§ § § - November 22, 2008
Nina had been just about all over the ship—at least, to all the places she had been allowed to explore. There were certain areas she couldn't visit, of course; the cargo area had been one such, deemed off limits by a couple of crewmen who found her prowling on one of the lower decks and informed her she had to return upstairs then and there. But she had visited all the public areas, peered in on all three swimming pools, browsed the gift shop, surveyed the recreational areas (including a children's playroom), looked over the schedule of films being shown in the ship's movie theater, peeked in the chapel, and strolled the open Promenade Deck. She still wasn't finished; there were thirty-one public areas in all, and it took time to get to all these places.
Nina had seen photos of the ship's interiors in the books she owned that recounted the story of the sinking; but seeing them in person was something else again, not least because all the pictures had been in black and white. The murals in the First-Class Lounge alone were enough to mesmerize her, even if it hadn't been for the focal point provided by the life-size bronze statue of the sixteenth-century Italian admiral for whom the ship had been named. The entire experience so far had been truly overwhelming, and only now, in the early evening, had she realized that she'd been so engrossed in looking around that she not only hadn't eaten a single bite all day, she had never even gone to the stateroom whose key she was toting in her pocket.
Laughing at herself, she made her way to the dining room, which was already about three-quarters full. It took her a few minutes to locate a table with enough empty chairs that she didn't feel like an intruder on someone's family dinner, and took a seat. She had no sooner made a choice and relayed it to a waiter than a young mother with a two-year-old child saw her there alone and gave her a look of mock reproval. "Goodness, why are you sitting there all by yourself?" she asked with a grin. "You could just as easily have joined us up here. Where do you come from? Did you just come off a big European trip?"
"Not really," Nina said, trying to think of something to say; she had never been to Europe, though not because she'd never wished to go. "I was...visiting a friend."
"In Italy?" the mother guessed and beamed. "How lucky! Well, come over here and sit beside me, and we'll talk. What do you think of the Doria, isn't she just as grand as can be?" Nina grinned and let the woman chatter while she changed seats, feeling slightly relieved in a way that she wouldn't be totally alone on this adventure. Once she had settled down in her new chair, her companion seemed to catch herself, laughing sheepishly. "You must really think I'm nuts," she apologized. "I'm Claire Minton, and this is my daughter Carrie here beside me. We're from Chicago, and we're just heading home from the trip of a lifetime. I just wish Carrie here would be able to remember it. We'll just have to keep our pictures and our movie film...my husband bought an eight-millimeter camera just for this trip."
Nina grinned again. "That'll be some keepsake. I'm Nina Dawson. Chicago, you said? I'm from Mattoon. Small world, isn't it?"
Claire Minton laughed. "Funny how it seems like everyone says that, ever since Disneyland opened up last year with that attraction. I guess that's going to be our next trip, but by the time we can afford it, Carrie'll be old enough to remember."
"Where did you go on your trip?" Nina asked, and that sent Claire Minton into a long reminiscence about their jaunt around mainland Europe. She was still talking when Nina's meal arrived, and Nina found herself enjoying Claire's anecdotes as she savored her food. It was turning out to be quite the adventure; she wished she could have afforded to ask Roarke to put her on a full week's ocean crossing on the Doria. It might have given her a chance to not only fully explore the great liner, but to develop real friendships. She had to remind herself that she was merely a visitor to this time and place. Yet for some reason, she thought the name Minton sounded familiar. Maybe, if she could ever get a word in edgewise with her new friend, she'd try to investigate.
§ § §
"You designed this place?" Pelle Fågelsang asked in amazement as he, Christian, Leslie and Ernst Wennergren alighted from the Enstads' car and paused in the driveway. "I had no idea you were an architect, Christian. Herregud, you never told us anything."
"I'm not an architect at all," Christian refuted with a laugh. "It was more a dream I had than anything else—when I first started making up the plans, I gave no serious thought to its ever coming true. The whole design bent in me drove me on to take graphic-design classes at Premier, to apply to website designing."
"This is too good to be just a fast drawing," Ernst said, shaking his head. "You spent years on this, didn't you?"
"Many of them, in my spare moments, when I wasn't motivated by anything else," Christian admitted. "But I'll say this—I did all the final refinements in the years I was waiting to marry Leslie. Sometimes it was all that kept me going when I thought it would never happen." He gathered Leslie to his side with one arm and kissed the top of her head as she smiled a little self-consciously at Ernst and Pelle. "Seven years in this house, and we've had many good times here."
"So show us the inside," Ernst suggested. "I'm sure it's completely modern...nothing like Kungliga Slottet at all."
They went inside and took Ernst and Pelle on the grand tour; it wasn't long before Christian lapsed back into jordiska as he bantered with his old friends, and Leslie listened in with a sense of wonder, hoping all the while that now and again she'd hear them refer to something they had done as little boys. Occasionally they spoke faster than she was able to follow, or used slang or ten-dollar words; but she got most of what they said, and thoroughly enjoyed the entire interlude.
Pelle noticed Tobias' fort in the backyard, something that seemed to have become semi-permanent since he and Kevin Knight always seemed to be working on it or playing in it whenever Kevin visited; Christian took him out to get a closer look at it, leaving Ernst on the patio with Leslie. He turned to her and cleared his throat. "This might sound a bit...odd," he said, and Leslie heard him trying to choose the proper words in English. "But you know that Christian is only our second royal ever to leave the country and the first not to lose the status permanently because of it. We have so little news of him and his family at home. I wonder only if you think perhaps you will ever move back to Lilla Jordsö?"
Leslie stared at him for a moment, considering the question. "Well, I don't know," she said at some length, realizing that she and Christian had never really discussed it and that she had no idea whether Christian ever suffered from homesickness. "It's never come up. I know he moved here because he wanted to be with me. He told me that his rationale was that he could do his job anywhere, but my job is unique and I'd be unemployed if I left this island." She smiled when Ernst chuckled. "I suppose someday Father will retire, but I don't know what will happen if and when he does. And anyway, Christian likes the privacy he has here, as opposed to being constantly on view in Lilla Jordsö."
Ernst nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps it only seems to me that things have changed too much in these years. The throne has changed hands so frequently only since you and Christian were married—already we have only a seven-year-old king and Christian's older brother must be regent for the next eleven years. And so many deaths. King Arnulf and Queen Susanna, then Princess Cecilia, now Queen Gabriella." He took a breath, started to ask a question, then caught himself when Christian and Pelle came back within earshot.
"Having a private conversation with my wife?" Christian asked with a grin.
"Only a few questions," Ernst said evasively, shrugging and aiming an uncomfortable smile at the prince.
Christian never missed anything, Leslie noted again, seeing her husband peer a little more closely at his friend. "Is something wrong, then?"
Ernst glanced at Leslie, threw Pelle a look that got no more than a blank stare in reply, and finally met Christian's quizzical gaze. "I wonder only..."
Christian waited for a few seconds, but when Ernst shifted his weight, he took in the three of them as a group. "Suppose we go inside and sit down, have something to drink," he suggested. "I think we have a pitcher or two of cherry seltzer in the refrigerator. Come in."
"How do you have cherry seltzer here on this island, on the other side of the world from home, and in the wrong season?" Pelle demanded, laughing, as they filed inside and Leslie made a relieved escape to the kitchen to pour out glassfuls. "You break so many rules and traditions, Christian, you're even worse than Claesson sometimes."
"That's probably what bothered Ivar about me so much," Christian reflected easily, gesturing his friends to chairs and taking a seat on the sofa so that Leslie would have room to sit beside him. "But my upbringing probably brought it out far more than if I had been only another ordinary human being. I wanted to break so many of those restrictions, perhaps I went too far. But I'm in another country. Why can't I have some reminders of home, anytime I wish?" At that Ernst and Pelle laughed agreement, as Leslie came out with a tray and handed out glasses of deep-red seltzer to each of them.
"So you were about to say something, Ernst," Christian prompted after a minute.
Ernst froze in the act of lowering his glass, eyeing Christian as though trapped. At last he sighed. "I know you are worried about Princess Margareta," he said slowly, his discomfort and lack of complete ease with English making him speak more slowly than usual. "And it's a good reason. But I don't know if you are in touch with your family at home since she has started this...drug thing here. Do you have time to look at the news from home?"
"What are you getting at?" Christian asked, frowning.
Ernst shifted in his seat and swallowed, then said gently, "There is a rumor now, that Prince Consort Daniel plans to take Prince Anders and move back to his hometown in Sweden. Prince Anders is Prince Daniel's only heir, true? And Prince Daniel has no brothers or sisters. His mother has died and now his...now Queen Gabriella has been taken from us, and people are saying now that he wants to leave us."
Pelle looked as astonished as Christian did; Leslie blinked and stared at her husband, who wrapped an arm around her as if seeking comfort before he spoke. "Where did you hear this, anyway? Don't tell me you read the damned tabloids."
"Well, that's where it began, but now others are saying it," Ernst said. "It comes out now in the better magazines, and on television programs...but there is no official statement from the castle. I wondered only if you have heard anything."
"No one's said anything to me," Christian said slowly, "but then again, I haven't asked either. And it's true, I've been...taken up with all of Magga's problems in testing this cure for her amakarna need." He fell silent, thinking, then looked up and narrowed his eyes at Ernst, just perceptibly. "So I suppose you want to have an inside scoop."
"A what?" said Ernst and Pelle at the same time.
"You want the truth before anyone else in the country knows it," Christian explained, "because of your friendship with me. Perhaps you want this before the family has it." Leslie peered worriedly at him; his accent had thickened a bit. "Is this true?"
"Christian, I don't know," Ernst said helplessly. "I ask only because I thought you knew the rumor. I thought you had heard it, and I wondered what you think."
"I don't think anything," said Christian with a scowl, "because I don't know anything and no one has told me anything. You shouldn't be reading such garbage."
"Christian, my love, calm down," Leslie said softly. "Maybe he didn't get it from a tabloid—he might've heard it on local TV or something, and he's just wondering what your take on it is. If it's had enough time to spread like that, then it's been around long enough that he expected you'd have heard about it by now, that's all."
"Exactly so," Ernst said, sounding a little desperate. "That's all, Christian, truly."
Christian drew in and released a couple of deep breaths, then smiled apologetically at his friend. "I'm sorry, Ernst. But you surprised me badly with that. If Daniel is really thinking about returning to Sweden with Anders, I would have heard something from my family about it, and it would have been through e-mail or a phone call. And I haven't received any word at all about it. At least, not in that fashion."
"Rumors often have at least a tiny bit of truth in them," Pelle ventured. "It could be that there's some gossipy servant in the castle who saw a chance to make a lot of money."
"It wouldn't be the first time," Christian grunted, and Pelle and Ernst grinned. "Well, all I can say is that I'll have to check in with the family later on."
The rest of the visit was quite pleasant, but after Christian had taken Ernst and Pelle back to their bungalow to start packing for their long trip home, he retreated directly to the computer in the main house to start looking for something online. Roarke was out, but Leslie was there taking care of some things, and she paused to watch him. "Checking up on that rumor of Ernst's, huh?" she asked.
Christian glanced up and nodded. "I want to know where this is coming from and who's circulating it."
"You put that much stock in it?" she asked.
"I'm not sure yet," he admitted with a sigh, clicking on something and settling back in the chair. "The trouble is that I can't honestly blame Daniel if it's true and he really does plan to take Anders to Sweden. They were both born there, and with Briella gone now, Daniel has no real reason to remain in Lilla Jordsö, especially with his own land and holding in his native country." Leslie nodded, and he turned back to the computer and leaned forward a bit to read what was on the screen. When he frowned, Leslie shifted in Roarke's chair.
"What is it?" she asked.
"One of the tabloids took an online poll," he said. "People seem about evenly divided as to whether they think Daniel should stay or go. And they give all manner of reasons."
Leslie got up and peered at the screen over his shoulder, and shook her head. "Well, I don't know...all I can think is, maybe it's time to give the family a direct call and see what they know and what their stance is on it."
Christian murmured agreement and was pulling out his cell phone to make the long-distance call when Roarke's desk phone sounded off, and Leslie went to answer it. Christian paused to watch her. "Main house," she said.
"Oh, I'm glad someone's there," Margareta's voice responded. "Aunt Leslie, I haven't had a single symptom since you and Uncle Christian came to visit me this morning, and now the doctor says I can go home if I like. Would you two come to get me, please?"
She sounded enough like a hopeful little girl that it made Leslie grin. "Oh, I guess we can do that," she drawled teasingly. "Besides, Christian and I want to bring you in on a family matter anyway, so I'll send him over to check you out. I have to hold down the fort for Father, so Christian can just bring you over here for a while."
Margareta agreed, and Leslie hung up and relayed the edict to Christian. "And it's not the doctor who says this?" he asked. "He let Magga tell us herself, did he?"
"That's why I'm sending you," she said, grinning. "You can intimidate the truth out of everybody with your royal persona."
"Leslie, really," he grunted, but he was amused. "All right, I'll be back soon—with luck, I'll have Magga with me. And you're right, I do want her opinion on this." He arose and departed, and Leslie returned to her tasks, thinking alternately about the rumor and about Ernst's question over whether Christian and she might ever live in Lilla Jordsö.