Royal Blood - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,51
me.”
“Too bad.”
A trumpet sounded. The doors to the dining hall were opened by two of those servants in the splendid black and silver livery and we processed through. This time I was seated with Hannelore on one side of me and Anton on the other. Nicholas sat opposite with Matty on one side, and Field Marshal Pirin had again managed to position himself on the other. If anything, Pirin was wearing even more medals and orders this time. He looked first at me, then at Hannelore and his face lit up.
“This is good. Two pretty girls tonight for me to feast the eyes upon. Very nice. Feast for eyes and feast for stomach at same time.” His smile was disconcerting. As my mother had said the night before, he was mentally undressing us.
“Beware that horrid man. He was pinching my bottom yesterday,” Hannelore whispered to me.
“Don’t worry. I’ve already encountered him and I’m avoiding him,” I whispered back.
I noticed Anton looking around, obviously trying to locate Belinda, who was nowhere in sight, presumably sitting at a far end of the table with the lesser mortals. I couldn’t help glancing at Matty and my gaze went straight to her mouth and neck. They looked perfectly normal but then she was wearing a high-necked dress. She caught my eye and then looked down uncomfortably. I found myself checking out the guests at the table to see if any of them showed obvious bite marks on their necks. One woman at the far end was wearing a lot of strands of pearls, but apart from that their necks seemed to be pristine. Maybe vampires bit each other. What did I know?
The meal began, course after course of rich food, culminating in a procession carrying a whole roast wild boar with an apple in its mouth.
“Not the one we shot today,” Anton said. “Ours was much bigger.”
“Who actually shot it?”
“I did”—Anton lowered his voice—“but we let Siegfried think that he did. He cares about these things, you know.”
Throughout the meal Dragomir had been hovering in the background, directing servants like an orchestra conductor. As the main course came to an end he appeared at Nicholas’s shoulder and banged on the table with a mallet.
“Highnesses, lords and ladies, please rise,” he announced in French, then in German. “His Royal Highness Prince Nicholas wishes to drink a toast to the health of his bride and to her wonderful country.”
Nicholas rose to his feet. “If the toasts are to begin, then more champagne, if you please,” he said. “How can I toast my beautiful bride with anything less?”
“Forgive me. Of course. Champagne.” Dragomir barked instructions and bottles were produced, opened with satisfying pops and poured. And so the toasts began. An endless stream of toasts. At home toasting at formal banquets is a stylized and decorous affair with the toastmaster drawling out, “Pray be upstanding for the loyal toast,” and everyone murmuring, “The king, God bless him.” Here it was what my mother would have called a beanfeast. Anybody who felt like it could leap up and toast whomever they pleased. So there was a great deal of scraping of chairs and shouted toasts up and down the table.
Dragomir, as toastmaster, tried to keep control of things, banging his mallet with a flourish before each speech. The toasts were conducted in a mixture of French, German and English as hardly any of the party spoke either Romanian or Bulgarian. If the two parties were close enough together they clashed glasses. If they were far apart they raised glasses and drank together, the rest of the diners often joining in with a swig of their own to show solidarity. One by one the men rose to make their speeches and toast their guests. Maria was the only woman who dared to rise and toasted her attendants, so I had to stand up and reach across the table to clink glasses with her. Then Nicholas rose to toast his groomsmen. “These men have watched me grow up from disreputable youth to serious manhood,” Nicky said and various men at the table hooted and laughed. “And so I toast you now, you who know my darkest secrets. I drink to my dear brother, Anton, to Prince Siegfried, to Count Von Stashauer, to Baron . . .” Young men rose to their feet as he named them, twelve in all, reaching out to clink glasses with Nicholas. He was speaking in German and I couldn’t take in all the names, until