One of them was as still as if he’d been driven into the ground with a hammer, and he was studying her speculatively.
It feltwonderful. So wrong, and so wonderful. It was sex. It was the ball landing on your number on a roulette wheel after you’d wagered just a little too high, which she’d done only once in her life. She wouldn’t do it again, but she wasgladshe had done it.
What virtue had she just annihilated?
“Oh, Miss Wylde, that song is adelight! I shall be singing it whilst I go about my day,” Mrs. Pariseau said.
“Whata happy song about dancing,” Dot said, wiping tears of laughter.
“Yes, there are so few happy songs about ‘dancing,’ Miss Wylde,” Mrs. Durand said dryly, rather pointedly. “So generous of you to add to the canon.”
She deserved more than a little scolding. But she thought it wasjustsubtle enough that she couldfeign innocence, and she was going to bask in the champagne bubbles of her cleverness. She’d had so few wins, recently. She felt positively fulsome with triumph.
“I suspect you have a wonderful singing voice, Your Grace,” Mrs. Pariseau said, emboldened and aglow with the happiness of good music. “You ought to sing a tune. We’d be so honored.”
“Yes, whydon’tyou join in the singing, Your Grace?” Mariana felt emboldened, too. “I’m certain Mrs. Pariseau is right. You excel at so many things, it would doubtless be yet another triumph to add to the chapter called ‘Triumphs’ in your memoirs.”
He didn’t reply. He regarded her with something very like genuine interest. In fact, speculatively.
“Most operas are performed in Italian, are they not, Miss Wylde?” He was very polite.
Unusually polite.
Almost deferential.
“It is my opinion that the best of them are, indeed, Your Grace.” It was lovely to know something definitively that he seemed not to know. The evening was getting better and better.
“Such a lyrical language. So expressive andvibrant.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. A little more cautiously now. She wasn’t used to hearing two relatively pleasant sentences in a row from the duke.
“There’s a beautiful Italian expression... it’s a favorite of mine. Perhaps you know it? I should be pleased indeed if you could turn it into a little tune, with perhaps a poignant melody.”
“It would bemyhonor, Your Grace.” Perhaps, the general that he was, he’d decided to call a truce, knowing the battle would go on and that she could, in fact, draw blood.
“It’s this...” he said, slowly and beautifully. “‘Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagallo.’Isn’t that beautiful and profound?”
“‘Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagallo.’”She flawlessly, slowly, imitated the way he’d savored the words. She hadn’t the faintest idea what they meant.
Mrs. Pariseau cleared her throat. “Miss Wylde...?” she said quietly.
But Mariana didn’t hear her. She only knew she could not hesitate for long without looking like an absolute fool in front of him. So she nodded.
Later she was to remember the duke’s immediate little smile.
A snippet of an aria she loved possessed a similar rhythm to those words. With a tweak or two, she could adapt the duke’s phrase to it.
The room was utterly silent as she lowered her head and took a breath.
And then she slowly lifted her head, closed her eyes, and soulfully released the words with full power, trilling theL’s for all she was worth, hands over her heart.
“Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagalllllllo!”
A resounding silence ensued.
She frankly thought it was a creditable, if not tour de force, performance.
There ought to have been applause, or at least a sigh or two.
