If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
This was followed by an appreciative stillness, because there was no denying he was a skillful orator.
“That’s... oh my... that’s not very kind.” Dot was aghast. “Wires! Her hair! I ask you! In a poem!”
“It has a happy ending, Dot,” Lucien assured her. “It turns out he’s rather fond of his mistress, after all. It goes like this:
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
“A goddess who treads on the ground,” Hugh repeated quietly.
“That’s the sort of wife you need, Mr. Cassidy,” the countess said.
He looked at her, surprised.
Mrs. Pariseau sighed happily. “Ah, the Bard. Wouldn’t it be lovely if recitations were held on the stage in the new ballroom?”
“It’s nearing completion,” Hugh said shortly. Absently. He’d be almost sorry when it was. It had been cathartic to have something to beat with a hammer.
“And we’re so grateful to you, Mr. Cassidy,” Angelique said. “Before we hold any events, we’ll need a fine curtain to complete it. We’d love to have velvet... but we’ll need somuchof it,” she added wistfully.
“It’ll come very dear, curtains like that,” Mrs. Pariseau mused.
“Velvet isindeeddear,” the earl said. “We’ve velveteverywherein the country house.”
He wasn’t bragging. But he perhaps hadn’t quite heard how this sounded to a pair of proprietresses who had furnished The Grand Palace on the Thames more by bartering, repairing, reusing, begging, and sheer acrobatic ingenuity than by throwing about pound notes. They were earning fairly well now, but almost all of the profit was immediately reinvested in their business.
“The stage will be beautiful when it’s done,” Hugh promised them.
They smiled at him.
He felt a little better. It was undeniably soothing to be smiled at by kind women.
“What a fine thing it will be, too. I do believe Lord Bolt and Mr. Cassidy could enthrall an audience with recitations of poetry,” said Mrs. Pariseau. “The public might even pay to see it.”
Hugh was far from sure of this.
Lucien was amused. “Cassidy hasnopatience at all for poetry.”
Hugh smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid he speaks truth.”
“Why, that is a shame, Mr. Cassidy,” the countess said. “We’ve spent many a pleasant evening reading poetry aloud to each other by the fire, haven’t we, Vaughn?” She beamed upon her husband.
Hugh sought the right words. “It’s just that...” He pushed his hair back. And then he sighed. “I feel that if one isproperlyliving life... an excess of rumination and metaphor can put you at a remove from all that’s beautiful about it. If one takes advantage of all the senses—breathing, feeling, seeing... touching... tasting...” he tried not to look at Lillias “...then merely being alive is poetry.”
There was a little lull as everyone reexamined their beliefs.
Lillias turned to him, then, and said her first words of the evening.
