§ § § - November 23, 2008
By the following morning, however, they realized they were in for another minor siege: Christian awakened with a very queasy stomach, and before Leslie could ask him what was wrong, he had to make a mad dash to the bathroom. When he came back in, still looking nauseated, she pushed herself into a sitting position in the bed. "Did that help at all, my love?"
He threw her a look and thumped wearily onto the bed on her side, still cradling his stomach. After a couple of breaths, he gave her another look and quipped sourly, "Don't tell me I'm pregnant too."
She grinned, reaching out to smooth his shoulder. "If you are, you'll merit more than one chapter in Lilla Jordsö's official royal history. I think you finally came in for your turn with that stomach virus that's been going around. You might be better off staying up here in bed, and I'll take Margareta to our house the first chance I get."
Christian mumbled agreement and plodded gingerly back to his side of the bed, settling in with a couple of small groans and closing his eyes. Leslie dressed, then leaned over the mattress long enough to give him a kiss on the cheek before heading downstairs.
"Where's Uncle Christian?" Margareta asked; she and Roarke were already at the breakfast table, though Mariki had not yet come out with the meal.
"The stomach bug finally got him," Leslie said, "the one that's been circulating around the island. Once we finish eating, I'd better take you to our house. I don't think it'd help the trial any if you happen to come down with it too."
"Why not take Uncle Christian home?" Margareta wanted to know.
Roarke chuckled. "I suspect Leslie would prefer to keep an eye on him, Your Highness. Besides, he's in Leslie's old room, which is actually closer to the bathroom than he would be at home." That made them laugh, just as Mariki came out with the breakfast cart; she too asked after Christian's whereabouts, and shook her head at the response.
"I think that's everyone except you, sir, and the princess here. You just wait, you'll all be eating at the hotel restaurant yet." Mariki hadn't contracted the illness yet, but she had been proclaiming for most of a week now that she expected to be felled by it any day.
"Is that really as big a hardship as you like to think it is? You know Kazuo's a friend of ours," Leslie scolded her, "and he's a very good chef or else he wouldn't be employed here. You just worry about breakfast right now. And oh, drat it, I'll have to take Christian's friends to the plane dock myself and explain why he isn't here to say goodbye."
The morning passed with little incident; Roarke made a check on the fantasies just before lunchtime. Leslie looked up when he returned from the Dawson fantasy. "I suppose she's been upset."
"Mrs. Dawson? She has been quite well occupied with the passenger she rescued," Roarke said. "She informed me that you made it very clear that saving said passenger was extremely urgent, and now that they have been taken aboard a lifeboat to the Stockholm, she has split her time between trying to figure out why the name of the passenger she saved is familiar to her somehow, and exploring the Stockholm."
Leslie laughed. "Well, good, she accomplished her mission. I guess she figured she might as well check out the other ship involved in the fracas as long as she was there."
"She's a very curious lady, indeed," Roarke said with a smile. "Shall we have lunch?"
Leslie made a check on a soundly sleeping Christian after lunch; at two, Roarke went to retrieve Nina Dawson from her fantasy. Nina peered at Leslie as she came through the time-travel-room door behind Roarke, and remarked, "I guess I can see why you didn't come back after that first checkup you made on me. I think I'm gonna have dreams about feeling that collision for months now, if not years."
Leslie grinned wryly. "I just hope that doesn't translate to me. Well, other than being caught in the collision, how did your fantasy go?"
"It was beautiful, in the beginning at least. Now more than ever, I can see what an incredible loss the Andrea Doria was, not just for Italy but for an era, a whole way of life. I think that was the beginning of the end of the transatlantic cruise as the preferred means of getting between Europe and North America. It was really amazing." She shoved her hands into her pockets, then went still, her face changing expression.
"Are you all right, Mrs. Dawson?" Roarke asked.
Slowly Nina withdrew something from one pocket and lifted it into the air, staring at it. It was a brass key with a matching tag on a ring. "My stateroom key," she whispered, her eyes fixed on it. "I...I never realized I still had it."
"Perhaps it will be a souvenir for you," Roarke offered gently.
"Yeah," Nina murmured, sighing. Fingering the key, she settled into a chair. "I finally figured out what was familiar about the name of that passenger I had to save. Carrie Minton was the two-year-old girl whose mom I met in the dining room." She addressed Leslie with this. "They were on the starboard side of the ship all right, a good ways aft of where the Stockholm plowed into the Doria. But they were down one deck, and at the time of the collision, Carrie was asleep in her cabin with a hired babysitter while her parents were up in one of the ballrooms, dancing. I met Claire on the Promenade Deck after you loaded me up with those life jackets, and she told me where Carrie was. We both tried to go back down to get her, but the crush was awful...and with the list already at twenty degrees, it was incredibly hard to navigate along the hallways, never mind the stairwells. But Claire was so frantic, I knew I had to try. So I gave her all but one of the life jackets, told her to wait at the gift shop, and went down after Carrie."
"So you were supposed to save Carrie Minton," Leslie said softly.
"I wasn't sure, but I thought, at least I can try it. I figured Mr. Roarke would tell me if I succeeded or not when the fantasy ended. It must have taken me an hour just to get down one deck, with all the crazy panicky people clawing their way up from below. And I had to do it from the port side because the starboard side was mangled too much from the prow of the Stockholm. But I found her. Both she and the babysitter had managed to sleep through the collision...how, I'll never know, because I'll never forget that horrible groaning noise as long as I live. I woke up the babysitter, and I got Carrie up and put the life jacket on her, and the babysitter grabbed the life jackets out of the closet and put one on. Of course, the other ones got grabbed, but I figured we were fine, we had ours. I, uh...I grabbed a big blue tote bag too, when I saw what was in it. It was the Mintons' movie camera, and Claire's purse, and their passports. Claire thought I was nuts when I finally got back to her with Carrie, but she didn't dwell on it much—she just cried and hugged me, and thanked me for saving Carrie. And we all managed to catch the same lifeboat to the Stockholm together. Claire carried Carrie, and she helped me tie that bag to myself so that there was no getting rid of it till we were saved." She made a face. "I guess it was dumb, but everybody thought I had a brand-new baby bundled up against me, so no one objected."
Leslie grinned. "Well, the important thing was that you saved that little girl. You may have nightmares about the collision, but you can be at peace otherwise."
"Yeah." Nina sighed, then turned to Roarke. "So did I fulfill my destiny?"
"Indeed you did, Mrs. Dawson," Roarke said with a smile. "However, I might remind you of one small item. You neglected to explain why Carrie Minton's name was familiar."
"Oh, that's right," said Nina through a laugh. "It's because of one of my daughters. Her best friend at school is Lily Branton, whose mother's name is Carrie Branton—maiden name, Minton. I've known Carrie Branton casually for three or four years now, but we don't live that close, so we don't see each other much. I think when I get back to my bungalow, I'm going to give her a call and ask a few questions."
Roarke smiled. "I'm glad you've fulfilled your fantasy, even if it may have been a bit harrowing at times. You deserve a rest, so feel free to do as you like for the remainder of the weekend." Nina smiled her thanks and departed.
Leslie began drumming her fingers on her knee, thinking. "Carrie Minton, huh? You know, now that I think of it, for some reason the name's starting to sound a little familiar to me as well. I can't imagine why."
Roarke sat beside his daughter and smiled at her. "I had begun to wonder whether you would remember at all. It would be forgivable if you had not, since it's been so many years since you saw the lady."
"I saw Carrie Minton?" Leslie repeated, staring at him. "When was this?"
"It goes all the way back to your very first weekend on this island, my child, the day we broke the Hamilton curse once and for all. Think back to that day and tell me what you remember about it now."
Leslie let her eyes go out of focus as she turned inward, examining her memory. "It was funny because someone came in at the end of her fantasy, needing clothes because what she was wearing was stuck back in the day of...Cleopatra, I think. I remember it mostly because it was the first time I ever saw Tattoo trying to act suave around a pretty woman and misfiring the way he always did." She stilled; then her eyes widened and she stared at Roarke. "That was Carrie Minton, wasn't it?"
"It was indeed," Roarke said. "What you don't know is what happened later. It was Ms. Minton who first alerted us that your bungalow had caught fire. Had she not let us know, it is entirely possible that it would have taken longer for us to realize that Tituba had made her final move, and you might have at least been critically injured, if not killed."
Leslie paled and closed her eyes for a moment, swallowing thickly before she studied him again through forming tears. "So Nina Dawson had to save Carrie Minton, so that Carrie Minton could help to save me."
"Exactly," Roarke said, smiling and hugging her close. "And now the circle has been closed. Perhaps one day you'll be able to thank Ms. Minton yourself."
§ § § - November 30, 2008
Christian had been unlucky enough to spend the entire past week battling the stomach virus, to the point where he'd even been forced to sleep a couple of nights atop a mound of towels in the bathroom; but by the final morning of the waiting period in the serum's second trial, he looked much healthier. "Never in my life have I been so sick for so long," he complained, massaging his stomach with great care as he lay beside a still-drowsy Leslie in their bed. "But believe it or not, my stomach feels fine today. At least, it doesn't react with a roll if I so much as rest my hand atop it."
Leslie regarded him with his six-day stubble, the aspiring mustache and beard that looked so out of place on him, and grinned in sleepy recollection. "That has to be a good sign. Frankly, I'm as relieved as you are. As much agony as you went through—especially those two nights when you slept in the bathroom and I kept waking up every time your stomach tried to eject something—I'm just as glad it's all over. But be careful when you try to eat, and I don't think I'd recommend any coffee just yet."
Christian winced and closed his eyes. "Believe me, my Rose, right now coffee sounds like the worst sort of torture to me. Besides, you can't imagine the massive caffeine headache I found myself suffering late last Sunday afternoon and through most of Monday. It was why I barely slept all Sunday night—the pain kept me awake, even after I took that aspirin for it. Perhaps I'm better off drinking decaffeinated coffee from now on; I don't care to go through that again."
She giggled and raised herself up on one elbow to kiss him. "So how much does that beard itch? Goodness, Anna-Kristina was right."
He opened his eyes and squinted at her. "About what?"
"She told me about how she talked you into letting her come to your flat for a few days, the week after Madame died, and she found you with about this same amount of stubble. She told me she remembered thinking that even though you were hotter-looking than George Michael, stubble did a lot more for him than it did for you."
"The little brat," Christian muttered, but he had started to grin. "When did she tell you this, then?"
"Last spring when we were in Lilla Jordsö for our vacation. I think it came up when we females were sitting in the back courtyard watching the children playing—her and me, Amalia and Anna-Laura, Liselotta and Gabriella, Louisa and Adriana. I think even Kristina was out there with us. We had a radio and the station started playing a George Michael song, and the next thing I knew Anna-Kristina was telling me all about your brief 'George Michael period'. I thought she was nuts and I said so, and she laughed and said she was just kidding. That was when she told me about the stubble."
"So apparently stubble still does nothing for me," Christian murmured with good humor. "That's all right, because you're right—it itches like absolute hell." They both laughed, and he got out of bed, moving slowly, testing his stomach's reactions to every movement on his way to the bathroom.
They had arranged to have Margareta stay at the main house again after Christian insisted on being at home in his own bed; so in about two hours they were on their way over there, once Christian had had a chance to shower, shave and even ply his stomach with a little of Karina's grömmagraut, prepared by Ingrid. It was bland enough to be a good starter food after a bout of illness like Christian's, and when his stomach seemed to accept it without question, he had a second helping just to keep himself fortified till lunchtime. So when he, Leslie and the triplets appeared on the porch of the main house that Sunday morning, he was as hopeful as anyone else.
Roarke and Margareta looked up from their breakfast; Margareta jumped to her feet and hurried around the table to bestow a hug. "Uncle Christian, finally! You look so much better! Have you gotten past that stomach illness at last?"
"Seems so," Christian said, returning his niece's hug while the triplets ran ahead to greet their grandfather. "I'm sure you're very excited."
"You can't imagine. I almost couldn't eat for all the bats in my stomach." Margareta grinned at Leslie. "What time are we to go to the bed-and-breakfast inn?"
"Ten," Leslie said. "Believe me, I'm excited too. I think we all are."
They reached the B&B at the appointed hour while Noelle Tokita watched the children at the main house; Rogan, just exiting the greenhouse, brightened at sight of them. "Oh, good, ye're all here. I've three doctors from the hospital here to draw blood samples so that we can find out once and for all if ye're all free of the spice. How're ye feelin', Yer Highness? No symptoms at all since that convulsion ye had in hospital last weekend?"
"Nothing," Margareta said, beaming. "I feel wonderful. I've been eating every possible kind of food all week just to see how it tastes without being sprinkled with amakarna. It's as if I've had a burden lifted from me."
"Ye encourage me, believe me," Rogan said. "An' ye, Christian...och, ye look a wee bit scrawny after that bout ye had with that stomach virus. Ye're all right?"
"Nothing a few good meals won't repair," Christian said with a smile. "Well, stop stalling, Rogan, for fate's sake. I'm sure everyone wants to know if this experiment's been a success." Rogan laughed agreement and accompanied them to Julie's café.
They were almost the last to arrive; two more participants appeared after them, and Rogan swiftly counted heads before closing the café door and addressing the group at large. "Well, here we are—fifteen days after the application o'the serum—an' it amazes me, it does, ye all sittin' here lookin' so healthy an' cheerful. If ye all don't mind givin' a wee last bit o'blood for the cause, we'll have the final verdict." He cleared his throat. "Pardon me brogue—me uncle an' cousin there'll tell ye it means I'm nervous as all hell." Everyone laughed, and Rogan grinned back, nodding at the doctors to get started.
They watched as the doctors made the rounds of the room, collecting blood into labeled vials for their tests. Margareta gave hers without a sound, her face a mask of hope and anticipation; everyone else seemed equally wound up, so when one of the doctors announced that they should have the results by six or seven that evening, a huge collective groan arose from everyone in the room—including Christian and Leslie. Roarke laughed as his daughter and son-in-law traded despairing looks. "You must realize it will take time to analyze some two dozen blood samples," he chided them.
"I suppose you have a point, but it's still nerve-wracking," Christian said, sighing. "I guess all we can do is wait, and keep ourselves occupied as best we can."
In the end Christian passed the time at his office working on a website for a client; Leslie helped Roarke with paperwork, and Margareta indulged herself with a trip to the beach for the afternoon. However, when six o'clock came and there had been no word, they all had begun to get antsy. Even Roarke was slightly disturbed, though he hid it far better than the others. Supper was a rushed affair; they were afraid they would miss the crucial phone call.
It came a few minutes after seven. "Come to the café," Rogan told Leslie when she grabbed the phone. "We're all meeting there." He hung up before she could acknowledge it; she made a face, then shrugged, put the receiver back on the hook and relayed his message to the others. In five seconds they were all out the door.
The rest of the trial group had gathered at speed; no one was sitting, for they were all too restless, too eager to hear the results. The doctor with whom Rogan had been working waited till Rogan had counted heads; then, at a look from him, he turned to the group, drew in a deep breath, and suddenly grinned. "You're all free of amakarna, forever. The trial is a complete success."
Cheers and shouts of joy filled the café, and people hugged each other all over the room. Margareta gasped and actually burst into tears; Christian and Leslie drew her into a three-way hug, and Christian tilted his head aside and kissed Leslie deeply.
"Oh, I must tell Stina as soon as possible," Margareta said through her tears, finally drawing Christian's attention enough to end his celebratory kiss (rather to Leslie's disappointment, of course). "Even if she doesn't like the side effects, she can't argue with a cure that works. And I know she's been sick of amakarna for years, ever since Uncle Christian and Aunt Leslie found out they couldn't get married because of it."
"If you like," Roarke offered, "you may call from my study. This is most welcome news, and it certainly warrants your telling Princess Anna-Kristina as soon as possible."
"Thank you for being part of this, Mr. Roarke," Margareta said, hugging him, much to the surprise of Christian and Leslie. "What would this world do without you? One day the fates will reward you, for all the good you do for so many people." She beamed at him before dissolving into happy tears again.
Over Margareta's shoulder, Roarke winked at Leslie, who grinned and then turned to Christian. "Did you ever think we'd see this day?"
"To tell you the truth, my darling, no, I never did. In all those days I waited for something to break so that I could make you my wife, it never occurred to me that this could possibly happen." Christian sighed softly, then gathered her close. "We've paid far too high a price for that spice, for several generations. Now we'll never have to be plagued by it again. I'll talk to my brother about some sort of recognition for Rogan, and perhaps something posthumous for Marina." He smiled and smoothed back her hair. "That's one niche that's at last been destroyed forever...thank the fates."
"Just wait till we tell the world," she murmured, and he nodded and kissed her again.
Now off to my book writing...but I still have a few unused FI story ideas in the pipeline, so there are still more tales in the wings. Thanks as always to Harry2, jtbwriter and Misheemom, along with those who merely read and those who leave the occasional comment; positive and constructive feedback is always welcome.