Page 93 of Happily Ever After

The Last Leg

Flicka von Hannover

Schloss Marienburg,

at last.

The next morning, they dressed in the clothes that Dieter’s sister had sent with him: slacks, a blouse, and a thick coat for Flicka, and jeans, a white shirt, and that sexy, black leather jacket for Dieter. They trotted back to the car, watching around themselves for anyone running after them, but thePâquisdistrict of Geneva was not known for its early risers. Only a few people were leaving apartments to catch the city buses and trams, and the bars were shuttered and dark. A cafe on the opposite corner was doing brisk business with breakfasts and coffee, and a line to be seated trickled outside and into the cold sunshine.

The car was parked where they’d left it, and they got in, found a gas stationon the outskirts of Geneva, and drove to meet her father at ten o’clock atLe Roseyschool, the boarding school where she’d grown up.

When they arrived, Dieter insisted that she drop him off on the sidewalk a few blocks away to scout and continue to drive around, which she did and managed not to hit anything. Turning the wheel at the right time to exactly navigate the corner was complicated.She needed more practice.

Fifteen minutes later, at the appointed corner, Dieter climbed back in the car and said, “He sent a few people.”

A platoon of black cars barricaded the area where her nannies or security staff used to say goodbye to her for the school year. Her father’s security men marched out to take possession of her, but Flicka insisted that Dieter had to stay with her and theywouldnotbe separated.

Her father had also sent maids.

Why would he sendmaids?

The three times that the procession pulled over for food and necessary stops during the seven-hour drive back toSchloss Marienburg,the maids fussed over Flicka and hovered, trying to see to her needs.

Flicka supposed that she should be gratified that her father was worried about her being sufficiently takencare of during a day trip in the car, but it seemed insane that seven women were fluttering around her when they stopped at a hotel in Freiburg for lunch.

The security guys were on super-hyperdrive alert, standing guard with enthusiastic fervor.

Her father must have promised everyone extra paychecks or threatened the hell out of them.

During the seven-hour drive, Dieter sat beside her in arear seat of a Volkswagen Atlas SUV. The Volkswagen factory had long been situated in Hannover, and her father had insisted many years ago that at least half the House’s vehicles must be Volkswagens. She and Dieter spoke quietly, formally, and he didn’t try to touch her at all.

Ah, he was preserving the story that he had merely rescued her, just in case she didn’t want to deal with her father’scrazy screaming that would surely ensue if he found out she’d married someone he would surely think was unsuitable.

After an hour of driving on the long highway from Switzerland and north into Germany, she couldn’t stand it any longer, and she reached over and held his hand.

Dieter rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, and his stern, professional expression softened the slightest bit as he watched,vigilantly, for anything untoward as the caravan sped towardSchloss Marienburg.

The cities gave way to higher elevations and more open spaces. Gray mountains covered by a leafless forest of twigs rose on the horizon, and the SUVs and sedans holding Flicka and the Hannover entourage raced toward them.

Schloss Marienburg,a white and dove gray fairy-tale dream, rose out of the wintry forest likea clockwork castle. Battlements and barbicans fortified the palace, which had been built in the Victorian mid-1800s as an idealized fantasy of a Gothic castle. A yellow and white flag, the standard of the House of Guelph, fluttered from the main tower that jutted up from the center of the keep, one of the few splashes of color in the silver and white landscape.

Dieter helped Flicka from the SUV,holding her hand like a footman as she alighted from a carriage, and her father strode to meet her. Icy wind speared through her coat and clothes.

He folded her in his still-strong arms and said, “Welcome home, my little princess.”

She was so glad to have made it that she burst into tears.

She tried to stop, but couldn’t.

She tried harder to stop, but her lungs ached and the fear turned intosobs.

Her father soothed her and led her to his sitting room, where golden chairs were set around a coffee table, to pour her an evening cup of tea.

When Flicka looked up, Dieter was leaning against the back wall, silent and almost unseen, but he was watching her with his intense, gray eyes.

She said to her father, “I’ve got to end this madness with Pierre, somehow. I can’t keep living likethis, running away from him.”

Her father patted her hand. “As much as I deplore a spectacle, I believe you must make a public statement of some sort. I’ll send lawyers to obtain a restraining order. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”