“Oh my, yes, of a certainty.” She looked down at the foolscap, gazing at all those new words that would soon be hers, forever. Feeling, for the first time in weeks, something akin to joy. Perhaps the rest of her life had come to a halt, but these words represented both structure and a sort of progress.Even if she never sang another aria again, by God, she would know how to speak Italian.
She looked up.
To find an expression she could not quite interpret vanishing from the duke’s face.
Her heart skipped. She had the oddest impression, though she could not say why, that she’d missed seeing something beautiful and rare. Like... a condor in flight.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said quietly. Somewhat shyly.
“Prego, Miss Wylde,” he said crisply.
There was a little silence, filled with the two of them studying each other.
“We’ve a few minutes more.” Behind them the pendulum on the clock was swinging its way toward four. “You mentioned earlier that there were a few things you’d like to learn how to say?”
He tapped the quill idly against the table.
“Oh, yes. For a start, I should like to learn how to say, ‘Signor, please remove your hand from my bottom at once.’”
The quill froze.
His face slowly went cold.
Then, terrifyingly... bored. As if she’d fulfilled every preconceived notion he might harbor about her.
“If this is how you intend to go on, Miss Wylde, I’m afraid we might as well stop right now. If your objective is to disconcert me, it simply can’t be done.”
God help her, her face was scorching now. “I donot mean to make you uncomfortable, Your Grace. I fear I am entirely serious. It’s a hazard of my business. As I mentioned before, it’s mostly men. If I dodge or give their hands a little smack, they think I’m flirting. If I tell them no, they think I’m flirting. If I laugh, they think I’m flirting. If I say no, no,stop, they think I’m flirting. And if in the end I seem angry, I’m deemed difficult, and they are disinclined to give me a job. I already know how to say it in English. I should like to say it firmly, in Italian, in a way they cannot mistake for anything other than a refusal.”
He remained motionless and silent. But his expression cleared to something thoughtful.
Then inscrutable.
But all the while, he fixed her with the unblinking gaze that made her feel as though he were rifling through her conscience.
“I have a temper, too,” she added, somewhat more mildly. “But having one and indulging one are two different things. And I’m afraid until I’m a diva like Angelica Catalani, who makes a thousand pounds per season, my life is entirely strategy. I should like to make it more bearable meanwhile.”
There was a little pause while he took this in.
“So you would like to know how to say, ‘Kindly do not touch my arse,’ in Italian.” He said this entirely reasonably.
“Yes, please.”
“Ti prego di non toccarmi il culo,” he said sternly.
“Ti prego di non toccarmi il culo,” she repeated just as sternly.
“Very good,” he said crisply. He wrote it down and then pushed the foolscap to her.
“Grazie, Your Grace.”
“Prego, Miss Wylde.”
She paused in the hallway as she met Dot, bringing in the duke’s tea.
“I have a good word for you, Dot,” she whispered. “It’s ‘serendipitous.’ Ser-en-dip-i-tous. It means ‘lucky.’”
“Ser-en-dip-i-tous,” Dot breathed. “Thank you, Miss Wylde. It’s ser-en-dip-i-tous to meet you in the hall.”
