Page 10 of Evil at the Essex House
I supposed it had. “It isn’t every day you meet a handsome young gentleman—and aGraf, no less—who remembers you from when you were small.”
“No, it isn’t.” He tilted his head. “Didn’t the Weimar Republic do away with the German noble titles a few years ago?”
“In 1919. Or they did away with their nobility, anyway. If you were theGraf von und zuNatterdorff before that, I believe you’re still theGraf von und zuNatterdorff now. It’s just that being theGraf von und zuNatterdorff doesn’t make you any better than anyone else.”
“Socialism,” Christopher scoffed, and shifted so he could fold the other leg over his other knee. “So riddle me this, Pippa: If there’s no nobility, but theGraf von und zuNatterdorff takes a wife, will she still be theGräfin von und zuNatterdorff? Or would she be just plainFrauAlbrecht?”
“I have no idea,” I said, “and I don’t know that it’s an incentive either way. But good for you, knowing that theGraf’s wife is theGräfin.”
He sniffed. “Of course, Philippa. I am the grandson of a duke, after all.”
“Of course you are.” I smiled at him fondly. “Did they teach you that at Eton?”
“I have no idea where I learned that,” Christopher said, dropping the affectation. “I imagine my mother probably told me at some point. Or my father. Or perhaps my grandfather.Noblesse obligeand all that.”
Yes, of course. “Well, everything you learned about Germany at your mother’s knee is defunct now. It’s not the same place it was when we were small.”
Christopher shook his head. “How are you really, Pippa? Coming face to face with your past like that?”
I sighed. I hadn’t wanted to think too deeply about it—hadn’t had the opportunity, either, honestly—but I supposed it was inevitable that I’d have to. “It was a shock. I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew back then ever again. Not with both my parents dead and me in an entirely different country with a new name, not to mention the war and international relations and everything else.”
“Do you remember him now?”
I shook my head. “But that’s all right. He clearly knew me.”
“What does he want, though?” Christopher wondered.
I peered at him. “What do you mean? He recognized me, and wanted to introduce himself.”
He nodded. “Of course. But beyond that. What was he doing at the Savoy? He wasn’t taking tea with anyone. I didn’t notice him in the tearoom when we came in, and believe me, Pippa, looking like that, I would have.”
I would have, too, most likely. TheGrafwas definitely eye-catching.
“Perhaps he saw us cross the lobby,” I suggested, “and thought I looked familiar. Perhaps he’s staying at the Savoy.”
“He has to stay somewhere,” Christopher agreed, “so perhaps he is. I wonder what he’s doing in England?”
“He has some sort of business here, I expect. We’re doing business with Germany again, aren’t we?”
“Germany’s in the League of Nations now,” Christopher nodded, “and there was the Locarno treaties last year. I think things are back to normal as far as that goes.”
Normal as in before the Great War, I supposed, when Germany was just one of many European countries and not a threat to world peace.
I had my doubts about it, honestly. About things going back to normal, I mean. That madmanHerrHitler was out of prison again now, after serving his sentence (or part of it) for planning the Beer HallPutsch, and it had taken the German government just two years to lift the ban on his National Socialist party. He wasn’t the type to give up that easily. The manifesto he had penned while incarcerated had been chilling, to say the least, and I was certain we hadn’t heard the last from him.
Christopher nodded when I said as much. “Stay with us, Pippa, where it’s safe. Marry Crispin, or marry someone else, but stick with England.”
I fully intended to. However— “I need you to stop saying that, Christopher. Uncle Harold would sooner disinherit Crispin than allow him to marry someone like me, not to mention that I don’t like him that way. You—all of you—have to stop it. Even your mother asked me, last month, whether I was sure I couldn’t just marry Crispin and rid us of Lady Laetitia.”
Christopher’s lips twitched, and I added, severely, “He and I don’t get along, and he’s in love with someone else. Besides, I don’t think the rest of you would approve of it either, no matter what you all say.”
“If it was what you wanted,” Christopher said, “we’d all be delighted for you. We all want you to be happy. If marrying Crispin would make you happy?—”
“It wouldn’t.”
“—we’d all be happy for you.”
“Well, it’s moot,” I said. “I’ll marry you before I marry him.”
