§ § § - June 30, 2001
Yawning all the way, Christian and Leslie made their slightly belated appearance at the breakfast table just past nine that morning, making everyone else look up. "Why on earth are you two so drowsy-looking?" Anna-Laura asked.
"The storms kept me awake," said Leslie, which was actually very much the truth.
"Hm, I guess that explains you," Anna-Laura said, "but Christian was under a sedative and he's still yawning. What's your excuse?"
"The sedative," Christian said easily, hiking an eyebrow at his sister. "It hasn't worn off yet, not completely. In any case, I was awake for some time last night myself. Have you finished grilling us, then? We'd like to eat."
Anna-Kristina looked up. "Did you make Aunt Leslie go to the atrium last night and watch the storms with you?"
"He dragged me down there kicking and screaming," Leslie said, straight-faced.
"Well, certainly screaming," Christian put in, in a soft, wicked voice. Anna-Kristina and her sisters exploded with giggles; Anna-Laura grinned widely, and even Carl Johan couldn't keep back a grin. Leslie shot Christian a look that made him smirk.
"What are you three doing over there?" Leslie asked, having noticed Anna-Kristina, Gabriella and Margareta hunching over a yellow legal pad, whose top page was about half full of handwriting. Arnulf's daughters looked up again.
"We're trying to collect all the songs we want to play at Briella's coronation party," Anna-Kristina explained. She suddenly brightened and poked her sister. "Briella, we should ask Aunt Leslie for some ideas. She's much closer to us in age, and she might like some of the same music we do. The others are just too old…"
"Thanks a lot," said Anna-Laura, Carl Johan and Christian in nearly perfect chorus, which made everyone burst out laughing. Anna-Kristina reddened but giggled.
"I don't mean it as an insult, but even Uncle Christian grew up with different music from ours. For all I know, his favorites are even different from Aunt Leslie's," she said and turned to Christian and Leslie. "Did you ever compare your musical tastes?"
"Only insofar as we spoke of which types of music we like," Christian said, pulling out a chair for Leslie and then taking the one next to her. "But now that I think about it, we never really listed our favorite songs or artists. I see no reason we shouldn't at least overlap, though, since we're only seven years apart in age; and Leslie is that much older than you are, Kattersprinsessan. If your tastes and hers happen to match anywhere, then I'm sure hers and mine will do the same. What do you have on that list now?"
The three sisters read off a collection of songs that made Carl Johan and Anna-Laura look at each other with some confusion; Christian frowned slightly, and Leslie simply listened, blank-faced. When the princesses looked up and took in the others' expressions, they exchanged glances. "There's something wrong with those?" asked Gabriella.
"I realize this is to be your coronation party, Briella, but you must remember that not all the guests will be under 30," Christian said dryly. "I've never heard of most of those, and judging from Leslie's expression, neither has she."
"Really, Anna-Kristina, you were born early enough that I'd think you'd be into at least some 80s music," Leslie said quizzically. "Even if you're not, you shouldn't rule out 70s and 80s stuff, and maybe some 60s music too, for the old folks."
Christian chortled gleefully at that. "She means you, äldrebror," he twitted Carl Johan.
"Don't even speak to me. I'd rather listen to jazz," Carl Johan said good-naturedly. "If you three are really serious about providing music to satisfy all tastes, then I think you're better off hiring a professional disc jockey. They have everything you can think of and more that you can't, if I can judge from the one who played the music at Christian and Leslie's wedding reception."
"Not only that, but you should make sure he takes requests," Leslie put in. "I'm sure people will want to hear their favorites."
"Then after we've greeted all the dignitaries who came here for Pappa's funeral," said Anna-Kristina hopefully, "would you help us think of some?"
"Sure," said Leslie, "it sounds like fun. But don't you think you're forgetting someone? I mean…" She turned to Christian. "That is, if you're willing, my love."
"Well," Christian noted, in that same dry tone, "the old folks do need a representative at this brainstorming session, so I may as well be the one."
"Oh, you're not so old, Uncle Christian," Gabriella said, shooting Anna-Kristina a quick look.
Christian gave her the raised-eyebrow look. "Not 'so' old? As opposed to what, the Sphinx? I don't know how I should take that, Briella."
"Stop it, Uncle Christian," Anna-Kristina and Gabriella protested in unison, touching off more laughter and loud snickers from Margareta. Grinning, Christian desisted, and he and Leslie settled back as servants filled their plates and started rounding the table. One asked Anna-Laura a discreet question, which she replied to at some length, and the servant nodded and left the room.
In English Christian asked his sister, "You say Kristina isn't coming up?"
"She's not ill," Anna-Laura said, "she merely prefers to be alone for now. She will be taking breakfast in her suites, and when it's time for the family to come out and acknowledge our guests, she will join us. Oh, yes, Leslie, will you satisfy my curiosity? I saw the queen of Arcolos look at you just after the king's eulogy yesterday. Do you know her?"
Leslie looked up in surprise. "You didn't know? Michiko and I have known each other since we were thirteen. She's a native of Fantasy Island and was the first friend I made there when I came to live with Father. I'm hoping she and I can find a chance to talk."
Anna-Laura looked impressed. "I had no idea, no. But you shouldn't have trouble finding a chance to speak with her. The Arcolosian contingent is planning to remain in Lilla Jordsö throughout Gabriella's coronation and party, and I saw to it that they were offered suites right here in the castle."
Christian saw Leslie's astonished look and grinned. "That's what's on the other side of the great entry," he said. "Our suites are in the northern wing of the castle, and the southern wing is composed of guest suites for other royal families and similar lofty personages. Admittedly, there is a great deal of wasted space in this monstrosity…and Anna-Laura, exactly which ancestor decided to make this place big enough for its own post-code?"
Anna-Laura shrugged. "It wasn't so much one ancestor as several," she said, "in the time of the series of kings called Erik. I believe Erik II began expanding the place, and it took nearly a century before Erik V decided he had enough living quarters."
"Ah, so we can blame the Eriks for taking up half the land space in the country," said Christian humorously. "Leslie, my Rose, that does it: if we have a son, we're not going to name him Erik." That brought on more laughter, and conversation was encouragingly light and cheerful throughout the meal.
Once breakfast was over, Christian and Leslie retreated with the others to their respective rooms, preparatory to dressing for their day-long meeting with those who'd come to pay their respects—and it was then that the nerves hit Leslie full-on. "What on earth am I going to wear?" she asked, stunned, standing in the middle of Christian's old room with him picking unconcernedly through his own suitcase. "I don't have anything—"
"Of course you do, you brought a whole suitcase full of clothes," Christian said a bit absently. "Never understood how a woman can stand in front of a closet exploding with clothing and scream that she has nothing to wear. Every time Anna-Kristina says it, I want to have her tested for blindness. Now if you—Leslie, where are you?" He'd finally looked up, only to discover that Leslie had left the room. Christian dropped the shirt he'd been looking at and stuck his head out the door, catching sight of her half-running down the corridor. He sighed deeply and lit out after her, easily closing the distance between them. "Where exactly are you going, then?"
"To check with your sister. She'll have better advice than 'of course you do'," Leslie said, not without affection. "Christian, I love you more than anything else on earth, but in this instance you're just not much help." At his expression of outrage, she shrugged with mock apology and grinned. "Hey, it's a girl thing."
"It seems so," Christian agreed, shaking his head, "since I just don't understand it. I suppose my poor male brain simply isn't up to the task."
"You said it, not me, my love." Leslie giggled and trotted off again; Christian came determinedly after her and caught her, stopping her once more.
"Now, just one minute. I want you to explain something to me. You packed a suitcase with all kinds of things. You have jeans, you have T-shirts, you have at least two dresses that I've seen, and you have some nightclothes, though to be honest with you I didn't see much reason for you to bring those." This came out with a smirk that made Leslie roll her eyes and grin good-naturedly. "Come back here with me right now, Leslie Enstad, and show me exactly what you have, and while you're doing that, you can explain to me why none of those items is suitable."
Leslie stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"
"I am deadly serious, and if I have to use force to prove it to you, I will. Show me."
A devilish twinkle entered her eyes. "What if I don't want to?"
"Then I'll make you do it." Christian promptly made good on his word and scooped her off the floor, carrying her easily back to their temporary sleeping quarters. The moment he lifted her, Leslie burst out laughing and couldn't seem to stop the entire way back, which got her a series of increasingly dirty looks from Christian but no other response.
In the bedroom he set her down just in front of her suitcase, then took one step back, planted his hands on his hips and looked at her expectantly. "I'm waiting."
"Is this the culmination of years of frustration with your niece, the clotheshorse with nothing to wear, and you've decided to take it out on me instead of her?" Leslie asked; all she got in return was a stern look and a shift in Christian's stance. "Oh, fine, all right." She narrowed her eyes at him and deliberately plucked out the shift-and-robe set that she had worn on their wedding night. "I can't wear this, you see, because I'm supposed to wear it only in front of you, and it would get me—and probably you by extension—on the front page of every tabloid on this planet." She dropped it back in, fished out jeans and a T-shirt, and went on, "I can't wear these because they're way too casual. I'd certainly be a sight in this outfit while all the rest of you, not to mention those important politicos, are mixing and mingling in business suits and so forth." By now Christian had folded his arms over his chest and was beginning to glare; Leslie ignored this and blithely made another selection, this time a swimsuit. "You insisted I bring this, though we haven't seen the slightest trace of a swimming pool yet, and I have no doubt the North Sea is on a par with freshly melted ice for temperature. And I can't wear this either: again, the tabloids would be on it like fleas on a dog." She held it up for him to examine.
Christian reached out with overdone care and deliberately removed the suit from her grasp, dropping it back into the suitcase. "Leslie, my patience is very low," he warned her quietly. "Show me a dress and explain to me why it isn't suitable."
Leslie studied him a little warily for a moment before deciding to humor him. She lifted out the black dress she had worn to the funeral and turned to face him. "I wore this yesterday," she said simply.
"So?" said Christian. "If you can't wear the same thing two days in a row, then fine; but where's the dress you wore when we spoke with Arnulf?"
Leslie found it and held it up against herself; it was a lovely, ice-blue satin-and-chiffon creation with three-quarter-length sleeves and a modest V-neck that had perfectly accommodated her ruby heart necklace. "Too flashy," she said.
Christian stared at her incredulously. "Too flashy?" he repeated in disbelief. "Tell me, what do you expect Michiko to be wearing? What do you expect all the women to be wearing? What did you expect to wear?"
"Just a minute, Christian," Leslie said, finally beginning to lose her calm, "what's the story here? Like I said, is this some sort of retaliation for Anna-Kristina always claiming she had nothing to wear? Just for your information, nobody could have foreseen that Arnulf wasn't going to survive his heart attack. We didn't expect to be attending a funeral and facing kings, queens, presidents, ambassadors, and so on. These are the only two dresses I brought with me. And guess what else: we're expected to be here for your niece's coronation as well. If you think I had barely anything suitable for a funeral and a meet-and-greet, then just wait till you see what I wear to that—as long as you're prepared to watch me walk out in public in my birthday suit!"
Before he could reply to that, Anna-Laura appeared in the doorway. "I don't believe this: Christian and Leslie, arguing? What about?"
"Clothes, of all things!" Christian exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "Leslie claims she has nothing to wear to meet all the dignitaries! Look at this dress she's holding right now and tell me that isn't proper to wear!"
Anna-Laura waited till Leslie had turned her back on Christian to display the dress in question; then she nodded. "That will be fine, Leslie," she said, "but I seem to remember seeing you wearing that the day you and Christian met with Arnulf. Do you have any other dresses with you?"
"No, just this and the one I wore to the funeral," Leslie said.
"Then we'd better take you shopping," Anna-Laura decided. "Don't worry, I'll go with you, and so will Stina."
"What about Gabriella's coronation?" Leslie asked a little frantically. "I mean…this calls for formal gowns and that sort of thing, doesn't it? I remember that scene in My Fair Lady where Audrey Hepburn was meeting a bunch of royal types, and everybody was decked out in tuxes and elegant dresses and impossibly expensive jewelry, and the women had their hair in all these elaborate dos, and some of them were even wearing those elbow-length gloves! And holy paradise, imagine the ten-inch heels I'll probably have to wear with a dress like that! Anna-Laura, I'm a complete klutz! I break my ankles in shoes like that, and I practically punched a hole in Christian's foot with one once, and—" She finally sputtered to a halt when Anna-Laura and Christian both broke into loud laughter.
Christian snagged her from behind and hugged her hard, dress and all, heaving with mirth. "Leslie, my darling, do you realize what you sound like? Never in my life did I think I'd hear words like those coming from you! My Rose, I love you desperately, but I do wish you'd calm down and stop sounding like some foolish little spoiled brat who never does anything but worry about what she looks like. I apologize for quite nearly losing my temper, but to be truly honest, I was getting upset with you because you were turning into some flighty, clothing-obsessed little thing, and I know you're much more sensible than that. As Anna-Laura said, she and Stina will go shopping with you, so that you can find something to wear to the coronation especially. But for now, please, let me see the sweet, grounded woman I fell in love with, all right?"
Leslie had been staring up at him all the way through this; she looked now at Anna-Laura and said, "Does Anna-Kristina really have an entire closet filled with clothes, and yet say she has nothing to wear? Christian says she does."
"He's right," Anna-Laura said, still chuckling. "Perhaps you should ask that girl to show you, and I'm sure she'll display the contents of her closet to you."
Leslie sighed. "I'd ask to borrow something of hers, but she's a little shorter than I am and it wouldn't fit. Well, okay, then, we'll go shopping." She turned back to Christian and said dubiously, "I suppose you'd rather bow out of that trip."
"You suppose correctly," Christian said, still snickering. "I'll wait till you get back and then have you model your new things for me, and I'll choose the ones you should wear to the coronation and then to the party."
"Two different outfits?" Leslie asked, eyes widening.
"Yes, my darling, I'm afraid so. The coronation is much more formal and ceremonial than the celebration." Christian looked up and, finally serious, remarked to Anna-Laura, "I think we'll have to have some sort of dress rehearsal for that one. She's not at all familiar with this kind of thing, and the protocol is brutal."
Anna-Laura nodded thoughtfully and said, "Yes, it can. Actually, somewhere we have video of Father's coronation and then Arnulf's, and I think it would help her to watch those as well, before we have an actual run-through. I'll try to find the tapes." She left them, and Christian turned Leslie in his embrace, taking the dress from her hands and draping it across the bed, all the while giving her a long, gently reproachful stare.
"What?" Leslie asked, puzzled.
"Don't—I beg of you, don't ever—go into such histrionics again, my Rose. Maybe you think my reaction is a little extreme; but you have no idea how often I found myself sitting around Anna-Kristina's suite when I was a teenager, watching her show off endless fussy, frilly dresses as if she were tripping down a Paris catwalk. When she dressed up, everything had to be just so. Kristina taught me to braid her hair, but that was as far as I was willing to go. Briefly, we even kept a hairstylist in the castle, fate take it, and that child made endless use of her. There were so many television appearances then. Arnulf and Kristina were quite visible while their daughters were children, and Stina and Briella at least grew up with the belief that they always had to look impeccable lest some wayward television camera happen to catch them out and about." Christian let his head fall back and groaned with the memory. "It made me eternally grateful I was born male. But then I found myself married to Johanna, and she was another clotheshorse. It was just another of the countless reasons I gave her as wide a berth as I could get away with during the years she was my wife. Then came the women between her and Marina…Ingela and Karin were both high-society types and had a great many elegant clothes. Maria Dahl, the film actress, was a two-month diversion who never stopped checking her image in a mirror. Why I stayed with her for even that long, I'll never know. She made me take her on two major clothes-shopping excursions."
"And the singer?" Leslie prompted, her interest immense.
"Astrid," Christian remembered. "She wasn't as fussy about her clothes—but I must explain to you that she was a punk rocker." Leslie's eyes popped, and he grinned ruefully. "Yes, you heard me correctly. If my sister and my nieces were as merciless as I think they were, you're going to find photographs of me with her in those scrapbooks they gave me for my birthday, and you'll see what I mean." He sighed. "As for Marina…well, she was well aware of her own appearance, undoubtedly because she was at the age to be supremely conscious of it. I simply thought all women were that way. Then I met you, and you were comfortable in anything, from your work clothing to swimsuits to that cute little nightshirt you were wearing the night I tried so hard to talk you into marrying me. That was one of at least five dozen reasons I fell so madly in love with you."
"Five dozen, huh?" Leslie mused, enjoying his monologue. "I'll have to ask you for the other 59 some one of these days. In the meantime—I'm sorry, but these fussy formal ceremonies are intimidating the blood out of me. What I'm trying to say is, I'm terrified I'm not going to do you justice—that I'll look ridiculous beside you, especially since you were raised on all this and I'm totally clueless."
"If you walked out in your birthday suit, as you so charmingly threatened to do a few minutes ago, you'd do me more justice than you could ever dream," Christian murmured, kissing her. "Stay clueless, my darling Leslie Rose. It's one of the things that keeps me so in love with you." He forestalled any riposte on her part with another kiss that made her forget forever what she might have said.
Some indeterminate time later Anna-Laura returned and caught them still kissing, so lost in each other that they never heard her even after she cleared her throat three times. At last she took a breath and said with amused exasperation, "Christian Carl Tobias Enstad, you're going to set that room on fire if you don't stop now."
Christian and Leslie broke apart and stared at her, both a little glassy-eyed. After a moment Christian asked, "Why do I get in trouble and Leslie doesn't?"
"Oh, trust me, you'll both be in trouble if you don't get some control over yourselves and start dressing. It's already past ten and the servants have finished setting up the great entry. You don't have time to make love right now." Anna-Laura grinned widely when Leslie hid her face against Christian with embarrassment. "I have the tapes. We'll watch them this evening in the sitting room." She laid a pair of videocassettes on the chair beside the door. "Hurry up." With that, she left.
Christian laughed softly at Leslie. "Oh, come out of hiding, my darling. Truth to tell, I think she's envious. Arnulf should have devoted some effort to marrying her off—she's been widowed for eighteen years. Come on, let's get ready."
"While we're doing that," Leslie said slyly, "you can tell me how on earth you managed to get yourself involved with a punk rocker." Christian's laugh rang halfway down the hall, loudly enough for Anna-Laura to hear it and grin in response.