An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,103

by somehow contriving to destroy this.”

“Certainly not,” I assured him.

“Then would you please explain why else you are here if not to jettison my career?”

“I did not even know you were involved!” I protested. “Stoker never told me you had a post in the Foreign Office.”

“I do not, as it happens. My role is a more personal one in Her Majesty’s household,” he explained. “I am a sort of liaison. It is my task to bring together those who would not ordinarily work in tandem to accomplish goals set by the queen and her closest advisers.”

“Against the will of the government?” I asked.

“Of course not.” He sounded appalled at the very idea. “But sometimes what the government wants is for matters to be handled discreetly. In this case, it would be far too complicated to broker this treaty publicly and offend the German Empire, and it would no doubt make the empress’s position even more difficult than it already is.”

“I will not fail you,” I promised. “Your treaty will be signed.”

“It will hardly be legal if it is signed by Veronica Speedwell, spinster, of the Marylebone parish,” he muttered.

“It is not like you to be rude,” I told him in a soothing tone. “I fear you are hungry and it is making you dyspeptic.”

“I am not hungry. I am having an apoplexy,” he said, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing at his brow. I peered at his face.

“You do look rather florid. Would you like to take a moment?” I asked kindly.

He stopped before a tall pair of double doors. “There is no time,” he told me, fixing a thoroughly unconvincing smile upon his lips. “We are here.”

CHAPTER

24

Much of the evening passed as if in a dream. I was seated between Sir Rupert and the French delegate, who bowed deeply and kissed both of my hands when he was presented.

“General de Letellier,” Rupert murmured. “The general is the French signatory to the treaty.”

The general swept me a bow, clasping my outstretched hand.

“Your Serene Highness,” he murmured against my gloves, and it felt as much like a seduction as a greeting. He was at least thirty years my senior, with a tightly girdled waist and hair pomaded thickly against his head, but what he lacked in personal charms he more than compensated for in gallantry. “The English are very casual,” he remarked. “We ought to have been introduced in the anteroom, but I must not care about etiquette when it means I have the company of such a lady all to myself.”

He stepped sharply in front of the castle footman to push in my chair with his own hands, taking the opportunity to glance swiftly down my décolletage.

“Merveilleux,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, widening my eyes at him. I reflected then that my ordinary instincts in such situations could not be reliably called upon. I had often been complimented, inveigled, caressed, and otherwise importuned in my travels, and it was my experience that a few sharp minuten—tiny pins meant to fix a butterfly to a card—when judiciously applied to an offender’s person invariably rendered him apologetic. But that would hardly do in this case. To begin with, I risked causing grave insult to the other signatory of the treaty. Beyond that, there was every possibility that he would object strenuously to being stabbed. Men, as it happens, were often not enthused about such a development, I had observed.

“I was marveling at the generosity of the good God,” he told me as he took his seat. “To make a woman royal is a gift from the Almighty. To make her beautiful as well, that is an abundance of favor.”

“Is there a Madame de Letellier?” I asked pointedly.

He nodded towards a lushly curvaceous brunette dressed in rose pink taffeta and leaning very close to Stoker, her mouth curved into a smile.

“That is Honorine,” he said. “I will not introduce you, for you will not like her. Other women never do. But the men . . .” He raised his eyes heavenwards and made an ecstatic sound in the back of his throat. Madame de Letellier was a few decades younger than her husband, and I could well imagine how she had come to his notice.

I said nothing but inclined my head a fraction, just enough to set the jewels on my tiara trembling as I reached for my menu card. Inscribed in elegant French, it detailed the courses we were about to receive. I conversed politely with de Letellier for the