Naughty In Nice (A Royal Spyness Mystery)

you and I can go out for a night on the town, and I’ll teach you to play roulette with his money.”
    “We’ll see,” I said, half laughing. There was something rather appealing about him. We moved out of the alcove. Bobby glanced around him before walking purposefully to the door. I watched him go, not quite sure about him. He seemed a typical likeable young Englishman, but the ease with which he had left that salon undetected indicated that he had done that sort of thing before. And also the forged check. . . . Then I realized that he had never tried to say that he didn’t steal the necklace. Somebody took it, and he was the only one who successfully left the room before he could be searched.

 
    Chapter 15
     
    Still at the casino
     
    I wondered if I could ask my mother to have her chauffeur take me home. I started to move back into the crush around the bar, looking for her, or Coco and Vera.
    “I say, it’s you. Are you all right?” Another young man stepped out to block my path. He looked familiar somehow and I realized I had seen him at Victoria Station when I was serving soup. “You took a nasty tumble back there,” he said. “No bones broken?”
    “Only my pride,” I said. “I felt like a complete fool.”
    “Damned Frenchies,” he said. “What’s the betting there was a nail or something sticking out of that stage thing that made you trip. Can’t build anything properly to save their lives, these foreigners. You should see the botched job they did on our villa roof. Least little wind and tiles rain down like confetti. Give me good old English workmanship any day.”
    “And yet you come here for the winter,” I pointed out.
    “Ah, well. They do know how to cook divinely,” he said. “And the wines . . . and the weather is decidedly better. I’m Neville, by the way.”
    “Georgiana.”
    We shook hands. I decided how pleasant it was not to have to go through the formalities of home. In England we would have had to wait to be introduced properly by a third party. Here we could be on a first-name basis.
    “I thought you looked jolly pretty when I saw you before,” he went on.
    “Really?” Was it possible he’d actually noticed me doling out soup? “At Victoria Station, you mean?”
    “No, here in Nice the other day,” he said. “Remember you passed me on your bicycle and I called out to you and you smiled?”
    “That wasn’t me,” I said.
    “Must have been. Looked the spitting image of you. Even the smile was the same.”
    “But I don’t own a bicycle.”
    “Are you sure? It was on the road from our villa. I was walking my aunt’s dog, remember.”
    “No, it really wasn’t me,” I said. “I’ve only been here a couple of days. I walked along the seafront once, but that was it.”
    “Well, I’m dashed,” he said. “I could have sworn it was you. I don’t usually forget pretty girls, you know. Well, no matter. We’ve met now. Come and have a drink.”
    I allowed him to steer me back toward the bar. Two young men had shown interest in me in the space of a few minutes. Perhaps things were looking up after all. As I looked around while Neville ordered drinks, I saw a face I knew well. Belinda had just come into the room, wearing emerald silk pajamas with a halter top that only just managed to cover the important parts. Her face broke into a smile, she gave a delighted scream and she rushed toward me, arms open.
    “Darling, it is you! You came after all. I thought I saw you yesterday and I called out your name but you couldn’t have heard me because you didn’t stop. But now you’re here. How splendid. Where are you staying?”
    “At my mother’s villa. It’s lovely—right on the cliffs overlooking the Med. And where are you? I asked at the Negresco but they said you hadn’t been there.”
    Belinda made a face. “No, it was a little too pricey for me, given my current situation, so I had to opt for somewhere more humble. I’m at a little pension a couple of streets back from the Promenade.”
    “So nobody’s invited you to stay yet? You haven’t tried the famous breaking-down routine?”
    She frowned. “I tried it once and the gentleman in question was kind enough to send his man out to fix my car. It only worked in Transylvania because we were miles from the nearest habitation.”
    “I’d invite you to stay with me, but Mummy has other guests.”
    “It’s all right. I have my eye on a certain man. So far it’s been slow going but I’m quite