Weighed in the balance - Anne Perry [87]
Suddenly exhilarating seemed a false word to have used. He had been thinking of Evelyn, not the city, and it was patronizing to speak falsely of thousands of people’s lives and homes.
She was looking at him curiously. Perhaps she saw something of his thoughts reflected in his face.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he said, and this time he was sincere.
“Must you leave?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I have business in London which will not wait.” That was truer than she could know. “Perhaps you will do me the honor of allowing me to accompany you in?”
“Thank you.” She took his proffered arm and began down the steps. He was about to tell the footman who he was when the man bowed deferentially to Brigitte and took Monk’s card.
“The Baroness von Arlsbach … and Mr. William Monk,” he announced.
Immediately there was a hush as heads turned, not to Monk, but to Brigitte. There was a murmur of respect. A way parted for them to enter the crowd. No one pushed forward or resumed their previous conversation until the couple had passed.
Monk realized with a rush of heat to his face how presumptuous he had been. Brigitte had very possibly not aspired to be queen, as apparently Gisela had, but her people had wished it. She was revered next only to Ulrike, and perhaps better loved.
His earlier pity for her faded. To be one man’s passionate love was perhaps a quirk of nature no one could create or foresee. To be loved by a country was a mark of worth. No one who held it should be thought of slightly.
The music was beginning in the room beyond. Should he invite her to dance? Would it be insulting now if he did not, or would it be a further presumption if he did? He was not used to indecision. He could not remember ever having felt so gauche before.
She turned to face him, holding out her other hand. It was gracefully done, an unspoken acceptance before he had time to make either mistake.
He found himself smiling with relief, and led her onto the floor.
It was another half hour before he was able to find Evelyn. She was as light in his arms as a drift of silk, her eyes full of laughter. They danced as if there were no one else in the huge room. She flirted outrageously, and he reveled in it. The night would be far too short.
He saw Klaus looking melancholy and rather bad tempered, and all he could feel was a vague distaste. How could such a miserable man expect to hold a creature like Evelyn, who was all wit and happiness?
An hour later, dancing with her again, he saw Klaus talking earnestly with an elderly man Evelyn told him was a Prussian aristocrat.
“He looks like a soldier,” Monk agreed.
“He is,” she replied, shrugging her lovely shoulders. “Almost all Prussian aristocrats are. For them it is practically the same thing. I dislike them. They are terribly stiff and formal, and have not an atom of humor between them.”
“Do you know many of them?”
“Far too many!” She made a gesture of disgust. “Klaus often has them in the house, even to stay with us in our lodge in the mountains.”
“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