Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They ate and talked and ate some more.
Gus was intelligent, composed, and easy to talk to.
The more they spoke, the more surprised she was that he didn’t have a job doing systems security for a government or a large private company.
His current position developing the user-side interface of software seemed to massively underutilize his talents.
Then again, it paid very well. His salary had been in the report Zoran sent. Maybe he was in it for the money, and if recruited could be convinced to use his talents toward a greater good, given the Masters’ Admiralty could serve as a financial safety.
Was Gus qualified to be a member? Yes. And based on what Victoire said, Nikolett was comfortable with the idea of offering him membership knowing there was an ulterior motive.
However, she wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet.
She also wasn’t sure it was her place to recruit him, since he didn’t spend a significant amount of time in her territory.
Arguably, England or Castille should be the ones to recruit him, given when they talked about their favorite places, he talked most about locations in Scotland and the northeast of Spain.
That was a worry for later. For now, she’d completed one objective: assessing him for membership.
Which meant she could focus on the other objectives.
The meal arrived course by course across a span of several hours. Someone—she’d guess Maxim—had arranged for them to order not off the room service menu but from the Michelin-star restaurant, each cart wheeled in either by Maxim or Iacob.
“Are you embarrassed?” Gus asked after Maxim brought in the salade course, which was next up now that they’d had their plat principal.
“What do you mean?”
“You look away, like you’re embarrassed, when your bodyguards bring in the food.”
She was surprised that he’d noticed and that he’d called her out. She arched a brow and said nothing.
“Just wondering if you’re embarrassed by me or embarrassed by having an audience on a date.” Gus looked oddly resigned, as if he were ready for her to admit she was embarrassed to be seen in his company.
“Embarrassed by you? Not at all.”
“But you are embarrassed.”
“I’m embarrassed that we have to eat here rather than in the restaurant.
” She gestured at the room, though it was admittedly very elegant.
“I’m embarrassed that my security people had to check the flowers.
” She nodded to where they sat on the table, now in a vase Maxim had brought up along with the fish course.
“They might have been poisoned,” he said solemnly.
“And yes, I’m embarrassed that my security people will know what happens on our date.”
He studied her for a moment. “Would it help if I told you something embarrassing about myself?”
“Immensely.”
“My name is Angus McAngus.”
She stared at him, expectant, but he didn’t say anything else. “Yes, I knew that.”
“Of course you did. Your people probably did a background check on me.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment.
“It’s an embarrassing name.”
Now, Nikolett frowned. “Doesn’t it translate to Angus son of Angus?”
“It does.”
He still didn’t elaborate, but the grim look on his face assured her this wasn’t an odd joke. “I assume your father’s name wasn’t Angus, but sometime in the past you had a notable relative named Angus, and his descendants identified themselves as sons of Angus. McAngus.”
“That’s true enough, but having the same first and last name is embarrassing.”
Maybe she was losing something in translation. Gus—and now she understood why he went by Gus rather than Angus—looked genuinely embarrassed.
“I know a man who has the same kind of name,” she said.
He looked up, gaze almost sharp. “You do?”
“Yes. His name is…” She wasn’t going to give Eric’s name. “Samuel Samuelson.”
Gus made a noncommittal noise, looking at his plate.
What was she missing?
“Is Angus an embarrassing name because there’s…” She took a moment to come up with something. “Is there an objectionable person named Angus in Scotland?”
Gus ate several bites without answering.
The sense of intimacy that had developed with the easy conversation up until now started to fade away under the weight of his silence. Hypocritical of her no doubt, given how many things she wasn’t saying to him. She focused on eating, not sure which way to take this.
“My father named me as a joke.”
Nikolett’s head snapped up from her small salad of greens and tart vinaigrette.
“There’s nothing wrong with the name, except that he meant for people to laugh at me because of it.
Now, no one does. But when I was a child, they taunted me.
” Gus’ smile was cold. “Looking back, if I’d been able to hide my feelings about it, I doubt they would have taunted me, but I cringed every time a teacher said my name, and the other children picked up on it. ”
“I’m sorry. Your father sounds…”
“He was a right bastard.” Gus smiled, but there was fury in his gaze that made her catch her breath. “He didn’t care about me and the name is just an easy example of that.”
“Was?” she asked gently.
“He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, I’m not—”
“Not sorry he’s dead,” she cut in. “Sorry he was such a poor father. And sorry other children were cruel to you. What we think and feel and believe when we’re young… It imprints on us.”
“It does,” he agreed.
Silence settled over them, awkward and heavy. Neither one of them finished their salads, and Nikolett considered grabbing her phone and begging them to bring the next course just to break the tension.
The room now felt off-kilter, as if it were canted to one side and she had to tense her muscles and lean to stay upright. The imbalance was because he’d told her something intimate and real, while she was made of secrets.
She steeled herself. “All my father ever expected of me was to marry and be a good wife.”
It had been a very long time since she’d talked about her family to anyone. Even Nyx and Grigoris knew very little about who she’d been before she stepped into the messy world of Hungarian politics after university.
“I’m sorry,” Gus said simply.
“In Hungary, we tell stories about a king. A knight-king. King Ladislaus, who was so chivalrous and pious he became a saint.”
“Sounds a bit like Arthur—the piousness at least.”
“But your Arthur, he is fictional, yes?”
“Yes. And he’s not mine. I don’t have any love for British folklore.”
She was starting to get the impression Gus was ambivalent about his homeland, despite the detailed way he’d described parts of Scotland when they were discussing travel.
“Ladislaus was a real king. The stories about him turning gold to stone so the wealth wouldn’t distract his armies are a myth, but he was a real man.”
Gus was quiet, watching her attentively, but not in a way that made her nervous.
“My father loved to tell stories about Ladislaus. How he was so great that not only was he a saint, but his obedient, pious daughter was also made a saint. Saint Irene, Byzantine Empress.”
“Empress? Impressive.”
“Don’t worry, she didn’t rule with her husband. She devoted herself to the church and her children.”
Gus’ head tipped to the side as he studied her. “This is what your father expected from you? To be the pious daughter of a pious man. That you would marry and devote yourself to exclusively being a wife and mother.”
“I’m glad you added ‘exclusive.’ There is nothing wrong with being a wife, a mother. There is a problem when that’s all you’re allowed to be.”
“Right enough. My mother was a single mother and had to do it all.”
Single mother? His father must have left them.
“But you weren’t having that, were you?” He smiled softly.
“For a long time I was. I grew up in a small city. There weren’t many jobs for the men, let alone the women. Going to university was never discussed. I was good at school, excellent at languages, but that didn’t really matter except that I would be able to manage my husband’s money well.”
An old, anger-laced embarrassment slid through her. It was hard not to look back on the girl she’d been without wincing with embarrassment.
“What changed?”
She smiled. “A book.”
Gus shook his head, exaggerated and slow. “It’s always a mistake, letting the women read.”
That made her laugh, and the laugh released some of the tension in her stomach. She could stop here, cut the story short.
But there was something freeing about telling all this to a stranger. He might not remain a stranger forever—might even end up as a member of her territory.
Might end up as one of her spouses.
The thought made her shoulders tight and stomach hurt.
For now, he was a stranger, and the confession felt good, even easing some of the tension thinking about her marriage brought. She kept going.
“When I was ten, eleven maybe, there was an international teacher who came for one year. She was teaching younger children, and was never my teacher, but as a gift to the school, she donated two e-readers loaded with books in English. I was one of the only older students fluent in English, and one of them became mine by default. Because my parents didn’t read English, they didn’t know what kind of books were on it. ”
They paused at the knock on the door. Iacob wheeled in yet another cart.
Gus helped gather their salad plates, exchanging them for a large cheese board and fresh small plates.
Once Iacob had wheeled the cart out, she and Gus looked at the cheese board.
“It’s just…cheese,” she said, puzzled.
“I think having it with bread and fruit is not a French thing,” Gus said. “Though I’m glad it’s not a full charcutería and there’s no meat. I’d be tempted to eat it and I’m almost too full for the cheese, let alone meat.”
He’d mispronounced charcuterie, which was oddly endearing. She didn’t tell him that this wasn’t charcuterie anyway—it was the cheese course, and charcuterie meant meat, not cheese.