Mr. Bingham’s eyes narrowed. His life had been built brick by brick, course by course, on a series of men slower, kinder, weaker, or less willing than Emery Bingham to do what was necessary. How many handshake deals had he broken? As many as there were men stupid enough to make them. How much had he taken without asking? All of it. You asked only for the things that you were too weak or too poor to get on your own. Bingham was the cardsharp who wins a big pot and then uses his stack of chips to bully the others—to bet more than they’re willing to call, to bluff past their ability to check. Bingham had never checked in his life. He raised every hand. But where had that first pot come from? Had it been luck? Had he been smarter than the other strivers? Had he simply outworked them? Had it been fate, or God’s will, that had set this life in motion?
It started with that first big strike, copper where no one was looking for it in the Montana Territory. He had been living in a hole in the ground for months—an actual, literal hole, with a piece of canvas stretched over the top that couldn’t keep out the rain, much less the cold or the rodents that gnawed at the rotten grub that passed for food. He was nothing but a brash troublemaker who had dug more dry holes than any other starry-eyed prospector for a hundred miles. When he hit the jackpot, he was digging on land he didn’t own without a dime to pay the claim fee. He knew that as soon as he brought the first lump of ore into the assay office, the hills would be crawling with miners with more money and better connections. Instead he brought a sample to a man in town—a small-time pimp—and promised him a 50 percent stake in exchange for seed money to get the operation up and running and on the books. For six months he fended off his partner, arguing that start-up costs—men, mules, equipment—had consumed every penny he’d harvested from the ground. Starting a mine ain’t cheap, he said. Then, before his partner could beat him to it, Bingham signed up a lawyer and paid off a judge who declared the agreement null and void and then prosecuted the man for pandering, the first time in the history of the territory that anyone involved in an industry as vital as prostitution had been jailed. By the time that man was released, Roundtop Mining, Bingham’s new outfit, owned half the town, including the two biggest brothels—one for workaday miners, the other for pit bosses, business owners, and other professionals flocking to the nascent boomtown. Had that man—Dawkins, yes, that was his name—had Dawkins been a victim of Bingham’s quick, sharp knife? No, he’d been a fool with more money than sense. All Bingham had done was correct the imbalance.
“Enough of your men talk,” Mrs. Bingham said. “Maybe the world is a horrid place, but not here and not now. We have a lovely visitor who has come to us from far away, and just in time to celebrate a great event for our two countries. Did we tell you, Sir Angus, that we’re going to be presented to the king and queen?”
“Not me,” Bingham said. “I’m not going to stand around in a monkey suit so that I can bow—”
“Daddy, it’s not just his king,” Anisette said. “It’s his family.”
“Inbreds, all. That’s what I was—”
“Emery, please!” Mrs. Bingham’s eyes flared. “The queen is his cousin.”
A knot formed in Francis’s stomach. When had he said that? Had he gotten too drunk, too carried away, during dinner on the Britannic? He sputtered, tried to form a thought that wasn’t pure gibberish.
“Don’t be so modest, Angus,” Anisette said, flushed with pride at her offhand use of his first name. “You’re among friends.”
“Yes, Angus.” Félicité perched her chin on the same fist that had caught Francis in the mouth. “Do tell us all about your cousin the queen.”
Mrs. Bingham had leaned toward her husband and was talking to him in a rasping whisper.
“Speak up!” he said. “I can only follow one conversation at a time.”
“Earl. Of. Glamis,” Mrs. Bingham said, loud enough for all to hear. “His father is the Earl of Glamis. That’s where the queen grew up—Anisette saw it in Life magazine. There was a picture of her there with her girls. Reminded me of my own little lambs.”
“Yes, Glamis,” Francis said. Had Martin been right, then, about Macbeth being a history play? It was another failing of his father’s classics-heavy curriculum, which offered no preparation for life in the twentieth century. “Of course, it’s a large family, as you can imagine, and none of us ever expected that she would be the queen.”
“How wonderful,” Anisette said. “You simply must tell us all about her.”
“Yes, you simply must.” Félicité’s eyes raked across Francis. She toyed with a necklace freighted with diamonds.
“We don’t know each other terribly well,” Francis said. He cast about for something to say. This was not one of the anecdotes he had prepared. “There is a story about her dressing me up in doll’s clothes when I was a wee babe. But the truth is, you’ve forced me into something of a confession. You see, the queen has always been known for being very good, but I must confess that for a brief period, in my misspent youth, I went out of my way to be quite bad. And so it was to the family’s advantage to keep me as far from Her Majesty as possible.”
The queen talk had rattled him. (Curse that Shakespeare—but wasn’t it his own fault for trusting an Englishman?) He hoped that by confessing to being a reprobate of unspecified depravities, he could align himself with Mr. Bingham and the elder Bingham daughter, and that by claiming to be a reformed soul, he could further ingratiate himself with Mrs. Bingham and the younger Bingham daughter—though it seemed Anisette needed little else to deepen her swoon.
The smiles on the faces of each of the four Binghams showed the success of the plan: approving, conspiratorial, sympathetic, enraptured.
“I imagine,” Mrs. Bingham said, “that you will be among the party at the British Pavilion?”
British Pavilion? They kept lobbing haymakers at him. It was all he could do to ward off each blow. “That hasn’t been decided,” Francis said. “As I said on board the Britannic, my brother’s medical care must be my chief priority. I wish this were an entirely social visit, but unfortunately…”
At the mention of his brother, smiles melted into furrowed brows. While Anisette asked questions—And how is Sir Malcolm? And what have the doctors said?—Mrs. Bingham briefed Mr. Bingham and Félicité on poor, deaf, mute Malcolm (so brave, so young, so tragic, so et cetera).
When Mrs. Bingham learned that his brother had not yet seen a doctor, she insisted that Sir Angus take him to her husband’s personal physician. “I will call Dr. Van Hooten myself,” she said. “You will see him tomorrow—just name the time and it is done.”