let it roll right past me. She's all bluster, but of course, you knew that." Everyone laughed, and Gudrun focused on Leslie. "So...are we assuming, just for the sake of discussion, that you'll be coming to Lilla Jordsö?"
Leslie hitched a shoulder. "Well, I guess so. You'll have to excuse me if it seems as if you're all trying to convince us we should come back, though."
"That's what family does," said Anna-Laura teasingly. "They bully you into returning to the fold." When the chuckling stopped, she studied her brother and sister-in-law. "As you said, for discussion's sake. Christian, my assumption is that you'd shift your center of operations for your business back to your Sundborg office. Would you still operate the Fantasy Island branch, or close it down?"
"I don't quite know yet," Christian admitted. "If I kept it open, I'd have to go back once in a blue moon to check on the place, as I do with my other branches occasionally. Of late I've been lax about it, mostly because of the horrific travel distances and times involved; but that would be one small advantage of coming back. London and Santi Arcuros are both within a few hours' travel, and even Boston is just a day's flight away. Also, there's the fact that as I get older, my body reacts with less and less favor to so much flying, and sleeping the flights away doesn't always help. And I'm not prepared to invest in a corporate jet; even I have my financial limits."
"You could look into it," Anna-Laura said. "Amalia and your other accountants can get together and see what sort of resources you have. In any case, there'd be no interruption of your work or income. But for Leslie—she claimed at one point that she's 'useless'. Leslie, please, what precisely do you mean by that?"
"All I've ever done is work for Father," Leslie told her. "Helping him grant fantasies, as you know. I've never held any other job."
"What exactly did you do in that position?" Esbjörn broke in. "I think what we want to show you is that you have more job skills than you believe you do, even in light of the specialized nature of your position as Mr. Roarke's assistant. So what does it entail?"
Leslie hesitated before she said anything, thinking through a typical weekend on the island. "Well, let's see. During the weekends, I help Father greet the incoming guests, and we both talk to them individually about their separate fantasies. I usually help Father get them started on those fantasies. I go through all the incoming mail, separate out the bills and other business correspondence from the fantasy requests...I read the requests and set aside the ones I think Father might be interested in granting; I print out all the guest acceptance letters, stuff envelopes, put stamps on them, get all the outgoing mail to the post office." The family watched with increasing interest as she continued ticking off her days; only Christian listened with a knowing little smile. "I answer phones if Father isn't in; I check around to make sure everybody has supplies for the guests and the people who are just on vacation; I make checks on the guest sometimes, and I've been a sort of confidante for some of them. I've even cleaned hotel rooms a few times." That got her some chuckles; she smiled and continued enumerating. "I do some troubleshooting if something comes up on the technical end of things..."
"What do you mean by 'technical'?" asked Rudolf.
"Oh, dumb things like shortages of certain foods at the hotel restaurant, or things the guests leave behind by accident when they go home and realize too late their stuff is missing and would we please send it back to them. I've gassed up Father's fleet of vehicles on quite a few occasions." She grinned. "And then, of course, I've been sent back to play roles in a whole bunch of different fantasies. Even Christian's had that privilege occasionally."
"Moonlighting, were you, ungstebror?" Carl Johan jested, evoking laughter. "So what sort of fantasies does Mr. Roarke tend to send you back into?"
"Usually something he thinks has to do with one or more of my interests or abilities," Leslie mused, thinking back. "After Christian and I were married and he came to live on the island, Father started bringing him in on it a few times—whenever it had something to do with a fantasy connected with Lilla Jordsö. We've seen some very interesting things, and we used to think if we could write down everything we saw, heard and learned, the history textbooks in this country's schools would be a bit more accurate."
"Oh, now you've done it—you've got Mother's interest," Roald groaned with a teasing eye-roll in Anna-Laura's direction. "You'll be trapped for hours telling her everything you found out. You'd better change the subject now while you still can."
"Quiet, young man," Anna-Laura retorted, grinning. "All right, but believe me, Christian and Leslie, you can be sure I'll come back later looking for details. Unfortunately, Roald has a point; we'll end up far off topic. Leslie, you're quite wrong about having no marketable skills. Admittedly, what you can do wouldn't earn you much of a paycheck, but you really don't have to worry about that. It's not as though you're single and trying to support yourself. You have the privilege of choosing whether to work, and what with Anastasia to care for, I for one think finding another job should be low on your priority list right now."
"She has a good point, my Rose," Christian said. "My suspicion is that you were considering working because you didn't want to be seen as just another useless royal living off the castle treasury. Am I right?"
"Not by as much as you think you are," said Leslie with a smirk, and everyone broke into laughter. "I guess what I'm thinking is that...well, maybe I'll be occupied with motherhood for the next eighteen years, but the triplets will start school this coming fall, and after Anastasia's old enough to go, what do I do with myself during those hours? Even right now, she won't necessarily take up my every waking hour. I could make appearances on behalf of charities, sure...only I'd have to speak, wouldn't I?—and in jordiska at that, which brings us back around to Margareta's original issue. Any job would require me to do that to some extent. So that'd be a big barrier right there."
"What if Aunt Leslie became the English tutor to all our children?" Liselotta asked, out of the blue. "She speaks enough jordiska to communicate with them easily enough, and she wouldn't have to know really big words, because even Matti is still a beginner in the English language. As they grow older, Leslie will learn more jordiska and become more fluent in it, and her knowledge of our language will grow as the children's English gets better."
They all gaped at her in wonder; Leslie's hand drifted to her mouth, her eyes almost round, and Christian sat up with excitement. "Liselotta, that's brilliant! It would be the perfect job for her! And we could save the cost of paying and housing a tutor!"
"There's that too," Amalia agreed with a laugh, "but at the same time everyone would benefit, and Leslie, you could keep your own hours, to some extent at least."
"Until the kids come around knocking and looking for her help with English at every hour of the day and night," Louisa said with a giggle. "They started doing that to me after Rudolf and I got married, and he had to threaten them to make them stop."
"I don't think I'd care," Leslie said, still in wonder at the whole idea. "Of course, I'd set limits right away. But I wouldn't mind. I'd feel useful, after all."
"Leslie, Leslie, my silly, overly modest Rose, you are not useless, not in the least," said Christian firmly, with a long hug. "So there, you see? The problems aren't unsolvable at all. The next question here is this: where would we live?"