Chapter 16 #2
“Yes. Well. I had a moment of panic, and that is now over.” She dipped into a brief curtsy.
“I apologise for having inconvenienced you and left in this rather rude fashion, after you had so generously offered your hospitality and tended to my sick companion. Listen to me apologising again, it is quite splendid of me, don’t you think?
Oh, and Miss Honeywell is doing well but she is still resting, in case you have been wondering.
And you are entirely right, I should have told you so in person.
But that is moot, now.” Her eyes were big and earnest. Violet, he thought. Like the flowers.
“Looks like it’s back on again, the engagement.” Georg tore his eyes away from her and clapped Julius on the shoulder. “Brother-in-law.”
Julius gave Evie a mildly irritated look. “You can’t turn the engagement on and off at whim, Evie, just because you quarrel with him. ’Tis not the thing at all.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Quarrel? Us?”
“Never,” Georg agreed.
Julius frowned. “Looks for all the world like a lover’s quarrel to me.”
“But Julius—”
“Really, Aldingbourne—”
Both protested simultaneously.
Julius lifted a hand. “Quiet. We will do as follows. We proceed with the engagement. We will announce it, as planned, at the Embassy ball Saturday night. And bring the wedding forward to the beginning of January.”
“I can’t.” Georg’s reply was clipped.
“Why not?” barked Julius.
“Manoeuvre.”
Evie perked up. “Ooh. What’s that?”
“A large-scale military exercise involving the entire army, to test readiness, tactics, and weaponry,” Georg explained. “Unless you want to conduct the wedding in a tent? Either way, it’s an inconvenient time for a wedding.”
Julius drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “You’re right. We ought to wait until the Congress is over.”
“How long will that last?” Evie demanded.
Julius pulled a frustrated hand through his hair.
“Who knows? Maybe we should aim for a summer wedding.”
Evie’s face brightened. “Splendid. That gives us enough time to get things settled.”
“Settle what?” her brother asked, but she did not answer.
Evie sat up. “Oh! Which reminds me.” She turned to Georg. “You work in the Imperial War Council, don’t you?”
The sudden change of topic took him aback. “We have some of our meetings there, indeed.”
She tilted her head aside. “Can you show it to me, please?”
Her brother snorted. “Why on earth would you want to visit that place?”
Her head tilted to the other side. “Because I am, naturally, curious to see where my bridegroom and future husband works.”
She put on her bonnet, tied it, and took several steps towards the door. “Aren’t you coming?”
She looked directly at Georg.
“Me?” He pointed a finger at his stomach.
“Why yes? Who else?”
Julius slapped his shoulder. “Good luck, my friend, you will need it.”
Georg drank up his whiskey and set the empty glass down carefully. Dealing with one Stafford-Hill was a matter of diplomacy. Dealing with two, it appeared, required a full defensive mobilisation.
“Where are we going?”
She’d taken him firmly by his arm and almost dragged him out to the street. Heaven forbid if she wanted to take him bonnet shopping.
“You didn’t seem at all surprised when you saw me,” she said instead of answering. She searched his face. “When did you figure out that Miss Honeywell is Miss Honeywell and I am me?”
“Far too late, to my eternal shame.”
“At the inn?” she pressed. “As soon as we arrived at Wolfsthal? Oh. It must have been at the hunt.”
“During the card game that first night. You shuffle the cards the same way as Aldingbourne.”
“Bother and botheration. I suppose I would make a terrible spy if Metternich ever did manage to recruit me. Something silly like card shuffling would give me away.”
“On the contrary. You are too good at it, which is why I did not see it sooner. But the moments when you forget yourself, every emotion is on your face. Now, back to my original question. Where are we going?”
She drew him across the street.
“Do you have a pistol on you?”
He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the street. “A pistol?”
“You know. That device that one commonly uses to shoot people.”
“Not on my person, no.” He drew out his words and looked at her through half-closed eyes.
“Lawks.” She chewed on her lower lip, deep in thought.
“When in civilian clothes, I do not normally go about armed. And when I am in uniform, I wear my sabre.”
“Which is entirely useless. More for decoration than anything else.”
“I beg your pardon?” His nostrils flared with outrage. “It is certainly not decorative. It is a fully functioning weapon with a sharp blade, crafted of the best steel the empire can produce.”
“Yes, yes, I know all about it. The truth is that a sword like that isn’t serviceable in battle, you know.” She talked to him as though he couldn’t tell the difference between a sabre and a soup ladle or had never set foot closer to a battlefield than Hyde Park. “Wellington told me all about it.”
His eyebrows shot up. “And how, if I may ask, have you come to be acquainted with Wellington?”
She shrugged. “I sat next to him during an entire evening at a banquet, and he bored me to tears with his lengthy battle tales. Then he showed me his sword, which was pretty enough but entirely for show, and entirely useless, and in the end he confessed he’d never used it at all during battle, but a more common service sword.
I confess I was rather disappointed. What’s the use of carrying a sword if you won’t use it? I don’t understand it.”
Georg bit back a smile. So the great man himself, hero of the Peninsula, had bored her. He had no clue why that pleased him. But please him it did, rather tremendously.
“The British wear a Mameluke, I believe. A pretty piece, well enough for a drawing room. In that much you are right.” He paused.
“But do not mistake Wellington’s levée sword for the weapon I carry.
An Austrian field sabre is quite different altogether, and I should be grateful if you did not confuse the two again.
” He paused again. “I must say I am rather impressed by your knowledge of weapons.”
She shrugged. “I am an excellent shot, as I am certain you have discovered by now. I am also not too bad at archery. Definitely better than Julius, but shooting is more to my liking. Fencing doesn’t interest me. And cannons such as howitzers and mortars are boring. They are merely loud.”
Georg blinked. “It is rather rare for a lady to be so informed about weapons of war. Why the interest, I wonder?”
She flashed him a sudden smile, which lit up her eyes, and a dimple appeared, and he caught his breath. “The future wife of a field marshal has to be thus informed, don’t you agree?”
He was still struggling for an answer, when she took his arm again and pulled him into a building. The smell of coffee, cinnamon and baking revealed that it was a confiserie, a sugar bakery that specialised in selling sweets and sorbet.
She paused just inside the doorway, her gaze sweeping the room before she guided him to a table in the far corner, where the wall was at her back and the door within sight.
“Why did you change your mind about our betrothal, Lady Evie?”
Her eyes wandered over the tables and the people in the room, as if searching for someone.
“Because I realised it’s rather practical to have a bridegroom after all.
One needs a male escort who is always at one’s beck and call.
They are more convenient than a maid, particularly when one must go out, like this. ”
“Of course.” He folded his arms. “I wonder why this did not occur to me sooner?”
“Better than a companion who falls ill with the measles,” she explained. “Besides, the wedding is rather far off, giving us enough time to still change our minds.”
Ah. So the poppet had left a back door open, had she?
He folded his arms and leaned back. He couldn’t remember when he had been thus amused.
He watched her from underneath hooded eyes. She was restless, shifting on her chair, her eyes wandering over the people. Was she looking for someone?
She bit on her lip and fiddled with her reticule.
“Who are you looking for, Evie?” he asked, quietly.
Her eyes flew to him, like a startled deer.
“You appear to be worried about something,” he insisted.
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Her fingers tightened on the reticule. He watched her weigh something behind her eyes, and found he had gone very still, waiting in anticipation of what she was to say. He was not to be disappointed.
“What happens,” she said at last, lowering her voice, “when one gets caught for espionage? Do they get executed?”
She’d pulled the rug out from under him yet again.
He wanted to laugh it off, then registered the tightness of her lips, the slight shade under her eyes.