Hemming’s promise of answers drove her down Strandvej to the villa. The Ahlefeldt villa. Why had he chosen it for a meeting place? Because it was abandoned?
At the gate, she hopped off her bike. Despite the chilly day, sweat tingled at her hairline.
She paused in the gateway, slowed by the fear of answers and by the aura of mystery and sadness about the place.
Just inside, Hemming stood behind the stone wall, wearing a gray rolled-neck sweater. “Good afternoon, Else,” he said in English. “You came.”
Questions formed, spinning, accelerating until one flew out with a spurt of anger. “Who are you?”
He gestured toward the enormous house. “Please come in, and I will explain everything.”
Else set her jaw. “I refuse to trespass.”
“You will not be trespassing. This is my home.”
A cultured sheen to his speech and mannerisms blurred his image. “I—I don’t know you at all.”
His eyelids twitched, then drooped. “No, you do not. That is why I asked you to come. You deserve answers. Please come inside.”
Yes, she did deserve answers, and she rolled her bike forward.
“You may park your bicycle here.”
She leaned her bike against the wall behind his dented bicycle.
Hemming swept his arm toward the villa with a nod of his rough, bearded head, a gallant gesture she’d noticed before, dismissed before.
With her hands in her coat pockets, she walked beside him but at a distance. “You speak English.”
“Fluently. I also speak German and French.”
But Hemming barely spoke Danish. “Whoareyou?”
He stopped halfway to the house. He held his chin high but his gaze wavered. “I am Baron Henrik Ahlefeldt.”
The words zinged around in her head, looking for a place to land. “Baron...?”
“I am a member of the nobility, not the working class.”
She blinked over and over. “Henrik...”
“My friends call me Henning, which is why I chose Hemming as my name. Also, as you noted when we first met, Hemming meansshapeshifter, which is fitting, as you are undoubtedly realizing.”
Henrik ... Henning ... Hemming ... shapeshifter shifting before her.
His last name ... “Ahlefeldt? The shipyard?”
“My father owns it. He doesn’t know I work there.”
Her gaze shot to the villa. The Ahlefeldt villa.
“My father hasn’t come here since my mother died,” he said. “He doesn’t know I stay here every weekend. He thinks I’m in Sweden.”
“You’re the wayward—” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
His eyes scrunched shut. “The wayward son.”
The thoughtless, frivolous, selfish, cowardly young baron? But Hemming was thoughtful and serious and kind and brave.
