And besides, she’d proven to be a veritable savant about describing the people who appeared.
“What makes you think she’s not a lady?” Delilah asked.
Dot bit her lip. “Well, her dress is good wool and of the first stare of fashion, mind you, but I took her damp pelissefromher—she didn’t hand it right off to me, like”—she made an imperious shoving motion—“and when I did, she said, ‘Thank you, you’re very kind.’”
Delilah and Angelique took this in ruefully. Dot knew most titled ladies didn’t typically thank the servants any more than they would thank the settee for supporting their bums.
“Did you take her name?” Angelique asked her.
“She says it’s better if she tells you directly.”
“Well,” Angelique said slowly, with another glance at Delilah.
Things had just gotten more interesting.
Dot clasped her hands in front of her. “Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand, she... I do think she needs help. Will you go and see her?”
They both spared a thought for their husbands waiting for them.
And then Angelique and Delilah put aside their mending.
“Well, if there’s anything we’ve expertise in, it’s not-quite-ladies in distress,” Angelique said blithely. “Thankyou, Dot,” she added pointedly.
Angelique was married to a formerly notorious, now (almost) entirely respectable bastard son of a duke, and Delilah was married to a famous former blockade captain who’d deservedly beencalleda bastard a time or two, but their unlikely friendship had been forged when Delilah’s first husband—an earl—had up and died, leaving both of their lives in ruins. They had risen from the ashes.
They were both ladies to their marrows, and they both knew a title didn’t make a lady.
“Do make some tea, Dot. And... perhaps bring in a snifter of brandy.”
They stood at once and shook out their skirts, removed their aprons, patted and smoothed their hair into place to reassure their potential guest of their own respectability. They would discover soon enough what manner of lady the steaming woman downstairs might be.
Dot had only been wrong about a guest once. And if she was wrong about this one, well, they knew where the loaded pistol was hidden in the parlor. And they knew how to use it.
Like a miracle, presently there appeared in the room two beautiful ladies who introduced themselves as Mrs. Durand, who was blonde, and Mrs. Hardy, who had very dark hair. Mrs. Durand held a knitted coverlet out to her.
Mariana accepted it with a sort of wordless peep of gratitude before lowering herself onto the settee. She closed her eyes briefly, savoring the comfort. Then snapped them open. It wouldn’t do at all to nod off. Best not to lower her guard just yet.
“Thank you for coming down to speak to me. I know it is very late, so I should like to tell you two things straightaway. The first is that I currently have in my possession only one pound.”
She inspected their faces for outrage or censure.
Delilah’s and Angelique’s expressions remained pleasantly interested.
Very slow, measured footfalls could now be heard on the marble of the foyer floor, accompanied by clinking and rattling sounds. It could easily have been a ghost in the attic dragging chains, but it was Dot bringing the tea.
“I’mowedmore, mind you,” she added hurriedly. “And I presently expect to have more. But that—that—bounderGiancarlo hasn’t...” She pressed her lips together. “Forgive me. That is quite beside the point. The point is, I began the night with two pounds, but I needed one of them to bri—er, persuade my neighbor to spirit my trunk out through the back courtyard and over the fence.”
There was a little beat of silence.
“May we ask why this spiriting was necessary?” Mrs. Hardy had lovely, patient brown eyes and one of the best game faces Mariana had ever seen.
“To avoid the little mob in front of my building who seemed eager to tear me limb from limb.”
Through her slitted curtains, she’d looked down into upraised fists and furious, snarling faces shaping the word over and over:harlot harlot harlot. It hardly fit the circumstances, but it sounded clever when paired with “Haywood Street,” so that’s what the newspaper had printed. Three days in a row, as it so happened. There was a certain type of person who found that sort of thing delicious. It wasn’t true.
Then again, truth didn’t matter to those who feasted upon judgment like wolves on lamb.
“I found a hack right quickly, however,” she added somewhat more brightly, into the silence.
