Part 27
Danielle quietly entered her Father’s chambers. He was just starting to eat dinner. “Do you mind if I join you for dinner? It looks as though you would like some company.”
“You are always welcome.” He gestures towards the spot next to the bed. “Marie has just left. She went to go make sure that all the items of the court were running smoothly. I understand you had some guest come today. One of them is in line to be a count. I have heard people gossiping about the two of you. Is there anything that you would like to get off of your shoulders?”
“All I have to say on the subject of him is that people presume too much. He and his sister are merely friends. At one point in time, I pictured that maybe he and I would come to something, but we have not.”
“Ah, he has a sister. I am sure she is charming. What do you say that we try to pair her and Henry up?” Danielle blushes slightly at the mention of Henry. Her mind can not help but to drift back to the last time they were together. Francis continued talking, “Or would you not suggest that we enter in such an endeavor?”
“Father, you know very well how I feel on such matters. One should be aloud to make their own choices in life. Not have them be dictated by others…It is not that I do not like Anne, I really truly do, but I believe that she would agree with me that a person can not pick who they fall in love with. It is just something that happens naturally.”
Francis laughs. “I was only testing you. Obviously, you are as strong-minded as you were before you left. You know that you do not realize how much you will miss a person until they are already gone. That was how it was once you left. You had left home before, but this time I did not know if you would ever come back.”
“Everyone always comes home. Sometimes it takes them a week and sometimes it takes them years but they do come back.” Danielle pauses for a few moments. She does not want to argue with her father right now, but she also did not want to pretend that everything was fine. Just because her father was sick did not make everything he did before right. “We need to talk.”
Francis looked up at her. He knew what she was talking about. To him, the two of them had been modeling what a perfect father daughter relationship should be; it was type of relationship that you would see in a play. “I know.”
To Danielle this was enough of encouragement to continue. “I am unsure exactly where to start. I know that a lot of your behavior has been explained by the fact that I am not your daughter but not enough. Why did you send me away for the better part of my later years? Both of us know that I learned nothing at that boarding school. A governess would have taught me a lot more. Did you not want me to spend time with you?”
Francis was still weak, but he knew that had a lifetime of problems that she had to sort out. Going away for nine months only mitigate the inevitable confrontation. With as much strength as he could gather, he spoke, “Danielle, when you were young I still held the notion that I could change who you were. I wanted a soft-spoken daughter, but I got the opposite. Now, I am glad that you are who you are. Otherwise, you would have let me run your life that is no way to live.”
“Regardless of my birth, you are the only father I know. Perhaps one day I will find out who my real parents are, but until then you are all I got. Do you know how much it hurt me that you could not except me for me? Everyone has their faults, but you never saw passed any of mine.”
Francis feels that it is his duty to try to defend himself, at least a little. “I did see past your faults I just did not show it.”
Danielle turns away. “Now you are saying I actually had faults. What kind of a father are you? You are supposed to be a positive influence on me. You are supposed to tell me that I do not have any faults and other compliments along those lines! No wonder I could never have a successful relationship with a man. I never believe I am good enough for them.”
“Danielle, do not try to blame everything on me. It is not fair,” yelled Francis.
“The way you treated me was not fair!” she yells back. She then takes a second to calm herself. She then says in a much more mellow tone, “You were put were you are because of too much stress, I do not think that I am helping you right now. We will save this conversation until you are better. Right now, I think it is best if I just leave.” She kisses Francis’ forehead, “Get better.”
Slowly she walks down the hall to her room. She was dreading laying there tonight. She knew that there was no way that she was going to get any sleep. Danielle went straight into her dressing room. She changed into her pajamas. Then she brushed her hair out. Finally, she looked into her looking glass. She spoke to her own reflection, “Where are you going in your life?”
Danielle left looking glass and went into her bedroom. “Well,” she thought to herself, “lets see how well you can not get sleep.” She slowly walks over to her bed where she sees the crown that she had made in the garden. With it, there was a note. She picks both up. The not read as follows:
Dearest Danielle,
You might not be a princess to the rest of the world, but you are the princess of my heart. That’s deserving of this crown that displays all of the gifts that matter, all of which you possess.
Love,
Henry
A smile graces Danielle’s face as she slides the note into her desk drawer. She than places the crown on top of her desk. She then climbs into bed, and blows out her candle. For hours she laid, starring out of her window into the moonlit forest. Her thoughts, though, were with another under the roof of the same house.
She eventually dozed off into a very peaceful sleep. It was filled with dreams that were meant to delight. It was almost as if all of the worries that had come her way had disappeared with this one glorious memory, one that she intended to hold onto dearly.
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After Danielle left, Henry lingered in the garden for a while. He was willed with such an unbelievable amount of happiness. He never thought that in a million years his dream would come true and here he was. Charles must have tried to get him to marry someone else a hundred times because he was convinced that Danielle and Henry would never work. Henry could not wait to prove him wrong.
He was a bit shocked by Danielle’s reaction to his actions. He thought that she would run away no question asked, but she welcomed it. It made Henry wonder if she had felt the same way for him for as long as he had felt this way for her. He highly doubted it considering that she had had two suitors already.
Suddenly, a thought came to Henry, “If she has already had two suitors that she has turned away, what are the chances that she will do the same to me? Why should I think that I am going to be the exception, the one man that she lets slide by?”
This thought bothered Henry for the rest of the night. In fact, he laid in his bed staring at moonlit forest worrying that Danielle did not feel the same way for him. No pleasant dreams came to him that night, only nightmares.