“Poor soul,” Delilah said absently. She never slept as well when Tristan was away.
“And he smells as though he’s been cooking over a fire,” Dot concluded.
They froze in removing their aprons.
“Are you certain it’s not just cheroot or cigar smoke?” Angelique finally asked.
“I know how gentlemen ought to smell,” Dot said loftily, causing Delilah’s and Angelique’s eyebrows to leap in tandem.
“From taking their coats,” she expounded, to their profound relief. “They smell like their coats.”
They did. And for an instant, Angelique and Delilah simultaneously experienced fits of yearning for their husbands and the smell of their coats.
They puzzled over all of this for a moment. There had been a time or two where Dot had described a potential guest and they had immediately asked her to go back down and send them on their way. Usually it was a guest who had come bearing a yellowed menu of prurient services once offered by the building’s former incarnation, which haunted the sign hanging over the door in the form of the very faint word “rogue” visible behind its elegant lettering.
And then Dot lowered her voice conspiratorially to deliver her coup de grâce. “I think he might be someoneimportant.”
“Or believes he is,” Angelique was amused. In their collective experience, most gentlemen considered themselves important. At least more important than any woman in the vicinity.
But Dot had an eye for this, too.
“Once under our roof, all of our guests are equally important,” Delilah reminded Dot diplomatically, with a quick wry glance at Angelique. While it was fundamentally true—and they had indeed received a number of “important” guests, including a duke, and very briefly, His Majesty the actual king—they knew in their heart of hearts that if circumstances involved a shipwreck, room in their lifeboat for one more person, and a choice between their longtime guest Mr. Delacorte and the monarch, well, England would probably need to go searching for a new ruler. They hoped they were never tested.
“Except he only wanted a regular room, not a suite.”
This was interesting, too: usually the important people liked to emphasize their importance by taking a suite.
“And when I said, as you taught me, Mrs. Durand, ‘Whom may I say is calling?’”Nothingmade Dot feel more sophisticated than the word “whom.” Angelique, a former governess, had recently taught it to her and she might as well have given Dot a tiara. “He said ‘KIRKE.’ Just like that. Sharp as a handclap.” She demonstrated by bringing her hands together. “He’s altogether impatient. I told him that we were an exclusive establishment and that you would need to speak to him first, he gave a laugh, like this—HA!” She imitated a short, wildly ironic laugh that made both of them jump a little. “And then he sighed and said, ‘Oh, by all means, do go and tell them I’m here.’”
“He sounds like a joy,” Angelique said dryly.
They were still a moment. Bemused.
In the end, curiosity, and the currently empty rooms, won.
“Let’s go and meet him,” Delilah said. “Will you make tea, Dot?”
Dot gave a little hop because bringing tea to new guests was her other favorite thing to do. And so far, there seemed no chance that Pike would ever be asked to do it, but one never knew.
Dot was right on all counts.
As it turned out, their guest was one of the people Mr. Delacorte referred to as a “The.” For instance,theDuke of Valkirk had come to stay with them, andtheKing of England had briefly parked his majestic behind on the settee, andtheEarl of Vaughn and his family had once taken a suite, andtheLord Bolt had reappeared from the alleged dead (and married Angelique). And though he had ultimately taken to all of those men—he liked nearly everyone, and eventually, everyone was given no choice but to like him in return—he was always more comfortable with the likes of Mr. Bellingham, a vicar who shared his love for donkey races and to whom he’d introduced the joys of singing bawdy songs in a pub while drunk. He felt he was becoming more refined by the minute, thanks to the marvelously civilizing powers of Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. But the “The” guests reminded him that he was a work in progress, and he always felt with them at first the way he did when his waistcoat buttons were just a little too tight.
The Lord Dominic Kirke’s house had caught on fire. Something to do with a lamp. Hence hissmokey aroma. He’d escaped just in time, with a few of his belongings.
They learned this straightaway because, as it turned out, Lord Kirke was every bit as... well, bracingly direct as Dot described.
Angelique and Delilah knew what to do with testy, tired, impatient, wild-eyed men whose houses had just burned nearly all the way down: they clucked over his shocking news, spoke in soothing tones, tucked him into a comfortable room, ferried away his smokey things to be aired and brushed, sent him up some drinking chocolate and a scone, and took his money.
And if he was a bit notorious... well, they had a good deal of experience with that, too.
“He’s going to want to orate, isn’t he?” Mr. Delacorte said somewhat grimly, when they delivered the news of their new guest as he was heading up to his room for the night. For Lord Kirke’s fiery, eloquent speeches in the House of Commons were legendary, and frequently printed in the newspaper.
“Perhaps not,” Delilah soothed. “After all, it’s his job. Nobody wants to do their job all the time. Perhaps he’ll want to quietly sit and listen to a story. Perhaps he’ll enjoy a game of chess.”
“Ihappily want to do my job all the time,” Mr. Delacorte pointed out.
This was true. While he was a partner with Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt in the Triton Group, he was also an importer of remedies from the Orient made up of herbs and ingredients and what he referred to as “ground up bits and bobs, horns and testicles and whatnot,” some of which worked a treat. He sold them to surgeons and apothecaries upand down England. It was how he’d made unlikely friends everywhere. He never missed an opportunity to make a sale.
