She cleared her throat. “Ah... very little.”
“If you would kindly share a few words with me.” It wasn’t a question. It was a command. She supposed she’d better get used to that.
“Buonasera. Grazie. Prego.I know the meanings of those words.Aria. Aria di sorbetto. Cadenza.Mostly musical words of that nature. Man, woman. You, me. Some pronouns.”
“So far during your career...” She didn’t care for the slight ironic lilt he’d given to the word “career”—it rather suggested the words “of vice” ought to follow it. “...you’ve learnedallyour singing roles, and the lyrics to arias, by ear?”
“By parroting, if you would, Your Grace.”
There ensued a pause during which she could almost hear him meticulously re-looming his fraying patience.
“I apologized, Miss Wylde,” he reminded her heavily. “Might I suggest we move on?”
“What fun would that be?”
He pressed his lips together.
“You are a... cobbler’s daughter, you said?”
“Yes.”
“And have you had any formal education?”
“By formal—”
“A tutor. A governess. That sort of thing. To teach you languages and maths.”
“Not... as such.”
His little confirming nod indicated both that he took that as a no, and that it was precisely what he’d thought. “Yet you’re fairly well-spoken.”
Well. She was almost amused. Her pride took that as a glancing blow. “Fairly,” she repeated, musingly. “Damned with faint praise. May I say ‘damned’ in here?”
“Do you see a jar?” he said. He gestured broadly.
He was studying her again, a little thoughtful shadow between his brows, as though she were a map to an unpromising territory. His forehead indeed featured a faint line, and there were a few more of those raying from the corners of his eyes. She wished his shoulders weren’t so admirably vast.
“If you learn the arias well by listening, what do you hope to gain from Italian lessons?”
She hesitated, her pride and impulse toward sarcasm warring with the genuine desire toknow. The blessed relief that would bring. Here, for the first time in her life, was someone, anintelligentsomeone even if he was rather a bastard, who could teach her. And she could endure a bastard if there were some return on the investment of endurance.
And so she told him the truth.
“Well, it’s like trying to see through a dirty window, isn’t it? It can be done, but you never see all youwantto see, only bits of it. And the effort isso . . . it’s ultimately exhausting. I can glean quite a bit from context, but am always at a slight disadvantage, and I want to never be at a disadvantage again.”
His expression shifted subtly. It could not precisely be said that it softened. It became interested, she would have said.
“How much money do you have?” she asked kindly.
“Refuse,” he said smoothly without so much as an eyebrow twitch. “How was it you came by your facility—ease—with speech?”
“I know ‘facility,’” she said calmly. “You needn’t translate every word longer than two syllables.”
“Very well,” he said with equanimity. “Why don’t you just tell me when you’d like something defined? Two people who have survived insulting each other without fighting a duel should not stand on ceremony.”
It was the oddest sensation to be yanked between seething resentment and the impulse to like him, the latter of which she felt he did not quite deserve. But he was difficult in an interesting way, and one could so seldom say that about men.
“Well, my mother taught me to read and write. She made sure of it from the moment I could walk. Of course, it helped in the shop, to do accounts and take orders and the like. Our shop was near the theater, and we had quite a variety of customers. Actors and actresses and singers, and lords and ladies and everyday folks. It was Madame Elaine Guillaume—”
