Page 1 of Peril in Piccadilly
ChapterOne
The first timeI almost died, I was a few years old, and stumbled into the Neckar River on a walk through Heidelberg with my mother. A good Samaritan fished me out and handed me back to her, dripping wet and hiccoughing for breath, and I was exposed to several hours of rough toweling and tears, until it all mostly faded into memory. I was more startled than afraid, I think, and while my mother undoubtedly had the shock of her life, nothing terrible happened.
The second time I almost died, I was eleven, and abandoned in the center of the garden maze at Sutherland Hall in Wiltshire by the not-so-Honorable Crispin Astley, also eleven. By then, the Great War had broken out, and my mother had sent me to her sister in England for my safety. I had been folded into the Astley family, and Crispin had taken against me because I had supplanted him as our shared cousin Christopher’s best friend. Just as the first time, the experience was traumatic, and much longer-lived, but ultimately no more fatal. Christopher rescued me long before I could starve to death, and Crispin got a talking-to by my aunt, as well as a spanking by his father, which went a long way towards making me feel better (at the time, anyway; even if it makes me feel rather worse about the whole thing now).
After that, there was the time I tried to climb out a second story window at the Godolphin School in Salisbury, which I attended from thirteen to eighteen, while Christopher and Crispin were away at Eton, and while my elder cousins Robert and Francis were in the trenches in France. The ivy wasn’t strong enough to hold me, and I dangled for a few seconds before a couple of the other girls hauled me back to safety. The less said about that, the better. That wasn’t fatal, either, and probably wouldn’t have been even if I had fallen.
After that, a few years passed. The war ended. Francis came home, but Robert didn’t. Christopher and Crispin left Eton and went to Oxford and Cambridge, respectively. I went with Christopher, while Crispin, for some reason known only unto himself, seemed to want to get away from us. Eventually, Christopher and I ended up in London. Then came the bullet that grazed my arm during a visit to Sutherland Hall in late April, and a few weeks later, the poisoned cocktail I was served at the Dower House in Dorset. The shot went wide, and Christopher took the cocktail out of my hand and tossed it back himself when he saw that I didn’t like the taste. There was enough Veronal in it to put me to sleep permanently, but Christopher—a bit taller and heavier, and with a faster metabolism—merely slept the sleep of the dead for a few days before waking up, none the worse for wear.
That takes us to September, and the second bullet, the one that passed within a foot or so of my head, and that of Francis. We chalked that one up to either a case of mistaken identity—I looked a bit like the Honorable Cecily Fletcher, who was even then fighting for her life upstairs in Marsden Manor—or simply a stray shot from the shooting party in the nearby woods. None of the hunters admitted to firing it, but that was to be expected, really, when it almost killed someone. There was no harm done, so we were all (mostly) happy to relegate it to the past, where it belonged.
And that brings us up to the present day, October 1926, and what I like to refer to, in retrospect, as The Peril in Piccadilly.
Yes, the capital letters are intentional.
I was having a late supper with Wolfgang Ulrich Albrecht, theGraf von und zuNatterdorff, a distant cousin and also my sort-of fiancé. We were sharing a table in the Criterion Restaurant, after attendingThe Scarlet Lady—the new comedy featuring Miss Marie Tempest and Mr. Ernest Thesiger—next door at the Piccadilly Jewel Box.
Wolfgang and I (and Christopher) had met a couple of months earlier, in the tearoom at the Savoy Hotel. He claimed to have recognized me from a visit when I was a wee imp in Heidelberg, and I had no reason to doubt him. In the time since, we’d been getting to know one another better. Christopher approves—Wolfgang is quite handsome, as well as aGraf—while Crispin and Francis both vehemently disapprove. Francis because he fought the Germans in France, and Crispin for reasons known only unto himself. He wasn’t old enough to serve in the Great War (nor was Wolfgang, for that matter), so it can’t have been that. But whatever the reason, he despises Wolfgang, a feeling which is decidedly mutual, since Crispin has let no opportunity go by to make himself disagreeable.
I’m still not entirely certain how we ended up engaged, other than that when Wolfgang proposed, I didn’t say no. I don’t think I said yes, either—my response was something more like, “Thank you, but…” But by the time I got that last part out, Christopher was shrieking, my Aunt Roslyn was whooping, Lady Laetitia Marsden—Crispin’s intended—was watching with barely concealed glee, and Crispin himself was scowling. Wolfgang had moved to embrace me, and I couldn’t really say that I hadn’t meant it, not when everyone was so clearly elated.
In that spirit, I accepted the congratulations—Lady Laetitia practically cried tears of joy, while Crispin’s jaw was clenched so tight when he extended his hand to Wolfgang that I feared for the health of his molars—and then I returned to London and went about my business as if nothing had changed.
And nothing much had. Wolfgang seemed satisfied with the semi-positive response to his offer—less than enthusiastic though it was—because he didn’t push for anything more definite, and he also didn’t bring it up again over the next few weeks. Perhaps he realized that I hadn’t said “yes,” so much as “I need some time to think about it,” and he decided to give it to me. Perhaps he was afraid that if he pushed, “Thank you, but—” might turn into a flat “No.”
The thing was, I wasn’t in love with him. I wasn’t in love with anyone else, either, so it wasn’t as if my heart was engaged elsewhere. And I liked Wolfgang; it wasn’t that I didn’t. But marriage to him came with certain disadvantages. He was a German nobleman, with a title, aSchloss, and presumably a fortune to go along with it. All well and good, even if the Weimar Republic had done away with the German nobility in 1919, so the title, at least, was mostly only worth the paper it was written on. TheSchlossand money were more solid, or so I assumed.
But be that as it may, Germany after the war wasn’t a place I wanted to be. Yes, I had been born there. But that was a long time ago now, and I had no fond feelings for the place. My father and mother were both gone; the former in the War and the latter in the influenza epidemic that followed. I had had no contact with any of my German relatives in the past twelve years (or even before that, for that matter). The incident that Wolfgang recalled, was not something I remembered. I felt thoroughly English now, and there was no part of me that wanted to return to post-War Germany,Schlossor noSchloss.
And so we limped along for a few weeks, taking tea and supper together in London, spending time together but without touching on any difficult subjects, or for that matter touching much in general.
Until that particular evening in October, at the Criterion Restaurant. The waiter had just served the cheese course when the door to the street opened, and in swept the Viscount St George, resplendent in black tie, with his fiancée hanging on his arm.
Lady Laetitia Marsden is quite possibly the best-looking woman I have ever set eyes on. Or perhaps not: the now-dead Johanna de Vos was also stunningly lovely. But she certainly puts me, and most everyone else, to shame. Tall and willowy, she carries the current tubular fashions off to perfection, while her face is the exact proportion of curves to angles, with big, long-lashed eyes under curved brows, high cheekbones, and full lips.
Just like every other time I have seen her—more frequently than I would wish—she was wearing black: a slinky gown with a plunging V-neck and diamanté embroidery under a black velvet cloak decorated with fur around the neck and wrists. The ostentatious Sutherland engagement ring weighed down her left hand, and the matching diamonds sparkled in her ears.
They stopped just inside the door while Crispin handed off his topper, gloves, and walking stick to the hat check girl, and while Laetitia surveyed the restaurant for, I assumed, familiar faces.
For the record, I would have been quite happy to ignore their presence entirely, and so, I thought, would Crispin be happy to ignore ours.
He saw us, of course. He met my eyes for a moment before he turned his attention to the back of Wolfgang’s head—his lip curled—and then he looked away. It was Laetitia who looped her hand through his elbow and towed him across the floor to our table.
“Miss Darling.” She gave me the most condescending smile you could imagine, only made more so by the fact that she was standing and I was sitting, and she could quite literally look down her nose at me. Wolfgang, of course, had gotten to his feet, as any gentleman would when presented with a woman of breeding next to his table. “Grafvon Natterdorff.” She fluttered her lashes up at him. He’s tall, several inches taller than Crispin, who surely felt like just as much of a child as I did.
Wolfgang bowed over Laetitia’s hand, while I managed a smile, or rather a grimace I hoped might pass as one. “Lady Laetitia.” I flicked a look at her fiancé. “St George.”
He nodded. “Philippa.”
My brows arched. I can count the times he has called me by my given name on the fingers of one hand, or at least the times it has happened in the past few years. When we were children, yes. But he stopped sometime around the time he left Eton and went up to Cambridge. Since then, it’s been a sneered—or occasionally smirked—“Darling,” the way one would address the maid.
“Really,” I intoned, “Crispin?”
His given name didn’t feel any more comfortable in my mouth than mine did in his. And it must have been obvious, because I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. He didn’t comment, however.
“It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been improper,” he said instead, blandly.
“Of course you’ve been,” I agreed, since I had pointed it out to him myself on more than one occasion. “Although that has never stopped you before, has it?”
