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“Momma, I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Peter said.
“The hell you don’t! You’re as bad as Cletus,” she snapped.
“And that’s bad,” Frade said. “Shame on you, Hansel!”
“Momma, may I present my old friend Fregattenkapitän Wilhelm von Dattenberg?” Peter said.
“Welcome to Argentina,” Doña Claudia said.
Von Dattenberg took the extended hand, bowed, and clicked his heels. “An honor, madam.”
“You’re going to have to break that habit,” Clete said, and when von Dattenberg looked at him in confusion, mockingly bowed far deeper than von Dattenberg and clicked his heels.
Von Dattenberg nodded.
Von Wachtstein frowned, but decided to let it ride.
“Willi, this is Alicia,” Peter said.
“Peter’s told me so much about you,” Alicia said. “Welcome to Argentina.”
“The baroness is as gracious as she is beautiful,” Willi said.
“Beautiful yes, baroness no,” Peter said.
Von Dattenberg looked at him in confusion.
“Unfortunately, with Karl and Kurt dead in Russia,” Peter said evenly, “when those swine murdered my father in the execution hut in Berlin-Ploetzensee, I became the Graf von Wachtstein. This flower of Argentina is the Gräfin von Wachtstein.”
“And I am His Magnificence Grand Duke Cletus the First of San Pedro y San Pablo,” Frade said. “The blonde is the Grand Duchess Dorotea, and the fat little boy—by the way, his diaper needs changing—she’s holding is His Royal Highness, Prince Cletus Junior.”
Everyone looked at him in shock.
“Cletus,” Doña Dorotea said, “that’s not funny. It’s cruel.”
Frade was unrepentant.
“And the last time the Graf von Wachtstein here visited the family castle it looked to me—five to one—as if he was going to be nailed to the castle door to make it easier for the Red Army to skin him alive . . .”
“My God, Cletus!” Doña Claudia said, horrified.
“. . . to send the message to his loyal subjects that the old days were gone, and the Soviets were now in charge. And if my little brother hadn’t pulled Elsa there”—he pointed to her—“from a mile-long parade of refugees, she’d still be in Germany, wondering where she could find a crust of bread.” He paused, then concluded, “This is Argentina, and this is now. And I’ve heard all I want about who ranks where in the Almanach de Gotha.”
“Cletus!” Doña Claudia said furiously. “You owe Peter and Fregattenkapitän von Dattenberg an apology and—”
“And that’s my point,” Frade interrupted her. “He’s no longer a fregattenkapitän, Claudia.”
“—and one to the Baroness von Wachtstein,” Claudia finished.
“Do you think of yourself as the Baroness von Wachtstein, Elsa?” Frade asked evenly.
Elsa met his eyes and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I don’t. I thought about that last night at dinner, and at breakfast this morning. Looking at all that food, I realized that I had stopped thinking of myself as anything like that from the moment Jimmy took me to dinner in the American officers’ club in Marburg an der Lahn.”
She stopped and looked at von Dattenberg.
“Yes, Willi, where you and Kurt and Peter went to university. Jimmy took me to dinner in the Kurhotel. Remember that?”
