Chapter 12 Serving S’mores #2
“It’s time,” Werner puts his head around the door. “You made me promise to kick you out,” he says, yanking the tablet out of my hands. “You said to remind you that Alix won’t be in Sondmark forever and you’ll never get this time back. So I am.”
As helpful as Alix has been this year, I know my sister. She will run away from Lindenholm again with Tom running after her. I have to give her a weekend. I nod. Another alarm seems to silently flash on the edge of my vision. I’ll be seeing Ella, too.
In forty-three minutes, I turn from smooth asphalt to well-groomed gravel, the Mercedes slipping underneath a canopy of ancient trees.
In the distance, the windows of Lindenholm glow amber in the sunlight, inviting me home.
The Neoclassical lines are softened by exterior walls painted a deep, butter yellow, and it nestles into the grounds like it grew there.
Two centuries have passed since the third Neerheid van Heyden built it, his wealth accumulated in ways that don’t make for clean, heroic stories. Still, it’s beautiful.
Amma used to tell me that the U-shaped building made her feel at home.
That she knew her old hearth goddesses held her in their hands when, in the earliest and most disappointing days of her marriage, she was blessed to find an echo of a traditional Seongan courtyard house in such an unlikely place.
Alix, her hair an orange sherbet this week, races down the porch and drags me through the hall and into the east wing, past a dizzying string of unused suites. She steps over an extension cord as she strides beyond the threshold, and we are greeted with the sound of an electric drill.
I cock my brow. “What’s this?”
She smiles. “I got a VIP RSVP. You’ll never guess who. Okay, I’ll tell. Mikkel Dorsgard,” she squeaks her excitement, fingertips prancing on my arm. “The actor. The abs.”
His name lands like a left hook.
“You know—” Alix drops her voice into a husky whisper, imitating the famous delivery. “‘Your heart is all I wish for, Majesty. Today, tomorrow, forever.’”
Oh, I know it. I fight a gag reflex. All of Sondmark knows it. It won the man his first Oscar nomination and a lucrative ad campaign. I couldn’t be more pleased that my sister invited him to come and emote all over the property.
“I didn’t know you knew him,” I murmur, approaching an arched stone gate.
A giggle bubbles from Alix. “Not know-know. But I know him from his brooding in movies.”
“Brooding? What’s brooding?”
“Thinking plus hotness,” she says, supplying a definition. “I contacted his people as soon as the articles about Ella and him dropped. She looked interested, right? I thought so. I wanted to get her a present because she never meets actual men.”
“She meets men.” I glower—thinking plus jealousy. She meets too many.
“She meets useless adel,” she scoffs. We’re useless adel.
“No Sondish aristocrat is going to get serious with a princess. You wouldn’t.
” My skin vibrates in answer. My little sister doesn’t have the first clue about what I would and wouldn’t do, but she rattles on.
“You know too much about the royal clockworks. You’ve seen under the hood.
No,” she steps into the garden, “it’s better to shop at a new market when the first one doesn’t have the right fish. ”
“Ella’s not shopping—”
“Look, look, look.” Alix sweeps her hand in a wide arc.
I want to put her straight but she’s been busy.
The modest ‘camp-out’ she first conceived of has materialized as crisp canvas tents set on wooden platforms, dotted among blossoming fruit trees.
Strings of lights crisscross the garden, and fire pits and lawn games fill open areas, cleverly turning the rigid ornamental walking paths into gathering points.
Thick blankets drape over deep outdoor chairs, set in clusters throughout.
In the center, a statue of Atlas, covered in lichen and moss, observes the changes but stands resolute, holding the world on his back.
“Marc.” Alix tilts her face up and I answer her summons, kissing the cheek she presents. “Don’t ask how much it cost.”
“I won’t,” I answer, bumping her shoulder with my shoulder, “but, jagi, did the platforms have to be engineered so precisely? They’re only going to have to come right down.”
Alix fidgets, shifting her balance from one foot to another. “When you have a minute, I have this brilliant idea.”
“All your ideas are brilliant.” Ella. I brush a hand over my arm when she walks through the gate. “But I think your brother is clutching his bank balance.”
I should be immune to seeing her in a hoodie and jeans by now. Bored with it. Instead, the sight of her releases a sharp kernel of frustration that rolls under my skin, demanding my attention.
“This is dreamy,” she pronounces, eyes lighting on Alix’s elaborate preparations. At the look on her face, accountancy flies out of my head.
“See? It’s dreamy.” Alix elbows me.
I rub the spot and Ella points to the new construction. “You had this planned to the last nail. Who else is coming?”
“No one special.” Alix smiles widely and squeezes my arm. “I might slap on a little more eyeliner if I were you.”
Ella sends me a look. “Isn’t this a camp-out?”
Alix tucks her arm into Ella’s elbow. “Yes, dearest, but you should always be prepared to meet your fate. I love this,” she says of the hoodie and jeans, “but it’s giving s’mores when it could be giving, ‘Meet me in the woods.’” She waves a hand at the small wilderness beyond the wall.
Ella rolls her eyes. “For the love of Erasmus’s cap, you’re not matchmaking, are you? I refuse to make out with a groomsman on the grounds of your ancestral home.”
Good. Good for Ella. She has a sound mind. I will devote the next hour to picking out a supportive GIF.
“He’s not a—” Alix shakes her head, sounding affronted and sisterly. “I’m just asking if you brought a cute top.” I never knew what a dirty liar she was until this moment.
“I’m dressed for a campout,” Ella shoots back, shouldering her overnight bag.
Alix directs Ella to her quarters and I watch her go. Too jealous. Too hungry.
Ella climbs the shallow steps to her tent and I can’t look away, no matter how much I want to. I make one last bid to resist temptation. “I could use tonight to work,” I murmur. “I’m not in your wedding party—”
“You’re the one walking me down the aisle,” Alix counters, tripping away. “Don’t be stupid.”
I grip my bag and take a breath. Don’t be stupid.
At dusk, guests begin to trickle in, fires are lit, and I’m dragged into an unserious game of stikubb.
When Ella launches her baton into a fountain, I stand at her shoulder, modeling an easy swing.
“Like this,” I say, straightening her wrist, taking my time.
I try to ignore that my heart is beating like I’m one of those software engineers with a dating profile that reads, “I own thirty-three snakes.”
“Ella,” Alix calls, her voice slicing through the soft evening air. She stands alongside Mikkel Dorsgard, king of the Sondish screen. He’s framed in the arched gate, his hair ruffling in the breeze, comically photogenic. “I found you a friend. Come say hello.”
Ella’s voice is so low I hardly hear the murderous threat. She gives me a tight smile and drops the baton on my foot before jogging to Alix’s side. He’s not her type. This is my refuge.
Then he kisses her hand and I feel a direct, uncomplicated emotion, mostly in my fists.
When the night grows dark, we gather around the largest bonfire, dragging chairs from the shadows in a loose circle.
Alix starts a Seongan drinking game which gets ever more ridiculous and, when a row of empty bottles have been lined up on the edge of the fountain, she hands Ella an old school photo.
I lean over to see a snapshot of several Saint Sissela girls dressed up for a dance, posing like supermodels.
“You took this picture,” Ella says, glancing up at me, a soft dimple tucking her cheek. “You threatened to cut off Alix’s allowance when we wouldn’t stop laughing.”
Mikkel crowds her other side. Would it delay his next shoot if we got in a fist fight? In the event of a lawsuit, Han Heyden would suffer. “What is money for?” Amma likes to ask.
“Look at the youthful passion in your eyes,” he says.
“That’s not passion,” she scoffs, passing the photo around the circle. “That’s cheap mascara.”
Alix crashes into them from behind, wrapping her arms over both their shoulders so that they look like a couple. My sister lifts her chin and says, with the firm resolution of the slightly drunk, “Let’s play hide and seek.”