Free Amanda Scott - [Dangerous 04] by Dangerous Lady Page B

chattering diners on each side. Servants scurried to and fro, carrying huge platters, carafes of wine, and buckets of iced champagne. Letty drank water and sipped only occasionally from her wineglass, a trick her father had taught her the first time he allowed her to drink wine with her dinner.
    “He who remains in control of his senses throughout a meal is the one who will remember the most of what was said and done there,” the marquess had told her. “He also will make fewer errors of judgment in his conversation during the meal or afterward.” Letty had long since taken that lesson to heart.
    As instructed, she kept her ears open and paid heed to those around her, but she learned nothing that she could imagine was important or even interesting, politically or otherwise. She would not pass on anything to do with the queen, certainly, but what others said about party politics was fair game.
    Generally, she found the evening more boring than any other in her memory. If she looked forward to the queen’s drawing room the next day, it was only in the hope that it would prove more eventful.
    She had attended royal drawing rooms before, of course. Not only had her mother presented her to Victoria shortly after the young queen’s accession to the throne, but Letty and both of her parents had attended two coronation drawing rooms the previous year.
    The next day’s event took place at St. James’s Palace, which the queen traveled in state with her suite, in three royal carriages, escorted by a party of Life Guards. Letty rode in the third carriage with two bedchamber ladies and another maid of honor. The two bedchamber ladies chatted to each other. The maid of honor stared out her window.
    At St. James’s, a guard of honor from the Life Guards stood on duty in the courtyard, and members of the Queen’s Guard protected the color court. Martial music stirred the air, and as Letty knew from experience, bands of both royal regiments would play alternately throughout the afternoon.
    Before the drawing room began, Victoria received a deputation from Christ’s Hospital in the royal closet. Then members of the royal family arrived with their attendants, and soon after that Victoria entered the throne room to take her place, standing in front of the throne, surrounded by her ladies.
    The diplomatic presentations began, and when those with the entrée had come in, and the Countess of Kinnoull moved to present the lady mayoress of London, Letty began to see more familiar faces. Both the Russian ambassador and the Danish minister had dined with her parents in Paris. Each smiled when he saw her, and minutes later, she saw a pair of familiar, twinkling eyes that nearly moved her to leave her post in order to greet their owner. He clearly lacked her scruples, for he came to her at once.
    “Herr Hummelauer, how delightful to see you,” she said when he took her right hand and bent over it, clicking his heels together as he did.
    “Gnädiges Fräulein,” he murmured, kissing the air just above her hand, then looking up with his twinkle still firmly in place. “I hope I find you well.”
    “You do, indeed,” she replied in his language.
    No one seemed to be paying heed as she continued to chat amiably with the little man in German. He was the Austrian Chargé d’Affaires and a good friend of her father’s. When he excused himself, she was sorry to see him go, for the general presentations had begun. Again, time crawled at a snail’s pace.
    “I heard what happened in your chamber yesterday.” Viscount Raventhorpe’s now-familiar voice, coming abruptly, and apparently out of nowhere, startled her out of her boredom.
    Turning to face him, she found herself fighting a flurry of mixed emotions but managed to say evenly, “How kind of you to concern yourself, sir.”
    He retorted, “Concern myself? I, I thank heaven, need not concern myself. What the devil was your father thinking, to let a chit like you come here all