liqueur with their cherries?”
Hever Mistle shrugged, his expression bland as milk. “I think Splotze’s last two cherry harvests have been… unfortunate. And an unreliable harvest leads to unease, wouldn’t you agree?” Mistle flicked a sprinkling of salt from his sleeve. “Of course, I don’t claim to be an expert. I merely pass along what I’ve heard.”
Yes, and why hadn’t the same information been passed along to Sir Alec? If someone had fallen down on the job, heads would surely roll.
“I’d think the cherry-growers of Splotze would have something to say about that,” he said to Mistle, who shrugged. “They’re awfully proud of their cherries.”
He turned to Peeder Glanzig. “Could you even call it Splotze Cherry Liqueur if the cherries were being brought in from Lanruvia?”
Glanzig shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t believe these are proper matters for discussion, Mister Rowbotham,” he said, disapproving. Then he laughed, unconvincingly. “I mean to say, all this sombre talk of business, sir. We shall be boring the ladies. Perhaps, Miss Slack, you could entertain us with tales of life in New Ottosland? Such a quaint little kingdom, tucked away in the middle of the vast and mysterious Kallarapi desert. I’m sure we’d all be thrilled to hear more about it.”
Chilled with forboding, Gerald lightly kicked Bibbie’s ankle under the table. Say no! Say you’ve signed an Order of Discretion! But Bibbie giggled, ignoring him.
“Oh, Mister Glanzig, I’d be delighted,” she gushed. “For you know, I think New Ottosland is an undiscovered jewel!”
But it seemed to Gerald that Bibbie was the undiscovered jewel. Eating his slices of melon, listening to her spin a sparkling cobweb of a story out of what he knew were Melissande’s infrequent mentions of her New Ottosland past, he found himself regretting the rigid rules of society that meant Monk’s brilliant sister could never be a janitor in her own right.
Because, let’s face it, she’d make even Frank Dalby sit up.
Carefully, casually, he let his gaze roam until it rested once more on the Lanruvians. Could the explanation for their presence really be that simple? That innocent? Cherry liqueur?
I suppose it could… but since when have I ever been that lucky?
Dowager Queen Erminium of Borovnik was a difficult woman.
“This sauce is too thin!” she announced, poking at her third course of sliced roast beef. “Where is the cook? Can someone send for the cook? I must instruct him in the proper way to prepare a green peppercorn sauce!”
“Please, Mama,” Princess Ratafia murmured, seated at her mother’s side. “I think the sauce is quite-”
“No, Ratafia, the sauce is not quite anything,” her mother contradicted. “Save for too thin.”
“My dear Erminium,” said Hartwig’s long-suffering wife Brunelda, bristling, “this sauce is an old family recipe passed down to me by my late grandmother.”
Erminium smiled. “Indeed, my dear Brunelda? Well. Much is now explained.”
“Mama,” Ratafia whispered, anguished.
“You must allow me to furnish you with a green peppercorn sauce recipe of my own,” said Erminium, as though her daughter hadn’t spoken. “I fancy you will find it more fashionable.”
Brunelda’s answering smile was sickly sweet. “To my mind, many things counted fashionable are, in truth, sadly lacking. If there is a fashion for glugsome sauces then I am content to be seen a dowdy and will not lose a wink of sleep.”
“Save from indigestion, perhaps,” said Erminium, making a great show of scraping all traces of the offending sauce from her beef. “Or worse. For it is well known among those of us who have made the art of saucery our particular interest, that a thin sauce of any kind must prove an affliction to the bowels.”
Ratafia dropped her fork. “Mama.”
But Erminium had the bit well and truly between her teeth. “And I think I have even heard it mentioned by some Borovnik doctors that souls of goutish disposition should especially beware, as a thin sauce is well known to agitate the vital humours.”
“Indeed?” Brunelda’s vast bosom heaved with barely repressed offence. “Borovnik doctors?”
So sharp was her tone that the rest of the breakfast table was hard-put to go on pretending that here was a honeyed nattering about naught. Ratafia had given up remonstrating, and was gazing at her plate with not quite masked despair. Seated opposite her, Prince Ludwig’s stormy eyes suggested he was desperate to defend his mother but knew himself honour-bound not to, on account of his promised wife and the deference due to the woman shortly to become his bride-mama.
Appetite fled, Melissande glanced around the table and saw her own discomfort mirrored in nearly every other face. Only the Lanruvians seemed indifferent, oddly absent even though their presence was oppressively inescapable. Oh-and Hartwig. He was chewing his beef with gusto, thin sauce and all, heedless of the tension. Sometimes he really was a clod.
She risked a longer look at the man seated to her left. Why the devil didn’t he say something amusing? As Splotze’s Secretary of State, Leopold Gertz had made diplomacy his life. There was nothing at all diplomatic about stabbing bits of fried tomato with a fork, not when the mother of the bride and the mother of the groom looked as though they could cheerfully substitute each other for the tomato. Why wasn’t he merrily defusing the tension? That was his job, wasn’t it? It had certainly been her job, when she was practically a prime minister. Good grief, anyone would think he wanted the women to come to blows.
Men! They’re all useless!
“Borovnik’s doctors,” said the Dowager Queen, breaking the glaring stalemate, “are renowned.”
“Indeed they are,” Brunelda agreed quickly. “I have often heard my own personal physician pass comment.”
Her tone left no-one in doubt that the comment in question was anything but complimentary.
Erminium’s thin lips pinched to vanishing. “As frequently as he must attend you, my dear Brunelda, I’m sure that’s so. I must pass you the stylings of my personal physician. Humboldt has cured countless cases of gout.”
Melissande closed her eyes. If only Brunelda hadn’t decided to brave her affliction and join them. Lord, if only Hartwig had appointed a Secretary of State who knew his job. The urge to stamp on Leopold Gertz’s foot and wake him up to his obligations was almost overwhelming. Perhaps she should stop resisting it. If nothing else, his screams of pain would provide a welcome distraction.
“You know, speaking of doctors,” said the Marquis of Harenstein, with an unexpected chuckle, “I had a doctor once who swore by voles for toothache.”
Borovnik’s Dowager Queen lifted her quizzing glass on its black velvet ribbon and stared at him through the polished lens. Her eye magnified alarmingly.
“I beg your pardon, Norbert? Did you say voles?”
Nodding vigorously, the marquis patted his young wife’s hand. “I did, my dear Edwina. No word of a lie. Voles. And I tell you, the pain in my tooth was so bad I was desperate enough to try anything. So I did. But the sight of a live vole trussed to my jaw so alarmed my poor little Anadetta, here, that I was forced to dispense with it, and the physician, and instead put my faith in the court blacksmith and a trusty pair of pliers!”
Dowager Queen Erminium dropped her quizzing glass. “Really, Norbert! You do talk nonsense!”
“No, no, it’s true!” the marquis protested, his other hand pressed faithfully to his heart.
“Then I’m sure it was a merciful escape for the vole,” Erminium snapped. “I can’t imagine what crimes a vole might commit, that it should be trussed to your jaw and forced to endure your blatherings!”
Relieved laughter broke out around the table. Even Brunelda was betrayed into a twitch of a smile. Leopold Gertz, stirring himself at last, turned to the Margrave of Blonkken and invited him to expound upon the recent exciting discovery of etheretically sensitive crystal caves beneath his nation’s capital.
The breakfast continued, less fraughtly, and two courses later mercifully concluded.
Melissande, thwarted yet again in her quest to capture one of the Lanruvians in conversation, stared after their retreating backs and swallowed an unladylike oath. Then, feeling a light touch to her elbow, she turned.
“Ratafia!”
The soon-to-be Princess of Splotze smiled. “Melissande, I was wondering if you’d care to take a stroll around the barge with me? Only Luddie’s gone to smoke a cigar in the saloon with the other men, and Mama says she has the headache and must take to her bed. So I thought I’d partake of the fresh air, in your company. But only if you’d care to. I don’t want to impose.”
