Last Night
Flicka von Hannover
I should have fought harder
for him.
At the end of the evening, Pierre kissed Flicka’s knuckles and handed her into her car.
Dieter drove her back to their apartment at Kensington Palace, silent the whole way.
She was still buzzing from the champagne and the conversation and thedancing.
When they pulled into the driveway at the palace and gave the car to one of the garage guys, Flicka pretended to be a little more drunk than she actually was and tripped over an imaginary pebble.
Dieter caught her before she could stumble, of course, and whisked her up in his arms.
Flicka laid her head on his burly shoulder.
He pressed his cheek to her hair for a moment, and then he set her on her feet, holding her until she was steady.
Oh, too bad.She’d wanted him to carry her inside like he sometimes did.
No matter.
When he shut the apartment door behind them, Dieter sighed.
Flicka had turned back, still slaphappy and chattering from a long night of sucking in the energy of the cotillion.
As much as she loved music—and she was in preparation for the final rounds of The Leeds International Piano Competition in September, having passed the preliminary rounds just a few weeks before in April—these charity events were a high that she loved, too.
Dieter had loosened his black bow tie and was leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. His broad shoulders hunched, defeated.
She asked, “What is it?”
“We have to stop,” he said. The furrow between his honey-colored eyebrows deepened. Usually, the only time he frowned like that was when he was studying something that made no sense, and he was trying to force the information together like pounding a jigsaw puzzle piece into place.
“Stop what?” She dropped her purse on the round ottoman that served as a coffee table between the couches. “Stop staying out so late? I assure you, Ilivefor these nights.Thisis what Cinderella wanted when she went to the ball, to dance all night and feelglorious.”
“We have to stop pretending.” Dieter scowled as if the carpeting was confounding him.
“Stop pretending to be sober? Excellent idea. I have a chardonnay in the kitchen that’s just begging to die.”
Dieter said, “We have to stop pretending that our relationship could ever work out.”
Flicka was wound up tightly that night. Organizing that cotillion had taken six months and countless meetings and events.
Each of the debs had had to do a charity project. With Flicka’s guidance, the fifteen girls had chosen social justice and other important causes rather than planting flowers at their families’ estates to help the bees. Flicka had overseen those projects, coordinated the events, taught the debs about the financial ends of charities, and evaluated the success of each project with each of the girls. She had worked forhoursevery damndayfor it, in addition to her studies at one of the world’s most rigorous music conservatories and preparing herself for the initial rounds of The Leeds competition, a major milestone in her musical career.
And this was the night Dieter picked to have a fight about the future of their relationship?
She snapped.“Are you freaking drunk?”
“No, Flicka. I don’t drink when I’m working, and I was working tonight. Because I’m not a prince. Because I’m not a nobleman. I’m just a soldier, and I was working tonight.”
“No, you’re not ‘just a soldier,’ not to me. You’re myLieblingwächter.”
“I might be your darling guard, myDurchlauchtig,but I am just a bodyguard, a soldier, a mercenary.” He looked up at her, his gray eyes wider. “Flicka, we can’t pretend this could work out.”
