After they left, Gen recounted it to Roxanne, who had only heard some of it.
“We have to tell the guys,” she said. “Let’s get going.”
Chapter Ten
Yacht Club de Monaco
Casimir: After breakfast
Though it was still quite early, billionaire yacht owners and their uniformed staff bustled around the Yacht Club de Monaco. At seven-thirty in the morning, the sun had just cleared the horizon, but the owners sipped champagne and ate an elegant breakfast in the dining room or around the pool, if they were so inclined. Some yacht owners were still asleep in their fifth homes or hotel rooms in Monaco while their staff slept in bunks on the boats.
The yachts’ crew members had been awake and working for hours. Some of the crew were cramming a granola bar in their mouths while they readied the ships to sail for some days at sea or, if a voyage was not planned, washed the yachts’ hulls, swabbed the decks, and coiled the ropes into pleasing knots so as not to embarrass their billionaire owners in front of the other billionaires.
Casimir and Arthur strolled down the sidewalk and approached the yacht club.
Arthur was in his hail-fellow-well-met persona, casual and extraverted with a loose-limbed, careless gait while he walked, one of his masks that Casimir knew well. Caz also knew that the true Arthur behind all the myriad ways that he presented himself was a sober, quiet man who took his loyalties and his friendships very seriously. He was the pinnacle of Rudyard Kipling’s admonishment that man should keep his head when all about him were losing theirs.
Casimir also had a fair idea of what Arthur’s real job must be, other than managing the estates and properties owned by his earldom.
But that was a topic for another day.
They strode down the street called the Quai Louis II, a small side-street directly on the water, toward the entrance of the yacht club. The sea lapped at the rocky shoreline and sidewalks leading out into the Mediterranean, where the yachts floated beside the docks. The slips right in front of the club itself were all full of gleaming yachts and a few of the smaller superyachts that were over thirty meters long, save one slip, where empty water lapped under an oily film.
Arthur paused, regarding the empty slip.
Casimir also stopped walking and looked at the empty space. It seemed odd that one of those highly coveted yacht parking spaces was empty, especially at this time of year. The Prince’s Winter Ball was scheduled for a few weeks hence.
A silent glance between them confirmed that an empty slip right in front of the entrance was odd.
Most of the yachts flew the triangular pinnacle flag of the Yacht Club of Monaco somewhere on their ropes or masts. Red and white stripes formed the pointed tip of the flag that fluttered in the breeze, while the broad base was two swords and a crown flanking a shield filled with red and white diamonds in a checkerboard pattern, matching the third tattooed shield that both Casimir and Arthur bore on their right arms near their wrists.
The yacht club occupied a long, slender building directly on the marina that had been built to resemble a superyacht or a cruise ship. As it was Christmastime, mirrored scarlet orbs and gold garlands embellished the potted plants along the sidewalk that formed ade factoperimeter on the ground floor. A Christmas tree that was giant enough to impress the superyacht set graced the lobby, its top where Casimir and Arthur walked in. The inside was decorated in gleaming glass and many white-upholstered couches for lounging. The terraces and wood trim in the club were the same dark-finished wood that formed the hulls of the famed Carlo Riva speedboats.
A burly, Slavic man with a shaved, well-tanned scalp stepped into their path. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. Members and guests only.”
Casimir and Arthur weren’t wearing navy blue blazers bearing the coveted Monaco Yacht Club insignia nor the correct color of trousers mandated by the dress code, of course, and they hadn’t just disembarked from one of the yachts directly outside.
Arthur signaled to the man with one dismissive finger like the bored English lord he absolutely was and tapped his phone screen three times. He spoke into it, “William, old chap, you’re in Monaco for the Winter Ball in a week or so, aren’t you? Would you be so good as to ring up the yacht club and gain us entry? Thanks a ton, old man.” He hung up and waited with his hands clasped in front of himself, calmly observing the security man who obstructed their path with an icy stare in his blue-silver eyes.
Casimir folded his hands and waited, too, trying to be as cool about it as Arthur. Arthur was just better at being a nobleman than the rest of them. Casimir had violently clashing sentiments about his family due to his childhood, but his conflicts were nothing compared to Maxence’s.
The security man’s phone buzzed, and he answered it. “Yes? Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He told Casimir and Arthur. “You’re free to enter. Have a good day, sir and my lord.”
“I should say so,” Arthur muttered as they walked in.
Around them, the guests who were up and about at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty wore navy blue blazers with the yacht club’s coat of arms with gray pants or, for the ladies, a gray skirt. The coat of arms for the Yacht Club de Monaco, sewn onto the left breast of the blazer, was an embroidered crown atop a red and white life preserver emblazoned with the initials YCM, surrounded by a golden wreath of leaves. The thread that embroidered it was spun gold.
At the yacht club, ties were forbidden before six in the evening and mandatory thereafter, and the tie must be the official tie embroidered with a YCM miniature coat of arms, available to members from the club’s store. The official tie pin must be inserted a precise ten centimeters below the knot, though no one had brought out a ruler in years. This was a yacht club, after all. They had standards in dress and in membership. Had it been summer, members’ trousers or skirts would have been white, but of course, no one wore white pants to the yacht club after September.
Casimir turned to Arthur. “Did you say, ‘William?’ Did you just call up the heir to the British throne to get us into a yacht club?”
“I’m not going to screw around when Maxence is missing. Let’s split up to cover more ground.” Arthur looked at the few people basking in the particularly warm Mediterranean sunlight that morning. He moved past Casimir, greeting a tall, blond woman who wore a vibrant blue scarf that matched her eyes with her yacht-club ensemble. “Hello, Astrid-Gitte, your highness! I know the honorifics are not necessary, but I haven’t seen you since the Shooting Star Cotillion three years ago.”
Her huge smile filled with genuine delight when she recognized Arthur.
Everyone loved gregarious, personable Arthur.
Casimir, however, meandered among the other guests, all of whom were wearing their navy blue blazers with the embroidered member’s insignia and gray trousers. He didn’t see anyone he knew, so he eventually found himself outside the building on the sidewalk, studying the Mediterranean Sea and the tidy rows of multimillion-dollar yachts.
