Simon Hawke - The Zenda Vendetta

He turned her down.

She offered him what other men would have accepted upon any terms and he turned her down. To add insult to injury, what she offered him he had accepted from some ignorant peasant girl. The child that Vanna Drakova had borne should have been hers. She flung the bottle away, cursing Lachman Singh. He had done his job too well. Elaine Cantrell should have been dead, but a large part of her still lived. Well, soon it would be put to rest. Relief would come at last with the death of Nikolai Drakov.

She lured Forrester here to destroy him, but not in the manner that he thought. She would not try killing him herself. She would leave that job to Nikolai. If Drakov killed his father, she would, in turn, kill him, and then the slate would be wiped clean. And if Forrester prevailed, it would be a much more exquisite revenge. She would let him live with the knowledge that he had killed his own son. Either way, he would die. The Timekeepers would also be avenged and a massive timestream split would occur. As with the ancient Japanese, who would not surrender until they had experienced firsthand the awesome power of atomic energy unleashed, so would the war machine be forced to face the final consequences of their folly. She would go down in history as the woman who had single-handedly brought the Time Wars to a halt. And this time, history would not be changed.

They were admitted to Flavia’s chambers by Countess Helga von Strofzin, a pretty girl scarcely out of her teens. She was delighted to see Fritz von Tarlenheim. Finn left them alone in the sitting room as he went in to see the princess. Flavia had dressed for the occasion, already prepared to attend the dinner so that her king would not be kept waiting while she changed. She curtsied deeply with a rustling of organdy.

“Come, come, no need of that,” said Finn, taking her hand and bringing her up straight. “Surely we can dispense with formalities in private.”

“As you wish, Rudolf,” she said. “May I offer you some wine?”

“No, I don’t think so, thank you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Not even your favorite port?”

“I have favored port too much of late, I think,” said Finn. “It is one thing for a prince to be somewhat overfond of wine, but a king should be more abstemious.”

She looked surprised. “What brought this on?”

Protocol demanded that he sit first before she could be seated. Despite the fact that he was not standing on formalities, Finn knew that she would not sit down until he did. He settled on the large divan.

“To be honest, I’m not really certain,” he said, putting a note of puzzlement into his voice. “Things suddenly began to feel somehow strange.”

“How strange?” she said, sitting down beside him and turning so that she could face him. They sat close together, yet there was still a distance separating them. He knew he would not close it in a single day, but he could make a start, for Elphberg’s sake.

“I wish I could explain,” he said. “I am not quite sure when it all began. Perhaps it began when we rode together from the cathedral to the palace. Perhaps it started afterward, when I was alone in my bedchambers. Nothing had changed outwardly, but everything seemed somehow different suddenly. I experienced a vague unease. I stood before the mirror, still dressed in the uniform in which I was crowned, and I said to myself, ‘Well, there you are, Your Majesty. King Rudolf the Fifth.’ Only somehow, I did not feel like a king. I felt like a little boy who had dressed up in his father’s clothing. The clothing looked impressive, but it did not quite make me feel grown-up. It didn’t seem to fit. It was too large for me, somehow, despite its having been excellently tailored to my form.”

Even as he spoke, he was starting to feel cheap.

“I began to feel foolish,” he continued, noting that Flavia was listening with growing interest. “It felt like, well, you know- Oh, well, I suppose you would not know, but it felt like the morning after one becomes paralyzed with drink. You wake up and absolutely everything is wrong.. You can’t see straight, your head is splitting, your stomach feels as though someone had lit a fire in it. You feel terrible and the first thought that enters your head is ‘Why on earth did I do that last night? What possessed me? I must have been insane. I’ll never, never drink again, not so much as one sip.’ Only of course, it doesn’t last long. The feeling goes away and one does drink, even to excess and the entire process repeats itself. It’s a never-ending circle, like a puppy chasing its own tail. The only difference is that eventually, the puppy grows tired of the game and has enough sense to lie down.”

He glanced at her and saw that the beginning of a smile was tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Does any of that make any sense at all?”

She licked her lips and nodded. “I think so. But I’m not certain that I completely understand your meaning.”

“Well, for that matter, neither am I,” said Finn, grinning ruefully. Delaney, you miserable bastard, he told himself, you’re working a fast-talking con on a naive young girl who has already resigned herself to a loveless marriage. Now you’re trying to turn her head in another man’s name to suit the purpose of the moment.

“It was a most peculiar feeling and I thought that it would go away. I said to myself, ‘You’re tired, Rudolf, worn out from all the nonsense of that ridiculous parade through town and kneeling for what seemed like forever while that mitered idiot-” she frowned, but Finn continued in character-”sprinkled holy water over you and chanted nasally in Latin. You drank too much at the banquet and did not eat enough. You simply do not feel yourself.’ And that was the answer, you see. I did not feel myself. And the feeling did not go away. It only grew and grew and it began to give me headaches. I was not ill; there was no fever, but I felt like an old woman with the vapors. I knew that I needed to talk to someone, to attempt to describe how I was feeling, only who was there to talk to? Sapt? He had no patience for such nonsense. I was not up to hearing yet another lecture from that old bear. Von Tarlenheim? What would Fritz know? He’s just a boy. I’d only confuse him. The chancellor? He’d merely sit there pressing his lips together and then run off to search his documents for some precedent.”

Flavia chuckled. “And so you came to me?”

Finn shrugged. “I have no idea why, I must confess. Why should I burden you with this nonsense? Yet, the moment it occurred to me to speak to you, it seemed like the most sensible thing to do.” He frowned. “Perhaps I am ill.”

“You do not look ill to me,” she said. “Perhaps you were ill and are just now beginning to recover.”

“Recover? From what?”

“Perhaps from growing pains?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Finn. Not too much at once, he thought. Let’s have a little of the “old” Rudolf. “What would you know about growing up? You’re still a child yourself.”

“Am I?” she said. “When was the last time you took a good look?”

Finn gave her an appraising glance, half-humorously, then made his face grow a bit more serious. “Come to think of it, I may have judged a bit hastily.” He grinned. “A dowager you’re not, but neither are you a child. Kings marry little girls upon occasion, but it appears that this king will marry one that’s grown.”

Her gaze held his for a moment, then slid away. “I had wondered if you had come to speak of that,” she said.

“So does half the kingdom wonder, by all accounts,” said Finn, gloomily. “To tell the truth, I am loathe to set the date just yet.”

“I see,” she said, softly, looking down.