“I suppose you’ve come for the peace summit then, have you? The weather has been pleasant for this time of year, although one of my servants has informed me that it will snow soon. His hip is as good as a weathervane, he says. Rather like Wesloria, is it not?”
The man’s hip was like Wesloria? “Pardon?”
“Snow. I should think it snows quite a lot in Wesloria.”
Whowasthis woman? “Je,yes,indeed, it does.”
Her smile brightened, as if she was pleased to have had that fact confirmed. “As I understand it, it has to do with the confluence of the sea and the mountains, or—or something like that,” she said with a flutter of her fingers. “I’ve read quite a lot about Wesloria and filled my head with facts. Most of them not very useful.”
“I see,” he said, but he didn’t see at all. Was she a scientist? Were there female scientists in England?
Marek glanced toward the king again, wondering how to kindly extract himself from this conversation. Fortunately, he was saved by the Alucian duchess and future queen of that country, as she came sailing toward them, her tiara slightly askew. She was clearly trying to gain Mrs. Honeycutt’s attention. One of the advantages of Marek’s poor hearing was that he was able to read lips in a variety of languages, including English, Weslorian, and Alucian. She was calling out to Mrs. Honeycutt.Pardon,she said.Excuse me, Mrs. Honeycutt.
“It seems you are wanted,” he said simply.
“Am I?” Mrs. Honeycutt turned to look.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, and took the opportunity to step away, disappearing behind a pair of footmen who were trying to corral guests to a table for tea.
Not everyone was invited to occupy a table—there were far more in the stateroom than there were places for tea. It appeared that none of the guests understood that at first, and so clumps of humans wandered from table to table, examining the place cards, then stood about, talking. Some of them seemed happy to peruseallthe place names, as if they were shopping in a china shop. Others wanted to be seated and served. Others seemed entirely oblivious to the effort to seat the guests at all.
In the end, those who were not seated—the respective staffs and servants of the dignitaries, resident experts in a variety of subjects—were made to stand back and at attention in case they were needed to answer a question or remove an offending bit of food.
Marek stood by himself in the shadows.
Lord Dromio was seated next to Lord Van. Anton Dromio had been named the minister of trade in the way those things happened—as a favor to a favor for a favor, or some such. He was Marek’s superior in the trade offices, and he was quite possibly the dumbest man Marek had ever known—excluding the lad who’d suffered a terrible fall from a horse and had then been suitable only as a helper to the stable masters.
But the difficult thing about Dromio was that he didn’t know he was dumb. He pretended to know quite a lot, and when in doubt, which was often, he relied on Marek to explain things to him. He had a tendency to ask advice from any number of advisors, often changing his mind based on the last person he spoke to. He didn’t particularly like the complicated topics of a country’s trade and economic health, and waved off Marek when he thought his explanation was too taxing.
He was leaning close to Lord Van, speaking into his ear. Van sat immobile, his gaze fixed on the table in front of him, listening intently.
Van had recently been named the foreign minister after it was discovered that the former foreign minister was involved in a deplorable scheme to sell poor Weslorian women to men of influence both at home and here in Britain. It was the worst sort of slave trade—young women for political favor—and none other than Prince Leopold of Alucia had exposed the plot. Prince Leopold had been the talk around St. Edys for weeks—he’d been engaged to the daughter of a Weslorian duke who was implicated in the scandal. It had caused quite an uproar. The prince had married an Englishwoman and settled here. As for the duke and the foreign minister, well...no one knew exactly what became of either of them. Banished to the hinterlands, Marek guessed. Or worse. King Maksim was not particularly ruthless, but it was known that people who acted in his name could be merciless.
On the other side of Dromio was Lord Osiander. The new minister of labor was young and stoic, and seemed to Marek to be fiercely determined. It was said around the halls of Weslorian government that he desired a new era for their nation, one that would foster good working conditions in the factories and in the ports. He hailed from the unforgiving terrain in the western part of Wesloria, where men worked for low wages in the coal mines. Osiander wanted to change that.
But from what Marek had observed, Dromio and Van were far more interested in clinging to the vestiges of their power and influence. It was obvious to him that the person who enabled them to hold onto that power was King Maksim himself. Unfortunately, the king was ineffectual.
Dromio said something to Van that prompted the two men to chuckle. Osiander glanced at them, then turned his attention away, almost as if he had no patience for their antics.
Marek looked to the right. King Maksim was seated next to Queen Victoria. She had come alone to the tea, without her consort, Prince Albert. The table also included the king’s wife, Queen Agnes, and their two daughters, Princess Justine and Princess Amelia, as well as the Alucian Duke and Duchess of Tannymeade, who would one day be king and queen of Alucia. That table looked like a picture of harmonious accord between the main parties, which, of course, had been the intent. And indeed, as servants dressed in turbans and red coats poured tea, the group did look rather at ease. As if they were all friends.
“Beg your pardon,” someone said. “May I pass?”
The voice had come from Marek’s right, and he turned slightly to allow whomever it was to pass. His gaze landed on Mrs. Honeycutt again. This time, she was on the arm of a gentleman who looked well fed and well privileged. She was giggling at something the gentleman was saying. But she was looking directly at Marek.
What the devil? He didn’t like it, not at all. He stepped back, hopefully out of her line of sight, but Mrs. Honeycutt was not fooled. She leaned around her escort to see him. Was she...good God, was she trying to signal some sort of personal interest in him? Or was she an English spy?
Of the two possibilities, a spy seemed more plausible. Although he had never heard of a woman being a spy, he had to admit a woman would be excellent at teasing information out of powerful men. But neither was he generally the object of female attention and, in fact, could say with surety that it had happened to him only once or twice before. The most recent had been in St. Edys. The daughter of a colleague, a lovely young woman with golden hair and soft brown eyes, no more than twenty years or so in age and ten years his junior, had come to the offices every day carrying lunch for her father. Marek had always greeted her and exchanged pleasantries. One day, she’d come with sweetmeats for him. After a week or so of it, Marek began to realize she was not being friendly—she was signaling an interest in something more than a casual acquaintance.
He’d had to tell her that it was impossible. For reasons he could not explain to the young woman, or to anyone on this earth, it wasimpossible.
But it wasn’t as if other women were asking their mothers or fathers or cousins to make an introduction. Quite the contrary. It certainly made no sense to him that this woman, as beautiful and privileged as she clearly was, would have any interest in him. It had to be something else.
Her escort, who hadn’t seemed to notice Marek at all, said to Mrs. Honeycutt, “Will you take your seat?”
“Why don’t you take your seat?” she countered.
“What, and be subjected to Caro’s matchmaking attempts? I should rather perish,” the gentleman drawled.
