Page 1 of Evil at the Essex House
ChapterOne
We were sittingin the tearoom at the Savoy when a gentleman approached.
I use the word advisedly. He was clearly quality: his suit the equal of one of Crispin’s—the Viscount St George, future Duke of Sutherland, has a penchant for expensive clothes, expensive motorcars, and expensive women—and his demeanor at least as entitled as St George’s, as well. He looked at us down the length of his nose and intoned, without much apology in his voice at all, “Entschuldigung, but am I looking atFrauleinPhilippa Marie Schatz?”
Heads turned, of course. Not only was the gentleman’s voice penetrating, with a slight foreign accent that sent something warm swirling through my stomach for a second before icy discomfort replaced it, but the German honorific combined with the German surname (not to mention the German accent) still gets attention, eight years after the Great War.
“I’m Pippa Darling,” I said, perhaps a bit coldly, and gave the gentleman my best fishy stare. It was less effective than usual, as I was seated at table and he was close to two meters tall.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was only an inch or two above six feet. But that still made him taller than any other gentleman of my acquaintance, except perhaps Uncle Harold, the current Duke of Sutherland. It put him at almost half a head taller than Crispin and Christopher.
The latter was sitting across the table from me, indulging in tea and hot buns, and looking from me to the German gentleman with a slightly puzzled, slightly suspicious—and it must be said, slightly awed—expression on his pretty face.
Crispin, just to have said it, was nowhere around. Christopher and I are best friends, the next thing to siblings. Christopher’s other cousin and I are… not mortal enemies, certainly—not anymore, at least—but we’re also not daily associates. Lord St George was, as far as I knew, in Wiltshire. It was a Tuesday, and Uncle Harold was no doubt keeping his son and heir chained up in his rooms at Sutherland Hall. St George does sometimes escape, and comes up to Town to carouse with his friends in the Society of Bright Young Persons, but that only happens on weekends, and then only occasionally. He’d only be in London midweek if something was going on, and if anything was, we’d probably have heard about it.
“FreuleinDarling.” The German gentleman clicked his heels together and bowed in a very precise, very dashing, and quite foreign way. He took extra effort with the R in the middle of my name, too. “May I introduce myself? I amGrafWolfgang Ulrich Albrechtvon und zuNatterdorff.”
There was a moment’s pause. More than a moment, if I’m honest, while I tried to come up with something to say.
In my defense, it wasn’t just the fact that he was exceedingly foreign, nor was it the plethora of names and titles. Crispin has those, too, so I’m used to them. Christopher has his own string of names even without the honorific. But in addition to all that, there was the fact thatGrafWolfgang was quite possibly the best-looking man I had ever set eyes on. And I’m honestly not spoiled for choice as far as that goes. Christopher is quite attractive, and so is Crispin, for all his annoying ways. So, for that matter, is my elder cousin Francis.
And if I didn’t happen to like the fair-haired and -complexioned, there’s Lord Geoffrey Marsden, who is an awful cad, but with the glossy good looks and shiny black hair of a matinee idol.
There’s also Thomas Gardiner, a Detective Sergeant with Scotland Yard and an old friend of my late cousin Robert’s, although I have a feeling that Christopher might take it amiss if I extoll Tom’s virtues too loudly. He’s undeniably handsome, though, with brown, wavy hair and hazel eyes.
TheGrafto and from Natterdorff was fair. His hair was parted down the middle and smoothed back from his face in golden waves, while his eyes were a dark blue. His face looked like something that might have been carved in marble, with a chiseled jaw, straight nose, and high cheekbones. The only thing marring its perfection was a scar, thin and white, long healed, that ran diagonally across his left cheek. It did nothing to destroy the overall effect, but instead added a touch of recklessness or danger to a face that might otherwise have been almost too classically handsome. I didn’t need Christopher’s foot nudging my ankle under the table to know that I was looking at something—or someone—extraordinary.
Of course I didn’t let it show. If there’s one thing I’m adept at, it’s keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of unfairly charming men who do their best to throw me off balance. So I merely smiled politely and told him, “I’m pleased to meet you. May I present my cousin, Mr. Christopher Astley?”
The count—for that’s what he was—clicked his heels together and bowed again. “Mein Herr.”
“Grafvon Natterdorff.” Christopher’s eyes were enormous in his rapt face. “Won’t you have a seat?”
He nudged one of the chairs with his foot so it moved slightly. TheGrafeyed it for a second before putting a hand on its back. “FreuleinDarling?”
“Of course,” I said. “Please, be comfortable.”
“Danke.” He pulled the chair out and seated himself. Up close, when I didn’t have to stare up at the underside of his nostrils, he was even more spectacular-looking than I had originally thought. Perfect bone structure, perfect teeth, eyes of such a dark blue that they were almost navy. “I will not take up much of your time.”
His speech was extremely precise, every word chosen with deliberation and placed carefully into the sentence. I knew what that felt like. It had taken me at least a year after landing in England at eleven to get over my habit of thinking in German and translating my thoughts into English before speaking them out loud. My mother was English, so I had learned the language at her knee, but we had lived in Germany all my life.
At this point, twelve years later, I hadn’t thought in, or even spoken, German in at least a decade. The back of my mind was churning, trying to access old channels of words and sentence structure.
“Take up as much time as you want,” Christopher said brightly.
The years since the Great War has, in many ways, been extremely kind to many of us. My skirts are short, and so is my hair. I smoke cigarettes and drink liquor in public. I’m unmarried at twenty-three, and not just that, but I share a flat in London with an unmarried man of marriageable age (consanguineous marriage is legal in England, so the fact that we’re first cousins is not an impediment to our being romantically involved, theoretically anyway) without servants or a chaperone on the premises, and nobody (or nobody much) remarks on it.
Not that there’s anything romantic going on, of course. Which is the point I was getting at. The post-War society that allows me the short hemlines and bobbed hair, also allows Christopher not to hide—or not to hide to an extreme degree—the fact that he prefers the company of other men. The buggery laws are still in effect, so he can’t be too obvious about it—no hand-holding or kissing in public—but to many of us, it’s not a matter worth much thought, and certainly no condemnation. Christopher is the way Christopher is, and I love Christopher like a brother, so why would I care on whom he bestows his personal affections?
He has bestowed them on Tom Gardiner, as far as I know. I’m fairly certain Christopher has at least a little crush on his late brother’s best friend. I don’t know whether Tom reciprocates, although I’m fairly certain he at least likes and cares about Christopher. He has yanked him out of a couple of uncomfortable situations that might have ended with Christopher’s arrest and imprisonment for running afoul those buggery laws I mentioned, but I don’t know if things have gone any farther than that, or whether they ever will. It could just be a crush on Christopher’s part and goodwill towards a late friend’s little brother on Tom’s.
In any case, it didn’t stop Christopher from being visibly taken with theGraf. He put his chin on his hand and eyed him admiringly from the other side of the table.
TheGrafcleared his throat. “You do not remember me.”
There was no question mark at the end of the sentence, but I suppose it might have been the German inflection.
“My apologies,” I said. “I wasn’t aware that we were previously acquainted.”
