Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen Page B

Nanny and Mrs. MacTavish. All he has is a mangled ankle. I have Americans.”
    “Chin up. It can’t be for too much longer,” I said. “Nobody stays in Scotland for more than a week or so.”
    “By the end of a week or so we shall be destitute,” she said, her voice dangerously near to tears. “Eaten out of house and home, literally. I’ll have to take in paying guests to make ends meet. Binky will have to sell of the rest of the family silver.”
    I put out a tentative hand and rested it over hers. I believe it was the first time I had willingly touched her. “Don’t worry, Fig. We’ll think of something,” I said.
    She looked up at me and beamed. “I knew I could rely on you, Georgiana. I am so glad you’re here.”

Chapter 10
    Castle Rannoch
August 17
Late.

    As we emerged from Binky’s den and came down the corridor to the great hall, a noisy party was coming out of the drawing room, at the far end of the opposite hallway.
    “And so I said to him, ‘You simply don’t have the equipment, honey,’ and he said, ‘I’ve got a bloody great big one, and what’s more, when it’s revved up, it goes like a ramrod.’ He thought we were still talking about the boat.”
    There was a roar of laughter. Even though they were still a good distance away and bathed in shadow, I recognized the speaker before I could get a good look at her. It was, of course, the dreaded American woman, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. As she came closer I noticed that she was looking rather thin, angular and masculine in a metallic pewter-gray evening dress and matching metallic helmet. And old. She was definitely beginning to look her age, I thought with satisfaction.
    “Wallis, honey, you are shameless.” The speaker was an older woman, dressed in sober black. She was statuesque in build and towered over Mrs. Simpson, but she carried herself well with a regal air, rather like a larger version of Queen Mary. “How you can tell tales like that in public I don’t know. Thank heavens Rudi is not still alive to hear.”
    “Oh, don’t come the countess with me, Merion,” Wallis Simpson said. “I remember you when you were plain old Miss Webster, remember? You took me for root beer floats at Mr. Hinkle’s soda fountain in Baltimore when I was just a toddler, and you flirted with that young guy behind the counter!”
    “Who is that?” I murmured to Fig, indicating the older woman.
    “Oh, she’s the Countess Von Sauer.”
    “I thought you said they were all Americans.”
    “They are. She’s part of the Simpson woman’s party. She was originally called something perfectly ordinary like Webster but she did her tour of Europe and snagged herself an Austrian count. I don’t think the Simpson woman has forgiven her for one-upping her on the social scale.”
    “She’s trying hard enough to remedy that now,” I muttered to Fig.
    “She certainly is. The Prince of Wales has been over here to visit almost every evening. I told him I didn’t approve and he said I was a prude. When have I ever been a prude, Georgiana? I consider myself as broad-minded as anybody. After all, I did grow up on a farm.”
    “Fritzi, honey, I left my wrap. Be an angel and fetch it for me or I shall freeze.” The countess turned to a large, pink young man who was trailing at the back of the party. “It’s positively frigid in here. It makes our Austrian castle feel like the Côte d’Azur.”
    “Mama, you’re always forgetting things. I shall be worn to a rail if you keep me running around like this. Do you know how far it is to your room from here? And all those horrible stairs?”
    I turned to Fig again.
    “She’s also brought her reprobate son with her,” she muttered. “He piles his plate with all the good sandwiches at tea and he pinches the maids’ bottoms.”
    “Hasn’t the keep-fit movement reached Austria yet?” one of the men in the party asked. “Babe can’t start the day without her gymnastics and dumbbells, can you, Babe,