Chapter Fifteen: Trysts of Every Sort

I woke to familiar surroundings that now felt cold and unfamiliar. I dressed mechanically without any help—putting on a corset alone was virtually impossible, so I forwent the thing—and went downstairs. Mother wasn't in the sitting room as she usually was; nor was she in the dining room. The clock said it was a quarter to six in the evening, and I couldn't think of where else she might be. Wondering if she had gone out somewhere, I decided to ask Albert. He would be in his study at this hour, I decided, and made my way in that direction.

As I approached the study, hushed voices caught my notice. They were coming from the study, and as I drew closer, I realized that Albert and Mother were coming as close to arguing as I had ever heard them come.

"-not a child anymore, she can handle it."

"No. If you think that I will subject my daughter to that horror..."

"You go on like an arranged marriage is a death sentence! Is being married to me so horrible?"

"What if she has someone on her mind?"

"You said she didn't last time we discussed the matter."

"But that was before this whole fiasco and..."

"And you think she might have met someone in the common world? Colette, we had best hope not. That would be a tragedy."

"Are you suggesting that it wouldn't be horrible to wed Nadja to someone who would have been inconceivable as a potential husband before today?"

"Oscar is hardly that bad. You know as well as I do how Nadja adores him. Your father wants the match to go through, and you know how he is."

"I know how Nadja is as well."

My blood went cold. Grandfather wanted me married to Oscar? Oh, of all the...!

I listened vaguely to the hushed tones as I tried to envision myself married. It had always seemed so far off that I had never really thought about it, but now I envisioned everything. I envisioned my wedding, walking down an aisle to a man who had always been a brother to me, my heart pounding with trepidation rather than anticipation. I tried to envision the wedding night, but my stomach churned and I turned my mind away. I envisioned the first months, of me and my husband growing used to being together in the same household, and learning to run the household together by dividing the work to be done. I envisioned our children, who would eventually fill our house with joy and laughter—joy which we would impede by forcing them to be docile, and laughter which we would silence because it was not proper.

It was not a bad life, really. The only problems were that it was Oscar who would be beside me all the while. I loved Oscar, I had no doubt of that, but I simply could not think of marrying him. I knew that it was still not that uncommon a practice to wed one's cousins, and yet the thought of me and Oscar together was just...wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

I did not wait to listen to the rest. I retreated back to my room, all appetite for food, conversation and company diverted. In my room, I tried again to envision me and Oscar together, perfectly happy as Mother and Father had once been. It didn't work.

I went outside onto my balcony and tried again. This time, instead of starting with Oscar, I started with what I wanted. I envisioned my children first: happy and outspoken and above all free. I would live in a mansion of course...but it would be a small one. One that I could oversee myself, without too many servants... And the garden wouldn't be one of the extensive ones, like Grandfather had at his house. It would be small: large enough to host a small party, perhaps, but small enough for me to care for on my own, mostly just lawn, but with nice flower beds around the sides. The kitchen would be a place where the cook could do her work, but I could help if needed and my children could play while I worked and watched them. We wouldn't need too many bedrooms: one for me and my husband, one for the children, and three or four extra for guests, and to be the childrens' when they grew old enough to have their own rooms.

This vision of mine expanded. The world before me grew vivid: the friendly neighborhood, the cook and the housekeeper (who would be the only servants we would have)... And then I saw my husband. He was smiling, laughing as he played with our eldest boys—they would be twins, you see—and he was still as handsome as I knew he'd been the day I married him, only happier, less sullen, more mature...and he wasn't Oscar, I suddenly realized. He had no shoulder-length dark grey hair or smiling, gentle grey eyes: no. His hair was golden, sparkling in the sun, and his eyes were the deepest blue, and their mischievous sparkle shone more than all the stars in the sky. And the children, I realized. Their hair may have been a few shades lighter than his, but there was no doubt that they were his, not Oscar's.

I wiped the vision from my mind. Was that what I wanted? I wondered. Would I live my life with Oscar, sneaking around with Keith all the while? Or perhaps that was not what I wanted. Perhaps I wanted to live my days out with Keith, day and night, together regardless of what the world thought.

The best that I can do to discribe how I felt then is to say that I was confused, very confused. There was no earth-shattering revelation, or fireworks that shouted the truth to me. It was simply that I was so confused that I tried to clear my mind of it all: banish it beyond my thoughts, so that it would not confuse me so. And as I shoved all the useless emotions away, slowly my mind cleared and I thought with increasing certainty that I must love Keith.

It really should have been quite obvious, I thought. All the confusion, how much I had been thinking about him of late, my reaction when I thought he would be killed...

My face felt cold. I touched my cheeks, intending to warm them with my hands; my fingers touched water. How strange, I thought, I was crying. It really didn't seem like that big a deal. But the realization that one is distressed enough to cry seems to be enough to trigger more tears, and soon I was sobbing my heart out.

And Keith was there. I realized it with abrupt certainty when I noticed something rustling on a branch. I reached out to him and called his name. There was silence for a moment, and I wondered if I had been mistaken—or perhaps he was still angry at me over the Francis incident. But my instincts weren't quite that off.

He was no more than a black, bird-like shadow when he leapt from the tree, but when he landed on the railing before me, he was the Black Rose, quiet and solemn as he looked at me and I looked at him.

"Can we talk for a bit?" I asked, hating that my voice sounded feeble and week.

"Cerntainly," he replied, gracefully climbing down from the railing. He shook out his cape, then removed that, his top hat, and the mask.

"You've been avoiding me." There was no need to sugar coat the fact.

"You needed space."

"I might have thought so."

A silence that lasted a while.

"Was it the thing with Francis?"

He stiffened, but didn't say anything.

"Nothing happened."

He snorted.

"Really. He was just a bit confused. We straightened everything out, and he went after Maryann."

Keith sighed and shook his head. "That isn't it."

It was my turn to snort.

"Fine, maybe it bothered me a bit." The reluctance in his voice was palpable, and I had to look down to hide my grin as I smothered a laugh. There was a long silence, and when I looked up he was glaring down at me and I knew I hadn't fooled him. I quickly sobered. "What are we, Nadja? We're not lovers, that's for sure. But we're not exactly friends either. How much do you really know about me? We've barely talked about ourselves these past few weeks. I love you—that's not about to change—but we're not..." He trailed off, then shook his head. "No. What I want to say is...we can't go anywhere from here. You live in this world"-he made an expansive gesture-"and love your mother and cousin too much to leave it for me. I love my freedom too much to abandon it for you—I can't say that I love my freedom more than I love you, but if I abandoned it to join you here, I would go insane and you would go mad trying to cope with my presence. It's stalemate, and regardless of what may or may not have happened between you and my brother, that's only what started me thinking. And I don't want to start something that I know is never going to work out in the long term. It would hurt us both, I think."

I was looking over his shoulder at the trees outside, contemplating what he'd said. Yes, I could see the logic in what he'd said. A moment ago, I'd been ready to leap over the fence that divided our worlds and join him in his. But how happy would I be there? At least if I were married to Oscar, I knew I would be happy. I would be living with someone I got along with, and it wasn't as if the discomfort of a more-than-platonic relationship had to continue at all once I'd conceived an heir. But more than anything, I would be in familiar territory—it was unlikely that anything should occur that would be very surprising.

Still, Mother had been happy to elope with Father. Why couldn't it be the same for me?

I knew why: there were too many people around me whom I loved and who loved me. Mother had had only Uncle and Grandfather—Uncle had been at school and too full of himself to take much notice of his elder sister at the time; Grandfather had been the one to drive her away with his insistance that noble blood in the man who would be her husband was more important than her happiness.

And like Keith had said, I didn't know him. How could I know I'd be happy with a man I couldn't say I knew?

"One day," I told him. "Let me spend one day with you. We've been spending time together in bits and pieces, but we've never really spent one long period of time together."

He gave me a long look. Then he shook his head, and smiled. "Why not? But it's getting dark now—would you like me to come back in the morning?"

I contemplated this a moment, then shook my head. "Let's go now. As long as we're back around noon tomorrow, no one will notice."

He raised his eyebrows as I hurried inside and stuffed a few of my pillows under my covers. Satisfied that it looked as though I were still asleep, I exited to the balcony and closed the curtains behind me, and then the door. "Shall we go?" I asked of him, and he smiled and gave me his arm.

It wasn't as though we ran in circles around Vienna doing as much as we could. In fact, nothing we did was even all that far from ordinary. Keith, of course, had shed his Black Rose disguise and was wearing a neat shirt, jacket and trousers underneath that could have passed for either commoner or noble. I was impressed, and belatedly realized that I had not bothered to change—but that didn't matter because we went to the library and spent the remainder of the evening there until it closed. Then Keith took me to a shop that sold odds and ends—and was always open at awkward hours, Keith told me—where, despite my protests, he bought me an old but nice-looking dress. Even my insistance that the skirt was too tattered were met by his assurance that it really wasn't. Finally I caved and changed. There was a slit in the skirt that went up to the middle of my thigh, and I felt horribly inadequately dressed. But Keith just took the dress I had come out in and was gone for all of thirty seconds before he was back without the dress and suggested we move on.

I asked where we would go, scarcely believing that anything else would be open at that hour. He proved me wrong, and showed me to a place much like a bar, only quite different. There were drinks to be bought, but most of the people were dancing. It wasn't like the cafes that I had seen on my travels, where a dancer would spend the night dancing for the guests. No—there were only four couples, but those people obviously danced for pleasure, and it was almost like a ball, only I had never imagined that one could dance so wildly in partner dancing. There was even one couple practicing the steps clumsily on the edge of the floor.

"How does anyone lead—let alone follow—a dance like that?" I whispered to Keith, awed. He grinned.

"Why don't I just show you?"

Then he led me onto the dance floor and took my hand and put a hand around me...which settled rather low on my hips rather than high on my back, as I was accustomed. Before I could exclaim, he stepped closer and pulled me close—so that our bellies and thighs were flush against one another, and I was about to remark that partner dancing couldn't be done when the partners were that close...

...Then he began to move.

And suddenly, with fully clarity, I understood. The slit in the dress, the closeness: it was all intentional, for it was all a part of this dance. It was more like the flamenco than any dance I'd ever danced—the steps, the speed, the music, the rhythm. But it was this closeness of the partners that allowed this wild dance to be led. With so much of our bodies touching, Keith scarcely had to lead—he just had to hint, and I could follow.

I watched other couples out of the corner of my eyes—they all danced as closely as us, of course. To my surprise, I realized that while the man led, the dance was almost made for the woman. The man could lead them into a spin, or a twist, or a low dip, but the woman could choose to kick one or both of her legs gracefully at the ceiling, or release her partner to include her arms in the dance.

Of course, I realized. The dances I knew were led with the arms. This was led with the body, and so it was only natural that a woman should be able to do other things with her arms (but only if she picked the right moments, of course. If she let go as the man was trying to send her into a spin or a lift, for instance, the whole dance would be thrown off). And, in turn, because it was led by the body, the man could feel it when the woman changed the pattern, and could accomadate it—the woman played a part as the lead as well.

The first time that Keith pulled me in for one of the closer spins, I kicked up my legs, and he turned the spin into a lift. I danced in the air until I was back on the floor.

For the first time in my life, I was dancing a partner dance that allowed the two dancers to stand on equal footing. It was exhilirating.

That was my introduction to the dance called the tango. We danced until the bar closed in the early hours of the morning.

It was still dark, so Keith took me on a walk through nighttime Vienna.

What I had previously known of nighttime Vienna was not very much in its favor—muggers, thieves, angry uncles... But Keith showed me my city by taking me up windowsills, up the rafters, and up to the top of the roof of a house at the top of a hill—and I understood that Vienna was beautiful. There were some lights scattered throughout the little houses, packed closely together. The streets were silent and still. There was a fountain in a square not far away that I could see from the roof—the three street lamps in the square reflected off the water, and it sparkled like a gem. The roofs were uniform in places but not in others, and it was almost like a jungle that was a city.

Keith and I sat there and watched the sunrise. We never said a word.

The first time he spoke after climbing up to the roof was to tell me that we ought to get down before the house's inhabitants woke , or else we would need to find a way down that didn't make use of the window sills.

Then we wandered through the market square, watching and sometimes chatting with shopkeepers.

Every so often, Troupe Dandelion would cross my mind and I wanted to ask Keith if he knew what had become of them and where they were. But the answer scared me—even an "I don't know" would be horrific, so I kept my silence on the subject.

Soon the sun was high in the sky. I didn't even notice Keith slip away when he did, but he could not have been gone long anyway—and when he returned, he had my dress.

"Time to go back," he said.

We had scarcely spoken in all the hours that we had spent together, yet I didn't regret a single moment. It felt far too soon to be back on my balcony.

I thought of Mother and her fury at her husband and father on my behalf. I thought of Oscar, and of Grandfather's plans for him and me. I thought of Albert and his suggestion that we simply cave to Grandfather. But irrational though it was, none of those people, not even all of them combined seemed enough of a reason for me to stay at the price of leaving Keith in the past forever.

That was why I caught his hand as he turned away.

"I want you to stay," I whispered. I saw his back slump.

"I can't, Nadja," he said, and his voice sounded dead. "I hate this world too much."

"Not like that." I gripped his hand tighter. "Stay with me. I don't care where. Here, there, anywhere—I can't cut off my ties with this world like you did, you're right about that. But I'm not so attached that I need them permanently by my side."

He looked around me, and his eyes were sad. "You think that now. How do you know you'll think the same ten, twenty, even fifty years from now? You're seventeen. I'm twenty. Who's to say we know our own minds at our age? What if we end up regretting it? Coming with me is final—even if we never actually make it to a church, your reputation will be ruined as far as noblility is concerned."

"Who's to say that anyone knows their minds?" I snapped back. "My uncle was well into his fourties, yet Oscar has far fewer regrets!"

Keith didn't say anything. There was a knock on the door, and my head swung to the side to stare at the door, then back at Keith in horror. My anger had evaporated in a second, but he was already half way out the window. My chest felt constricted.

"Just...just come back tonight?" I asked. He only gave me a brief nod before he left, but it was good enough for me.

"Come in."

The door opened. It was Mother.

"Nadja," she said. There were dark circles under her eyes, and I suspected that she hadn't slept last night either. Suddenly, I regretted my attempts to get Keith to take me with him. It was all well and good for me, but what about Mother? Would she feel like she was losing me? I remembered the descriptions Edna and Albert had given me of Mother's depression after Father's death. I would never toss her back into that despair—but what if I almost had, in my selfishness?

I felt ashamed.

"Are you alright, Mother?" I asked, slipping out of bed.

"I am well," Mother smiled, and I wondered if she was lying. "Did you sleep in those clothes, Nadja?"

I realized that I had not changed, and flushed a little. "I woke and changed last night. I did not want to bother you, but nor did I sleep much after that, and by the time I grew tired, it hardly occurred to me to change."

Mother smiled. "Then get some sleep now. I will come back and talk to you when you wake again. Come wake me if I am asleep." She knew I wouldn't, but she said so anyway.

"Thank you, Mother." She smiled at me and moved to leave. "Mother?" She turned back. "I love you."

It seemed like so long since I had seen her smile the way she smiled then. "I love you too, my Nadja."

I ran across the room, and she pulled me into an embrace. It felt like years since I had been held by my mother this way. "I love you," I murmured again.

"And your father and I love you." It had been years since she had felt the need to assure me of Father's love. "Always. No matter what you choose." I stiffened. Did she know about Keith? Or was she referring to the issue of my possible betrothal to Oscar, and telling me that it was alright to refuse? "Now get some sleep."

And she released me and was gone. I was too tired to pursue her.

When I woke, Keith was sitting at my bedside. I looked outside and saw that it was dark. I sat up abruptly. "The time! What time is it?"

Keith looked amused. "Still before midnight," he replied.

"Thank goodness," I gasped even as I threw myself out of bed and went digging for my flamenco dress.

"Why the rush?" asked Keith as I cursed, realizing that all my dancing girl possessions were still with Troupe Dandelion. Keith just looked more entertained.

"If it gets too late, we won't be able to go to the tango bar!"

"They don't close until four, honey. We've got plenty of time."

I scowled. "If you're going to use endearments, stick with 'dear' or 'darling.' I'd rather not be a sticky liquid stolen from viscious insects."

"Yes, dear." That made it sound more intimate than I had intended—domestic, like we really were married, and I felt a shiver run down my spine despite myself. "If it's a dress you need, I brought the one from last night."

"Thank you!" I took it—practically snatched it, actually—from him. "Now look the other way or close your eyes or something so I can change." I wasn't telling him to leave—it was what an immature man could easily construe as an invitation to peek. I wondered if he was rogue enough to interpret it as such.

But I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I changed, and he kept his back to me, apparently transfixed by the wall he faced. I decided that maybe it wasn't so foolish of me that I had found myself considering spending the rest of my life at his side.

"Done!" I announced. "Let's go!"

I practically slid down the tree by the balcony, hardly hearing his warnings that it was dangerous.

We followed the same routine that day—danced the tango, watched Vienna and then the sunrise from a rooftop—a different one this time—and spent the morning wandering through the market.

Keith led me back home earlier this time, insisting that I had taken no pains to conceal my absence and that my mother might worry. It occurred to me that it would be something of a miracle if she actually believed that I slept as long as I was pretending to, but that seemed somewhat insignificant. I conceded, but only after he promised that I would see him again that evening.

I had scarcely finished changing after he left when Mother came hurrying into the room.

"Nadja?" she called. I was surprised—she was hurrying, and she hadn't knocked. Was something wrong? "Nadja, you have guests downstairs. Are you here?"

"Yes, Mother," I said, exiting my dressing room whilst finishing braiding my hair. Instantly the panic left her demeanor and she was her usual self.

"Come; there are some people here to see you."

She would tell me no more, and just led me downstairs to the sitting room.

"Nadja!" squealed Rita. I caught her up in a hug, smiling. If I was horrified to see the sling that held her left arm, I didn't let it show.

Kennosuke was sporting a grin and a few scratches on his faces; the others all seemed to be trying to conceal some degree of bandages. I perceived as I had with Rita that to mention the bandages before anything else would be to push them away—I had a good enough idea of what must have happened.

So I looked at them all and smiled and greeted each in turn. Then I turned to Mother and grinned. "Mother, these people are Troupe Dandelion; they saved me and helped me and I'm so in their debt I can hardly thank them enough. Everyone, this is my Mother." I began introducing the Troupe to her.

Leader scolded me for talking about debt, because we were practically family; Creme and Chocolat had already taken to Mother and were rubbing against her ankles and purring for attention before I had even finished my introductions; but before I was half way through the names of the troupe members, chaos was already reigning and Kennosuke and Rita were distracting me with a detailed account of what had happened that night. I snuck a glance at Mother as I found myself wanting to hear what had actually happened, since I knew nothing. Mother seemed deep in conversation with Silvy, so I turned back to Kennosuke and Rita, hoping that Mother wouldn't chance to listen in on our conversation.

"They knocked you out with a branch," Rita was explaining. "And we all thought you'd been shot-"

"Rita," Kennosuke scolded, "Don't be cryptic. You can't just tell her that she was hit with a branch without explaining how that happened, you'll just confuse her!"

"Oh. Okay. Nadja," Rita said seriously. "One of the men snuck up behind you with a big tree branch and hit you, and you fell over, but he had a gun and someone else had shot just when he hit you, so we all thought you'd been shot. The grown-ups got really mad and started going at them even more violently, but the men took you away like we didn't even matter once they'd got you, and we tried to chase them, but they shot at us and... Nadja? What's wrong?"

I blinked.

"Don't be stupid," Kennosuke hissed, "you're talking about how her uncle kidnapped her. Of course it would be upsetting to her."

"Really?" asked Rita, peering at me worriedly. "Is that all?"

"What do you mean, 'that's all'?" Kennosuke demanded. Rita was quite perceptive, I observed.

But I could not very well tell her what was on my mind. The word 'grown-ups' had caught in my mind, and I had realized that Granny, Leader, Thomas and Arvell had joined Mother and Silvy—we had separated in to 'adults' and 'children,' and I wondered at myself for seriously considering my future with Keith and for thinking of such things just then, yet I couldn't help myself. Rita and Kennosuke were telling me about a situation that had threatened our lives mere days ago, and I was distracted by a petty concern of my own. I really must be heartless, I thought miserably.

"Yes, that's all," I replied with a forced smile. "It was quite alarming..." I shuddered to remember my uncle and the way he had looked at me in that room, but turned my mind from the matter before my mind could tie it back to...the person who had turned up later.

"But why did you all show up here so suddenly? Not that I'm unhappy to see you! I'm delighted, in fact, and I was so worried about you, but didn't know how to find you... But..."

Rita cocked her head and exchanged a look with Kennosuke.

"A young man came to visit late yesterday afternoon," Silvy smiled, and suddenly the entire room was focused on this subject. "He asked if we could possibly visit you this afternoon since you'd been concerned over our well-being."

Keith. I knew without having to ask, and almost laughed—so this was why he had brought me back earlier today. But why hadn't he just taken me to visit them, I wondered?

"So he gave us directions, and what to tell the gatekeeper and everything," Rita grinned.

"I didn't know you were friends with gentlemen," Kennosuke muttered. Rita pursed her lips and glared at him. Gentlemen? I wondered at that word.

"Don't be silly," Rita said to him. "Of course she would know gentlemen—she's a lady!"

Silvy and Mother chuckled at that. I felt those three words stab at me like a knife. Had this ordeal built a wall between me and my commoner family? Suddenly horror gripped me. Would they ever let me dance with them again?

Then all the energy drained out of me at once as I recalled that I would be wed to Oscar, and my wayward days would come to an end anyway.

"Who was this young man?" Mother asked Silvy suddenly, and I felt my heart leap in my chest.

Silvy considered this a moment. "Dark grey hair and eyes. His hair was about shoulder-length. Quite good-looking...perhaps around twenty years old?"

And the world was comprised of puzzlement. Oscar? Why had Oscar asked them to come? More to the point, how had Oscar known who and where they were, and how had he known that I wanted to see them? Keith I could understand—he'd always read me quite well, and had had the opportunity to do so. But Oscar? I hadn't seen him since the incident with Uncle Hermann.

I shrugged it off—he had probably wanted to find a way to make me feel better after the incident. I warmed to the thought—it had been such a horrible incident, after all. We all ought to help one another overcome it.

"I am so very sorry about everything that happened," I said at last. "If only..."

"If you're about to say something about it being your fault, or you not being there, then don't," Arvell interrupted gently.

"We helped you because you're a member of our family, and family sticks together no matter what. We couldn't have done otherwise." Silvy smiled at me, and I decided then and there that she was the elder sister I had never had.

I smiled. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Don't be silly," Rita frowned. "Thanking us is almost as silly as apologizing."

I laughed and hugged her. She giggled and hugged back.

"So," said Mother, "as it is supper time, I propose that we all move into the dining room, where you can tell me more about how you all met. What do you think?"

I felt only a small amount of dread at the prospect of expaining what I had been doing all these years; everyone else thought it was a wonderful idea.

The dining room that evening was far more exciting than it had ever been in my life. My friends' manners were nothing like those of Mother and Albert, and while I noticed that Albert occasionally cringed at the head of the table, he was polite and friendly, and Mother seemed perfectly at ease. Leader was the primary figure in explaining how I had come to join them, but everyone else had things to pitch into the tale—a good deed I had done here, a new dance I had learned there, an interesting idea I had conceived here.

It made me blush to listen to them talk about me like I was some amazing person, but I saw that they were trying their best to make my mother understand why I had done what I had done—and Mother didn't seem condoning in the least. I felt my heart warm, love for everyone present bubbling over in my chest.

"They are good friends," Mother told me as soon as they had left after supper and the door closed behind them. "I'm glad that you have such wonderful people to love you."

"They're like my second family," I told her.

"They are your second family," she told me, smiling at me before she turned and headed for her chambers.