you could grant me this favor.”
Gladden your heart? It would gladden my heart to tell you to go to the devil, but we both know that there is no chance of me being allowed to say that.
Princess Olga smiled from son to son. Christian nodded. There would be no getting out of granting Gustav his request. “It would be my pleasure to take any gifts from our family to Erika and Magnus. Now if you would please excuse me, I need to go and start making preparations for my departure,” he said.
As he crossed the highly polished parquetry floor, Christian softly whistled to himself. It was all he could do not to break into a happy little dance.
Soon he would be bound for London—and Erika.
Chapter Six
London 1815
Mid-August
* * *
Erika picked up her father’s boots, tossed them under his bed and growled. “Will you ever learn to put your things away, Pappa?”
Count Magnus Jansson had never been one for tidiness. When they had lived in their own palatial home in Stockholm with plenty of servants, it had not been a problem. But in the small house in Duke Street, it most certainly was an issue.
London was a big city. An expensive one. Real estate was at a premium, especially in the streets close to where most foreign embassies and envoys were situated. It had taken some getting used to, living in such cramped quarters and only having a handful of servants, most of whom did not reside in the house.
“Förlät. I thought I had moved them,” he replied from his study next door.
“Apology accepted, but you do need to look where you leave your clothes.”
And books, papers, cups etc.
Two years of living in the English capital and Erika was still getting used to the idea of having to do much of the work herself and run a household with only a small retinue of servants. Even staff cost a great deal more than what they did in Sweden.
Early on in their stay, she had developed a simple system for managing the household budget. Take whatever price she would expect to pay for something, double it and add a bit more. Only then would she be within range of what it would actually cost.
She had just picked up Magnus’s dressing gown and moved to hang it in the closet, when her father’s head suddenly appeared around the door.
“It is Thursday, is it not?” he asked.
Well, yesterday she had visited the fish monger at Covent Garden market, and she always went on Wednesday. Wednesday’s fish was the freshest of the week. “Yes, today is Thursday. Why do you ask?”
He raised an eyebrow. “The Northern Lion is due in port this morning. And you know what that means.”
Erika chuckled. Her father was a messy, at times muddleheaded man, but he loved getting parcels from home.
Every month when the ship from Sweden arrived at London docks, there would be a slew of diplomatic papers and letters for Count Jansson. Along with them would be a box of treats—baked pies, pickled herrings in jars, and several bottles of potato vodka were usually included. There would also be a bunch of semi-dried flowers tied with a pretty ribbon.
The flowers, often wild Swedish twinflowers or arctic starflowers almost always made Erika cry. She would place them in a vase by her bedroom window, only taking them down when the next box arrived.
Someone in Stockholm had started sending them these wonderful gifts not long after they had arrived in England and had kept doing it ever since. The odd thing was that they always arrived without a card, a note, or anything that would give an indication as to the identity of the sender. It was touching to think somebody made the effort to send such a personalized gift every month, especially the flowers.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same thing for the letter which Prince Gustav regularly sent. Her name would be in large, bold letters on the front, his personal stamp marked in the wax seal on the back.
“I shall head down to the dockside today and greet the boat as it comes in. I can meet you at Baron von Rehausen’s home and give him the diplomatic bag. After that we can come back here, and you can open the box and enjoy a glass of Brännvin with your supper,” she said.
“That sounds like an excellent idea, Erika my dear. Let me go and get my papers and then we can leave.”
Erika turned back into the hallway