Page 54 of Peril in Piccadilly
“The ring you showed me,” I said to Wolfgang. He met my eyes across the table, startled. “Was that a Natterdorff heirloom?”
He smirked. “No,mein Schatz. I didn’t come to London thinking I would find a bride, so the Natterdorff engagement ring is still in Germany.”
“There’s no one there who could have mailed it to you?”
He tilted his head to contemplate me. “Would it have made a difference if I had offered you the Natterdorff engagement ring?”
“Not at all,” I said. “My answer would have been the same no matter what. I wouldn’t accept or deny a man because of a ring.”
He nodded. “To answer your question, there’s my grandfather. But he would hardly risk sending one of our heirlooms in an envelope across half of Europe and the English channel when I could just go to Hatton Garden and look for something there.”
Of course. “I just wondered if it was an heirloom,” I explained, “because I have nothing from my father’s side of the family. Aunt Roz has everything from her family, or if my mother had anything, it’s gone now. But I don’t think, in 1914, when my parents sent me to England for my safety, that they thought it would be the last time they saw me, or I them.”
Wolfgang reached out and placed a hand over mine on the table. “Likely not. I’m sorry, my dear.”
“Me, too,” I said with a sniff. “I don’t think about it most of the time. But I know next to nothing about my father. In fact, it was just the other day that I was talking to Christopher, and he reminded me that my father had a Mensur scar on his cheek?—”
My eyes lingered on the one across the table from me, and a muscle in Wolfgang’s jaw jumped. I looked away. “—and I wondered how that came about.”
He didn’t speak, and I added, “I always thought Mensur duels was something the students did at university. But my father was a craftsman. He made furniture. He wasn’t likely to have attended university. So how did he get it?”
“There are other ways to get a facial scar than fencing for sport,” Wolfgang said.
“Yes, of course there are. Perhaps he grew up in rough circumstances, and someone brought a knife to a fistfight at some point, or perhaps one of his tools slipped while he was working, and he cut himself…”
“Perhaps,” Wolfgang agreed.
“But it seemed like something I ought to know about my own father. Do you know, I don’t even have a photograph of him? There’s a portrait of my mother at Beckwith Place, from when she and Aunt Roz were young, but every day—or every year, at least—I’m less and less able to bring my father’s face to mind.”
They were more just flickers of memories now, of sitting on my father’s lap while he read to me, of holding my mother’s hand while we walked, of talking at the table in our flat while eatingSourbratenandSpätzlewith butter and herbs. My father’s hands, full of cuts and scrapes from the shop, holding a knife and fork, while my mother’s upper-crust British voice asked how work had been…
But as for bringing his face to mind, no. I couldn’t do it.
Wolfgang nodded sympathetically. “For what it’s worth, and from what I remember, you look like your mother but with your father’s eyes.”
Indeed I did. My mother at fourteen or so, in the portrait at Beckwith Place, looked very much like I had done at that age, except for the eyes and a few other small differences. It was difficult to say what, if anything, other than my green eyes, I had inherited from my father’s side of the family.
The waiter rescued us from becoming too maudlin. As he appeared beside the table with two cups of crab bisque, Wolfgang withdrew his hand, and I did the same. And if I had to surreptitiously touch the napkin to my eyes, it’s no one’s business but my own. The cups descended and the waiter stepped back, waiting for approval.
“It looks lovely,” I told him, a bit stuffily, “thank you.”
He clicked his heels and withdrew. I picked up my spoon and dipped it into the bisque.
The soup was excellent,and so was the prawn cocktail. So was Wolfgang’s turbot. When he offered me a bite, I took it off the end of his fork and tried not to wince at the gesture.
It’s not that I hadn't taken bites of food off the tines of Christopher’s fork before, because of course I had done. But that was different. This felt… overly familiar. Something one might do with a romantic interest, such as a fiancé or husband—or, of course, a cousin and brother. I could imagine Laetitia opening her mouth, birdlike, so Crispin could deposit a tempting morsel therein. Or perhaps the opposite would be more likely to happen. Laetitia waving a piece of food in his face, wanting him to be sweet and romantic. He’d probably feel about it the way I did. I could practically see his sneer in my head as he’d fight back whatever sarcastic remark came to mind.
But never mind all that. I took the piece of turbot between my teeth and pulled it off the fork without actually touching the silver. “Delicious,” I told him once I had munched it down, and if my smile was a touch strained, it was the best I could do.
He smiled, pleased, and went back to his fish. I picked up another prawn and bit into it with a snap.
We ended the meal with a joint serving of spotted dick—it came with two spoons, so there was no need to share any more flatware—and then Wolfgang pulled out my chair and helped me into my coat before he placed his hand on the small of my back for the trip across the floor.
“Let me get you a Hackney,” he told me as we stepped outside on Queen Victoria Street. As he looked around for a vacant cab, I did the same in an effort to spot Christopher. There was no sign of him, although I couldn’t see into the alcove he had tucked himself into earlier, so he might still be there and watching.
“Don’t be silly,” I answered. “It’s broad daylight, and ten minutes on the underground. Just walk me to the entrance. Unless you’re taking the tube back to the Savoy, too?”
It was a perfect opportunity for him to tell me that he was no longer living at the hotel, and I held my breath—hopefully not too conspicuously—while I waited to see what he would say.
