Everyone at the table looked at Derek and the man in the red suit.
Victor Rothschild was the first to speak. He sat back slightly in his chair and looked at Derek with the composed expression of a man who had seen many things presented to him as solutions and had learned to be patient about what they actually turned out to be.
"And precisely what," he said, his accent clipping the edges of each word in the particular way of old European money that had never quite left his speech regardless of how long he had been in this city, "iz zis supposed to mean for us."
Derek looked at him.
Then his smirk arrived, unhurried, taking its time getting to his face.
"I was just about to say zat," Derek said, the accent landing in the room with the precision of something thrown rather than spoken.
