To my surprise, they agreed at once, and I felt a rush of emotion. I was going to a banquet at Windsor Castle—home of my grandmother, the queen. And whether that emotion was fear or exhilaration, I could not tell.
•••
After a lengthy lesson on royal etiquette from the baroness, Stoker and I were given a brief respite. Stoker complained of hunger and went to the room put aside for his use with the packet of honeycomb he kept in his coat whilst I rubbed my aching temples and picked up a discarded copy of theWeekly Portentthat someone had stuffed beneath the sofa cushion. I could not imagine any member of the entourage taking an interest in such a periodical; it was a lurid little publication even more outrageous than theDaily Harbinger. I wondered if one of the maids had been reading it and hidden it away lest she be discovered shirking her duties.
exclusive interview with princess’s potential betrothed, royal man of action, shouted the headline. I read the article with mounting disbelief. It was a lengthy piece on Duke Maximilian, describing the events of the previous night at the opera house and detailing how his courage and perspicacity had saved Princess Gisela from harm when a bomb had exploded near her. The piece was stickily sentimental and flattering in the extreme, cataloging his virtues as a man of the people, accomplished and yet never lacking the common touch. There was a formal photograph of him in uniform and two more in hunting garb and evening dress. He presented a perfect image of a man of the world, destined for greatness. He was quoted as sayingthat he was a devoted lover of his country with no greater wish than to serve the Alpenwald by supporting the princess. He had many flattering things to say about England and the continued bonds between our countries, and the article ended with an encomium of praise so extreme I blushed for the author. The last lines were a direct appeal to the princess to accept the duke’s hand in marriage and give the Alpenwald the prince it so richly deserved.
I nearly tossed the newspaper aside in disgust. The duke had not “flung himself on the perpetrator with complete disregard for his own personal safety” while “shielding the princess from harm with his own muscular form.” And he had certainly not “apprehended the villain single-handedly before turning him over to the Metropolitan Police.” Every other newspaper in the country reported the fact that the bomb thrower had not been identified much less apprehended, and a dozen different descriptions had been circulated—everything from a nut seller to a dowager duchess had allegedly hurled the explosive.
Just then my gaze went to the byline and I caught my breath, blinking hard.J. J. Butterworth.
I took the newspaper and hurried to find Stoker, running him to ground in the small bedchamber put at his disposal. He was reading a French novel and contentedly consuming the better part of the entire packet of honeycomb, happy as the proverbial clam. I thrust the newspaper into his sticky grasp.
“J. J. has lied to us,” I proclaimed in a state of high dudgeon. “She indicated she was here in order to write a story about the princess, and yet she must have already seen Maximilian and interviewed him for this piece to run in today’s newspaper.”
He considered this a moment. “More to the point, how did she happen to find him when the chancellor and the baroness did not even realize he was in London?”
“Read the last paragraph,” I instructed.
He skimmed it, his brows rising heavenwards as he did so. “Christ and his sleeping saints, do you realize what this means?”
“It means,” I said grimly, “that J. J. Butterworth has a very great deal to answer for.”
CHAPTER
20
We made our way to Julien’s workrooms, appearing just as he was mournfully studying a bowl of curdled custard in the hands of a tearful assistant.
“Archie, this is not a custard. This is a crime,” he said gently. “You must always handle a custard as you would a woman. Have you ever been with a woman?”
The youth shook his head, his face flaming.
Julien clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Let me tell you about my first love, Angelique. What a beauty she was! Martiniquais, like me, and a sheen to her skin as if it were polished by the hand of God. She was plump like a ripe piece of fruit, and when she undressed, her thigh, just above her stocking, it moved. What is the English word? Wibble?”
“Wobble?” the young man guessed.
“Wobble, yes. Her thigh would wobble. You must find such a woman, Archie. And when she undresses for you, watch her thigh. Worship it,” he instructed. “And when you return, you will know how a custard should move. It should look like the round and silken thigh of a woman.” He flapped a hand at the bowl. “Now, take this away and feed it to a sad cat in the alleyway. It pains me to see it.”
The boy fled, custard bowl in hand, and Julien sighed. “My work, it is very taxing.”
“Clearly,” Stoker said with a grin. “How is Angelique?”
Julien’s expression turned mournful. “Married. With nine children. And skinny now like the handle of a rake. It is enough to break the heart. What do you want, my friends?”
We told him and he dispatched an errand boy to find J. J. I expected her to prove elusive, but she strode in, her chin lifted defiantly.
Julien made some tactful French noises and withdrew, no doubt sensing the interview would be an unpleasant one. He gestured towards a tray ofguimauvesas he went, and Stoker collected a handful as J. J. seated herself with ill grace.
“What? I have work to do, you know.”
I held up the newspaper and she went pink to the tips of her ears. “I do not apologize for writing for thePortent.”
“It is a rag,” I told her.
“It pays,” she said flatly. “And that is my first byline on a front page. One more story—the right story—and it will be enough to persuade theHarbingerto take me back.”
“What kind of story?” Stoker asked. She twitched a little but said nothing.
