In The Name Of Love

Chapter 12

The dining room was through the kitchen. It was a long room with a table big enough for about twenty but tonight there was only going to be ten of us. In old films when there was a big table and few people, the people were spread out quite a way, but we weren't.

"Ah, we finally get to meet the beautiful Irish –"

"Welsh," I snapped. Mircea elbowed me, hard. "Sorry. I'm Welsh."

"You can settle that score tomorrow," Mircea said. "Wyn, my Uncle Miticia and Aunt Sofia, and my cousins Tereza, Alexia and Emilia. Everyone, Anwyn."

And this was it. The Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family had been pretty extensive before the war, about as big as the British royal family was now, but most of them had been figures of hope to the people of Romania and the surrounding countries as well as being in the rebellion. The important members of the family had been captured, tortured for information and executed, sometimes in public.

"Can Anwyn sit next to me?" Emilia asked in perfect German. She was about eleven and adorable.

Alexia scowled at her. She was about nineteen, had curled her hair to within an inch of its life and was wearing a little too much make-up around her eyes. But she was really pretty with big, bright eyes, full lips and her hair was really thick. For some reason she was wearing a knit jumper with fur around the collar.

"She sure can little cousin," Mircea replied for me.

There were two empty places next to her. I sat down undoing the button of my jacket. There were dishes full to overflowing with all the components of a Sunday Roast and a few local delicacies in the middle of the table and they were being passed around. This was the way we did dinner at home so I was pretty comfortable with it, even amongst a bunch of strangers.

"You'll like this," Emilia said and put a huge chunk of a local variant of blood sausage on my place.

Mircea smirked knowing that I hated blood sausages. But he didn't take it off my plate.

"Uh, thanks. Carrots?"

"No tha –"

"Eat your greens, Emilia," her mother said.

"They're orange," she mumbled.

"Enough of that. Put some on your palate."

She sighed and took the carrot dish from me. "What's Wales like? Oooh, can you speak Welsh?"

Everyone was looking at me, but I stayed focused on her because it was easier. I smiled. "It was the only language I spoke until I was eleven. Most of the old people in my village don't speak any other language."

"How many languages do you speak?" she asked.

"Welsh, English, German and a bit of French. What about you?"

"Just Romanian, German and English."

Alexia muttered something. Mircea snapped something back at her. Emilia looked nervously between them for a moment. I gently elbowed her.

"What do you want to do when you're older?" I asked.

"I want to help people," she said gravely and looked a lot older than her eleven years. "In the war I saw lots of people die. I don't want to see anyone else hurt like that and not be able to help them."

Alexia turned to snap something at me, but she must have seen a dark look on Mircea's face because she just clicked her jaw shut.

"Hey, you know what I learned the other day?" I asked Emilia cheerfully.