Page 95 of Happily Ever After

The world wouldn’t really change.

Not until wealthy people valued human beings more than shiny rocks.

A servant wearing an identical black dress to all the other servants pushed a tea service cart into the room. The squat pot gleamed silver in the golden light.Flicka had last seen the Tiffany & Company “Chrysanthemum” sterling silver coffee and tea service at a brunch her father had thrown for some German artist he’d wanted to cultivate. She should be honored that they’d brought it out for her, but instead, she remembered that a similar set of teapots and sugar bowls had sold at Sotheby’s in New York for well over fifty thousand dollars.

Her fatherpoured the tea into a delicate, tall teacup. The brilliant paint depicting butterflies, berries, flowers, and dragonflies scrolled around the rim and halfway down the cup, and the handle was a shining gold butterfly wing instead of the usual curlicue.

Ah, yes, the design was Versace By Rosenthal, Flicka remembered. Her father had ordered and received the new china set just before Wulfram hadthrown him out of the Marienburg Castle and cut off his funds. She’d liked the butterfly-wing handles at the time. So innovative, for a teacup.

The Tiffany & Company pot had brewed the tea adequately, and the Versace By Rosenthal cup did indeed keep the tea from spilling into her lap.

In her mouth, the tea was smooth and tangy, and she recognized it as Da-Hong Pao, a loose tea that cost morethan thirty times its weight in gold, often more than ten thousand dollars per pot for the aged tea from the original mother trees.

Even the tea her father served was an obscene waste. He didn’t even like tea that much. At the very least, a real tea aficionado should be drinking this tea. There weren’t many of the original mother trees left, and this tea would be extinct someday soon.

Tearsflooded her eyes again. She wanted to throw this waste across the room, but she sipped the tea.

“Cookie?” her father asked, holding out a plate.

Lemon cookies, from the warm, citrus scent that wafted from the plate. She forced her mouth to say, “No, thank you. Carbs.”

“Yes, I understand.” He lowered the plate and also didn’t take one.

God, she wanted a damned cookie. Maybe she would stop cryingif she ate a cookie.

Maybe the staff would eat the untouched cookies in the kitchen, though they might toss them in the trash, wasting them.

Her eyes burned more.

When she looked back at Dieter, he was resting against the wall and staring at his feet, but his shoulders were nearly to his strong jaw. His hands clenched into hard fists.

Flicka turned back. “Can I borrow a phone? I need to callWulfie.”

Her father blinked. “I don’t know why you would want to call when I’ve already informed him that we would be retrieving you and will be occupyingSchloss Marienburgfor the foreseeable future.”

“I just want to talk to Wulfie.” Her throat tightened, and she was mortified at how desperate she sounded.

“Here. Use mine. We’ll procure a phone for you tomorrow.”

Her father’s phone was thenewest version of the very best phone. Three icons dotted the home screen: contacts, phone, and texts. He probably didn’t know how to use it as anything other than a phone.

She dialed Wulf’s phone number with her thumbs, and it rang only twice before he answered sternly, “Father.”

“Wulfie, it’s me. It’s Flicka.” Her voice broke.

Wulf said, “Tell me a word.”

“Fiddlesticks,” Flicka said.

Herfather frowned at her across the Tiffany silver tea set, and one of his silver-gold eyebrows rose.

She told Wulfram, “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

Wulf’s relieved sigh was audible all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. “Are you atSchloss Marienburg?”

“Yes, with father and all his staff. Every, single one of them.” While she was fairly certain that the reason her father had sent his staffen masseto retrieve her was due to some sentiment on his part, the maneuver may have turned into an attempt to re-occupySchloss Marienburg.

“Is Raphael Mirabaud with you?” Wulf asked, his voice serene and neutral.