Page 28 of Peril in Piccadilly
He stood there politely, without clearing his throat or interrupting, but of course he was impossible to ignore. Wolfgang tried, I’ll give him that, but it was only fifteen seconds or so later that he interrupted his own description of the damask to look up. “Yes?”
“A message formonsieur.” The maître d’ held out a small envelope on a tray, like Tidwell was wont to do at Sutherland Hall.
Neither he nor Wolfgang were French, but perhaps the maître d’ did not want to sully his mouth with the German, and let’s be honest, English simply doesn’t have the same snooty flair.
Wolfgang eyed him for a moment before plucking the note from the tray. The maître d’ withdrew, with a polite clicking of heels, and Wolfgang glanced at the envelope in his hand. His stare was intent enough that it seemed he might be trying to see through it to the message inside.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “It could be important.”
He hesitated, but after a moment he unsealed the flap and pulled out a small notecard from within. The message written on it was short: I saw his eyes flicker for just a second, over what was surely only a line or so of script. His jaw tightened and he glanced over at the entrance to the restaurant, to where the maître d’s podium stood beside the door to the lobby. Perhaps he was hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever had left the note. If so he must have been disappointed, because the maître d’ stood alone, and wasn’t looking our way.
“It isn’t St George,” I inquired, “is it?” Just in case Wolfgang was right, and he actually had seen Crispin in the lobby earlier. Or Christopher, I supposed.
His lips stretched into a semblance of a smile, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No, no,mein Schatz. Merely a business matter that needs my attention.”
He slid the notecard back into the envelope and put the whole thing in his pocket.
I watched it disappear before I asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I’ll deal with it later. Now—” he gave me another smile, this one a bit more natural-looking, “where were we?”
“In the ballroom,” I said, “with the pale blue damask wallpaper and crystal chandeliers.”
He nodded, and went back to describingSchlossNatterdorff and its many delights.
He spoke glibly and at length, but nonetheless, I did get the impression that he was distracted. He fidgeted on his chair almost as much as Crispin had done on the rather memorable occasion when I had dropped a handful of rose hips under his collar just before luncheon.
The Honorable Mr. Astley, all of eleven or twelve years old at the time, had lasted through the meal under his father’s disapproving eye, although it had taken days before he deigned to speak to me again. I still wasn’t entirely sure that he had forgiven me. On this occasion, it was only five minutes or so later that I felt I ought to offer to take myself off and so give Wolfgang the opportunity to deal with the contents of his message. It wasn’t as if he could jettisonme, after all. A gentleman can’t do that sort of thing, at least not to a lady he hopes to see again.
“I should be making my way home,” I said with a smile.
I won’t go so far as to say that Wolfgang looked relieved—he did put up the token protest: “Already? Are you certain I can’t talk you into staying for a bit longer?”—but he got up without demur and offered me his arm for the walk into the lobby.
“Don’t feel as if you have to take care of me,” I told him as we passed through the door and onto the black-and-white marble floor. The maître d’ bowed unctuously as we passed. “You said you thought you saw St George, didn’t you? Or perhaps Christopher? I’m sure either one of them would be happy to see me home.”
I scanned the lobby for a head of fair hair. I had found them both here once before, taking up a corner of the lobby, waiting for me, but the armchairs were empty this time. Or empty of Astleys, at any rate. There were plenty of people around, albeit no one I recognized.
“Don’t be silly,” Wolfgang informed me. “Of course I shall see you home if you want me to. Or I’ll put you in a Hackney, at the very least. No more tube rides for you.” He squeezed my elbow.
I smiled back. “It’s perfectly all right, Wolfgang. I can see myself home. There’s an entrance to the underground right down the street, and it’s still daylight. Nothing would happen to me.”
I had taken the underground to the Strand, as a matter of fact. I had deemed it a good idea to get back on the horse, so to speak, so I wouldn’t develop some inconvenient phobia of the tube forever, out of fear that something might happen to me. I had perhaps been a bit extra careful on the stairs going down into the tunnels, but nothing had occurred, and I had made it here in one piece. I could just as easily make it back to Bloomsbury.
“Nonsense,” Wolfgang told me, and nudged me out the front door, past the doorman, and towards the first Hackney waiting in the queue. “In you go.” He opened the door for me.
“Thank you.” I climbed in, docilely, even as I wondered whether it was my own cynical nature throwing up suspicions, or whether he really was trying extra hard to make sure I was away from the Savoy before he dealt with his note. “I’m perfectly capable of taking the tube home, you know.”
“Not after yesterday.” He brushed his lips over the back of my knuckles carefully before he shut the door behind me. “Safe home,mein Schatz.”
“Where to, guv?” the cab driver inquired, and Wolfgang gave him my destination and enough coin for the fare before stepping back and raising a hand.
“Right you are,” the cabbie said, and off we went, down Savoy Court towards the Strand. I turned my head and peered out the back window in time to see Wolfgang lower his arm. He did an about-face towards the door to the hotel just before we turned the corner, and then we were out of sight down the Strand.
I leaned forward. “Pull over at Charing Cross station, if you please.”
The driver peered at me in the mirror. “You don’t want to go to Essex Street?”
I shook my head. “I realized I left something in the tearoom at the Savoy. I want to go back there and get it.”
