The Frog Prince (33 page)

“Where are you going?” Kat hisses at me.

I tip-toe back to the doorway of the oval room and peek around the corner. The footsteps have faded away and I don’t see anyone, so I take a few steps into the Small Gallery where Roman and I entered the ball last night, and turn around. On the wall dividing the Oval Salon from the lobby there are two doorways. The first doorway is filled with my curious fellow-explorers, and leads back into the Oval Salon. Far to the left of that is another door, just like the first.

I push past Kat, Menen and Mikhail, back into the Oval Salon, to look at the other side of the wall. The only door on this side is the one I just walked through. Not only that, the wall inside the Oval Salon ends well before where the second door is outside. In other words, there’s nowhere for that second door out there to go.

“That second door in the lobby doesn’t go into the Oval Salon,” I whisper. “It’s a dummy door!” I know from trying to learn my way around the palace that dummy doors were all the rage with the Habsburg. Nothing says “IQ test” like tugging away on a door that has no hinges and is built into the wall.

Three sets of eyes look at me, not comprehending.

I join them back in the doorway and point across the lobby towards the Round Salon. “If you were over there, you’d be able to walk right through the doorway, right to the hidden wall panel that leads up to Roman’s suite.”

I turn back around and look to my left, along the wall to the second, dummy doorway and grab the handle. As I suspect, it doesn’t turn. The entire door and frame are one unit, sealed together like the doors at the top of the Blue Staircase. “There’s got to be some sort of dead space on the other side of this.”

I go back to the blank wall in the Oval Salon that ends much too soon for the door outside to be of any use. I move my fingers along the wall, pushing as I go. I’ve almost reached the floor when an entire wall panel springs open as one piece. Inside is a landing and then a flight of stairs like the ones that lead up into Roman’s quarters above the Round Salon.

Just then we hear footsteps on marble even louder and closer than before. Mikhail swings the panel out and waves us. He pulls the door shut and we all simultaneously freeze and hold our breath.

Click, click, click
! The footsteps cross the space of the Small Gallery and stop just inside the Oval Salon. There is a long pause before a voice says, “Leigh?”

I exhale and push the panel open.

Roman slowly turns to his left and stares at us in disbelief. “What are you guys doing?”

“Uh…playing hide and seek?” I say.

“You’re it,” Kat adds.

A long silence follows. “Did you want to eat lunch,” he says, eyeing us with amusement. “Or was there going to be a game of Red Rover first?’

*****

“So then I thought it was probably the place that your father kissed your mother when they met,” I say, wishing like hell that Isabella wasn’t sitting across the table, looking at me with a mixture of triumph and contempt.
Looks like someone else read the papers this morning,
I think.

“That was exactly the place!” says Elfriede. “I cannot believe you found it with so few clues!”

“She is very clever,” says Mikhail. From three seats down he leans forward and winks at me.

“I’ll talk to palace security and let them know where it is so we can seal it off,” says Roman, squeezing my hand. “I’m just glad you didn’t go up the stairs. God knows what condition it’s in after all these years. The four of you could have fallen out of the ceiling.”

I clear my throat. “Actually, I was thinking of seeing what’s in there,” I say. “It’s not every day you run across a secret passage.”

Roman opens his mouth, no doubt to forbid any more adventuring, but his mother speaks first. “There are other hidden passages,” she says, leaning back in her chair.

Roman turns to look at her. “There are?”

“Of course,” she says. “Your father used to tell me about them—hallways and passages and entrances and exits. You can imagine the court gossip all these centuries!”

Now Roman looks interested. “How did he know where they were?”

“I did not say he knew where they
were
, only that they existed,” she says. “He had seen family letters and papers that he thought were clues.”

“Where are the letters?” says Mikhail.

“Can we see them?” says Kat.

Menen chimes in. “Perhaps there is an archivist or curator who could assist us?”

“There might be old architectural blueprints we could look at,” I add, leaning over the table eagerly.

“Wait, wait, wait!” says Roman, holding up his hands. “No one’s going to be crawling around the palace looking for hidden hallways!”

“Why not?” This last question comes from the unlikeliest of places. Every head at the table swivels in Isabella’s direction. She touches her napkin to her perfectly shaded lips. “It’s part of the historical record of the palace and of the country,” she says, unfazed by Roman’s glare. “Looking through letters and papers doesn’t seem particularly dangerous. And it will give her something to do while we’re gone.”

A hush descends on our little party. Even the flawlessly well-bred Menen freezes, her gold fork suspended halfway to her mouth. I stare at my wine glass as the flush on my face heats into a low burn.

Roman finally breaks the silence without looking in my direction. “There’s been so much interest in the SFR Initiative–not just in Austria but all over Europe–that I’ve asked the Environment Minister to take me on a tour of some privately-held forested lands around Vienna. Isabella is thinking about launching a sister project in Denmark, and has agreed to help raise some money by doing some photo ops with me.”

The tension in the room is so thick you could bounce on it like a trampoline. I decide to put Roman out of his misery. “I assume you’ll be looking for a site near a stream for the water wheel?” I say.

He smiles my favorite crooked grin and wraps his fingers through mine. “And a clearing for Cinderella’s castle.”

“Well, Cinderella’s castle goes without saying,” I say with a shrug, “especially with an actual princess
tagging along
.” I throw a subtle emphasis on the last two words and make googly eyes at Roman until I’m certain I can see steam blowing out of Isabella’s nostrils like a cartoon bull.

Menen tactfully steers the conversation to neutral topics where we thankfully stay until the meal is over.

“I’m going to go back to my room to call my parents before it gets too late,” I lie.

“I’ll walk you back,” says Roman, jumping up from his chair and pulling mine out as I stand up. We say our goodbyes to everyone and make plans to meet up in a few hours for dinner and perhaps a movie in the new palace theater. As we’re walking out I hear Kat and Menen making plans to go to the Clock Museum, Mikhail quickly inviting himself along.

Once I’m sure we’re alone in the labyrinth of hallways I lay into him. “Will there be an opportunity for private time with His Majesty before he leaves with Her Royal Highness?”

He stops walking and pulls me around to face him. “I love it when you refer to me in the third person,” he says, sliding his arms around my waist.

I look up at him from under my lashes and run my finger along his jaw. “I beseech His Majesty’s favor,” I say in a low murmur, “and ask that His Majesty allow me access to the family letters and papers or….”

“Or?” he says when I don’t finish.

I drop my arms. “Or I’ll go find a job,” I say in my regular voice.

Roman laughs. “You’re not serious.”

“I’m dead serious!” I start walking again.

“Leigh, you can’t get a job.”

“Well, I can’t sit around the palace doing nothing!”

He catches my hand. “Leigh, you’ve only been here for two days. Can’t we just enjoy a little time together before you tell me you’re bored?”

“First, of all, I don’t know if you noticed but I quit my job and I don’t have any income. I’m living off my savings–not exactly a great strategy for retirement.” I don’t mention the part about not wanting to depend on the largesse of citizens who apparently wouldn’t put me out if I was on fire.

I pull the key out of my pocket and unlock the door to my suite. Roman holds the door open for me and follows me inside. “And I don’t know when you’re planning to leave for the Great Treehouse Project, but it doesn’t exactly sound like I’m invited. Where in this busy schedule of yours were you planning to fit quality time?”

Roman looks pained. I put my arms around his neck. “I think your idea is really, really great,” I say.

“I was going to tell you about it yesterday, but then you were out shopping with my mother–”

“I’m not trying to give you a guilt trip,” I say. “I mean it—it sounds like a really good idea, and I’m glad Isabella’s willing to throw her weight behind it. I’m just saying that unless you’re planning to pay me a salary as your royal mistress, then I’m going to need something else to do.”

“How exactly does going through a bunch of old letters and looking for secret doors help you earn your own way?” he says.

I’m way ahead of him. “Haven’t you ever been to a historical house and wanted to jump the ropes and explore?” I ask him.

He grins. “It’s the first thing I did when I got here.”

“See? So I’ll write a book. People love this kind of stuff—royalty, secret passages, clues in letters. I’ll sell a million copies.”

“Huh.” He chews the inside of his lip, thinking. “That’s actually a really good idea,” he says with grudging admiration.

“So you’ll help me find the papers and letters your mom’s talking about?”

More thinking. “Okay…but you can’t go into any secret hallways or up hidden stairways until I’ve had an engineer check the soundness of the construction. Remember that some parts of the palace are a few centuries old.”

“Agreed.”

“And you have to agree to wait until I leave on Sunday to start your side project.”

“Agreed.” I start pulling him in the direction of the bedroom.

“How much will it cost me?”

I look back at him. “How much will
what
cost you?”

“That gives you six days as my royal mistress plus the two days you’ve already been here.” He pretends to reach into his pocket for a wallet. “Do you take Visa?”

I pull him forward until he’s fallen on top of me on the bed. “Just treat it as an in-kind contribution.” I’m about to throw in a quip about putting it on his tax return, but I never get the chance.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“What about that other one…Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette?” I say, flipping through my notes. “March twenty-eighth, seventeen seventy-eight.”

Next to me in the windowless, closet-sized office we’ve commandeered in a far wing of the palace, Mikhail Romanov looks at the computer screen and shakes his head. “The archivists have not yet scanned those letters. We would have to travel to Paris to see the original.” He swivels in his chair and touches my arm. “What do you think? A weekend trip to Paris?”

I pull my arm away and stand up. “Maybe. I think I’ve had enough research for one day. My eyes are starting to cross.” I look at the time on the computer screen. “Roman will be back from Steiermark in a couple of hours. I need to grab a quick bite to eat.”

“Yes…” says Mikhail, clasping his hands over his head and leaning back in the chair. “He was, what, over a week in Steiermark with Isabella?”

I stand there, willing myself not to boil over. “
And
his mother,” I say evenly. “Roman invited me to go, but I had just found Countess von Wchinitz’s diary in the archives and I didn’t want to leave you discovering all the clues.” I grab my sweater off the back of my chair. “I’ll be back here in the morning if you want to keep working.”

Mikhail turns back to the blueprints of Schönbrunn he dug up in the archives at the Hofburg Palace. His tone is subdued. “I am going to keep working,” he says. “I still think these were altered to conceal access,’ he says, tapping the page. There are too many references to an escape route.”

I sigh. Classic Mikhail, trying to tempt me to stay longer. Usually it works, but I’ve had enough tonight. “Goodnight, then. See you tomorrow.”

I walk down the now familiar corridors to my suite, my forehead furrowed in disappointment. Even after eight weeks at Schönbrunn and seven weeks of research, we still haven’t been able to discover why the passageway above the Oval Salon ends abruptly after just ten feet to the west.

On the other hand, we have had success in other parts of the palace. Using clues found in a one-hundred fifty year-old letter and a nineteenth century newspaper clipping, Mikhail and I had discovered a tunnel from Crown Prince Rudolph’s private apartments to a room in the servant’s quarters. “Boffing the servants,” as Mikhail so delicately put it, apparently was a popular royal pastime. According to Rudolph’s personal letters, the tunnel also enabled him to slip out of the palace unnoticed in order to rendezvous with his various mistresses.

It might have been better for the monarchy if he had just stayed home and had his way with the chamber maids; he eventually died in a murder-suicide next to his last mistress. The Habsburg dynasty never recovered and it was a slow, thirty year slide to abdication and republicanism in nineteen-eighteen.

A slow, thirty-year slide to abdication
, I think to myself, trying to remember the words long enough to get back to my suite and write them down. Which is what I’m doing when the door to my apartment opens.

“Hey!” I say. “How was the trip?”

Roman crosses the room and leans over to kiss me. He looks tired and seems to be in one of his more frequent sour moods. “It was good. I think we’ve selected our first site. We’ll break ground outside that village in Steiermark in the spring.”

“That’s great!”

“What about you?” He walks to the kitchen and fills a glass with water.

“Not much since we found the Rudolph tunnel. Mikhail is still looking at those original blueprints we found. He thinks they were altered later and that the tunnel above the Round Salon picks up again somewhere else in the palace.”