“We’ve less than a fortnight before you leave for Paris,” he said.
The word “we’ve” was the first formal acknowledgement of their conspiracy. That this flagrant breaking of the rules at The Grand Palace on the Thames and sex after dark was something they were mutually deciding to do, and intended to continue doing until she was gone. They were officially lovers.
“Yes,” she said.
But there was no reason to think of anything other than this moment.
He had never before felt so full of things that he could not form into words. And he supposed that was the point of operas and sex, so that you could feel and communicate things you could never say.
She left with the full complement of hairpins she’d had when she’d first arrived.
Chapter Fourteen
Of the hundred tickets optimistically made available for the Night of the Nightingale, ten now had been sold.
“Perhaps people come the day of the show. Perhaps on the day of the show we can send Dot out with a bell to lure people back for a shilling,” Delilah said, half joking. But only half.
There was a silence.
“May I?” Dot asked quietly.
She loved the idea of shouting and ringing a bell. She ferventlylongedone day to do it. She hardly dared hope she would be allowed.
“I think not,” Delilah said regretfully.
Handkerchiefs, neatly folded and embroidered with TGPOTT, awaited early guests. Bowers of paper flowers bloomed in the sitting room.
The days seemed to pass rather too quickly.
Several of their handbills advertising the event had been slid under the door of The Grand Palace on the Thames. One had been violently hatched through with an “X,” on a second someone else had written, “Are you mad?” and on the thirdsomeone had drawn a surprisingly accomplished, very detailed penis.
They all mutely stared at it in astonishment.
I think I recognize him,Mariana was tempted to say.
She thought they might laugh. They were not milquetoasts, these ladies.
Then again, they might not. Recognizing penises was probably what harlots did, and her reputation had only recently been mildly rehabilitated by one article.
“It’s going to be a triumph,” Delilah maintained, firmly.
James could never possibly answer, let alone read, all of the letters sent to him.
His Man of Affairs did that for him, sorting out and setting aside the ones he thought he ought to see, or would prefer to personally answer. A fresh stack of these had just been delivered to him at The Grand Palace on the Thames. He reached for the one on top, from a Mrs. Anne Jenkins of Portsmouth.
He broke the seal on the letter. Something that flashed silver like a coin spilled out into his hand.
He exhaled. It was a Waterloo Medal. The heft of it was familiar; every man who’d been at Ligny, Quatre Bras, or Waterloo had been given one. He had one, too. He ran his thumb across the name engraved on the edge:William Jenkins.
The letter read:
Dear General Blackmore,
My son Billy passed of an illness recently. He said to me on his deathbed, “Send my Waterloo Medal to General Blackmore, and tell him he’s the finest man I ever knew. He’s the one who brought me home to you.” He was on a rough path, my Billy, before the army. I thought I would lose him to gaming hells and bawdy women and other bad sorts. We scraped all we had to buy a commission, and he said you made a man of him. He never left home without your book in his pocket. He married a good woman and we have two grandchildren.
Billy was my heart. I should have liked more years with him. This is a small thing indeed, but I wanted you to know that you had Billy’s gratitude and his mother’s. There are no words for how much you have meant to us.
Yours Sincerely,
