If he didn’t say yes, Ernst would offer all night. “Thank you, yes, I think I’ll have a very small serving of chips.”
“Chips. Northton grown. Can’t beat.” Ernst shoved away from the table and called to his wife. “Stella, chips.”
“You prince?” The man at the table next to Gus leaned toward him.
“So it says on my birth certificate.”
“Sorry. Women.” He shook his head. “Can’t figure. Those lasses. Running. You a good man.” He clapped Gus’s arm. “Don’t give up. Right one.” He patted his heart. “Love is worth it.”
“T-thank you.” Gus buried his face in his pint, his eyes stinging from the man’s sincere encouragement. But was it true that love was worth…what? Everything he’d been through? All the grief? The mortification? The nights he wondered who he was—if all the headlines were true? Pudgy? Pathetic? That there was something wrong with him that caused women to leave?
Maybe love was for everyone else, just not him. Never mind. He was in no mood for a pity party, but two broken engagements in less than two years? One had to work to shrug it off.
Gus’s phone pinged. Hemstead.
Where are you?
In town. Perfectly fine. Be home soon.
Please, sir, do not leave the castle without me.
Ernst burst from the kitchen with alargeplate of fries and set them in front of Gus. “Stella. No small. Only large.” He reached into his apron for a bottle of ketchup. “America.” His big laugh tickled Gus. “Betsy, more pint.”
Ernst returned to his chair and rested his thick, muscled arm on the table. “Now, tell Ernst about it.”
“About what?”
“The lass. The love.” He twirled his finger in front of Gus’s eyes. “I see.”
Gus batted the man’s hand away. “You see nothing. There’s no love. Why don’t you tell about theBelly of the Beast and life in Dalholm?”
Ernst’s rapid, broken speech was its own kind of poetry, and Gus’s mind automatically filled in the vacant parts of the story with proper grammar. Nevertheless, he understood life for Ernst was “supersplendous.”
The tech companies caused the hamlet to prosper with a surge of young career folks who then met, fell in love,ah, only in Dalholm, and married. Ernst stressedmarriedwith a narrowed gaze at Gus.
“You. Marry.”
“Not for me, my friend. Not for a long, long time.”
Ernst huffed at the answer but carried on with his update. After they married, the youngsters bought the older homes on the east side, in the Old Hamlet, and began restoring them.
“New?Pffbbt.” Ernst swiped the air with his broad hand. “Restore old. Better. You?” He clapped his hands. “Dalholm is love. Catch you, prince, will catch you.”
“Noooo…” Gus shoved the plate of chips away—he couldn’t eat one more bite—and spoke in shorthand. “Wrong. Miss by long shot. Big.”
Ernst laughed. “Me wrong? You wrong. Very wrong.”
Well, that started a debate as Betsy angled a pitcher over his glass. Love? What did Ernst know about Gus’s love life? Past, present, or future?
“Listen up, Ernst,” he said, reaching for the frothy pint and speaking in the queen’s dialect. “Let me tell you what you didn’t read in the press. Let me set the record straight.”
Chapter Nine
Queen Catherine II
Today was one of those Mondays that stretched the limits of her royal demeanor.
She woke up early, agitated instead of refreshed. Regrets from years gone by crept from behind long-ago closed doors and haunted her dreams.
