After phoning, John needed to do some stretching and co-ordination exercise, but he preferred to do them with music on, so he went to the living room to get the radio and Anna's CDs. He studied the CDs. They were a bit too feminine for his taste. "Patrick, is your car open?" Patrick's music would have a little more spunk to it.

"No. What do you want?"

"Tapes."

"The keys are in my coat."

"I don't envy you if that's his taste in music," Marie-Celeste said to Anna in a low voice. It puzzled her that Anna had not turned her head even when John had spoken. Were they not in love? Things would go horribly wrong if they were not truly in love. And what did Anna mean by loving a man who appreciated Patrick's taste in noise? One could hardly call it music.

She herself had not overtly looked at Patrick once after she had seen him come in, but she had glanced in his direction repeatedly. His words still bothered her. She will force me to marry you. Surely he was not looking forward to that? But he had kissed her in order to bring it about.

"Oh, why?" Anna asked.

"Because it's dreadful."

"It's not classical, you mean? I don't really care. I don't think we have to have the same taste."

"I thought you did. It would be very symmetrical, wouldn't it?" she laid a slightly sarcastic emphasis on symmetrical. "If we like the same things, it follows that we like each other." While she ascribed this thought to Anna, she had always been sympathetic to it herself and it confused her that reality should turn out differently.

"And it doesn't work that way?" Anna asked with an innocent smile.

"Interesting subject," said Patrick. Marie-Celeste stiffened when he came to stand behind her, claiming to be interested in the website they were looking at. He ran his fingers up and down her shoulder and of course not on the side nearest to Anna. In such cases one had to react quickly and make a scene, or keep quiet. Marie-Celeste hesitated for too long and lost her chance. She could not see it, but his grin widened.

"Patrick, show them your yummy babes page," James called.

"No," said Patrick in shock. "No!"

"They'd like it," James said pesteringly.

"James, bugger off!"

"Where is it?" Anna asked interestedly. She wondered which yummy babes were on it. Patrick seemed to be embarrassed about it. It was probably very silly.

"No, Anna!" said Patrick in despair. He did not want Marie-Celeste to see it.

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to see it, that's all."

"Rest assured. I don't even want to," said Marie-Celeste. She felt a little tinge of something unpleasant at hearing about a yummy babes page. "Scarcely dressed women, most likely."

"No, don't listen to him," said poor Patrick. It was not like that at all, but he could not show it to them. It was impossible.

"Anna, just load the page," James called. "You'll have a good laugh."

"If you tell her the address, I'll kill you," Patrick promised him.

"Why can't Anna see it? I understand that you don't want Marie-Celeste to see it, but Anna should be alright."

"Why not me?" Marie-Celeste asked.

James laughed. "Ha ha ha! The ultimate babe."

"James!" Patrick cried. He was getting redder and redder.

Anna took one look at his face and decided not to press him any further. She would ask James what was on Patrick's page. She got up. "Here. Take my seat if you want to play with my computer."

Patrick took her seat eagerly. He would be in control of typing and nobody would get the chance to type in the URL.

Again Marie-Celeste seemed a little slow to react. She was wondering if it was polite to get up as soon as he sat down. It would be a great slight, but why on earth would she care? Still, acting against everything that she had been taught was very difficult. Besides, she would be running and she wanted to try to avoid that.

"Do you ever surf the net?" Patrick asked her.

Now she was really stuck here with him. Well, perhaps she could question him about his motives then, why he would go along with such a stupid plan as Anna's. "Sometimes."

"Do you ever look yourself up?"

"No, of course not."

"I do." He looked her up regularly.

"Yes, I'm sure you thrive on the attention from young schoolgirls. I'm surprised that they even know you."

"Do you want to see a site devoted to me?" he asked with a grin. It was so easy to predict when she would misunderstand him. He doubted that there were any sites which dealt with him.

"Not particularly." She sighed. "I did not remain seated here so you could show me all kinds of juvenile fan sites. I stayed here because I felt an explanation was in order."

"I'm all ears," said Patrick. And it was also so easy to misunderstand her.

Marie-Celeste clenched her fists. She had the most unladylike desire to box his ears. "No! You are going to do the explaining."

"I am? I have no idea what I should explain."

"The kiss," she hissed. He ought to tell her why he had taken such a liberty with her.

Patrick pulled a concerned face and placed a hand on her knee. "Darling, I can't explain it to you in words. It's one of those instances where 'learning by doing' applies. I think you got the hang of it in the end. Really. Don't feel bad about it," he said in an extremely sympathetic and kind voice. "We can't practise here, but if it's so important to you, I wouldn't mind stepping out into the hall for a minute."

Marie-Celeste felt as if somebody had knocked the breath out of her. His presumptuousness and his nerve were almost too much to bear. She was too stunned to reply anything.

Patrick continued to regard her with the same look of earnestness, but he found it increasingly difficult to keep up when she kept gaping at him. "Oops, I'm sorry for touching your knee," he apologised. "I forgot that you're very ticklish there." He withdrew his hand. "Well, think about it for a while and then let me know, alright?" He did not know how much time he had before she would become violent, so he quickly left the room and looked up John.

Marie-Celeste fumed for a while and waited until she could breath normally without betraying any discomposure. Then she got up and followed Patrick. It did not occur to her that he might interpret that as wanting a lesson. She merely thought he needed to be punished.

Anna had been trying to coax James into betraying the address and he was willing to give in. When they saw first Patrick and then Marie-Celeste leave, they made a dash for the computer, followed by Hegge, who was never averse to seeing yummy babes and who had listened to everything with interest, and Nathalie, who was not interested in yummy babes but more in how depraved Hegge was.

"Well, I think they'll be a while," said James, typing in the URL. "It looked like they had a little quarrel there and knowing my brother, he's going to argue his point until next year. He should never have given me the URL, the idiot, but I guess he hadn't counted on meeting his ultimate babe in real life. Oh, I love this," he said in delight as the page loaded.

"Oh, gosh. He's sick," said Hegge. "He's got a web-page on her?"

"That's a picture of Celeste!" Anna cried in amazement.

"Yes and there are more," James snickered. "He's got a top ten of beautiful women and I think she's on places one to nine, with the other nine all ex aequo on number ten."

"Is this serious?" Anna asked.

"I think it was meant as a joke, but there's always some truth in it."

"Is that why he asked if he could come to the Palace that one time? I thought it was so strange that he asked if he would meet my sister!"

Patrick located John very quickly -- all he had to do was go to where he heard music. He turned the music down and threw himself on the bed. John looked up from his exercises. "What's up?"

"I think I went too far. It's so easy to go too far, but then afterwards I regret it."

"I don't know what you're trying to do," said John, correctly assuming that Patrick had upset Marie-Celeste in some way. "Are you trying to make her hate you or make her love you?"

"Neither. She should take me as I am."

He had not thought Patrick had so much sense. "Wouldn't you agree that you might just be a little too much to take, the way you're pretending to be? If I were her, I would have smacked your face by now."

"Then I may count on you not to interfere when I do?" Marie-Celeste interrupted coolly from the doorway.

John did not dream of interfering between the two. It should prove to be highly amusing. Besides, he was exercising and quite frankly, he was not even sure if Anna could come between him and sports.

"How dare you suggest that I can't kiss?" Marie-Celeste said angrily. She was angry enough not to care that John was present, since he had probably been told already. Patrick seemed to tell him everything.

She stepped forward and slapped Patrick across the face. Since he was lying on the bed, he could not defend himself very well against the fury that attacked him. Marie-Celeste seemed to have released all her breaks and she was nearly pounding on him. Patrick penitently suffered the first few blows, knowing he deserved them, but when she did not stop after a few, he began to worry. "Stop it!" he gasped.

John rolled into a sitting position and observed the fight with interest. He felt a little sorry for his brother, but then he remembered that Patrick actually liked this vixen. And the vixen liked Patrick. While she was pretending to beat him into submission, John did not doubt that the tide would turn eventually. He did not want to be there when it did, given their ardour, and he was not so sure that he really liked the fact that they were on his -- Anna's -- bed. He smiled and jumped up lithely, rummaged in a little box on Anna's nightstand and took something out. He grabbed one of Marie-Celeste's hands and curled her fingers around the small package. "You wouldn't want the world to be populated with little Patricks, eh?" he said, as much to annoy her as to warn her what might happen in the hopes that they would pack off to some other place.

"Exactly!" Marie-Celeste answered, glad to have an ally and gave Patrick another punch in the stomach.

John was baffled that she did not cry out in shock or fury. Marie-Celeste did not seem to know what she had been given and now that Patrick wanted to see it, she was trying to keep it out of his grasp. He shook his head and decided to leave them to themselves. He had done his best. Taking the radio with him, he went downstairs to continue his exercises in the living room.

"What did he give you?" Patrick demanded. He was of course much stronger than she was, but he did not want to hurt her, so he was a little careful.

"I'm not going to show you that." She tried to pocket it, whatever it was. It had been given to her and she was not going to give it up to him, except voluntarily if she was bored with it.

Patrick had some idea of what it was, from what John had said and he did not understand Marie-Celeste. Why did she not scream? Perhaps she was seducing him. Well, he was easy and he would not object. He did not try too hard to grab the little thing away from her, only making just enough effort to make life difficult for her.

Marie-Celeste fell on the bed when he gave her belt a sharp pull. "Ouch!" she exclaimed when she did not fall comfortably and slapped him once more.

"Ouch!" he cried out. "I'm playing tomorrow, twit! Do you want me to look like I've been fighting?" He reached for her arm and started to pull it towards him.

"Who cares about your looks?" she retorted, fruitlessly trying to stuff the package into the pockets of her jeans. Her jeans were too tight to do that sitting or kneeling down. He had grabbed her arm, but she took the package over with her other hand and stuffed it into the right back pocket, with her left hand, so Patrick would be confused. And he would not dare take something out of her pockets anyway.

Patrick was not easily daunted. "Get that stupid hair out of my face," he grunted. "Which pocket is it in?" He tried to feel it.

"Don't do that!" She was a little shocked. Patrick was apparently not held back by any principles.

It was difficult for him, only having two hands, one for searching her pockets and one for keeping her in place by holding on to her belt. He had none left to ward off her blows. The hand on her belt circled her waist and grabbed her from behind, pulling her against him. It was vital that he obtained what she had hidden somewhere behind her back, whatever it was. He wanted it for no other reason than because she kept it away from him. Now that he was holding her close, she could no longer hit him with ease, except pound on his back, but that was not really painful and he had one hand free to search her pockets. It was a strain on his abdominal muscles, though, because he was not sitting up straight, and soon he would have to fall back.

Marie-Celeste wriggled and pounded, but she discovered that he was a whole lot stronger than he had let on before. It was enormously frustrating that he could do exactly what he liked and she tried to fall onto her back so he could no longer get to her pockets. "You're so annoying," she spat out. "Why can't you just let me have it?"

"What is it anyway?" He gasped when she misplaced her knee.

"That doesn't matter! That's beside the point." She cheered inwardly for managing to fall on her back. He could not get to her pockets anymore now, unless he lifted her up, which would be really difficult, considering that he was on top of her. Marie-Celeste felt very proud of this manoeuvre and rejoiced in the fact that he could not do anything.

The absurdity of their actions had struck Patrick before, but he had not done anything against it because he was enjoying himself. However, now she had really hurt him and he was not enjoying himself so much anymore. He looked at her with watery eyes, but she still had the same look of obsessive determination in her eyes. Apparently she had not even noticed that he was temporarily incapacitated. Maybe she thought she was on the winning hand. Stupid woman. "That…hurt," he croaked.

"Hurt?" Her confident expression was beginning to falter, if only slightly, and doubt began to creep into it. How could he be hurt? She had not done anything. It was all to distract her, so he could get at her pockets and he was doing it well, giving her such a pathetic look that she would almost feel a tug at heart, if she had not told herself that she would not fall for such tricks. Still, with his freckles and those watery blue eyes he looked like a little boy who was about to cry and it was hard to forbid herself to feel compassionate.

"Yes…it's nothing," he said courageously, blinking a few times to see more clearly. "I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose." He was draped diagonally across the stomach of his idol, he suddenly realised with a gasp, and he turned his head slightly to look at her. "Eeeeee!"

"What?"

"Eeeeee!" he gasped for breath again.

Marie-Celeste looked at him in alarm. "Don't die on me, Patrick! Get off me first!" She suddenly realised what she was saying. She sighed and stared at the ceiling. "What did I do?" she said softly. "I don't believe it. Hell."

"No, it's heaven."

"Eternal punishment."

"Eternal bliss."

"I can't believe that I, Marie-Celeste, let myself go in such a way."

"I can't believe that you, Marie-Celeste, are not pushing me off."

She looked at him sadly. "The damage is done. And I'm almost as much to blame as you are. I'm tired and I guess it would be futile to waste my energy on trying to push someone off who doesn't want to be pushed. I suppose it's better to wait until you get enough of it."

"You're a good loser, Cellie."

"That doesn't help me much. Losing is losing."

"What did you lose?" Patrick asked and took up a more comfortable position beside her. He did not want to crush her and he wanted to be nice for a while, so she would not get up and walk away.

"My dignity."

"Dignity is not everything."

"Hmph. And I was already feeling humbled. Now I'm really annihilated." Marie-Celeste sighed. "I thought I was perfect, but I'm not. I thought I could communicate, but I can't. I thought I could stay calm, but I can't. My whole idea of myself has been shaken and who am I now? Is this me who is lying here?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Why? Why am I not running away?"

"Maybe you like it."

"How can I like it? You're lying next to me." Marie-Celeste did not understand herself.

"You're not being very nice, but I forgive you. You're confused. Maybe you enjoyed our struggle. I know I did."

"Of course you would. You like being annoying. And the annoying thing is that Anna gets her way now. If we can't control ourselves, then we couldn't possibly marry somebody else," Marie-Celeste frowned. "I'm not sure any husband of mine would approve of me physically fighting with you and I probably can't avoid you in the future, with my sister marrying your brother. I'm terribly sorry, but you seem to arouse aggression in me." She watched as he hid his face in his pillow. "I'm really sorry about that. I can't seem to help it."

"You are funny," Patrick choked. He was imagining the future, with them running into each other at family get-togethers, and beginning to wrestle as soon as they saw each other. It would not do for a queen. But what made her think it would be less if they were married? Was she sane at all?

"I'm not funny," she said seriously. "I mean it. I don't like the idea of being aggressive, but it's the truth."

"Why should it become less if we were married?"

"It wouldn't," Marie-Celeste said sadly. "But at least we would not hurt a third party."

"Cel, Cel, Cel," he said in a fatherly tone. It would be easy to get her to say yes now, but he did not want to. She did not appear to be very sane at the moment and he did not want a wife who merely married him because she thought it would not do to beat another woman's husband. Maybe he should ask Anna if Marie-Celeste had problems more often. "I don't know what you're thinking, but I can tell that you're very confused. Now I don't want to hear any more nonsense about marrying me until you are so desperate for me that you're willing to resort to begging on your knees. Remember, on your knees and with tears in your eyes, no sooner." He hoped his sacrifice was worth it.

"That's never going to happen," she said readily.

Marie-Celeste had expressed her concern about other people finding out, but Patrick had assured her that nobody would, because nobody had seen the end of their fight. "But you tell your brothers everything," she said.

"Not if my behaviour could give rise to comments as well. Which reminds me, give me that thing John gave you." He had been amazed that she had stayed so calm, but he supposed that it was her upbringing.

"Why?" Marie-Celeste felt they could start the whole fight over if he began again and she did not want to lose her cool another time.

"Well, then don't," Patrick shrugged. She pulled it out of her pocket and studied it. It surprised him that she did not scream or shout or throw it away, but gazed at it thoughtfully. "I just thought you would be shocked."

"Oh, Patrick," she said pityingly. "How enormously gallant of you to spare the Chairwoman of the Committee for Reduction of Teenage Pregnancies the sight of this." She held it up. "Don't you know I've been to schools to blow them up?"

"You've been blowing up schools?" he teased, but he would have loved to be there in a class to watch the stately Marie-Celeste lecture teenagers. "Did you blush?"

She was always very business-like, except now, because she had to try very hard to suppress a smile over her clumsy phrasing. "No, of course not. I'm not Anna." Anna blushed, but not she. "Anna wouldn't even dare touch it."

Patrick laughed, but he was not sure if Marie-Celeste had seen where John had taken it from, or she would have spoken differently. Marie-Celeste seemed to have developed a faulty perspective on things, notably on herself and her sister. It was comical, though, but if he had not known it, he would think she had a great sense of humour. "Are you looking down on Anna, or…?"

"No."

"But she's not as wonderful as you are, right?"

"Don't mock me," she said with a painful expression. "You know I'm confused. I don't want to think about myself or Anna or Anna's plan. Or you."

"Chooo chooo chooo," Patrick muttered with a vacant expression on his face.

"What are you doing?" She looked at him in surprise.

"Thinking."

"Why does that have to be accompanied by strange sounds?" she asked distastefully.

"I'm going to talk to Anna."

"About what?"

"I don't know yet, but I'll tell her that you don't want to marry me and that I can arrange my own marriage, thank you very much, and -- what else?" He got up and walked onto the landing. "Yes, and that she should forbid you from attending my tennis matches."

Marie-Celeste followed him, making herself presentable as she walked. "Why?"

"You make me nervous."

"I don't even want to come anymore. I've seen you play and I assure you it's a disaster that I don't want to see repeated." She was wondering what he was going on about. She made him nervous? Not at all! He made her aggressive! Although he had been restraining himself quite nicely in the past few minutes. "You play so ill that it makes me want to run down and take over from you."

"It was men's doubles, not mixed doubles," said Patrick, descending the stairs. "Besides, John wouldn't have liked to play with you, I'm sure."

"I'm sure he would have! I'm better than Anna."

"Yes, but whether or not you're better than Anna is not the issue here. You'd be replacing me."

"Argh!" she cried. "I hate you." He always had his reply ready and he did not seem to care for her position at all. Respect was something he had never heard of. But she probably did not deserve any respect; she realised gloomily, only contempt, ridicule and pity.

"I know," he answered ironically. "I know it so well. Remember that you hate me the next time you feel driven into my arms by your feeble, weak-willed and undevious sister, and remember that I don't want you unless you beg me on your knees. You know, I have a bad character and I need to be revered." He would have kissed the ground she walked on before he found out that the girl needed to see a psychologist, and badly. He reflected that he had sobered up a little. She was no longer a goddess, but a mere mortal -- a delicious mortal, true, but with faults.

"My sister is not feeble," she said through clenched teeth. "Who gave you the right to criticise her?"

"I'm just paraphrasing your words." This was again one of those instance in which he seriously doubted her mental abilities. Had the girl not always let on that Anna was weak? And yet she did not want him to say it. It was incomprehensible.

"No, you're not."

Patrick ignored her and entered the living room. Anna was leaning against John on the couch, discussing something with Raine and Gris. Nathalie and Rosita were building a homepage as an answer to Patrick's and they were giggling over the choice of male babes, with David and Charles-Louis looking on with interest and giving HTML advice. James and Hegge were playing chess. Marie-Celeste headed straight for Charles-Louis and Patrick for Anna. They were far enough apart to each hold their private conversation.

Anna looked up when he came nearer. "Interesting homepage, Patrick," she smiled.

He looked at her doubtfully, not quite trusting that smile, but she did not seem to have any deeper meaning with it. He did not know what to think of her anymore, nor of Marie-Celeste. Women were just incomprehensible. "Oh. Anna, can I talk to you two for a sec?"

"You can talk to me, but John is watching tennis and I've come to suspect that he wouldn't notice us even if we started dancing on the table, as long as we don't block his view. Right, John?"

"Hmm?" he said without taking his eyes off the screen and pulled his arm a little tighter around her. If Patrick said anything interesting, then he might be persuaded to give him his full attention, but so far tennis was much more captivating. And if Anna would start dancing on the table, he would certainly look. But she would not.

"See?" Anna said triumphantly. "I know him a little. You must be wanting to talk to me about Celeste. I'm really sorry she's been so bad to you. She doesn't know about your homepage, of course. She thinks you hate her."

Patrick sat down and leant forward. "Then why on earth are you forcing me to marry her?" he asked in a low, urgent voice.

John made a snorting sound and Anna looked at Patrick in wonder. "Forcing you? Gosh, Patrick! That was a joke!"

"A joke," he repeated blankly.

"I can't believe you think I would seriously do such a thing!" She was appalled and amused at the same time.

He looked away. "I did. I thought you were serious. Marie-Celeste thought you were serious."

Anna was even more appalled by that. "Gaaaah. Celeste? What has got into her mind?"

"I'd say she was the one who was hit on her head. Thoughts go in, but they come out really distorted. Has she ever been to a psychologist?"

"No."

"She should! She's crazy!"

"She's rearranging the furniture," said Anna. "She's far from being crazy. Once she's got everything settled, I think she'll be back to normal."

"Oh," said Patrick. "Do you think you women could ever speak intelligibly? What furniture?"

John suppressed another snort. "Try to draw him some schematic representation," he suggested, surmising that this was one of those cases in which Anna went schematic or visual again.

"The furniture in her head," Anna explained. "It's being moved."

"To where?"

"To a different place and now it's all in the way." She looked at him expectantly to see if he understood her. "Don't you ever rearrange your room?" She did it about once a year and then spent a whole day pushing cupboards and tables around the room.

"No."

"Oh, but do you understand what I mean? About everything being out of place and blocking your way?"

"I think so…" he said hesitantly. "How come she believed that you would seriously marry her off to me?"

"Because she's rearranging and she's probably more occupied with where to place the side tables and so on and because when you're rearranging, you accept more readily that other people might think that their superfluous little cabinet will fit into your room, I suppose."

"Anna, you've lost me completely." He understood the rearranging, but he did not see where the superfluous little cabinet came in.

Anna looked at him. Had she been unclear again? She knew her thoughts were singular at best. "I can't get any clearer than that. You are the little cabinet."

Patrick sighed. "Why, thank you. I think I'll just pass over that one and not wonder what I have done to merit a comparison to a cabinet. Why did she begin rearranging?"

She smiled. "Why did you?" she murmured. "I couldn't begin to guess what motivates other people."

"But you know your sister and you think it's me," he stated.

"Well, she was normal until she met you."

"Why doesn't this happen to you?" Patrick asked in exasperation. "Why don't you go crazy over him? He's my brother and we're very similar."

"Because he's the one who should have gone crazy, because he didn't want to like me, just like Celeste doesn't want to like you."

"So, er…he's been rearranging too?" Patrick mocked.

"Well, I couldn't afford to go berserk like Marie-Celeste, but yes, you could say that I made life difficult for myself," John answered. "Isn't that so, Raine?"

Raine chuckled. "You should have seen him after his shopping trip with Anna."

"You should have seen him during his shopping trip with Anna," said Gris. "Well, the rare instances that he could be seen because he wasn't in the fitting room with her."

Anna chuckled. "Life would have been so much easier if he had just come in with me. Now he was peering past the curtain every ten seconds, asking me if I was ready yet when I had barely taken my coat off. I had to be really polite, because I was afraid he would give up before we got to buying new underclothes if I snapped at him. And that is where our situations differ, Patrick. There's no need for either you or Celeste to be really polite. There's no danger. Did you talk to her upstairs?"

John suppressed a small snort again. He did not know if they had talked. And Anna had invited him into the fitting room while she changed, when she had got tired of the curtain opening and closing every ten seconds, which was more like every minute if one insisted on being truthful, but back then they had assumed that this was a very sensible arrangement that limited the chances of Anna being seen.

"Yes," said Patrick. "I think that maybe we can treat each other more indifferently now. Maybe."

"I'm a little -- I have a few problems," Marie-Celeste said to Charles-Louis in a low voice. "Would you listen to me?"

"Sure." He got up and led her to the dining table, which was strewn with breadcrumbs and other leftovers.

Marie-Celeste wiped a corner clean for them and they sat down. "I have to tell you that I met Patrick in the bathroom once by accident. Well, Anna heard about it and she decided that he should marry me if he'd ever do something like that again and then --"

Louis smiled incredulously. "Cel! Anna would never say such a thing and you know it."

Marie-Celeste looked as if she wanted to believe that but could not. "If I can't even be sure of myself, then how can I be sure of Anna?" she asked softly. "I'm really confused."

"Listen, Celeste. Anna would never force anyone to marry you, even if she knew that the person in question was wild about you. As long as you don't love anybody, she's not going to do anything. Now she may tease you, but that's all. Are you sure she wasn't teasing you?"

"She didn't say it to me. She said it to him."

So Anna had teased Patrick and Patrick had teased Marie-Celeste, or perhaps he had taken it seriously. "Ahh. And he told you?"

Marie-Celeste nodded. "Yes, he said all he had to do for Anna to force us to marry was to kiss me." It made very little sense to her as she said it. He could not possibly want to marry her.

Louis laughed. "Whoa. So he kissed you?"

"Maybe," she said evasively. "He might just have told me that." There was no need for Louis to know all the details.

"I'll assume he did kiss you. Well, then you know where you stand with him. He wants to marry you." Which was to be expected. He shook his head and wondered why everybody suddenly came to him for love advice.

"No, he doesn't. He told me he only wants to marry me if I beg him on my knees and I never will." She could not see herself begging and pleading for Patrick to marry her.

Louis sighed. "Oooh. That's a bit confusing then."

"He said that after we had fought," Marie-Celeste supplied helpfully. She found it confusing too. Perhaps Louis could make sense of it. "Maybe he changed his mind after I misbehaved. I hit him. It's logical for him to say that he wants me on my knees -- it's nicer than saying he doesn't want to marry me and he knows it will have the same effect because it will never happen, so he's very safe."

"You hit him. Whoa. Why?"

"I was upset with him. He said I couldn't kiss and he offered me lessons, as if I want lessons. Anyway, he was very presumptuous and impertinent," she said indignantly.

"Oh sweetie!" Charles-Louis said pityingly. "Come here and let me hug you." He hugged her and thought the situation over. Having seen Patrick look at Celeste and having seen his web-page, he did not doubt that Patrick would have liked to marry the image of Marie-Celeste. Maybe their fight had opened his eyes and shown him that she was not quite what he had expected. "You shouldn't be too hard on him. He doesn't know what to do with you. He probably likes you, but when he shows that he does, you hit him."

"Of course I hit him."

"If you liked someone and you kissed him, would you be happy if they hit you?"

"No, of course not, but he didn't kiss me because he liked me." He had kissed her to aggravate her and for no other reason.

"No, he kissed you because he hates kissing. Celeste, he thinks you're the most attractive woman on earth. Of course he likes you!"

"Who says that he thinks that?" she asked suspiciously. He had kissed her as if he liked her, but that might just have been her imagination and it might just have been done to aggravate her.

"Sweetie, we've been to his web-page. Very illuminating!"

"What's on his web-page?"

"You are. Pictures of you with a very complimentary and decent text. Even you would be flattered if you saw it."

"Oh," she mouthed. "He likes me. He can't like me. He doesn't even know me."

"Maybe he's realised that now. Do you like him?" Louis asked.

She breathed in. "I don't want to think about it. Can't we just be friends?" Instead of being aggravated, annoyed and frustrated all the time. Being friends would surely be less taxing.

"Suggest it to him."

"Oh, I couldn't. He'd laugh at me," she said immediately.

Because twelve people were a bit much to make dinner for, they had decided to go out to a restaurant. It was dark, but the snow made it easier for them to see where they went as they walked to town. It was not far, but it took a long time to decide on a restaurant that would please everybody. Hegge and Nathalie were vegetarians and they voted against a steakhouse, whereas Marie-Celeste voted against a rather shabby pizzeria and the next restaurant of their choice was too full to accommodate twelve more. Finally they found a quiet one in a side street where the staff did not mind putting extra chairs around the big round table so they could all sit there. The table was originally meant for six to eight, but with a little squeezing it fit twelve just as well.

The restaurant was practically empty apart from their group and they needed not worry that they were disturbing any other guests. The atmosphere was good and the party frequently burst out laughing, reaching the point where they could laugh at anything, from a weirdly-shaped spoon to the fact that something such as pancake soup existed, not to mention the fact that David ordered both pancake soup -- to try it -- and oxtail soup -- in case the pancake soup was disgusting. This merely led to the bowl of pancake soup being passed around the table so everyone could taste it.

Anna did not know if she had been recognised or not. She had kept a little back when they had entered and fortunately the restaurant was not brightly lit and the waitress had not betrayed anything when she had taken their orders. She hoped it would stay that way. There was nothing more embarrassing than when people suddenly recognised her and changed their attitude. She sat next to John, naturally, and Gris was on her other side. Theirs was evidently the quieter side of the table, although they were not silent. Across from them, Hegge, Raine, Patrick and James were talking all the time.

She did not take a dessert, because she was quite full from the soup, the garlic bread and her main dish, but John did and he nudged her. "Are you sure you don't want to try anything? It's delicious."

"I couldn't eat a whole dessert."

"A few bites," he smiled and lifted his spoon to her mouth. "Do you like it?"

"Mmm." She let him feed her half of his ice cream. They drew some snickers from the rest of the table, but they did not notice.

After dessert they had coffee or tea and finally, when it got rather late, Anna asked for the bill. She gave one of her credit cards to the waitress, the one with the least recognisable last name on it. It was still likely that she would notice now, but she could not let anyone else pay this huge bill. It was rather a lot of money. The waitress returned with her card and she had to sign, but the waitress did not treat her any differently, which relieved her.

It seemed to Patrick as if Marie-Celeste was always on the phone. They were walking back home through the streets and she lagged behind a little so she could phone in privacy. Nobody else noticed that she stepped into a doorway when a car passed, except him, and the others just kept walking. He decided to wait. It was not very nice to leave her behind. He assumed that she would step out after a second, but she did not.

"Where are they?" she asked when she finally appeared.

"They've walked on." He realised that he could have called out to them and asked them to wait, but he had not thought of that. He also realised that the others were out of sight and that he knew which corner they had turned, but not if they would still be in sight beyond that corner. He had been looking at the doorway too much.

"Sorry. Somebody called me and I hadn't spoken to her in ages."

He was glad it had been a her. "Oh."

"Where did they go?" she asked.

"They turned right at that pharmacy." They walked there quickly, but when they turned right, they did not see the others any more. Patrick paused just around the corner. "Now I'm lost. I've never been here. Where do we go?"

"I have no idea," Marie-Celeste answered. "I don't know my way around here. Shall we just walk on in case we see them? Or I could phone Anna to ask how to get to where they are."

"Yes, do that." They walked on to the next corner.

Marie-Celeste took out her phone again. "Anna? We're lost. I don't care. Why did you all run away from us? No, I have no idea where we are. In front of I&U. Street name? No. Argh. No, we're not going to do that! No. Yes. Bye."

"Does she know where we are?"

"She didn't see I&U. She said we should go past the wedding dresses, but I don't see any wedding dresses. Are we supposed to try all those streets to see if we see any wedding dresses?" Marie-Celeste asked in irritation. "She said she'd come back for us and that we have to wait until she gets here."

"We'd better sit down then," Patrick suggested and sat down on a bench.

"Is it clean?" Marie-Celeste wrinkled her nose at the graffiti.

"Tolerably."

"I'll stand."

"Oh sheesh, girl. Don't be so silly." He got up and pulled her onto his lap. "There you are. Very clean. And very warm."

"True, but…" She had not had any opportunity to talk with him after their fight and at the restaurant they had been seated too far apart. She sighed. "I'm not sure I want to sit here."

"I don't want you to run away when I want to talk about serious things," he said in a serious voice. "It struck me that while you were kissing rather awkwardly at first, you certainly joined in on it after a while."

She groaned. "Don't -- I don't want to talk about that."

"I think we should. As grown-up people."

"You?" Marie-Celeste looked across the street. He a grown-up person? She had joined in? "And you were imagining things."

"That's my fate in life," he sighed sadly. "I'll get over it. Don't take too much notice of me. I'm not dangerous. I might kiss you once in a while, but I'll make it painless."

"Will you shut up?"

"Gladly. May I use your phone?" he asked. "I haven't called my mother yet."

That was a noble cause and Marie-Celeste did not mind lending out her phone for it. It would also keep him from talking to her. She thought about him as he spoke to his mother.

"Marie-Celeste and I are lost. I thought I'd wait for her while the others walked on, but we lost them. No, we're waiting on a bench for Anna to come back. She knows the way apparently. Yes, I'm behaving myself," Patrick said.

Marie-Celeste raised her eyebrows questioningly, but lowered them again when she realised that he was not so bad. If he had not waited, she would have been lost on her own.

"Your eldest son is not behaving himself as well as me, Mum. He was feeding Anna ice cream in the middle of a restaurant. And your youngest, oh, let's not mention him. Mum, what would you do against people who harmed your boys physically?"

Marie-Celeste glared at him and took the phone away from him. "I hit him but he deserved it." She thrust the phone back into his hand.

"What?" he asked. "Oh, that was Marie-Celeste. Yes, she hit me. Oh, don't! No!" He gave her back the phone. "She wants to talk to you."

Marie-Celeste walked away a little so he could not hear her.

That afternoon, Mrs. Seton had been surprised to find a man with a camera in her front garden. When she had asked him what he could possibly be looking for, he had asked her if it was true that John had a relationship with Queen Anna.

"I don't see why you should have to lie in my front garden just because you want to know if my son is involved with the Queen."

"Is he?"

"I hope so and if he isn't, I'll tell him to get involved," she had said cheerfully.

"Why is that?" the man had asked. He obviously had not expected that answer.

"Because I think she has the potential to talk about things like the stress pattern in loan words."

"What?"

"As you see, it's only a select group of people who have that potential. I was thrilled to see such a nice, clever girl with my son."

That had been that afternoon and she had supposed that the man was gone, because she had not seen him anymore. He had probably been hoping to see Anna here. She had no idea where John was or if he had gone somewhere with Anna after the theatre, but if people came looking for her here, then she was very likely not at John's flat and neither was he.

And now Patrick had called and she had heard that they were all together. Her first thought had been to find it nice for the boys to spend some time with nice girls, assuming that Marie-Celeste was as nice as Anna, but then she had heard that Marie-Celeste had hit Patrick. He seemed proud of it -- oh, Patrick! She shook her head -- and not at all angry. It made her curious and she had asked to speak to Marie-Celeste herself. She had seen Marie-Celeste on Friday, although she had only spoken to her mother on that occasion, but she was not afraid of her. "Is Patrick giving you much trouble?"

Not so much, Marie-Celeste lied unconvincingly.

Mrs. Seton looked puzzled. "Thomas, what do I make of a princess who hits Patrick and admits it proudly?" she asked her husband.

"Ask her if we will have another journalist in our front garden tomorrow, this time not asking you if your son is involved with the Queen, but if your son is involved with the Princess," he suggested. He did not know what Patrick was up to, but it was something questionable if he had a princess hit him. Princesses ought to be well mannered.

She repeated the question to Marie-Celeste, but there was silence at the other end and she pulled a questioning face at her husband. "Difficult question," she mouthed.

"Oh, don't feel you have to stay away from him, because you don't want us to be chased by journalists," Mrs. Seton said immediately. "It may have sounded like that, but that wasn't my intention. Besides, we'll already be chased because of Anna. A few questions more or less really don't matter."

"Well, thank Patrick for calling and keep an eye on your front garden, because obviously people are looking out for you."

Anna's private secretary Eva was preparing some work for Monday. She had been surprised by Anna's decision to send everyone home Friday afternoon. They had not even got to evaluating Anna's engagements yet and they would have to that on Monday when they planned the new ones. She had taken the pile of invitations home to look through them in advance. She was experienced enough to know which ones would certainly not qualify for a visit by the Queen and she put those aside. A large number of invitations remained. There had not been so many since right after Anna's accession. The past week had been fruitful, but Eva was not sure if Anna would really appreciate it. She had been working for Anna for two years now, after she had worked as a junior secretary under King Alexander's private secretary, and she knew Anna by now. There would not be much that could persuade Anna to take on more engagements. Her own junior secretaries had put all the invitations neatly in a folder, stamped with the date of arrival. It was vital that the first ones received a reply soon. They should have been discussed last week, but Anna had only just returned then and they had not got down to it. But it was their policy to be punctual and they could not let people wait too long. The ones she had put aside could certainly be passed on to her juniors, who would write an apologetic reply. She put them in a special folder.

Then there were the letters to the Queen, which arrived in large numbers every week. The easiest were dealt with by the juniors, such as requests for basic information or a picture of Anna, but the tough ones, such as complaints or petitions for mercy definitely had to be passed on to Anna herself. Not that she would grant any requests from criminals, no, she was far more likely to spend a few hours researching a difficult question for somebody's school project. Teachers seemed fond of a particular kind of questions, because there was again a plea for help with a paper on the history of the De Trignys. Anna should have that on disk from the previous time, Eva thought and stuck a post-it note on the letter. Maybe Anna should commission a historian to write the family's history, rather than having to do it herself every time.

Eva immersed herself in work, trying to compensate for her grave judgmental error with regard to the security exercise. She had believed what they had told her -- that it would be an exercise -- and she felt guilty for having believed that. She accessed all the email accounts from home -- Anna's business address, the general Palace address that was given on their homepage, and her own. She flagged the messages that her juniors could deal with and printed out some of the more complex ones to add them to the pile. She did the same with Anna's business address, printing out the ones she could deal with herself and flagging the others. Not all of the emails arriving there were strictly business. Some were definitely personal in tone and though she wondered if Anna would be happy with them, she still forwarded them to Anna's personal address. She was one of few people who knew this address. King Alexander had not used email and Anna had introduced it two years ago, specifying that she would need at least three addresses, one public, one professional, and one private. Even so, Eva suspected that Anna had a free web-based account as well.

A visit had been planned for Monday, according to the agenda, Eva was not certain if it could take place. She did not know what had been decided on Friday. Perhaps Anna had to attend more meetings on Monday. She had called the Grandmaster, but he had been out that afternoon and now that he was finally at home, he turned out not to know. Eva sighed. She suggested that she try to reach Anna to ask her personally. The sooner they knew, the better. "Hi, this is Eva. I wanted to ask you about Monday. Will you go through with the visit?"

"Yes."

"Will you be in tomorrow?"

"But I took your correspondence home and you might want to work on that tomorrow."

"Work?" John asked skeptically. "Tomorrow?"

"Don't worry. I'll take time off to watch you," Anna assured him. Only the two of them had returned for Patrick and Marie-Celeste. The rest was eating ice cream at a snack bar, as if they had not had dessert. "It's only correspondence."

John saw a car slowly coming down the street they were in, as if the occupants were looking for someone. He did not trust cars that did that in pedestrian areas. It just felt wrong. "Let's take a detour," he suggested and pulled Anna abruptly into an alley that connected the street to a parallel street. It was best to stay on the safe side and to get out of the car's way before they were seen. They had not been seen yet, because they had only just turned the corner and they were still on the first little bit that was not yet fully pedestrian where they were hidden from view by parked cars. But if they walked a few more metres, the street would become a pedestrian shopping area and they would be clearly visible, especially since the approaching car did not have its headlights on so it occupants could see everything better.

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