Parroting Clementine’s words back to her was a safe choice, though.
“Yes,that one is definitely too art deco for the Southwestern US.”
“Absolutely,wearing the same shade of navy two days in a row would be humiliating.”
“Of course,you’re so right that the cut of this amber dressistoo similar to the claret one, and I would never want to look like I’d just bought one in every color. How mortifying.”
“Yes,Belle Époque’s bell skirtsdefinitelyseemsolast season.”
“Absolutely, you’re right. Nope! Nip!Not!”My voice even rose to a sharp chirp. And yet, “Hey, what if I don’t manage to get to all these events? What if something comes up, and I can’t go one night? Or more than one night?”
Or all of the nights due to a sudden divorce and annulment?
Clementine turned to me, her motionless face pale in the strings of blue-white Christmas lights dangling from the ceiling. “What’s going on with you two?”
“What did Nicolai tell you?” I countered.
She didn’t take the bait. “What’sreallygoing on?”
“Nothing.”
She didn’t ask again, just waited, and stared at me, with her pale gray-blue eyes like she could see inside my skull.
“Nothing, probably,” I waffled.
Clementine still didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, waiting for me to spill all the beans, while bony models stomped down the runway in shimmering dresses.
But Nicolai had told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t. “I should start my, you know,shark week,in a couple of days. Sometimes I end up lying in bed for a day or two with a stack of chocolate bars, a tub of ice cream, and a Costco-sized bottle of Advil.”
“Fine,we’ll talk about it later.” She turned back to the catwalk, where the models seemed even more pissed that we’d been ignoring them for thirty seconds. “The dresses surely will be non-refundable after they’ve been delivered. You can use them for any occasionthis season,though, so they won’t go to waste. But you should wear them before Memorial Day.”
“Yeah, but maybe we shouldn’t buy so many outfits, just in case. I’m kind of grumpy. It feels like it might be a rough month.”
Clementine waved her hand at me again like I was being ridiculous. “It’s worse not to have something suitable for an evening than to cart around a few extras. You’ll need two day dresses for the afternoon teas, too. Who throwsteasthese days? Did no one inform Anna that this isn’t the Regency era, or is she doing some historical-costume thing we’ll need to adhere to? God, I hope not. Empire waists make me look like I’m wearing a barrel with straps, and the opportunities for criticism about colonial cosplay are endless.” She glanced at me. “Not that my family was involved in that. We’re all merchants and bankers back to the Vasa Empire.”
Oh, new vocabulary and history,awesome.Why didn’t I learn any of this in school? “The Vasa-what?”
“Sweden’s only and rather short attempt at imperialism,” Clementine said, watching the strutting models and offhandedly educating me about stuff I should have known. “An overlandempire, not overseas. Starting about 1523 and lasting for two hundred years, we liberated ourselves from the Danes and conquered some lands that are now our neighbors—Finland, Estonia, a bit of Poland. We called that time the Great Empire Era. And then we built a giant flagship for our great navy called theVasa,which sank immediately and became an enduring symbol of societal overmilitarization and martial overreach. You Americans should learn something from that.”
“Oh, so Sweden didn’t do any of thereallybad stuff.”
Why did I even say things that called attention to the fact that I was undereducated and uncultured?
And yet, how often did little small-town me talk to Europeans about comparative colonial atrocities? I hadn’t had any practice. Americans had done most of our unspeakabledeeds right here at home. Not all of them, of course. But a lot of them.
“Sweden wasn’t particularly involved in the subjugation and exploitation of the world’s vulnerable.” She looked at me and blinked a few times. “Unlike the Dutch, the English, or Russia, say.”
Russia?“Are you trying to warn me off of Nicolai, like he has some imperial ambitions or something? ’Cause it’s a little late for that.”
“Nicolai?” She laughed. “No, I didn’t mean Nicolai. Russia’s puppet governments and oligarchs blackmail and threaten the world into submission. I don’t think Nicolai’s the type.”
And yet he seemed to draw attention, whether he knew it or not. And the guys on his security team, other than Ueli, responded to what he said with everything short of a salute. “You don’t think so?”
“If anyone tried to thrust power upon Nicolai Romanov, he would run for the hills, poor boy, and that’s always been his official stance on the matter. But some of those little Russian or Soviet states are still a bit tetchy about being overrun and poorly used by Russian autocrats and dictators. Some desperate souls still believe that shooting the descendant of a defunct royal line would increase their national standing. It’s sad, really.” She looked at me. “But it’s why Nico has a security team that costs him mid-seven figures per year to run, and it’s why you neednot to run away from them.”
“You were fighting off Dusha like he was a flying cockroach.”
Clementine leaned back and held up both hands as if I’d startled her. “I do not want to know what sort of horrible American insect that was in reference to, but I was not fighting him off. Dusha was just being a dick about letting me drive myself. Indeed, one fewer person in Nico’s entourage might have been helpful at that point.”
