The manservant was leaning over him now, speaking urgently in his ear. She could hear the words, but he spoke in Swedish.
Olaf ignored him, shook him off. Lily said, smiling, “Do you know that Sarah loved Emerson so much she was always painting him? That there are six of his portraits in our mother’s private collection?”
“I knew,” he screamed at her, “of course I knew! You think I would ever want a portrait of that philistine? That damned fool knew nothing of what she was. He couldn’t have understood or appreciated what she was! I could, but she left me. I begged her, on my knees in front of her, but it didn’t matter—she left me!”
He was trembling so badly she thought he would fall from his wheelchair.
Suddenly, Olaf yelled something in Swedish to his manservant. The man grabbed the handles and began pushing the wheelchair across the huge chessboard.
“Hey, Olaf, why are you running away from me? Don’t you like hearing what I have to say? I’ll bet it’s only the second time anyone’s told you the truth. Don’t you want to marry me anymore?”
She heard him yelling, but she couldn’t make out the words; they were garbled, incoherent, some English, some Swedish. He sounded like a mad old man, beyond control. What was he going to do? Why had he left? She stood on the king one square, leaning against the beautifully carved heavy piece, shuddering with reaction, wondering what she’d driven him to with her contempt, her ridicule. She couldn’t run because she didn’t doubt the two bodyguards would stop her.
Where was the manservant taking him? What had he said to him? The two bodyguards were speaking low, so she couldn’t really hear them. They stared at her again, and she saw bewilderment in their eyes. She wouldn’t get three steps before they were on her.
Lily’s rage wilted away and was replaced with a god-awful fear. But she’d held her own. She thought of her grandmother and wondered how like her she was. They’d both faced down this man, and she was proud of what they’d done.
She stood there, her brain squirreling madly about, wondering what to do now. She didn’t have time to think about it. She heard the smooth wheelchair wheels rolling across the marble floor and saw Olaf coming toward her. This time he was pushing himself, his gnarled, trembling hands on the cushioned wheel pads. His two bodyguards took a step forward. He shook his head, not even looking at them. He was staring at Lily, and there was memory in his eyes, memory of that other woman, painfully clear and vivid. She knew that what had happened that day had struck him to his very soul, maimed him, destroyed what he’d seen himself as being and becoming. And now he saw what he had become after that day so very long ago.
Lily saw madness in his eyes; it was beyond hatred, and it was aimed at her. At her and her grandmother, who was dead and beyond his vengeance. Everything that had driven him, the decades of obsession with her grandmother as the single perfect woman, all of it had exploded when Lily had pushed him to remember the events as they’d really happened, forced him to see the truth of that day Sarah Elliott told him she was leaving with another man.
He came up to within six feet of her and stopped pushing the wheels. She wondered if he could make out her outline. Or was she a vague shadow?
He spoke, his voice low and steady as he said, “I’ve decided I won’t marry you. I have seen clearly now that you don’t deserve my devotion or my admiration. You are nothing like Sarah, nothing at all.” He lifted a small derringer from his lap and pointed it at her.
“The Frasiers are dead. They weren’t worth anything to me alive. And now, you aren’t either.”
The bodyguards took a step forward, in unison.
He’d had the Frasiers killed?
Lily ran at the wheelchair, smashed into it as hard as she could and sent it over onto its side, scraping against the marble floor. Olaf was flung from the chair.
Lily didn’t hesitate. She ran as fast as she could, to fall flat behind the white king. She heard two rapid shots. The king’s head shattered and fragments of marble flew everywhere.
She heard Olaf yell at the bodyguards, heard their loud running steps. She stayed flat on the floor. Several shards of marble had struck her, and she felt pricks of pain, felt the sticky flow of blood down her arm, rolling beneath her bra, staining the white dress.
She heard Olaf cursing, still helpless on the floor. He was screaming at his bodyguards to tell him if he’d killed her yet.
The bodyguards shouted something, but again it was in Swedish so she didn’t understand. They didn’t come after her, evidently because he wanted to have this pleasure all for himself, and they knew it.