Working Stiff(138)

Rox watched them more closely, her instincts finely honed by years of evaluating the legal shenanigans and manipulations by unscrupulous lawyers.

Yeah, they might like Casimir, and they might want him to like them, but there was an undercurrent of a past or other issues between them.

No wonder Casimir didn’t like it here. In California, he could be himself, open and honest and ethical and laughing and everyone’s friend.

Here, he was haunted by Prince Monster.

She saw Willem working the crowd a little ways away from them, and she watched him.

Most of the guests greeted Willem with pleasure, speaking with animation, and walked away smiling, oblivious to what he was. A few people seemed thrilled to see him, pumping his hand and exclaiming, but when he turned away, they swallowed hard or wiped their palms on their thighs. Rox actually saw one of the women shudder, ripples cascading down the silvery beaded fringe glittering on her dress. Others were merely reserved, cordial, but made their escape as soon as propriety allowed.

Sometimes, when Willem thought no one was looking, his icy glance over the crowd or at a certain person or two made Rox clutch her drink more tightly. He was really a lizard, cold-blooded and inexorably crawling through the crowd toward them.

And getting closer.

Rox said to Casimir, “Let’s dance,” and they walked out onto the center floor to waltz to the small orchestra that had set up at the back of the room after the supper. His strong arms settled around her, and Rox practically melted with relief.

While they were dancing, Casimir said, “You fit in here extraordinarily well.”

“Oh no, I don’t,” she protested, following his very firm lead. “I have been concentrating on not falling off my pumps or snagging my hem with my heels all night long. The silk in this dress is so delicate that it would just rip right off of me and expose my control-top panty hose for all the world to see. And there are so many people.” One-two-three, one-two-three, she counted in her head while she talked. “And they’ve all got titles and beauty pageant sashes and tiaras and the guys are wearing man-jewelry like yourself, there.” She touched the white cross medal-thing that hung on a ribbon around his neck. A lion reared up in the center, extending its claws, just like his tattoo on his right forearm. “And they’re all milling around. And they all know each other. I have been hanging on you all night like a howler monkey in a sidecar.”

He was laughing by the time she finished her complaint.

And now she felt like a petulant little whiner for throwing shade upon the royal reception that his lovely sister had thrown on a few hours’ notice.

She plastered a weak smile on her face. “But I like it!”

He laughed more. “I’m glad that you like it.”

“What is all this?” she asked, poking the brooch on the left side of his chest. The eight-pointed silver starburst surrounded a gold-enameled lion, and gold letters spelling out “Je maintiendrai” arched above the lion. His beauty-pageant sash was orangey-gold with blue stripes on the edges.

“It’s a thing that we wear.”

“Baloney. It means something.”

“It really doesn’t. It’s a House Order, called the Order of the Gold Lion of the House of Nassau. It was awarded to me when I was born, so it doesn’t mean anything. It isn’t a medal for bravery or for service. It was just handed to me because I was born to a particular set of parents.”

The medal dangling under his white bow-tie had the same lion on the same blue circle, but the cross was one of those eight-pointed Germanic-looking designs, a Maltese Cross. “It might seem useless and meaningless to you because you didn’t do anything to earn it, but it’s pretty.”

“I think that sums up my opinion of the monarchy.”

Okay, then. She stepped and turned with him as the waltz music swelled and the other dancers swung around them.

He held her hands more firmly. “You waltz beautifully. Why haven’t we danced before?”

“Because we travel together for work. You don’t go dancing when you travel together for work.”

“We go dancing all the time when we travel.”

“Only when the other side insists on taking us, but we never waltz.”

“I would have, if I had thought that you wouldn’t have backhanded me and told me to ‘keep my paws to myself.’”

She laughed at his ear-curling hodge-podge of a British accent and a Southern one. “Exactly.”

He said, “I didn’t even know you could waltz.”

“Cotillion, again. I was one of those prissy little Southern girls who dreamed of their debut from the time they were seven, when they are presented to society as a debutante wearing a white ball gown with crinolines and hoops like Scarlett O’Hara and opera-length white gloves. For that one, brief, shining night, we show off that we could be proper upper-class, decorative wives without a thought in our heads, that we can waltz, foxtrot, and do several other useless dances, and that we can select the shrimp fork out of five or more other stupid forks. And then next Monday we go back to high school and go on with our lives as if nothing ever happened. Because it didn’t. It’s all fluff and noise.”