George surreptitiously dimmed the gaslight by them so that Herr Bauer’s face was in shadow at the dining table. He glanced down at the royal family on the opposite end of the table—none of them were looking his way. The Rothfields were equally engaged speaking to his parents and Viscountess Jocelyn, another one of Queen Victoria’s ladies of the bedchamber.
But where is Drina?
A butler opened the door to the State Dining Room and several footmen began bringing in trays of food. A footman placed a boar’s head on a silver platter in front of George. He gulped; he didn’t like it when his food still had a face. But thankfully he didn’t have to eat the boar’s head. There was also turkey, baron of beef, five different types of fish, game pies, vegetables, sauces in silver-gilt sauceboats shaped like sleighs, and his favorite: mock turtle soup made from calves’ heads. George loaded up his plate and ate until his stomach could hold no more.
As he picked up the ladle to add more gravy to his beef, he saw Drina standing in the doorway to the room. She was dressed in emerald green and the light behind her made her look like a shapely Christmas tree. She scanned the room twice before noticing them in the darkest corner and walked toward them.
She sat next to him, a curious expression on her face. “Why is it as dark as an attic and what is Herr Bauer doing here?” Drina whispered in his ear.
“I invited him to dinner,” he said softly.
“You did what?”
“Invited him to dinner,” George said, grinning at his own cleverness. “Don’t worry, he has excellent manners.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed a foreign prince to come to dinner,” he said. “Or my father threatened to cut my allowance … And it has been such a lark. You would have been in stitches, if you’d seen how many times Lady Clara has tried to get his attention. She keeps asking him questions in English and he always answers her with ‘ja.’”
George watched Drina look past him to where Lady Clara was seated next to Herr Bauer.
“You are so amusing, Prince Friedrich,” Lady Clara said with another high laugh and a flirtatious wave of her fan.
Drina shook her head; her face looked grave.
“What’s the matter?” George asked.
“I’ve found the real Prince Friedrich,” she said, glaring at him.
George’s jaw dropped. “Where? How?”
“Here,” she said, pointing to the floor.
“Here?”
“He was in the servant’s quarters,” Drina said. “Because of the mix-up with the rooms.”
George exhaled. “So, he’s not here here.”
“But he will be soon,” she said. “I left him in his rooms to dress for dinner. He’ll be arriving here here any moment.”
George’s head felt ready to explode. He picked up his glass of red wine and drained it in one gulp. “What are we going to do? I think I may have caused an international incident!”
He followed Drina’s eyes as she looked down the table to where Queen Victoria was sitting next to her husband, Prince Albert.
“Has Herr Bauer been introduced to the Queen or Prince Albert yet?” Drina asked.
“No,” George said. “We arrived after everyone had already assembled for dinner. I didn’t introduce him to anyone except Lady Clara.”
“Good,” she said. “We can still think of something.”
“We can think while we eat,” he said, trying to lighten her mood. “You haven’t had a bite since luncheon and you didn’t eat much then. Would you like me to cut you off an ear from the boar’s head?”
They both looked at the boar’s head on the silver platter in front of them. Its eyes were open and there was a large red apple in its mouth. Why civilized people put decapitated pigs’ heads on the table, he’d never understand.
“George, how did you know that I shared Prince Albert’s fondness for boar’s head?” Drina said teasingly. “I’ll eat it, if you cut it off.”
She was calling his bluff. This was the Drina he knew.
“I’m not sure what would make me more ill,” he admitted. “Cutting off the ear or watching you eat it.”
Drina shrugged her curvaceous shoulders and George’s eyes noticed that she was wearing an enormous emerald on a golden chain around her neck. The emerald brought attention to her chest, which he thought didn’t require any more attention. She smirked at him before reaching her hand out to the boar’s head and taking the apple from its mouth. She placed it on his plate. “There you go, George.”
“I find myself already full,” he said. “I’ll let you have the apple as an early Christmas present.”
She laughed. “That isn’t a proper Christmas present at all, in England or Hoburg.”
“What is a proper Christmas present in Hoburg?”
“My mother would say jewels,” Drina said, touching the enormous emerald at her breast. “My father would say a book. I suppose the proper present is what a person wants or needs most.”
“So, a boar’s head is right out.”
She laughed like he’d hoped she would and dished herself up some fish and vegetables. She ate her food, but her eyes kept darting toward the door. George was too afraid to look for the prince.
What a mess I’ve gotten us into.
The footmen began to remove the dinner plates from the table and the superfluous dishes—including the boar’s head. George’s stomach was so full that he didn’t think he could eat another bite. That was until the footmen brought out an enormous Christmas pudding (on fire and as big as his head), a tower of mince pies, bon-bon dishes, cream dishes, and ice pails displayed on porcelain dessert trays held up by four figures representing the different seasons. It would be a crying shame to let such delicacies go to waist—waste. He’d meant waste.
He popped a whole mince pie in his mouth just as Drina grabbed his arm. He choked on the pie, beating his chest with a fist and coughing loudly.
“Whatever you do, don’t introduce Herr Bauer to anyone else,” she whispered, and darted from her chair to the door.
George saw a glimpse of a tall, blond young man in a red coat with a black sash covered in jewels standing in the doorway. Drina pushed him back through the door that led to the Octagon Dining Room and closed it behind them. George exhaled in relief. He looked from Herr Bauer smiling at Lady Clara to the enormous serving of Christmas pudding on his plate. Suddenly he found himself quite without an appetite.