There he was again! He was near the door now, but still quite alone, his gaze still fixed on someone in the crowd. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was staring at King Maksim.
Hollis glanced to where Eliza and Caroline were sitting. They were very much engaged. And Beck was...well, she didn’t know where Beck was.
She shifted her gaze to the gentleman again. She was curious about him. What was he doing here, all alone? Perhaps she ought to take the opportunity to thank him for being so gallant earlier. Hollis began to move casually around the perimeter of the room in the gentleman’s direction.
CHAPTER THREE
At a royal tea welcoming guests from Alucia and Wesloria, Queen Victoria looked resplendent in a gown of gold silk and Chantilly lace, festooned with large silk flowers on the bodice and skirt, and a lace cap atop her curls.
There were many dignitaries in attendance, as the opportunity to take tea at St. James Palace is rarely realized. It was noted by more than one that a Hawkish English lord was very much enthralled with an auburn-haired beauty only recently come to London from the country. Might a courtship be on the horizon?
Overheard at the tea was a debate as to whether or not women are suitable teachers for the youth of our country. A rather antiquated notion abounds in the heads of many males that the fairer sex is inferior in matters of the mind. But if one considers the irrefutable truth that every gentleman has, in one form or another, been taught a thing or two by a woman, does that not disprove such ideas? Ladies, we are all teachers, are we not?
—Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and Domesticity for Ladies
HEDIDN’THEARthe woman approach him, didn’t see her until she leaned into his line of sight, which gave him such a start that he must have jumped a good foot in the air. This happened to him quite often when someone approached him from the left. He was deaf in that ear.
He recognized her right away, of course. She smiled. She had a very pretty smile that matched her very pretty face, which he had noticed earlier today. She had deep blue eyes that shone with the light of a generous spirit. Her hair was very dark, almost black. He’d once heard that the Welsh had very dark hair. He wouldn’t really know—he’d never met a Welshman in his life.
He realized, a beat too late, that she was speaking. Her voice was soft and he couldn’t quite make out what she said in the din of so many voices. He leaned forward as was his habit, his gaze on her lips.How do you do.Aha. “Very well,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I really must thank you, sir!” she said. “I was so startled earlier that I couldn’t utter a word after you saved me from all but tossing myself into the street.”
He wasn’t certain whether or not she meant she had deliberately tried to fall into the street, or if the expression was another English euphemism he didn’t understand.
“Isn’t this something?” she asked, shifting slightly closer. Now that he could see her lips, the words she spoke sounded clearer to him. “So many kings and queens and potential kings and queens in one room.”
He looked around them. The people gathered here ought to have been kings and queens, given the purpose of this event.
When he looked at her again, she smiled prettily and asked, rather loudly, even to him, “Do you speak English?”
He blinked. “I—I just spoke English to you.”
“Ah, so you did!” she said cheerfully. “You must be Weslorian. Are you Weslorian?”
WassheWeslorian? No, impossible—she had an English accent and wore no green. Why was she asking him this? Why was she asking anything at all? A dull throb of suspicion went through him.
“I spotted your patch of green,” she said, as if she was proud of this, as if it was a special talent of hers. The green was on his cuff, clearly visible. He felt conspicuous. And a wee bit duped, as if someone should have warned him this would happen, that a beautiful woman would approach him from the left and startle him. But, then again, no one had expected him to be at this tea at all, and least of all, him. He’d received an engraved invitation, addressed to Marek Brendan, at the behest, he suspected, of Lord Dromio, the minister of trade.
The woman suddenly laughed, as if he’d said something amusing. “Do you at least have aname, sir?”
He’d failed to introduce himself, he realized, and now he was a bit reluctant. There was something about her that was causing him to feel a bit vulnerable.
In the space of his hesitation, she stepped closer. He caught a whiff of lilac or rosewater—something sweet and pleasurable. “I beg your pardon, I should have introduced myself—Mrs. Honeycutt.” She held out her hand.
He hesitated, then took it, bowing over it. “A pleasure. Marek Brendan.” The etiquette training he’d received all those years ago was slowly returning to his brain in something of a slow drip. It had been many years since he’d thought of those long, wintry nights spent on the shores of the Tophian Sea, playing a game with his aunt. Enchanté, madam. Fork to the left of the plate, knife to right.Funny, all that training was for naught, really—he lived a very solitary life in Wesloria, working in the capital city of St. Edys, going home to his little farm at the foot of the mountains in the evenings to water and feed his animals. This did not seem the time or place to renew his lessons, and really, he had more pressing issues to attend to. “Madam, if you—”
She seemed to sense that he was on the verge of excusing himself and blurted, “I have never been to a tea as crowded as this. How many teapots do you suppose the queen has in her kitchen?”
Was he supposed to guess?
She clasped her hands together. “Is it your first time here?”
Was she referring to the palace? Or to London? Either way, he had only one answer. “It is,” he said. He glanced around for an escape. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, not with his hearing impairment. Not with his lack of practice. Not with his lack of patience. Not when his attention was sorely needed elsewhere. He didn’t want to be distracted by a lady’s smile or a guessing game of how many teapots.If the queen had forty-eight people to tea, and each teapot held three and one half cups of tea, how many teapots...“It is,” he said.
The woman was smiling a little impertinently. It was indeed a lovely smile, and if he’d been a different man, in a different place, he would have basked a moment or two in that smile, no matter how uncomfortable. But he was not a different man. He was who he was, in London for reasons that had nothing to do with a woman like her.
He glanced across the room to King Maksim. The minister of trade, Lord Dromio, had his ear. The king looked concerned. Or was he confused? He tended to wear the same worried expression most of the time, as if he expected the roof to collapse on his head at any moment. Just behind him was the ever-present young man who watched the king’s every move. He was his personal valet.
