The End!

I'm about 6,000 words short, but I deleted a scene of 2,000 words, and I really rushed the finale. I intended to torture the protagonists and make it look as if all was lost and everyone would die, or that Emil would nearly die, but with one day to go, all I can focus on is that number, 50,000, and that deadline.

Should I post a trashy first draft? Eh. Maybe someone will have ideas on how to work in the torment, tighten the plot, adjust the pacing, and make this a thriller, not a walk in the park on May Day.

Thank you to all who've slogged through this,

especially @whatisnew and @kaelci -and now i'm off to read a bit before sleeping my way to the final day!

Gotta get to 50K!

source Cover

Lady Graves is my NaNoWriMo novel in progress.

Chapter One begins here: Lady Graves - ch. 1 - NaNoWriMo 2018 - freewritemadness: Day One

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Now what?” Evelyn asked.

Helga shrugged. “We get dressed for the parade.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “The prince himself has offered us a chamber for that purpose.”

“Gott in Himmel,” Evelyn muttered. Hadn’t the man gotten enough of Helga the night before?

“I didn’t get a good look at that lady in waiting,” Helga said, “but something about her is familiar.”

“Perhaps in your many travels, you crossed paths with her in England? What a coincidence that would be.”

“No, it was something recent. I’ll figure it out. I always do. You’re certain it was Hannah, right?”

“Altered in appearance, but yes, it’s her.” She turned to the coachman, who hadn’t spoken much all morning. “Archie, did you get a good look at her?”

“Aye. It was all I could do to keep from dragging her and the usurper to the nearest torture chamber.”

Helga patted his back. “All in good time, dear Baldarch. Good things come to those who wait.”

The men were already attired in Lederhosen and ready to head out. “Be good,” Stangler whispered in Evelyn’s ear before he ventured out to the courtyard with the stoic coachman and the farmhand, who also had been unusually quiet, perhaps from too little sleep the night before. Lady Graves hoped the handsome young Lanza was suffering the most miserable of hangovers for his antics with Helga, assuming he must have been intoxicated whenever he cavorted with that woman.

Helga led the way as if she’d lived all her life in this dank old castle.

“Fräulein.” Two hands landed on Evelyn’s shoulders. Her breath caught in her throat as a tall figure loomed behind her. Oh dear God.

Her mind raced with dreaded scenarios: Hannah recognized her and ordered that the intruder be hauled off to a dungeon, where the prince and his debauchers would have their way with her. Or--

It was the prince himself, turning her to face him.

“Well, well. Hello, Harriet!” He winked at Helga, then leered at Evelyn.

Harriet? That was the name Helga was using here, Evelyn remembered.

“How charming.” The prince flicked his eyes up and down her face, throat, and bosom. “You are Harriet’s traveling companion from Edinburgh, I presume?”

“Lady Elizabeth, Prince Hal,” Helga said. “This young lady is of no interest to you, my handsome prince. She has an army of good men who would die to preserve her honor.”

Laughter came easily to Prince Hal. He was built like a bear, powerful and slow-moving, but at a moment’s notice he would spring to action, Evelyn guessed, and she would spring away from him faster than a gazelle.

“An army to defend her? Schade,” said the prince. “You remind me of my lovely bride, but a more vivacious and robust version. Odd, how the princess schlepps her body around the castle complaining of headaches and fatigue. The winter thaw seems to have passed her by. Perhaps our visiting herbalist,” he turned to Harriet, “could cure her of this lingering travel sickness? Our own women of Lindenstein have yet to bring her to life for me. Ach, so. Alles geht gut. Her lady in waiting has attended to her in more ways, and more satisfactorily, than the princess will ever know.”

Hal was the equal of Helga for delivering one ribald shock after another.

“I would be happy to examine her,” Helga said, “and see what ails her, that she hasn’t sprung to life, tail wagging, so to say, at the sight of the Bear of Lindenstein.”

“Ach, Harriet, vielen Dank! Spring is in the air, and I want to see a spring in my bride’s step, as well as in our bed.”

‘Oh!” Helga gasped, but whatever thought struck, she quickly regained her composure. Surely nothing Hal said could have shocked that woman. Good Lord, the man had no modesty or discretion whatsoever. Then again, Helga invited that sort of thing from anyone and everyone who entered her presence.

“Show us to her chambers, if you would,” Helga said. “If her lady in waiting is occupied elsewhere, I might make some headway in seeing what ails the princess.”

“You are a treasure, Harriet.”

The prince escorted them to her door and opened it. “Visitors, Evvy.” He, nodded a farewell to the real Evelyn, winked at Helga, and moved on.

“My dear cousin Evvy,” Lady Graves greeted the princess. “Congratulations! Princess Evelyn, now! I was certain you would recognize me over brunch, but if you did, you hid it well. I wanted to surprise you, and I very nearly did, but my companion,” she cast a look at Helga, “has connections here that I wasn’t aware of. She knows your husband and has friends in every corner of Bavaria and beyond.”

No response from the princess.

“I don’t believe you ever meet Harriet, in spite of her knowing absolutely everyone long before I ever do,” she added in a rush, knowing quite well the chances of Vee having met Helga would be zero. Unsettled by Vee’s silence, she caught herself rambling in the rapid-fire way she’d disdained among lady friends in English society. “Harriet is a rarity, a woman who chose not to marry. She travels a great deal, which is how she happens to know so many people in Bavaria. Would you believe she’s met Benjamin Franklin in London --and Goethe! And Beethoven, in Vienna!”

Too many words.

“I’m sorry,” the princess whispered. Her dark blonde hair was the same color Evelyn’s was before the henna job, her eyes the same hazel, her nose just as long, or as Stangler would insist, aristocratic. Then, regaining her voice, she explained. “I’ve met so many people since I left Everleigh. I know that I know you! You’re very, very familiar, but you didn’t tell me your name, and I cannot think which of my cousins you are. The trip from Everleigh was quite, quite, quite rough. I’ve suffered total exhaustipation and headaches ever since we set foot in Bavaria.”

“Exhaustipation,” Helga exclaimed. “Excellent word.”

“Dear Evvy. I’m so sorry to hear you are unwell.” Lady Graves rose to the occasion and drew upon her acting skills. “I don’t know how you define rough, but if you’d had Harriet as your traveling companion, you’d have been sleeping under the stars at night! Verily, you would! I hardly remember what a warm bed under a dry roof feels like. But I can say it’s invigorating, to live close to nature. They do in America, you know. The indigenous tribes, that is.”

Clearly, nothing she said was making an impression on her listener, who appeared to be a deaf-mute trying to read her lips.

The princess gave her a weak attempt at a smile. “I ween you must be from Scotland, but I’m afraid my head hasn’t cleared sufficiently for me to think of your name.”

“Oh, dear.” Evelyn laughed. “My name! Why, it’s me, Livvy--Lady Elizabeth McGugan. Your father and my mother are siblings. That means you and I share the same grandmother who was born here at Lindenstein long, long ago.”

The shared a grandmother: that much was true, if Lanza had guessed right about Lord Everleigh poking about in other women’s beds.

She patted the hand of the princess and said in her best attempt at ladylike sympathy, “There, now, Evvy, you’ve undergone a long journey to a new world far from home, where not even the language is one you’re accustomed to. You’re not just a bride; you’re a princess, in the eye of the public, with not a minute to call your own, I’m sure.”

Helga snooped among the bottles and drinking glasses lying about, the servants evidently not having made their way up here yet. “Perhaps you’d feel more alert if you weren’t imbibing so much spiced wine.” She sniffed a tea cup. “Do you pay any attention to what you’re drinking? Doesn’t your lady in waiting take note?”

“Lady Annette is the one who supervises my food and drink.”

Hannah. The cook. Vee’s mother.

“I have something that should wake you up,” Helga said, “but without knowing exactly what is in your system now, or what quantity, rather, I’d best hold off.”

Fatigue. Headaches. The last memory she had of being Lady Evelyn, that was exactly how she felt. Her mouth went dry; she found herself trembling. She stood, backing away from the bed.

“I remember you now!” The princess caught her hand and squeezed it, seeming desperate, almost, to keep her near, this familiar someone from the home she left so far behind. “Livvy, of course, I know you. We’ve grown up a great deal since we last met, haven’t we?”

“More than you can possibly imagine,” Lady Graves replied.

source

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I don’t like it.”

Helga rattled off the names of various potent herbs that someone had apparently been using to keep the princess quiet and subdued. “Valerian! Excess doses can cause headaches and a racing heart. It shouldn't’t be taken for long periods. Valerian can be harmful and addictive.”

Valerian; Evelyn recognized that one from the stone cottage, during her convalescence. “I thought valerian root gave off an offensive odor. Surely she wouldn’t drink that?”

“The smell is not unpleasant to everyone. It has a musky scent, and the essential oil is used in perfumes. Some people lay the dried roots among their linens. Heaven knows, your beloved Klaus has benefitted from my decoctions of valerian for his nightmares and insomnia. Oh, but you never witnessed any of that, did you? First Emil came along--saving him saved Klaus--then you came along, and the man has apparently forgotten what a miserable misanthrope he is.”

“He has a sadness in his eyes, like a poet, but you do him a disservice.”

“You lit his candle, honey. He carries a torch for you, but you never saw the charred stump that was Klaus.”

They were dressed now in Dirndls, walking to the parade route, basking in sunshine. The thought of Klaus, widowed, imprisoned, taking refuge in the stone cottage, made her feel a cloud had passed over the sun.

“You were his wife’s aunt,” Evelyn said. “You were a baroness. Have you no sense of decorum at least for his sake? If ever I might doubt his character, I have only to think of his saintly patience with you, and I know whatever unladylike embarrassments I might be guilty of, none could be so obvious and offensive as yours. Well, any friend of his is a friend of mine, so I will try my best to withhold judgment and love you as you are, Helga, warts and all.”

They were apart from the crowds lining the main street, speaking in English, but her voice was rising in excitement. She composed herself, grateful for her training to speak softly and demurely, as befits a lady. Helga had mastered the art of keeping her voice barely audible, to the point that Evelyn often had to strain to understand her words.

But not at the moment: Helga hooted with laughter before regaining her hushed tone. “Oh, little lady, how much you’ve yet to experience of the big, bad world. I’d like to see you one year after your wedding to the prince, had it transpired, and see how proper and uppity you’d be then. Not to worry dear, a friend of Klaus is a friend of mine, and I will love you all the more when you’ve earned some battle scars and calluses. Warts? I have none, thank you, and if you should find any, come to me, I have the remedies.”

Evelyn felt an apology might be in order, but she couldn’t bring herself to offer one.

“What did the prince mean about the lady in waiting attending to him?”

“Oh!” Helga clapped a hand over her mouth. “Gott in Himmel, yes, it struck me then and there, but I had to hold the thought until we were out of earshot. Tending to his Majesty. Indeed. That set off the flares, reminding me where it was I had seen her before. Your Hannah, also known as Lady Annette, is also known as--well, her pagan name is none of your concern--but she was one of the nine, as you so derisively like to call us.”

“What!” Evelyn stopped in her tracks. “Wait.” She puzzled it over. “We only just arrived last night. How would you have come to know her as the pagan Lady What’s-her-Name so soon?”

“My dear, you hold yourself to be so well read and enlightened, but you know so little. We have signs and subtle ways of recognizing our own kind wherever we may go. Last night your Hannah was dressed quite differently, of course, but this morning I knew she was familiar. Naturally, I was seeing her with mental blocks in place: here was the possible mother of Vee, the murderous cook named Hannah, the lady in waiting to the new princess; there was just no place in my mind to recognize her as the kindred spirit who celebrated a sacred ritual to inaugurate the first of May.”

“Sacred!” Evelyn scoffed. “Never again will I hear little tinkling bells without thinking of the profane.”

“You are so much like my Maria. My niece-- Klaus’s wife--assaulted killed before his very eyes as he was being arrested on that ridiculous charge of being a Bonapartist.”

“He hates Napoleon.” And with more good reason than Evelyn had guessed, from what Helga was saying,

“If he’d just learned to keep his mouth shut! Of course freedom of speech is one of the reforms he was fighting for. Klaus is so much like you, Little Lady Graves. Too late in life he realized the importance of hiding one’s true thoughts. The man hears that Napoleon had scholars stationed in Egypt, and Klauss is off talking to those scholars, probably with stars in his eyes--you know how impassioned he gets talking history and science!--and of course that makes him a fan of Napoleon. Well, there’s also his open admiration for the Napoleonic Code. The abolishment of serfdom. If that damned Corsican hadn’t tried to annex every country within pissing distance of him, and beyond, he wouldn’t be so hated.”

Buzzing tin trumpets, blaring clarions, and whistles drowned out Helga’s hushed words as the parade commenced. Strapping lads carried the trunks of trees as easily as if they were batons, and at places along the route, one would stop out and deposit the tree, or May pole, before the woman he loved. Helga clapped her hands together in delight. “Look at those lads! Those redskins Klaus goes on about have nothing over these boys.”

Helga certainly had an eye for big men. Big, blonde, bear-like men. Evelyn was drawn to the whip-thin, agile, lean coachman, Reginald, who was so much like his father, the unprepossessing but impeccable and distinguished Archibald McCall. In truth, she had fancied the idea of running with Reginald rather than marrying a Bavarian prince, and Hannah must have overheard her teasing and tempting poor Reginald with visions of taking half that dowry, leaving the other half for Vee and Hannah to get home on, and going to live in some quaint village in, say, Corsica, or Scotland, or wherever they might manage to go.

How had she forgotten that until just now?

It was a recent turn of events; Herr Doktor had told her that recent memories were the hardest to hold onto, after a head injury or a traumatic event. She, Evelyn, had flirted with Reginald, because he was the kind of man whose company she enjoyed, whose virtues she admired, while arrogant, entitled lords and pampered rich boys interested her not at all. The doctor was even more to her liking, with his intelligence, sensitivity and learning, his powers of healing, his slim but strong physique. He was no Herr Lanza, no bear of a man like Prince Hal, and that was good. Very good. Very, very, good. Where on earth was he?

Stangler! The name would haunt her all the days of her life, as would every whiff of lavender or lye soap; every dog that ever bounced or had only one eye would tie her to Niklaus Stangler. She stood here in the May sun watching a parade, hearing bands play and girls singing as the wove ribbons around May poles, and without Stangler at her side, she was utterly destitute.

“Helga,” she said. “Why have we not come across the men? Where are they hiding?”

“I have a funny feeling about that. Something tells me your quiet, stoic little coachman snapped, something broke inside his head, and he’s off screaming bloody murder in the castle.” Helga shook her head vigorously as if to dispel the vision. “But I’ve pictured many, many crazier things than that, and thank heavens, the vast majority never come to pass.”

Evelyn held still, watching the ribbon weaving atop the May pole, the seamless movements of the girls yodeling as they danced round the pole.

The joy of spring was bursting from every window box filled with flowers, every dancer, every reveler blowing a horn or whistle; green meadows, white-peaked mountains, blue sky, and energy radiated from rosy-cheeked men in Lederhosen and women in Dirndls. It was hard to feel murderous toward Vee--though she was posing as a princess bride at Evelyn’s expense--when the bride looked so lost and confused.

And when Evelyn had never wanted to be Hal’s princess bride.

“Helga, it seems to me,” she thought aloud, “that Vee seems genuinely lost and confused. You seem confident she’s being drugged or sedated, which is how I remember feeling the last day I was walking the earth as Lady Evelyn. I certainly do not remember Vee being the sort to complain of headaches and daily fatigue. She and I were both strong and sturdy, which is to say, not very ladylike. I remember Hannah in the kitchen at Everleigh, She’s always known plants and herbs. She used poppy seeds to keep my nieces and nephews in line, if they fought their bedtimes. If she was the mastermind of the plot to make her daughter a princess, she would know that to keep the pretender in line, she’d have to keep her tired and disoriented, so as to have good excuse if she doesn’t know what she ought, or her remember all the lies she’s supposed to be telling. But it’s been weeks, by now, and it’ past time that the princess should recover from her exhaustipating travels and start looking like a May flower instead of a cold, wet April shower.”

“And the point you are trying to make here would be….?”

“Her mother--your kindred-sister pagan friend, as of last night, anyway--needs to pay for her transgressions. I don’t know how to bring it about without seeing her burn like those stick-witches over the bonfires last night. Crime and punishment is not always best administered by human hands. In London, before serfdom was abolished--”

“Good God, Stangler has met his match. Not even Maria could rival you for all this intellectual banter. It’s enough to drive a woman to drink. And I see a vendor with Maibock, oh, dear man!”

Like a speeding bullet, short, strong Helga made her way to the beer vendor. By the time Evelyn caught up, Helga had two steins in hand. “Drink up, dear. It’s been a rough winter.”

“Bier her!” Evelyn said, clinking their steins, and taking a much bigger gulp than her usual.

The parade had ended, and who should materialize for them again but Prince Hal?

“There’s madness in the mountains!” he cried, clanking steins with Helga. She glowed like a torch for him, and he was bursting at the seams with vitality.

“There’s madness in the Maibock,” came a familiar voice. Stangler! His own stein rang against Evelyn’s, and they locked arms in the Brüderschaft, an age-old expression of deep friendship in which two friends, usually both male, would join in a pretzel embrace while drinking simultaneously.

He was dwarfed by the Bear of Lindenstein, yet his familiar smile made him tower like the mountains over all other men. She would have missed out on meeting this man had Reginald run off with her, had Hannah not left her for dead. The shock of this hadn’t worn off, but had only deepened from March to April and into May.

“Where is Archibald?” she asked, remembering Helga’s vague premonition.

“I was hoping I’d find him with you.”

They glanced around the crowd that assembled after the parade. Evelyn looked first at the beribboned horses, knowing Archibald would check those out before taking in any other sights wherever he found himself.

And there he was, looking cool and calm, stroking the nose of a great Belgian mare, listening to the halting English of a local. Evelyn heaved a sigh of relief. “And what about Fritz Lanza?”

Stangler’s forehead creased. “I last saw him at the castle, heading into the kitchen. I’ve never seen a boy or man who could eat more than he does.”

The kitchen.

Hannah.

“How fast can you walk with a stein loaded full of beer?” she asked.

Arms locked, they headed swiftly back to the castle.

source

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The castle kitchen was a busy place,

but there were side rooms, and Evelyn knew her way around a big kitchen with its pantries, canning rooms, and sorting tables. The one door that was closed caught her eye, and with Stangler’s shoulder pushing against it, they finally made their way in.

“Oh Fritz!”

Lying on a massive wooden work table, Fritz was spread-eagled and cuffed with leather bands to stakes pounded into each of the four corners. With a carving knife in hand, Lady Annette, formerly known as Hannah, pressed a sharp point to his throat.

Her eyes narrowed and her back straightened at the sight of intruders.

“Draw a single drop of blood from that man,” Stangler said, “and I will have you drawn and quartered before the clock strikes noon,”

“Perhaps you would like to trade places with him.” Hannah tipped her head back, imperious, undaunted. “I have only to snap my fingers, and the prince will have you drawn and quartered. He enjoys seeing that sort of thing, you know.”

“Hannah, no!” Evelyn lost her composure far too soon, her usual failing, or one of many.

“Lady Elizabeth,” she said doubtfully. “All the way from Edinburgh, with a pagan Bavarian baroness in exile. Do you see something wrong with this picture?”

“I see everything wrong with the picture of you torturing this good man,” Stangler jumped in. “Put down the knife, and we can negotiate, like Albert the Bear with tribal chief who--”

“For God’s sake, no more of your history lectures.” Helga had stepped into the room, Archibald at her side.

The knife clattered to the table, but Hannah quickly reclaimed it and tightened her grip.

“Prince Hal will have all your heads. Mark my words, he will.”

A shadow fell into the room, and a towering blond ducked under the door and rose to his full height. ‘You were saying, Lady Annette? Or should I say… Hannah?”

In one step, the prince reached the table and unfastened the hapless Herr Lanza.

“You overestimated the quantity of valerian it would take to subdue a man like Fritz,” Stangler said. “What were you hoping he might tell you?”

He shot a hand out, holding it against Archibald’s chest to keep him from advancing on the woman with the knife. Helga grabbed the coachman by the shoulders. “Let the prince decide how to deal with her, Baldarch. First, let us hear her account of how a cook named Hannah came to pose as a lady in waiting who calls herself Annette.”

Hannah was cornered.

Herr Lanza was now standing. Between him and the prince, two giants among men, subduing Hannah should have been simple enough, but with that carving knife waving madly, a she-devil parried their efforts to get the blade from her.

Evelyn spied a bushel of potatoes and grabbed a few, then tossed them to Stangler and grabbed a few more herself. In moments, they were both juggling. Hannah was not impressed, but that was not their intent. She kept her focus on Prince Hal and Herr Lanza, who risked bleeding out if they got between her and her knife.

Splat! A potato hit her square in the face, then another, and another, in rapid succession. Evelyn grabbed more potatoes and kept firing them to Stangler, who continued firing them at the she-devil. Several potatoes were sliced clean in half by the knife she held up to block her face. The distraction created an opening for Hal to grab one arm, Lanza the other, and Stangler pried Hannah’s fingers from the handle. With a swift move, the kind only a farm hand with years of practice shearing sheep could make, Lanza had the woman arcing into the air and landing on the table.

Prince Hal was no stranger to the cuffing of a victim of interrogation. Hannah’s hands and feet were quickly secured to the table. Archibald loomed over her.

“I want my son back.”

“Your worthless son ran off with my daughter, Vee, and got them both killed by robbers.”

The coachman hauled back and slapped her across the face so hard, blood sprang from her lip.

The prince caught him and pulled him back.

Helga leaned over her. “Why are you drugging the princess? Are you afraid she might remember what you did to Reginald and give you away? Maybe you’re more worried she will give herself away?”

Prince Hal frowned at that.

“You accuse me son of stealing Lady Evelyn’s dowry,” Archibald said. “I know he would never do that. You, however, have many hiding places.”

Princess Evelyn arrived at the doorway. “I have searched, but found nothing,” she said. She was unable to step very far into the room, with so many people crowding in, but she got in, closed the door, and latched it behind her. “The servants don’t need to hear any of this.”

“Enlighten me,” said the prince. He faced Hannah. “You stole the dowry for yourself, killed Reginald, then blamed him and the maid for running off with it?”

Hannah glared at him as if casting an evil spell without words.

“I didn’t believe her,” the other Evelyn said, “so she started sedating me. I’ve searched everywhere for the money and cannot imagine where it might be hidden, if indeed my--if Lady Annette has it.”

“Oh, I have an idea.” Helga flung Hannah’s skirts up, baring her legs. “There is one safe place that nobody would dare to look.”

Groping, she got her fingers on a leather string and gave it a tug. Hannah screamed and thrashed. Helga raked her fingernails across both milky-smooth thighs, drawing blood, then gave the string a hard pull. Out slithered a leather pouch, glistening in the light that angled in from narrow windows.

“Oh, my, God,” Lady Graves groaned.

Prince Hal crowed with laughter.

Helga shook silver coins from the slimy pouch and counted them out. “Is that the right amount?”

Tears streamed from the other Evelyn’s eyes. “Oh mother. Oh, mother. How could you?”

“Mother?” Hal caught her by the chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Hello?”

Helga, the calmest head in the room, started explaining, but Hannah’s screaming and cursing became insufferable. Helga shoved a potato into her mouth. Hal seemed far too entertained by it all, and got in on the action by selecting the largest potato he could find and shoving it in between her legs. “You fit a lot of coin in there,” he said, “I wonder how many potatoes you might hold?”

The princess looked ready to faint. The prince took no notice, but Archibald did. He unlatched the door. “Let us get some fresh air, Vee,” he said gently.

She gasped, and he slid an arm around her, leading her away from the confines of the impromptu interrogation room.

Helga continued telling the story.

--

With some pleading from Stangler, the murderous thief was not publicly tortured and executed. Indeed, her crimes were not made public at all. The prince had her locked in a tower, where he would visit if the urge should ever strike. If she should suffer any urges, she could pull a string and ring tiny bells mounted outside her window slits, but more often than not, her ringing bells would be ignored. To make sure she never gave up, though, he would come around just often enough for her to keep those bells tinkling in the wind, carrying to anyone who’d hear the unvarying monotone of metal against metal. The same notes struck every time, a soulless melody of a woman who’d thrown her soul into a ravine with a fine young man whose life was worth more than silver coins, kingdoms, crowns, or titles.

The mystery of the bells ringing from the highest tower in Lindenstein led to a treasury of new legends, myths, and fairy tales. Every storyteller added embellishments and variations on a theme, but the lesson endured. The greatest treasure was love and loyalty.

Quietly, Prince Hal divorced his young bride, even though she became far more lively and flush with life once all the sedatives were out of her system.

The jilted princess was not alone for long. Archibald, whose wife had died not long after their only child Reginald was born, asked for Vee’s hand in marriage. He was younger than his shiny bald head would indicate, and far more fit and lithe than man half his age, which was a mere forty.

Helga was also barely more than forty, still in her childbearing years, and still a baroness by birth. And healthy, and not the least bit interested in marrying. Hal didn’t think much of the institution of marriage himself, but he thought a great deal of Helga. If Napoleon could forgive his unfaithful wife Josephine all her infidelities, Helga and Hal could overlook each other’s escapades. What he really needed was someone to help him curb his reckless spending, someone jovial and roly-poly and fun loving. What he wanted was Helga.

Fritz Lanza rode home to his family estate, with tin whistles and bells and other souvenirs, and a deed from Helga to take possession of the cottage, once Stangler had emptied it of his own things.

Take your time, she said, and so Lady Graves, Herr Doktor, and Emil spent the best part of May in their favorite place.

“Really,” Evelyn ventured, “it would be nice to stay here forever, now that Helga, or Princess Harriet, is living at Lindenstein with her favorite bear of a man.”

“Ah, but Herr Lanza could use a place like this, close to home. He has visions of gardens and green houses, more sheep and goats, and some frisky milkmaid, I imagine, who will summon him when she’s in the mood by ringing little tiny bells.”

“Gaah! I shall never again hear the innocent tinkling of bells without being afflicted with sordid memories!”

“You know that phrase saved by the bell? I make no claim as to the veracity of this, but as a doctor, I can attest that patients have been mistakenly declared dead--and buried. Buried alive. In the extraordinary event that someone was pronounced dead and interred, but later revived, a bell attached to the coffin and be frantically rung. I have never heard of a case of this happening, of anyone saved by the bell, but you might change your thinking about bells. I, for one, do not mind lurid visions of pagan women engaging in profane and obscene sex acts, but if you do, why, retrain your thoughts, and whenever you hear a bell ring, think of the shallow grave that your bones would be in even now, if not for a pesky one-eyed dog named Emil.”

As he spoke, Emil caught his name and responded with his irrepressible bouncing.

“Another reason we musn’t linger here forever,” Stangler whispered into her ear, “is that a new world beckons. Where hairless red-skinned savages elevate war to the highest art form, where buffalo roam on vast plains under the biggest blue sky, where every man is born equal under the law, and ‘Let Freedom Ring’ is one of their favorite mottos.”

Lady Graves, now Frau Stangler, twirled in the silky Sweet Sixteen Dress she had retrieved from a trunk at Lindenstein, along with half a dozen of her favorite books, and whirled into the lap of the man in the chair by the fire. She straddled his lap and smiled. “You can ring my bell as freely as you wish,” she said.

“You speak my language, Fräulein.”

In the morning, Hagen and Siegfried stared in at the window, as if their eyes alone had the power to summon the man who milked the goat.

These moments were not made to last, but the memories were hers, and she would keep them in her heart to treasure all the days of their life.

THE END

Word count 5,558
TOTAL: 45,500 for the novel