19 December 1958
"Will that work, do you think?" Alice asked, her gaze focused firmly on the blueprint of the castle Jean had procured to aid in their afternoon's work.
"Oh, I think we can make do," Jean answered lightly. There were thirty-five guest suites in the castle, and between them she and Alice had neatly allocated each of them to the various visiting dignitaries who would begin arriving the next day. Most of the foreign delegations had elected to take rooms in their own embassies, and most members of their kingdom's peerage had estates of their own within the walls of the city, but there were a select few who merited housing within the castle itself. Queen Elizabeth II, for example, and several members of her entourage would be taking up seven suites between them. That had caused quite a commotion, the announcement that the Queen meant to attend herself and not simply send her Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary - though both those gentlemen would be in attendance, on the day. Alice had told Jean that the Queen herself had sent a letter explaining her decision to make the journey; it would be a symbol of the strong ties between their two nations, she'd said, and likewise a symbol of her nation's gratitude to King Lucien, for his service and sacrifice while fighting under British colors.
"Frankly, I'll be relieved when it's done," Alice said primly. "The King has been in quite the mood for the last few days, and I don't imagine it's likely to improve until the coronation is over."
"Oh?" Jean asked, trying to make her inquiry sound casual, as if she weren't terribly invested in the answer. She could hardly explain it to herself, but the thought of the King distressed and out of sorts - and worse, taking out his ill humor on Alice - left her feeling somewhat mournful. He had wealth and status, power and privilege, but his behavior had not been that of a petulant, spoiled prince. From the very first night they met he had revealed himself to be thoughtful and desperately eager to please, had spoken of his worries for his people, his complicated relationship with his own father. More than once he had gone stalking along the battlements in the still of the night with a haunted look upon his face, a tremble in his hands that reminded Jean of nothing so much as Christopher's friends when they'd returned from the war, the quiet stories their wives had whispered of men jumping at small noises and weeping in the darkness. He had suffered - I fell in love with the wrong girl, he'd told her once, and I lost her, and oh, how Jean still wondered what that meant - had been pulled away from the life he had made for himself and forced to fill his father's shoes. There was something lonesome, something hopeless about him that called to Jean's tender heart, but she did not know how to soothe him, or even if she could.
"He's distractible, and if you ask me he isn't taking this business very seriously. The man doesn't want to be a King, but it isn't as if he has much choice."
That was something Jean could understand; she'd been robbed of her own choices, in the past. A quick wedding and a quick move to a farm in the country hidden from view of judgmental neighbors, the splash of blood on a warm wood floor, the whimpering sound of her own tears as two-grim faced men saw themselves out of her ramshackle house while her sons tugged at her skirts. Those memories, those days, were grim, but she had found a joy in the life before her, had found comfort and a sense of purpose. Perhaps with time her King would as well.
"I suppose it's a big adjustment," she said carefully, "going from being a soldier and a doctor to being King."
Alice looked up from the blueprints, her eyes wide. "How did you hear about that? I didn't think anyone knew what he's been up to these last few years."
He told me, she thought, and yet somehow she could not quite bring herself to speak the words. Those moments she had shared alone with her King in the darkness were precious to her for reasons she was loathe to contemplate, and while she had always got on quite well with Alice the pair of them weren't exactly friends. They were acquaintances, partners sometimes, but they did not often share confidences with one another.
"Oh," she said breezily, "I heard someone mention it, somewhere." It was not exactly a lie, but it was an obfuscation, and she supposed that was just as bad.
Alice nodded. "I wish he would let us tell people. He says after the coronation, he'll let the Press Office draw up some details for the newspapers. A little explanation of how he's spent his time. I suppose it'll have to do."
Jean nodded. The whispers had reached her; people had always felt comfortable with her, come to her with their secrets and their confessions and their troubles, and while she never broke a confidence she remembered them, each and every one. Her nephew Danny had been on the front gate with Charlie Davis the night their King had come home, and he had confided in her how strange the man's appearance had been, stepping all alone through the fog like a ghost. No one knows him, Danny had said, somewhat apprehensively. How do we know he'll do what's right? Jean had given him some platitudes about how the King had been raised from birth for just this purpose, how the Parliament and the Prime Minister wouldn't let him lead them astray even if he tried, but still, those questions lingered in Danny's eyes, in the eyes of the maids who were too frightened of him to even clean his suite of rooms. Jean did that work herself after he went downstairs to work each day; the younger girls were afraid of him walking in on them, were afraid of the possibility they might find themselves alone in a room with him, afraid of doing something wrong and risking his wrath, and Jean was much too old for such frivolous worries, and much too fond of the King besides. She made up his bed and took his clothes to be laundered and cleaned up the whiskey glasses he left scattered around the rooms, and as she did she found herself more and more convinced that this was as it should be. No one else needed to see this, she thought, the tangled mess of his sheets after a long night spent tossing and turning, the evidence of his fondness for drink. The girls would not understand, and they would not keep his secrets. Jean, though, Jean would do both.
"Five days, Matthew," Lucien said, leaning back in his chair with whiskey glass in hand. It was rather late, and Matthew was off the clock, as it were, still dressed in his uniform but with the tie askew and his collar unfastened, the business of guarding the King turned over to younger, less tired men for the evening. It was not often Lucien was able to cajole his old friend into enjoying a nightcap with him, and every time he did he found himself desperately grateful for the company.
"You've been King for more than two months now, sir," Matthew pointed out, grimacing as he stretched his bad leg out in front of him. "This is just...a party, really."
"Some party," Lucien grumbled. "I've got to stand up there trussed up like a Christmas turkey while they pour oil on my head and make me speak Latin and then parade me through the city like...like…"
"Like royalty, sir?" The turn of Matthew's mouth was wry, and Lucien fought a somewhat childish urge to stick his tongue out at him.
"Honestly, Matthew, you can have it. I'll turn the whole business over to you right now, if you like."
All traces of amusement vanished from Matthew's face at once. He kept his leg straight out in front of him but he leaned heavily on the arm of his chair, as close to Lucien as he could manage, his expression grim and deadly serious.
"I know you're having a hard time with all of this," he said, "but you'll need to keep thoughts like that to yourself. That's how people end up losing their heads. I don't want any part of it, sir. You're the King. You've known from the day you were born that you were going to be King, and now you are. And you'll make a fine one, if you can stop feeling sorry for yourself."
The words hung heavy in the air between them; Matthew sighed and retreated back into his armchair, his expression not contrite but watchful, wary, as if he realized he'd said to much. If Lucien had been a different man - a man more like his father - he could have fired Matthew on the spot for such insolence, banned him from the castle and kicked him out of the place that had been his home since birth just as much as it had been Lucien's. He wasn't that sort of man, of course; while it rankled, hearing someone speak to him so bluntly, while he wanted very much to defend himself, he would never seek such punitive action against his friend for the crime of having spoken the truth.
"It isn't just this business of being King," he said after a long, terrible silence. "I suppose I could get used to that in time. It's just that…"
It's just that Patrick promised me he would try to find my family, and it's been over a month with no word. Lucien himself had spent the last thirteen years since the end of the war trying to find his family on his own, without success. He had hoped that his country's security services, with their resources and their connections, could do what he alone could not, could bring his wife and child back to him. A month was perhaps not enough time, but the hope that he had felt in the beginning had begun to fade. What if his family was never found? What if the security services never even searched for them, only sat with their hands folded for six months, or a year, and then blithely announced that his family was dead? Such a charade would suit Patrick's purposes just fine, and save him the agony of having to introduce a Chinese girl to their kingdom as heir apparent, would save him money and give him exactly what he'd wanted all along: the leverage to force Lucien into an appropriate marriage. He did not want to believe Patrick capable of such deception, but he found his heart besieged by suspicion.
"What is it?" Matthew asked, genuinely concerned. Until that moment Lucien had told no one else of his family, the grief in his heart, his worries for the future. He had wanted, very much, to tell Mrs. Beazley, but each time he felt the words on the tip of his tongue something had stopped him, and he had kept his peace. Now, after three glasses of whiskey, sitting in the dark with the one person he counted his oldest friend in all the world, he could think of no reason not to give voice to his fears.
"I want to tell you something," he said eventually. "But you must promise not to tell another living soul. I mean it, Matthew."
"It would be treason to betray my King's confidence," Matthew said evenly.
For a long moment Lucien regarded him carefully, warily, but he saw the sincerity in every line of his old friend's face, and his heart cried out for peace.
"All right." he said.
And then he began. He told the whole sorry tale, how he had met Mei Lin, how he had wed her in secret, the joy of their child, the horror of the Japanese invasion, the long years he'd spent in captivity, his desperate search, the Faustian bargain he'd struck with Patrick. He told Matthew all of it, the reasons why he could not sleep, the doubts that plagued him, and everything else besides. If Patrick could not find his family he would be swallowed whole by grief, and forced to wed a stranger, to give to another what he had sworn would belong to Mei Lin, and her alone, for all his days. Would be forced to hold another child, and hide from the world his wretched sorrow at the memory of the one had lost. Would be forced to retreat further from the man that he was, the truth of his own self, and into shadows.
"Bloody hell," Matthew said when Lucien's story was through.
"I'll drink to that," Lucien said grimly, draining his glass in one go. The path had been laid before his feet, but he was faced with a fork in the road, and no way to know which side he might be forced to take. On one side there lay a hopeful chance for peace, for a reunion with his family, though that was cloaked in uncertainty, as he could not say what they had endured during their separation. On the other side lay only darkness, a woman chosen for him not by virtue of love or want or respect, but by virtue of her birth and Patrick's sensibilities. Lucien had not ever thought to wed again, before that fateful day when Patrick had laid out his ultimatum, but if he were to wed, he could not imagine that the woman he would want would be anything like the girl Patrick would choose.
What sort of woman would he want to take to wife, if he were forced to make a choice? He could not say, but when he closed his eyes he saw her, soft dark curls and bright blue-grey eyes, little wrinkles at the corners of her full lips, the enticing tuck of her waist above smooth hips, the gentleness of her hands that were never still.
You hardly know her, he tried to tell himself, but the vision of her remained, a vision of something he wanted, and yet knew he could never claim for himself.