“We’re so sorry to disappoint you,” Delilah said warmly. “We’d be happy to show you our second-largest room, which we will make just as comfortable for you. You will be nice and snug. It’s on the floor above.”
The silence was oddly protracted.
“Very well.” Jane sounded a bit martyred.
“We’ll do everything possible to make sure you’re happy here at The Grand Palace on the Thames,” Delilah soothed.
“Oh, we’re certain you will, dear.” She smiled.
Delilah and Angelique decided that since they had three guests now—one invisible, two visible—serving something fancy involving beef would be a splendid way to celebrate. Helga and Angelique set out to see if they could get a roast, happily squabbling about the price of it and the inventive ways they could stretch the meat throughout the week.
Delilah fondly saw them off.
In the spare moment here and there it occurred to her how odd it was that they’d all easily slipped into this unique way of life, when in typical circumstances their lives—hers and Angelique’s and Dot’s and Helga’s—would have been stringently partitioned from one another. What would her mother have said if she’d caught her chatting cheerily with Helga in the kitchen about her cousin in Dublin this morning? She could even now hear her hissing,Onedoesn’t exchange girlish confidences with theservants, Delilah!
She was still a countess, at least in name. And it wasn’t as though a part of her didn’t feel a bit of a tug toward everything she’d been taught. But it was the sort of tug a rose must feel when trained up a trellis. The trellis had crumbled. She could grow how she pleased.
She felt as though she was both weaving, and already woven into, this life here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. It was hers, andofher, in the way nothing else had felt in her twenty-six years. She hadn’t time to miss the luxury and leisure.Maybeone day it would seem like a sacrifice.
Until then, she would happily sing while she did the dusting.
Dot took the Gardner sisters up to get them settled into their room. Delilah decided she’d dust the large drawing room, paying special attention to the pianoforte just in case musically inclined guests began to pour through the door. Then she took a cup of tea to the drawing room to ostensibly finish some mending, but in truth mostly because she wished to scratch Gordon beneath the chin.
Both she and the cat sprang apart like startled lovers when she heard Dot’s feet thundering up the stairs, all three flights. Dot was quite fit.
“Lady Derring Lady Derring Lady Derring Lady Derring Lady Derr—”
She leaped to her feet. “Good heavens, Dot, what is the trouble?”
“There’s a man downstairs what wants to let a room, and...”
Dot paused and pressed her lips together.
Her face was lit up with a blend of wonderment and a sort of delicious fear, the kind engendered by horrid novels.
“What sort of man?”
“Very tall, not a spare ounce nor frill on ’im. His clothes fit like a skin, they’re so perfect and I could see me own face in his boots. I could not decide between Lucifer or the chap what holds up the world—”
“Atlas?” They’d been reading that particular myth aloud to each other in the upstairs drawing room at night.
“Aye, but summat about him is like both. I would and wouldn’t like to meet him in an alley alone, if you ken what I mean.”
“Good heavens.”
She most certainly did not ken what Dot meant, but she was going to have to go downstairs and face this remarkable person alone, with just Dot for reinforcements.
She untied her apron, shook out her skirts, reviewed her reflection for respectability. Huge, too-hopeful brown eyes gazed back at her. She was growing weary of mauve half mourning but at least the color suited her. She tried on a cooler expression, something like welcoming hauteur, and followed Dot downstairs to the reception room.
The man turned slowly at the sound of her footsteps across the foyer.
But even before she saw his face she knew. Because shefelthim. His very presence was as distinct a sensation as velvet, or flame. And her heart lurched in both alarming untoward exultation and fear.
She stopped short on the threshold of the room as though the carefully chosen and trimmed carpet was instead lava.
He lifted his head.
His abrupt stillness thrilled her. As though he’d braced for impact, too.
