An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) -Deanna Raybourn Page 0,107
asked brightly.
He nodded, resuming his place. The footman presented a fresh dish of the pudding but the general waved him off hastily. “A cup of tea please,” he pleaded. “Very weak. Nothing more.”
The general spent the rest of the meal nursing his cup of tea and shuddering every time he looked at food. It was not the kindest method of handling the situation, I reflected, but it had always proven mightily effective. I glanced down the table to see Stoker still deeply engaged in conversation with Madame de Letellier. She laughed at something he said, exchanging his empty plate of pudding for her full one, and he attacked it with gusto. I gestured for the footman to fill my glass once more with the muscat the general had declined.
“But only halfway,” I instructed. After the lavish amount of champagne I had consumed the previous night, I intended to keep a clear head about me for the signing of the treaty.
When the last of the plates had been cleared, Rupert rose from his seat. “Your Serene Highness, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen,” he said. “We have been invited to take our champagne in the lantern room.”
Stoker sidled up behind me. “Did you have a nice dinner with Rupert?” he asked, grinning.
“I think your brother is rather put out with us,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Nothing that has not happened before.”
I nodded towards his dinner companion, Madame de Letellier. “Your partner is very pretty.”
His mouth twitched. “Enchantingly so. But she did not spend the meal leering into my gown. The general seems entirely taken with you.”
“Oh, he is. We mean to marry in the spring. We shall name our first child after you if it is a boy. Or a girl. Revelstokia.”
He gave a snort of suppressed laughter behind his gloved hand. There was something utterly delicious about sharing a jest with him, a secret laugh that no one else in that company could understand.
“Your Serene Highness,” the chancellor’s low voice interrupted my reverie. He gave me a tight smile. “You are doing very well,” he said, lowering his voice. “Not much longer.”
We entered the lantern room. Above swung the lamp for which the chamber was named, an enormous lantern that cast a warm glow over the octagonal room. Across the expanse of thick carpet, a table had been laid with a white cloth, and enormous silver champagne coolers had been filled with ice. Dark green bottles were nestled in the snowy piles, rivulets of water running down the golden labels. Behind the table, footmen were discreetly opening bottles and filling coupes.
Standing in front of the table was a diminutive figure dressed all in black. For a moment, my heart stilled in fear at the notion that it might be my grandmother. But this woman was too slender; although her figure was lushly plump, it had not yet achieved the dumpling roundness of the queen’s. Her face bore traces of grief, marking a visage that had never been pretty but might once have been handsome. It was a purposeful face, full of character, with a stubborn chin and a level blue gaze. Her gown was the latest Paris fashion rendered in stark black silk and heavily embroidered in jet which clacked when she moved. Dark hair, threaded with silver, had been pinned tightly back beneath a widow’s peaked cap. A long black veil hung to her ankles, and at her neck a brooch of enormous diamonds shimmered and shattered the light.
She held up her hands, more diamonds glittering as she moved. “Welcome, friends,” she said in English accented by an edge of German. “Welcome to Windsor Castle, where we take our first steps towards a lasting peace.”
She came towards me, hands outstretched. I recovered myself just in time to make her a low curtsy. “Your Serene Highness,” she said, taking my hands in hers and lifting me.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” I returned in a low voice.
She looked at me a long moment, studying me. Then her face wreathed in smiles. “We will not stand on ceremony, Gisela,” she said, wrapping her arms about me. “Give me a kiss, child.”
There was no response to make except to return her embrace. I had recognized her at once from her photographs, of course. This was Her Imperial Majesty, the Dowager Empress of Germany, Princess Royal of Great Britain.
And my aunt Vicky.
CHAPTER
25
The next several minutes were occupied with the handing out of champagne glasses and the greeting of the other dignitaries. Toasts were proposed and drunk, and