It was the worst thing anyone had ever said to her.
It was as if he’d casually rummaged through her soul and plucked out into the daylight her most painful, shameful fear: That for eight years, she’d been inadequate to the task of raising her siblings. To carrying out her mother’s wishes. That she had been faking it all this time, and she had mostly failed. That their lives were merely shambolic, and if she’d been better at it, perhaps Hogarth wouldn’t have gone crazy and gambled when the inheritance arrived. Perhaps he simply would have ordered his own engraved calling cards.
She had never hated someone more than in that moment.
“Well,” she said brightly, at last. “ ‘Thoroughgoing’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
His smile was small, weary, and patient, as if, at long, long last, a slow pupil had grasped a concept.
“Shall I construe from your silence that you aren’t amenable to that particular solution? Or were you simply taking a moment to imagine the evening we might share?” He said this appalling thing distractedly, whilst consulting his watch.
He was brilliant in a way foreign to her experience and terrifying in a way she could not have anticipated. None of her paltry weapons were equal to it.
“The former,” she assured him coolly, struggling to match his hateful insouciance with as much aplomb. She was likely fooling no one, given every inch of her skin was on fire with outrage and her bright pink face was currently pointed right at him.
“Ah, well. We can’t all have brilliant business acumen.” He smiled sympathetically. “I’ll just leave that offer on the table, shall I? Meanwhile, I’ll await Hogarth’s repayment. And, of course, his immense debt doesn’t preclude your brother from enjoying his membership, should he choose to visit Lucifer’s Fall again.”
She wanted very much to tell him where he could leave this offer, which would require him to bend over and dexterously but roughly insert it into a narrow passage on his person.
She gave a start when he pushed back his chair abruptly and stood.
As if on cue, two liveried footmen bustled through the door. One settled a splendid many-caped greatcoat over his shoulders while the other thrust a gold-topped walking stick and hat into his hand. Marchand tucked the stick under his arm and began pulling on his gloves.
“Though it will no doubt astonish you to hear that other people seek my company, Miss Woodville, I’ve an engagement. Mr. Ogden, if you would kindly escort Miss Woodville off the premises and hail a hack for her. But as a token of our esteem, take her out through the special visitors’ exit, not over the alligator moat.”
The bastard winked at her.
“Oh, and Miss Woodville? You’re not left-handed. The knitting needle should be tucked in your right sleeve if you want the slightest chance of actually skewering someone. Though of course you’d never have a chance of bestingme.”
He bowed, ironically. And in a flourish of coat and a glint of walking stick, he strode from the room and swiftly around the corner, flanked by the footmen, out of sight.
She stared after him.
She finally rose to stand on shaky legs, feeling as though she’d been swept up in a whirlwind then dumped ceremoniously on the ground.
She smoothed her hands over her skirts. They were clammy and damp inside her gloves. She had never changed temperature so often in so short a time in her entire life.
Mr. Ogden cleared his throat. “If you would be so kind as to accompany me, Miss Woodville,” he said gently.
“Are there really alligators?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say, miss.”
Chapter Three
Mrs. Angelique Durand froze as she was lacing up her dress for dinner and stared, astounded, at her husband.
“Lucien, he’s arrivingtonight? And you’re just remembering this now? Youtoldhim he could stay here?”
“Yes to all of those questions, and I’m sorry, to all of them, too.” Lucien, Lord Bolt, was contrite. “I truly didn’t mean to trample on our established order.” The established order being that Angelique and Delilah Hardy, the owners and proprietresses of the improbably little jewel box of a building near the London docks known as the Grand Palace on the Thames, made all the decisions about guests. Their husbands, who were partners in an import and export endeavor called the Triton Group, were content to leave them to it. “Call it an impulse of bonhomie. Gabriel Marchand saved my life once in my wilder days. At the very least, he saved my skull. Someone was about to take a swing at it with a walking stick and he, ah, intervened in a timely and forceful way. I bumped into him near the warehouses this morning. We reminisced and traded war stories and he mentioned he was having a new roof put on his home, so he was looking for a place to stay for theduration. I told him about our little paradise here. I also suppose I was bragging a little, because I feel sorry for everyone who isn’t able to live here.”
Angelique knew his last sentence was both sincere and a tactic. It amused her, and it worked. She felt the same way. “How many timeshasyour life required saving? No, don’t tell me,” she said hurriedly. “I still occasionally have nightmares about the one you told me about.” In his infamously wild youth—well documented by the gossip sheets—Lucien, styled Viscount Bolt, bastard son of the odious Duke of Brexford and his late French mistress, had been kidnapped and hurled into the Thames in the dark of night. He’d been rescued from the murk by a Dutch ship about to leave port and had been presumed dead until his return, a decade later. “So what does Mr. Marchand do now?”
He hesitated. “Bydo, you mean...”
“Lucien.”
“He is the proprietor of a gentleman’s club.”
