“‘Dot salì le scale e lasciò cadere il tè,’” he read. “‘Dot walked up the stairs and dropped the tea.’
“Has this happened, or is this rank hearsay?” he asked her.
“I heard that it happened, but we all know not to believe all the gossip we hear, Your Grace.”
“‘Mr. Malloy guida una carrozza ed è triste.Mr. Malloy drives a carriage and is sad.’
“I can’t think why driving a carriage would make Mr. Malloy sad,” he said.
“It’s a hack,” she explained. “I couldn’t pay him the full fare when I arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames, and now the guilt is excruciating. I truly hope one day to find him and pay him.”
He looked up at her swiftly. She appeared entirely serious.
“‘Primrose indossava un ampio vestito verde e mangiava pasticceria, torta, pane, uva, e carne.Primrose wore a large green dress and ate pastry, cake, bread, grapes, and meat.’ Primrose certainly has a healthy appetite,” he said.
“I think it’s because she might be”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“withchild. But lest you feel too scandalized, Your Grace, read the next sentence.”
He did.
“Primrose and Phillip si sono sposati.Primrose and Phillip were married.”
“I see. Felicitations to them. A thrilling conclusion to the story that began with yesterday’s ‘Primrose wore a pink dress’ and ‘Phillip is a baker.’ The last must be why Primrose has plenty to eat.”
She laughed.
He realized he’d lately taken to saying things to get her to laugh, the way he might reflexively open a window to allow in fresh air.
There were little gold flecks in her green eyes, and when she laughed, they lit up. More of these faint gold flecks were scattered across her nose. It was as if her maker had finished her off by flinging a handful of fairy dust at her, and then, whimsically, pressed a little dimple into her chin with a forefinger before calling it a day.
“I almost married her off to a cobbler,” she said. “My father wanted me to marry a cobbler. I might have done, if he’d lived.”
He coughed a shocked laugh. “Icannotimagine that.”
Her silence and stillness were so sudden that he looked up from the foolscap sharply, surprised.
To his astonishment, she looked stricken.
“Why not?” she said finally. Her voice was quiet, thin, and wary, as if she knew he was a doctor bound to deliver bad news.
It seldom happened that he was surprised unto speechlessness.
But he was.
“It would have been a perfectly nice life, Your Grace,” she said indignantly into his silence. “I’d have a family. Maybe we’d have some rooms over a shop, with a little parlor a bit like the one here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, and a pianoforte if we’d been able to get one at a bargain, and we’d stand about it singing some nights... I would know how my days would look. I’d have... people to care for.”
It almost sounded like an enviable life. Truthfully, a lot like the one they’d managed to create here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
Moreover, one would never be urged to write their damned memoirs if one lived that life.
“It sounds like a fine life,” he said finally, somewhat gently. “It’s a far cry from the King’s Theater and . . .”
She tipped her head. “Lovers and duels?”
“Exactly,” he said, rather ruthlessly.
There was a pause. “I had no extraordinary ambition at first. I sang for pleasure. But after my father died, I sang for money in the hopes that my mother and I could keep our rooms over the shop. I was able to get better and better singing roles, but I never did earn enough money to keep it. My mother was compelled to go to Scotland to live with a cousin, who had more room for her. It’s safer and more comfortable for her there than in my tiny room on Haywood Street. I send money to her when I can.”
She wasn’t complaining about any of it. But through her words ran a current of almost bewildered wistfulness, as though the life she’d imagined was something she could see receding inexorably into the distance. Borne away by the damned caprices of fate, like a boat that had slipped its moorings while she stood on the shore.
