Page 42 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
“Give me this little girl. My goodness, I think I may know her. Is her name…hmmm. Dimity Rose?”
“Noooo, Mommy!”
“No? Ah. Hmmm. Fabulous Tulip?”
“Noooo!”
Katrina planted a big wet kiss on her daughter’s lips.
“Oh, yuck,” George snorted and stuck out his tongue.
To which his older brother, lately a stickler for ignoring parents and little girls who exhibited exuberant affections, said, “Oh, boy. Let’s go, George. You know they’ll be kissing each other for hours.”
The two boys made faces at each other and joining hands, marched along ahead.
Nate took her suitcase and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Can I take you home with me, Madam?”
“Please do, my lord.”
In the past two years, Nate served in Parliament. He rarely used his title to smooth his path anywhere. He had associates who valued his skills and promoted his special talents in the Government. Immediately after the war, he helped improve wheat production in Britain and worked with the American Herbert Hoover organizing his food program to feed the starving masses of Europe. Recently, Nate joined the ranks of the shadow government in charge of Agriculture, Food and Medical Supplies.
His expertise during the war had served him well. With the advent of higher taxation after the war, he was still in the process of selling all of his unentailed land. Soldiers returning home from a brutal war did not wish to return to menial positions as butlers and footmen in crumbling old mansions. Nor did they desire the poor wages. They moved to cities and factory towns where jobs in manufacturing were plentiful. Women who had found jobs outside the home wished to keep them. The labor force that had kept the aristocrats’ estates humming along with house staff and gardeners, grooms and tenant farmers was gone to the city and the lure of more prosperous jobs.
Having seen up close the havoc that war had raged on soldier and civilian alike, Nate was ready to embrace the changes. He invested the proceeds of his personal investments in many of the Hanniford family businesses and that, plus his government salary, was the basis of their nuclear family’s income. New land laws of the past year and a half passed and others considered by Parliament would allow many aristocrats to sell more of their inherited lands. Those in the House of Lords resisted this but they were losing the argument. Nate would happily give up his lands to be free to do the work he loved. Katrina understood his high regard for his ancient title and history, even if he did not relish the complexity of administering to it. As for her, she acknowledged her title of Countess of Carbury when appropriate for Nate’s professional activities but for herself, she styled herself Doctor Katrina Langston.
“We’ve tried the new cook, Mama,” Everett boasted when they were all situated in the old silver Diamler touring car and their chauffeur Davis drove them through the London streets.
“Does she pass your test?” Katrina ruffled his soft brown hair and cupped his cheek. Nearly thirteen, Everett was the duplicate of his father in slimmer, younger form. The boy loved to eat and had a refined palette for his age. The new cook Katrina had hired before she left for Vienna was a German refugee whosekartoffel kuchenhad pleased her—and Everett immensely.
“Her chocolate cake is the very best,” their oldest son acknowledged with good humor.
The boy had always been so easy in his skin, accepting her as his mother within days of their arrival at Lily’s and Julian’s. His departure from his “Grandmama Lily” came so quickly the yall marveled and applauded. Like his father, Everett was that rare child, the unique person, who loved everyone he met for themselves, without requirement or fear. Katrina hadn’t had to do much to ask him to accept her, save open her arms and her heart to him. When George was born five months later, Everett regarded the baby as a funny little creature who only ate and slept. He eagerly anticipated the day when George would grow up enough to go riding with him. For Everett, the love of horses was his abiding passion. George, however, never quite understood that. The two brothers were the greatest pals in spite of it. Eliza brought her dolls to their games of chess and cheered them on. The two boys accepted her with long suffering sighs.
“But I like Cook’s frosting,” Eliza entered the conversation wit her usual aplomb.
“No need for the cake?” Katrina asked as she settled into the warm nook of her husband’s arm around her shoulders.
Eliza wiggled her nose. “Just the bowl.”
“Cook is excellent,” Nate added. “You made an excellent choice, darling.”
“Thank you. We needed someone before my parents arrive.” Her mother and father came every year since the Armistice, sailing on the newest luxury liner and staying with them for a month. The children anticipated their arrival with special delight. Her parents brought a mountain of toys and dolls, all from the best American tradesmen whose wares Katrina’s father ordered at his chain of department stores. The two of them would arrive in two weeks. “Papa likes his strudel a certain way.”
“I think Frau Braun will pass his test,” Nate said with a chuckle.
Katrina regarded the tender smile of her husband and lifted her brows. “And yours? For tonight?”
He focused his devilish eyes on her lips. “She told me she has your favorite for you.”
She leaned her head briefly on his shoulder. “You are my favorite.”
Whenever she returned from a journey to a new research hospital or a conference, Nate arranged with their cook an intimate dinner for the two of them in their master suite. He always managed to find a good French Bordeau to accompany a dinner that refreshed and welcomed her back to him and their brood. He, too, traveled around the British Isles for his work, but he was not gone as often nor as long as she.
That night in their suite, they sat, he with her beside him in the huge French chaise longue that they adjourned to often. He drew patterns on her collarbone with his finger and kissed her now and then. She’d donned a new diaphanous blue silk charmeuse negligee and peignoir that she’d purchased on a whim one afternoon in a famous old lingerie shop on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. The remains of their dinner of cheeses and salad and Frau Braun’sapfel strudel, just so Katrina could bless it herself, lay before them on the small table and they sipped their good red wine.
“How is Camille? And Lily and Ada and Pierce? Have you seen them? Have they come to town while I was gone?” Camille’s mother Olivia, Killian’s second wife, had died quite suddenly in her sleep three weeks before Katrina was tohave left for Vienna. Everyone had been shocked by her passing because she was, even at age eighty-five, quite hearty. Killian had died on Armistice day after he heard the news of the ceasefire. Liv, as everyone called her, had survived him, though with fewer smiles and less spring in her step. Their two sons, Liam and Dylan, had booked passages with their wives and children on the first Cunard liner out of Manhattan, but could not make it home in time for the burial. As a result, they’d stayed on in England for a memorial service for Liv. But they were also to consult with Pierce, their half brother who was the president of Killian’s complex world-wide empire.
“They are still south in Brighton. We’re invited there Saturday. A family conference, Pierce says. He wants to reorganize certain branches of the companies. He needs our votes as major shareholders.”
