Page 59 of Evil at the Essex House
“Are we really?” A bit strange to wait until now to mention that, wasn’t it?
Where I would stay in Germany wasn’t the kind of difficulty I’d been concerned about, however. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to where I’d had a happy childhood, when my mother and father were both gone. It was one thing to live here in England and know I was an orphan. It was quite another to go back to where we’d lived together as a happy family, and confront the loss there.
Although if I still had family in Germany, that might make a difference to my feelings about visiting my homeland.
“How are we related?” I wanted to know. “Is that why you visited us on the occasion you told me about? When we were both children?”
Wolfgang nodded. “Do you still not remember?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said apologetically, since no man wants to be told he isn’t memorable, even when he was a tyke of seven or eight. “But there’s a lot I don’t remember. And I forget more every day. Germany seems like a different life.”
“But you have been happy here?”
I nodded. “My Aunt Roslyn and Uncle Herbert have treated me like their own. Christopher is like the brother I never had. So is Francis. And if St George is a bit of an acquired taste… well, there’s a black sheep in every family, I suppose.”
Wolfgang’s lips twitched, but he didn’t comment. “Can I expect to see the Viscount this evening?”
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “I’m hopeful that he’ll decide to stay in Wiltshire—or that his father will take away the key to the Hispano-Suiza and keep him there that way—although I have a feeling he’ll find a way around it even if Uncle Harold does do…”
Wolfgang kept watching me with a halfway patient, halfway amused look, and I nodded. “Yes, I think you can probably expect him to turn up. If we’re very lucky, he won’t try to take us out at the knees this time.”
“He’s very protective,” Wolfgang said, “isn’t he?”
“They all are,” I told him. “It’s as if I have three older brothers, except two of them are younger than me, and none of them is actually my brother. My Uncle Herbert is fairly protective, too.”
Crispin’s father is the only man in the family who isn’t protective of me. While Crispin normally has all the sensitivity of a cheese grater, and isn’t opposed to letting me feel the sharp edge of his personality, he’d most likely put his life on the line for mine if he had to. His father would watch me burn without a flicker of compassion.
Then again, I rather suspect Uncle Harold would watch his own son and heir burn without a flicker of compassion, either. He’d most likely step in to save him, at least if it didn’t involve the risk of harm to himself, but it wouldn’t be out of compassion for Crispin’s suffering, but merely because if Crispin died, Uncle Harold would be on the hook to make another heir, unless he wanted Uncle Herbert and Francis to carry on the line.
“Tell me about our family,” I asked Wolfgang. “How are we related? Are you an only-child, as well?”
Wolfgang said he was. The last of the Albrechtsvon und zuNatterdorff. “I shall have to marry soon, to secure the succession.”
He gave me a soulful look. I smiled politely, and wondered whether he was opening up negotiations for me to marry him, or whether he was simply trying to get under my skirt before he had to marry someone else—someone whose father hadn’t been a commoner—to bear the son and heir he required.
When I didn’t snap up the bait one way or the other, Wolfgang backed off a bit, and we settled into a conversation about his experiences at Heidelberg University, and mine at Oxford ditto. He had studied political science, and had received hisSchmissein a Mensur duel with a classmate named Stefan, he told me. When I feigned interest, he proceeded to describe the duel in detail. When I informed him that Mensur dueling wasn’t something undertaken in English institutions, and that a facial scar wasn’t considered a badge of honor in Britain, he sneered at me.
“The British prefer a man with a pretty face to a man with a brave heart?”
“I don’t know that one precludes the other,” I said mildly. “Surely it’s possible to be both handsome and brave?”
I accompanied the rhetorical question with a lingering glance, and he preened.
He was still in a good mood when we left the table after dessert, as we made our way back to the Savoy lobby, with its checkerboard floor and tall columns. That only lasted until he spied Christopher and Crispin lounging in one of the seating areas near the front doors.
I know I have rather gone on about how handsome Wolfgang is, but the truth is, neither Christopher nor Crispin is exactly hard on the eyes, either, especially in evening kit and in their element. Which they so clearly were: two beautiful young men-about-town at their leisure, with no worries beyond which cocktail to order with dinner. Christopher was draped over the arm of the chair with his chin propped on his hand and one leg folded elegantly over the other, while Crispin leaned back insolently, feet kicked up on the low table in front of him and hands folded across his stomach, with no concern for the Savoy’s table or the people who shot him sideways glances. But unlike Christopher, who appeared for all the world like he was half a moment from falling asleep, Crispin’s eyes were sharp under the lowered lids, and he caught sight of Wolfgang and me the moment we came through the doors from the restaurant.
Not that one could tell from his demeanor. He didn’t sit up, didn’t stiffen or show with so much as a twitch of an eyelash that he had noticed us, but his eyes nonetheless watched us come closer with all the attention of a snake eyeing an approaching fieldmouse.
“Darling,” he uttered when we got close enough that I could hear him over the other conversations taking place in the lobby.
Christopher straightened and turned towards us. Unlike Crispin, I assumed this was the first he had noticed we were there.
“St George,” I responded coolly. If he wasn’t going to grace me with an actual greeting beyond just my name, he couldn’t expect anything better himself, either. “Hello, Christopher. Have you been waiting long?”
“Just a few minutes,” Christopher said and stretched. “Grafvon Natterdorff.” He nodded politely to Wolfgang, who nodded back.
“HerrAstley. Lord St George.” He clicked his heels and bowed in Crispin’s direction. Not too deeply, but enough to be courteous. The latter, of course, couldn’t even be bothered to sit up.
