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Thank goodness for small mercies.
The king served himself a cup of coffee and sat at the breakfast table, motioning for Matteo and Ms. Delaney to join him. “My wife Josepha died five years ago.”
“Yes,” Ms. Delaney murmured sympathetically.
“I loved her very much. It hit me hard.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. The relevant point is that, to be frank, I neglected both Morneau and my royal duties for years.”
Why was the king telling Ms. Delaney, a stranger, this? This had nothing to do with the business at hand. And honestly, he was overstating things. Matteo and Princess Marie had kept things going just fine while the king was grieving.
“My daughter had to step in.” He looked over at Matteo. “And poor Mr. Benz’s job was made very difficult, I fear.”
“Not at all, Your Majesty,” Matteo demurred. It wasn’t empty talk. Although he wouldn’t wish the grief of losing a beloved spouse on anyone, he’d enjoyed taking a more active role in affairs of state during that time. In some ways, he missed that, having a wider canvas, and scope, for his work. Being in the foreground instead of the background, though such a vainglorious sentiment, did not reflect well on him.
“I didn’t want to put this in writing or say it over the phone,” the king said, “but I harbor guilt that some of Morneau’s problems are my own doing.”
“Your Majesty,” Matteo interjected, for he couldn’t remain silent, “you are too hard on yourself.”
The king waved away his protest. “My daughter and others tried for years to persuade me to consider, for example, producing a smart watch.”
Matteo wrinkled his nose, and somehow Ms. Delaney knew—she glanced briefly at him before turning back to the king.
“I’m afraid my neglect has put the company, and by extension the country, in jeopardy. There’s no undoing the past, but I wanted you to know. You’re conducting interviews with Noar Graf and the other senior executives; it’s bound to come up.”
Matteo rolled his eyes, but only because no one was looking at him. He’d thought. But the gesture drew Ms. Delaney’s attention again. Was she in possession of extra sensory abilities? But honestly, Noar Graf, Morneau’s CEO, was such an idiot that anything he said in an interview with Ms. Delaney should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
The king followed Ms. Delaney’s gaze this time. Matteo tried to belatedly school his face but must have failed. The king said, “My equerry is protective of me, Ms. Delaney.”
“As he should be,” she said with the same maddeningly impenetrable expression she’d deployed several times yesterday. He couldn’t get a read on her the way he generally could others. It was as if she induced facial blindness in him.
“And perhaps a bit skeptical about the work we are poised to undertake,” the king said.
“Mr. Benz and I spoke a bit yesterday about my mission to modernize Morneau,” Ms. Delaney said mildly.
All right. He could hold his tongue no longer. After all, as heand Ms. Delaney had discussed, his role was not merely to be in compliant agreement at all times. “I simply do not understand why it’s a foregone conclusion that Morneau must modernize. I fail to see whymodernhas come to be assigned such moral value.”
“Mr. Benz values tradition a great deal,” the king said. Matteo refrained from pointing out that the continued existence of the Eldovian monarchy was attributable to tradition. The monarch was no longer the governmental head of state. The king’s role was symbolic, his leadership carrying moral rather than legal weight. Would he rather Eldovia go the way of the Americans, throwing off the mantle of consistency in favor of the new and novel no matter how untested, or even reckless, it might be? “I often think of Mr. Benz as my moral compass,” the king added, and Matteo wasn’t sure whether he should be gratified or insulted, whether he was being complimented or patronized.
“Tradition is important,” Ms. Delaney said, “and it’s good to have someone on hand to keep traditions alive. The task before us, though, is existential. There can be no tradition if we don’t save Morneau.”
“So what you are saying,” said Matteo, trying to rein in his annoyance, “is that there can be no tradition without modernization. A bit like a word meaning the opposite of itself?”
“Yes,” she said with more of that supremely irritating mildness. “Exactly like that.”
She turned her attention back to the king, apparently having dismissed Matteo and his concerns. “I appreciate your forthrightness more than you know, Your Majesty. One thing I will never do is lie to you, or sugarcoat things. So perhaps you will take some comfort from my initial reaction to your concerns, which is thatgiven Morneau makes only one category of product, and considering the state of the worldwide market for that category, I sincerely doubt that any neglect on your part could have had as great an impact as you fear.”
“Ms. Delaney, are you telling me I’m not as powerful as I think I am?”
Matteo watched, astonished, as Ms. Delaney smiled mischievously and said, “That is what I’m trying to tell you—only as it relates to this matter, of course—but I’m trying to do it without being disrespectful. Did it work?”
The king cracked a smile, and Matteo’s jaw dropped. “I think we are going to get on rather well, Ms. Delaney.”
Well. At leastsomeonearound here liked her.
At Morneau’s factory on the outskirts of Witten, Ms. Delaney continued her campaign of American-style dogged honesty. As per her instructions—“All hands on deck,” as if this were a pirate ship—the entire Witten-based staff was in attendance. Everyone from the corporate office was present: human resources, sales representatives, the marketing staff. The factory workers were also on hand: the jewelers who worked on some of the higher-end, diamond-encrusted models; the assembly workers; those who worked in packing and shipping. Ms. Delaney had even asked them to round up as many of their external suppliers as were local and willing to come. They had a tanner who worked on the leather for some of the straps and a representative from an engineering firm to which they subcontracted some of their mechanism design. And of course the company’s small board of directors representing the families that had owned Morneau forgenerations: King Emil and Princess Marie; Max von Hansburg, the Duke of Aquilla, whose family mining company supplied some of the trace metals used in Morneau’s watches; Lucille Müller, a member of parliament whose family had a long history of political and philanthropic activity; and Daniel Hauser, who came from an old-money family that didn’t really do anything except use their money to make more money.
