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The butler offered Mr. Thompson a glass of wine, but he declined. “You haven’t got any whisky here, have you?”
“Yes, of course,” Lady Iddesleigh said, nodding at Garrett.
When Garrett returned with it, Mr. Thompson took it from the tray and sipped. “Now, that’s a man’s drink,” he said, looking around at the gentlemen holding wineglasses. He grinned at them, then turned his attention to the princesses. “I noticed you both have the white in your hair,” he said, gesturing at his own hair. “Not so noticeable in Princess Amelia’s hair, but definitely noticeable in Princess Justine’s hair. What is that? A royal thing?” He laughed at what presumably he meant as a joke.
No one else did. Everyone else stared at him, expressions ranging from appalled to confused.
“It’s a trait of our family,” Princess Amelia said. “My father has it, and his mother before him.”
“Interesting.”
“Perhaps we might come through to the dining room,” Lady Iddesleigh said suddenly.
“Yes, let’s go through,” Beck quickly added, seeming relieved by the suggestion.
They arranged themselves to promenade, Lady Iddesleigh taking Mr. Thompson’s arm and pointing out some of the portraits as they passed. Beck took in Justine, and William offered his arm to Princess Amelia.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I might ask the same of you. The better question is what is Mr. Thompson doing here?”
“I like him,” Princess Amelia whispered.
“I am no’ surprised,” he whispered back.
In the dining room, over the first course of soup, Beck asked Mr. Thompson what had brought him to London.
Mr. Thompson—who used a spoon and not his fingers for the soup, thank God—seemed to be waiting for the question to be asked. He began with a short history of himself, how his family had built the biggest steel factory in the Great Lakes region of the United States and how he was here to “make some deals.”
There could be nothing more crass than admitting to wanting to make some deals in the home of an English earl. Lord Aleksander stared with fascination at the American. William glanced at Lady Aleksander. Scowled at her, really. She gave him a halfhearted shrug.
When the soup was cleared and the fish was served, William watched Mr. Thompson pick up a fork with his right hand, a knife in his left, the opposite of the way everyone else at the table held their utensils. Princess Amelia asked him about America—what did it look like? Were there a lot of people? Was it very cold there?
Mr. Thompson switched his knife and fork back and forth, depending on whether he was eating or cutting, and said that the scenery was beautiful, far prettier than England, but that Michigan could be as cold as a devil’s teat.
“Pardon?” Princess Amelia said. “Isn’t it hot where the devil is?”
“I mean that it’s damnably cold, miss.”
Beck’s hand curled into a fist on the table, probably fighting the urge to correct the American’s address of the royal princess. “It must be cold in Wesloria, eh? You’ve got some of those ermine furs, don’t you?” He switched his fork and knife to cut a piece of fish, then put the knife down and placed his fork in his right hand again. It seemed to William a lot of work for a bite of food.
“We do have furs, but they are fox. It gets very cold in Wesloria. I prefer the weather in England.”
William caught Justine’s eye. She subtly glanced heavenward.
Beck shifted around to the topic of American politics, about which, surprisingly, he appeared well-read. All talk fell away, because Mr. Thompson liked having the floor.
After dinner they all retired to the salon. If Mr. Thompson had any desire to court Justine, he didn’t show it. He seemed only to want to talk of himself. Even when Lady Iddesleigh sat at the piano and began to pound away at the keys, he kept talking to Lord Aleksander, raising his voice to be heard over the piano. The man was a boor and so unsuitable for Justine that William wanted to put his fist through the wall.
At some point Beck determined the room was too warm and instructed the footmen to open the doors onto the garden. One by one the party began to drift outside. First went Lady Aleksander and her husband, obviously escaping. Mr. Thompson, having found a friend in Lord Aleksander, went after them. Princess Amelia, having found an interest in Mr. Thompson, scurried after him. And as Beck offered his arm to his wife, William watched Justine go the opposite direction, out into the hall.
He looked at the rest of the party wandering about in the garden and followed Justine. He paused just before the door and took a single rose from a vase of them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THEFRONTHALLof the Iddesleigh house had two window alcoves. Justine stepped into the first one and pressed her hands to her belly. She couldn’t breathe. All evening, as the reality of her situation had settled into her membranes and her heart, it had become increasingly difficult to breathe. Her skin felt clammy; her scalp tingled. She wanted to tear her hair down from its pins, release the laces of her corset.
Mr. Thompson was the worst of them all. A self-satisfied braggadocio with the manners of a sailor. And then there was William, seated across and down the table from her, so perfect in every way, yet so impossibly distant from her.
