Page 41 of Peril in Piccadilly
Wolfgang waved the offer, or rather the lack of offer, away. “No matter. It’s a pleasant evening for a walk. You’re headed back to the flat, I presume?”
He looked at me. I nodded. We hadn’t discussed it, but I was sure that’s where Tom was planning to take us.
“Just the three of you?” Wolfgang glanced into the backseat again, and I knew without looking that Christopher was pressing his back against the upholstery to get as far into the darkness as he could. “Where is Lord St George this evening?”
There was a beat of silence. It went on a second too long, or perhaps that was simply my guilty conscience. “Coming,” I said eventually. “He and Christopher. By the way, Wolfgang, I don’t know who you saw at the Savoy earlier, but I don’t think it was either of them. Christopher said he hadn’t left the flat during the time I was gone, and?—”
Wolfgang waved it away. “Likely just a chance resemblance.” He took a step back from the car. “I shan’t keep you any longer. May I contact you tomorrow, Philippa?”
“Of course,” I told him. “I’m looking forward to it.”
He nodded. “Until then,mein Schatz. Detective Sergeant. Lady Laetitia.”
He clicked his heels together again, and bowed to each of them. Christopher murmured something suitable, while Tom nodded back. “Good to see you, Natterdorff. Until next time.”
He turned the key in the ignition as Wolfgang walked away. I resisted the temptation to turn and peer after him. “Do you think he suspected?”
Tom waited until he had cranked the motor before he answered. “Suspected what? That Lady Laetitia isn’t Lady Laetitia but Kit?”
“He seemed to suspect something,” Christopher said, leaning forward to put his chin on the back of my seat. “Although it might simply be that he was surprised that the two of you and Laetitia would go anywhere together.”
We rolled away from the curb.
“He definitely knows that Laetitia and I don’t get along,” I said as we proceeded up Regent Street towards Oxford Circus and home. “And of course he knows that Laetitia and Crispin are engaged. I wonder what he thought Tom and I were doing together?”
Tom slanted me a look. “Aren’t you and Natterdorff engaged, as well?”
“It’s open to interpretation,” I said, and Christopher added, “Pippa doesn’t want to move to Germany.”
“I can’t blame you there,” Tom said.
I slanted a look back at him. “Why is that? Have you been to Germany?”
“Once, a few years ago,” Tom said, “and it was fine. But this is home, isn’t it?”
“Not for Pippa,” Christopher told him, and I shot him a look over my shoulder.
“Of course it is, Christopher. Why else wouldn’t I want to go?”
“You were born there.”
I scowled at him. “I’m well aware of that, thank you. And I suppose I mightn’t mind a trip to see it again, perhaps. But I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m English now.”
“I can’t imagine Natterdorff agreeing to stay here forever,” Tom commented, and I turned back to him.
“I have no idea whether he would do or not. The question hasn’t come up.”
“He didn’t suggest staying,” Christopher ventured, “did he?”
“It’s likely he couldn’t,” Tom answered, before I had the opportunity to say that no, Wolfgang hadn’t suggested it. “He must have business here, something that allows his presence in England, a decade after the war, as a German. But there’s likely to be a limit to the government’s largesse. I doubt he’d be allowed to stay indefinitely.”
“If he married me?” Or I married him, rather.
“Perhaps,” Tom allowed, “although it’s possible that that would affect your own situation instead.”
“My situation?”
“If you’re half German, and you’re choosing to marry a German, the British authorities might decide that you’re putting Germany above England, and send you there.”
