“And you don’t care for them?”
“I can’t bear them. But Klaus believes we will ally with Prussia one day quite soon, and it is the best thing to make them your friends now, before everyone else does and you have lost your advantage.”
It was a peculiarly cynical remark, and for a moment the laughter faded a little, the lights seemed sharper, glittering with a harder edge, the noise around him shriller.
Then he looked at her face, and the laughter in it, and the moment passed.
But he did not forget her story of Klaus’s deliberate courting of the Prussians. Klaus was for unification, perhaps not for his country’s sake but for his own. Did he hope to emerge from such forced union with greater power than he now held? Friedrich’s return would have compromised that. Had he feared it, and killed Friedrich to prevent it? It was not impossible. The more Monk considered the idea, the more feasible did it seem.
But it hardly helped Rathbone. Then again, nothing that seemed even possible, let alone likely, would help Rathbone. The only person who seemed to care about Zorah was Ulrike. That curious remark of hers came back to his mind.
At midnight he was drinking champagne. The music was lilting again, strictly rhythmic, almost willing him to dance. Until he could find Evelyn, he asked the nearest woman to him, and drifted out onto the floor, swirled and lost in the pleasure of it.
It was nearly one when he saw Evelyn and contrived to end the dance close enough to her, and she had equally contrived to be away from Klaus and had laughingly passed by her previous partner before he could invite her again.
They came together moving to the music as if it were an element of nature and they simply were carried upon it, as foam upon a current of the sea. He could smell the perfume of her hair, feel the warmth of her skin, and as they spun and parted and came together again, see the glow in her cheeks and the laughter in her eyes.
When at last they stopped for breath, he lost count of how many dances later, it was at the edge of a group of others, some fresh from the floor, some sipping champagne, light winking in the glasses, flashing fire on diamonds in hair and on ears and throats.
Monk felt a sudden surge of affection for this tiny, independent state with its individual ways, its quaint capital, and its fierce desire to remain as it was. Maybe the only common sense, the only provident way forward, was to unite with all the other states into one giant nation. But if they did so then something irreparable would be lost, and he mourned its passing. How much more must these for whom it was their heritage and their home mourn?
“You must hate the thought of Prussia marching in here and taking over,” he said impulsively to Evelyn. “Felzburg will be simply a provincial city, like any other, ruled from Berlin, or Munich, or some other state capital. I can understand why you want to fight, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“I can’t!” she replied with a flicker of irritation. “It’s a lot of effort and sacrifice for nothing. We can always go to Berlin. It will be just as good there … maybe better.”
A footman passed by with a tray of champagne, and she took a glass and put it to her lips,
Monk was stunned. He looked beyond Evelyn to Brigitte, who was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were aching with sadness, and even as Monk watched she blinked and he saw her breast rise as she breathed in deeply, and the moment after turned to the woman next to her and spoke.
Surely Evelyn must see that. She could not be as shallow as she had sounded.
“When are you going back to London?” Evelyn asked, her head a little on one side.
“I think tomorrow, perhaps the next day,” Monk answered with regret.
Evelyn looked at him, her brown eyes wide. “I suppose you have to go?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I have a moral obligation to a friend. He is in considerable difficulty. I must be there when his time of crisis comes.”
“Can you help him?” It was almost a challenge in her voice.
Beyond her a woman laughed, and a man proposed a toast to something or other.
“I doubt it, but I can try,” Monk replied. “At the very least I can be beside him.”
“What purpose is there, if you can’t help?” Evelyn was looking very directly at him, and there was an edge of ridicule in her voice.
He was puzzled. It seemed a pointless question. It was simply a matter of loyalty. One did not leave people to suffer alone.
“What sort of trouble is he in?” she pressed.
“He made a misjudgment,” he replied. “It seems as if it will cost him very dearly.”
She shrugged. “Then it is his own fault. Why should you suffer for it?”
“Because he is my friend.” The answer was too simple to need elaboration.
“That’s ridiculous!” She was half amused, half angry. “Wouldn’t you rather be here with us—with me? At the weekend we go to our lodge in the forest. You could come. Klaus will be busy with his Prussians most of the time, but you shall find plenty to do. We ride in the forest, have picnics and wonderful nights by the fire. It is marvelously beautiful. You can forget the rest of the world.”
He was tempted. He could be with Evelyn, laugh, hold her in his arms, watch her beauty, feel her warmth. Or he could return to London and tell Rathbone that if Friedrich had been the intended victim, then Gisela could not have killed him, but Klaus could have. However, it was far more likely that actually it was Gisela who was meant to be the one who died, and it was only mischance that it had been Friedrich, which doubly proved her innocence. Lord Wellborough could have been guilty, or someone acting for Brigitte or, far worse, for the Queen. Or Zorah could have done it herself.
He could attend the trial and watch Rathbone struggle and lose, watch helplessly as the lawyer damaged his reputation and lost all he had so carefully built in his professional life.
