Nanowrimo 2022

Secrets

American Kingdom Day 35

Previous chapter:

I had to surrender my boarding pass at the reception desk to gain access to the shower area. Luckily the staff spoke English; my Spanish is pretty basic: I can smile and nod.

The key unlocked a private bathroom. Sparkling clean, fresh towel, branded lotions and amenities, plenty of space. Now, this was more like it!

I stripped off. Five days since my fall in Charleston. Just a few fading bruises, a pink patch on my elbow.

The downside to travel is often that every new shower comes with a set of controls that is new and unusual; a problem to be solved while nude and shivering, not knowing if the stream of water is going to be icy-cold or superheated.

This one had a dial and lever arrangement I’d encountered previously. Turn the lever to the desired temperature, pull to get the correct pressure.

After a minimum of experimentation, perfection ensued. Oh, sweet glory! I loaded my hair and skin up with designer shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, and spent ten minutes enjoying the feeling of the water massaging every inch of my body.

Not quite as good as a massage, to be honest, but it wasn’t at all bad.

I dried myself off with a fluffy white towel approximately the size of Texas, changed into new panties and socks, and restored the travel clothes I’d hurriedly changed into while standing beside a deuce and a half in the dark last night, not having any other options.

I wasn’t quite the glamor jetsetter but I was feeling renewed and ready for whatever the world wanted to throw at me.

There was a ripple of laughter from the bathroom beside me as I emerged. Two voices — one of either gender — and I smiled. Annie and Oscar were inside, enjoying a honeymoon before the marriage. Well, good luck and God bless.

A thought struck me. There were five bathrooms, and two of them had closed doors.

I rapped softly on the one that wasn’t hosting a nude sex romp. “Hazel?”

A torrent of male Spanish greeted me. Oh well, worth a try. I scampered for the exit before I became ensnared in something that would probably have become a tale I could tell again and again.

I returned the key and retrieved my boarding pass. “Thank you,” I told the clerk, “you have just saved a life!”

All I needed now was some of this magic cava stuff. At the bar was Nathan, gloomily drinking a lonesome beer.

“Hey, cheer up, Sergeant,” I said, plonking myself down beside him. “What more do you want out of life?”

He raised his beer in salute. “Something I can’t have. But I can at least have a drink with her.”

“Cava, por favor,” I smiled and nodded at the barman. “Hey, didn’t work out this time. You’ll find someone else without a whomping great scar all down her front. The world is full of ‘em.”

“Like that one?” He indicated Hazel, sitting with Viscount Seth, at a cosy table against the wall. They had a pot of tea between them.

“Hazel doesn’t swing your way,” I said. “Tough cheese.”

“Yeah. I figured.”

My cava arrived with a pop. Served in a champagne flute, it had the same straw color and strings of tiny bubbles. Looked good.

“To a bright future,” I said, lifting my glass. “Two sergeants in the Service of the King.”

He clinked his beer against mine. “The coming glory.”

Mmmm, this cava stuff was good. Champagne rebranded. And free. I took a bigger sip. Yup. Just as good the second time.

Watch out, Molly. Pace yourself.

“I never got to see your famous scar,” he moaned.

“Count yourself lucky, then,” I said. “Most men would see it as a big turn-off. You really wanted to see it?”

He nodded and I rolled my eyes.

“Well, here it is.” I undid my top button, pulled my top across. My bra strap came into view, and beneath it began one side of the Y-shaped incision. The surgeons in Ramstein had put some serious work into rehabilitation on my upper chest and it was barely visible; a line of silver slanting across the top curve of each of my breasts. It got more raw and ugly further south. Goddamn it, Nathan, if you’d played your cards right it would have been you tickling your tongue along it all the way down.

“Ah, I see I’ve arrived in the nick of time,” Seth said, “Sergeant Freytag, if you really wish to disrobe, may I suggest you find a different time and place?”

“A glass of cava, please,” he said to the barman, whose eyes had joined Nathan’s in exploring my upper cleavage.

“Perhaps,” he said, “we could take our drinks to the restaurant and get something to eat with a bit of privacy?”

“My Lord,” Nathan said, “the restaurant doesn’t open until some hours after our flight leaves.”

“Seth, please. Of course. I’d always taken a later flight. They have their evening meal very late here. A pity. I imagine they’ll feed us on the airplane. Thank you, Sergeant. In that case, let me lead you back to my window table before someone grabs it.”

I glanced over. Hazel had gone, and a cleaner was wiping the tabletop down. I held my empty glass out for another pour from the leering bartender. Huh. He could look down my top all day long so long as the supply of sparkling nectar was maintained.

We sat down by the window. Outside, an Airbus taxied past, headed for Qatar, judging by the logo. I’d never been to Madrid; perhaps this was the closest I’d get. Or Qatar, for that matter.

Then again, here I was, about to fly Business Class to Tel Aviv. That had to count for something in my travel life.

I took a sip of my replenished cava. I could get used to this. I took a moment to say thanks to the Lord and would he be able to guide me in my future travels?

“Earth to Mollie, come in,” Nathan said, making a sound like an old walkie-talkie squelch.

“Sorry. Just checking in with the Commander-in-Chief. I’m good now.”

Seth was grinning. “I saw you sharing a drink with Him as well. Um, good to see.”

He raised his glass and took an appreciative sip. “As someone rather lower down in the chain of command, I’ve been asked to fill you in and bring you home. Home, in this case, being the Palace, where we feel we could use your help in a rather delicate matter. Nathan, Molly has shown us up. Perhaps we could all spare a moment for our Lord before we go any further?”

He reached his hands out to Nathan and I. We took them, and I held mine out to Nathan. We bent our heads for a few seconds, just enough time for me to come to rest, smile at Jesus, and thank Him for his company on my journey.

“Thank you both,” Seth said, taking his hand back. Nathan gave mine a squeeze and smiled.

“Good to touch base with the King,” he said. “I don’t do that near enough.”

“We lift each other up,” I told him.

Seth nodded. “Indeed we do. Sergeant Aizle, congratulations on your promotion, and on your selection to the Palace.”

Nathan and I exchanged looks.

“Oho!” Seth exclaimed. “What is it? Tell me, please!”

He weaseled the story out of us.

“You know,” he said when we were done — with a little prompting — and the flawed reason for Nathan’s promotion was clear, “I was picking up on something from Sergeant Wandurn but she was being very cagey. No, no, I’m not upset or displeased. On the contrary. The three of you have used your wits and worked together to solve a puzzle to your own advantage. Maybe we should award three promotions instead of just one.”

“Maybe you could tell us why there were five students assigned to the Palace instead of just one?” I asked. “We looked back over twenty years and this is the first time the pattern has been broken.”

“Interesting that you should say that,” Seth said, looking me squarely in the eye. “You are the main reason. Have you worked out why?”

I shook my head. Honestly, I was in the dark. This was not the result I’d been working towards. “Um, something to do with Duke Francis?”

“Hah! Now you’re fishing. You can do better.”

It wasn’t as if I’d had more than a few days experience with this outfit. How was I supposed to penetrate the internal politics and alliances and command systems to puzzle out an anomaly in an organisation that was essentially all anomaly to me?

What had been particularly unusual?

“Look,” I began, “this has all been well outside my usual experience. The only thing I can really directly compare this with is the Army, and I have to say that this is very different.”

“What about you, Nathan?” Seth asked of his freshly-minted sergeant. “Let me give you a hint. You both touched upon it a few minutes ago,”

Nathan was struggling, I could tell. Then again, he might have been kind of jerky and juvenile but he had been a Seal and they don’t assign stupid people to that particular outfit. Pigheaded, ill-mannered, and dogmatic sure, but not idiots.

“Okay,” he said at last. “There was one thing that stood out. Molly asked Lady Marion about something the Duke said as if it had been a secret, and I was surprised because it had been mentioned previously.”

“In the club after our range practice,” I broke in. “Annie said she had heard about myself, Sir Brian, and Lady Marion together in a bathroom with a gun. There was one detail that Marion raised that could only have come from her or Duke Francis, so I was puzzled about how Annie had heard it.”

“And did you ask His Grace?”

“I did.”

“And…?”

Now that I thought back on the bone I’d picked with His Grace, he had said he had only told one person who would not have repeated it.

“With all due respect, My Lord, it was a private conversation and I don’t think I should mention the details.”

“Good. You should be careful about confidences. We have many secrets of our own and idle talk can cause us a lot of trouble.”

He looked out at a plane landing. Lufthansa.

“Sergeant Aizle?”

“My Lord?”

“A word to the wise. We’ll be arriving at the Palace in six or seven hours. You’ll be met by the Commander of the Palace Guard, and you will want to make a good impression. None of us are going to have much opportunity beyond an airline bathroom in that time to smarten up our appearance.”

That was worth knowing. So glad I’d had that shower now.

“Thank you, My Lord. May I go?”

His Lordship nodded.

After Nathan left us alone, His Lordship fixed his eyes on me.

The next chapter:

The whole story:

Notes

My longest chapter yet. It’s taken a while but I’ve also been catching up on other duties since November ended in a haze of grinding coffee beans.

This chapter is where a couple of early spur-of-the-moment writing decisions are coming home to roost. A few weeks of thinking about the loose ends I leave behind in my writing frenzy and my subconscious mind finds ways to weave them into the story.

I don’t know if any of this makes much sense. My nose is pressed way too closely up against the words and I can see that I have a lot of revision ahead before I let this thing anywhere near an editor and their awe-inspiring talents and hourly rates.

It is, however, shaping up as something I’m enjoying.

This may change. I’m going to have to work a bit harder in the immediate future. I have new characters to introduce, new titles, new settings and in all this I’m going to have to be careful about who knows what, because some of these things could turn around and bite me on the ass five books from now.

Who knows what. Least of all me right now. I have a self-imposed deadline to get this novel finished and I only have a few foggy ideas of how it’s going to go. Climb aboard for the ride with me. Throw a few ideas my way.

Molly