“Stubborn?” he suggested as he looked up.
“Perhaps a little,” I conceded. “Yet you have such a marvelous way of knowing people, ‘reading’ them as you call it, and she does trust you.”
I had experienced that first hand myself, admittedly a bit disconcerting at times when I had learned early on to keep my thoughts to myself and then carry on as a sort of self-preservation as my great aunt called it. He had changed that.
“What advice did you give her?” I then asked.
“I told her that my experience was not the example to follow. I also explained that an education, such as ye have, will take her far as she is intelligent, and it would provide her opportunities that she wouldn’t have otherwise.”
“It appears that you weren’t entirely able to dissuade her,” I concluded.
He looked at me with that dark gaze. I could have sworn there was amusement there.
“As I have been able to dissuade ye from doing something that ye shouldna do?”
“I have no idea what you are speaking of.”
He proceeded to tickle the bottom of my foot, and my toes curled. The only thing that prevented further assault of my foot was the service bell that rang on the landing followed by…a knock at the door.
Brodie cursed, then went to the door and yanked it open. Mr. Cavendish grinned up at him.
“An envelope arrived with one of those gold seals on it. I thought it might be important and brought it up straight away.”
I smothered a smile as I set order to my skirts and crossed the office in my stockinged feet. He had obviously used the lift.
“Excellent, thank you,” I complimented Mr. Cavendish. “Most efficient.”
He tipped his cap. “I knew you would want it in short order.”
He spun around on his platform and returned down the companionway toward the newly installed lift.
“Aye, efficient,” Brodie commented.
He handed me the embossed envelope that had been delivered from Marlborough House.
I opened it. “An official invitation, it seems, from the Prince of Wales for his birthday celebration tomorrow evening,” I announced.
Five
MARLBOROUGH HOUSE
The royal manorwas located at The Mall, near St. James’s Park in Westminster, set amidst a park with a stone wall along the roadway that enclosed the grounds and the manor.
The tree-lined roadway along The Mall passed several stately buildings at the edge of St. James’s Park that included private men’s clubs, stately residences, along with upper class shopping and the War Office.
In the faint light from the lantern inside the coach, I caught Brodie’s expression. It could be more accurately described as distracted. In that way he had of turning over what we had learned in his thoughts, little as it was. Our driver pulled through the gated entrance, then pulled to a stop where Brodie presented our engraved invitation.
The guard handed the invitation back and nodded to our driver, then we continued to the cobbled courtyard flanked on either side by a four-story wing of the mansion. Those wings contained private rooms, sitting rooms, and other private chambers of the ‘Marlborough Lot’ as they were called, which included gaming rooms, as well as the Prince of Wales’s office,those of advisers, and an enormous library that I had found to be most interesting on a past visit.
“Good God!” Brodie remarked at the lights that glowed on all floors of the mansion. “How many rooms does a man need to lay his head?”
This from a man who was raised on the streets as a child and had lain his head wherever it was safe for a few hours or had not when it wasn’t.
“Several, I would guess, with his assortment of mistresses and other casual acquaintances,” I replied, with no need to elaborate further.
“Have ye been here before?”
“I attended a holiday celebration some years ago with my sister and Aunt Antonia. It was all quite boring, and I persuaded Linnie to go exploring,” I added.
