The Sixth Day (A Brit in the FBI #5)(120)
The car was waiting, the baron, Harry, and Mitzie inside. Harry was also dressed in a morning coat, Mitzie in a lovely embroidered white jacket over a sheath dress. She held a huge silk-and-felt hat in her lap.
Mike stared at her. “Oh, my, you look gorgeous. And imagine, your shoes match.”
Mitzie laughed and she said exactly what Nigel had said. “You look fetching, Michaela. Now, let’s get you settled, then we must be off or we’ll be late.”
Once inside Buckingham Palace, Mike tried very hard not to gawk. Now, this place had glamor. Imagine, Queen Victoria had walked through these incredible rooms with all their huge gold paintings, down these wide hallways, up and down the imposing staircases.
Harry steered them to a small staircase, a white sign on an easel in front of it: Recipients. Once again Nicholas carried Mike up the stairs, followed by Harry with her crutches. Mitzie and the baron took a seat in the gallery.
I have to remember everything to tell my grandkids. The Queen, there she is, the Queen of England, and I’m going to be a dame. But what’s a dame? Does it mean free Starbucks?
Mike’s brain continued to squirrel around even when Nicholas took her hand, squeezed it, and the ceremony started with nearly fifty people to be knighted and “damed.” Everyone sang “God Save the Queen,” then they were smoothly settled into place in the line to be presented to Her Majesty.
After Harry went forward to kneel before the Queen and accept his cross and her tap on his shoulder, Nicholas followed, tall, straight, so gorgeous she wanted to leap on him, but that wouldn’t do, not here, not that she could with the cursed boot. He was knighted, he and the Queen spoke, and Mike heard him laugh.
Mike knew she was going to throw up on her boot. Or she’d slip on the crutches, her hands were sweating so badly. Nicholas waited for her down the hall, looking somber as a judge, but then the grand voice called out, “Dame Michaela Caine, for services to the security of the country.” She smiled widely at him and walked forward, didn’t even fall off her crutches. And then she was in front of the grand dame herself.
The Queen pinned the medal to Mike’s left breast and the commander insignia to her waist.
Elizabeth said, “You acted admirably, madam. You saved many lives. We are most grateful for your service to our country.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Was that her voice, all quavery and insubstantial? Oh dear, yes, it was.
The Queen took a long look at the boot, then shook her hand, and looked to where Nicholas stood beside his father, watching. “Take care of our young Brit. His grandfather will have my head if something untoward happens to him.”
This time Mike’s voice was full-bodied American, reaching the entire gallery. “I will be his St. George, Your Majesty.”
She would keep him safe, her Sir Nicholas.
* * *
Melinda, Ben, Adam, and Dr. Marin joined their small party back at Drummond House in Westminster. Nicholas saw Adam had moved away from the group, trying, he knew, to protect the fresh, hot chips Cook had made especially for him.
Nicholas nudged him with his shoulder, nodded toward Ben and Melinda. “Hey, you’re getting to be an old man, already twenty. Ready for a girl of your own, Adam?”
“I sort of like that one with Ben.”
“She might be a whisker too old for you. No, better to let my mother find someone your age. What do you think?”
Adam appeared to give that some thought, but he said, “Oh yeah, Nicholas, I forget to tell you, they got Ardelean’s right hand, a man named Cyrus Wendell, and he evidently won’t say a single world. So, Ardelean did have someone loyal to him. The coppers also arrested Ardelean’s manager at his main installation in North Berwick, Scotland, Raphael Marquez. Unlike Wendell, he couldn’t wait to tell everything he knew, which is plenty. Now about your mom on the hunt for me? Okay, maybe.”
Dr. Marin stood nearby, listening and nursing a vodka tonic. Mike said to her, “Do you think Adam will let Mrs. Drummond set him up?”
Isabella smiled. “He did say maybe, and if he’s smart, he’ll at least consider it.” And then her smile fell away, and Mike knew she was thinking about her fiancé and the subsequent nightmare she’d survived.
“When do you plan to go back to work?”
“Next week, I think. There’s so much to do, and glory of glories, Persy didn’t fire me.” She smiled again, and this one wasn’t forced. “Imagine, you found the loose pages beneath the mattress of Radu’s bed. And now we’ve restored the Voynich to the Beinecke. Since I’m the one who made the ‘discovery,’ they’ve asked me to come to Yale and personally inset the pages. They’re talking a big ceremony. They want me to read from the Voynich,” she said, more to herself than to Mike. “The pages will like that. After so many hundreds of years, they’ll finally be together again, back where they belong.”
Mike didn’t want to go there, so she said, “That will sure put the Beinecke on the map. Are you ready to be a world-recognized celebrity? The only scholar ever to decipher the Voynich?”
Isabella shrugged. “Here’s the question. Do I tell them the truth? The whole story going back to Vlad Dracul?”
Mike said, “That’s up to you, but perhaps it’s time. And perhaps there’ll be other special twins of your line to read the Voynich.”