But nothing made him feel more alive than ambition. The Grand Palace on the Thames wasrightnext to a livery stable. Never had a building location been better suited for a gaming hell.
Perhaps he’d call it Kittens and Unicorns when he owned it. Because he wanted it. And everyone had a price.
He raised the knocker on the red door and gave it a smart rap.
He waited. The rat, finished with its ablutions, scurried off.
After a few seconds he put his ear to the door. A muffled male voice muttered “Ow!” while a woman indignantly said what sounded like “The moon isn’t even full!”
Marchand stepped swiftly backward when at last the peep hatch swung open.
A large pale eye appeared in the little window.
“Welcome to the Grand Palace on the Thames, the most exclusive boardinghouse in London!” The eye belonged to a cheerful young woman. This was all said in a breathless rush, as though she’d run a mile to get to the door.
“Is it? Well, then. Tonight must be my lucky night.”
“I’m afraid that depends, sir. Curfew is in five minutes. And Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy will want to speak with you first.”
What on earth? Bolt hadn’t mentioned acurfew. “As it so happens, miss, ‘exclusive’ is my very favorite word.”
“Isn’t it wonderful? I like it, too!” She seemed delighted with their accord.
“Forgive me. I ought to have told you, miss, that I’m Mr. Marchand, a friend of Lord Bolt’s, and that I’m expected. I wonder if my valise and I might come in out of the drizzle.”
Gabriel blinked when the peep hatch slammed shut.
Some sort of murmured conferral took place behind the door. And then he heard the slide of bolts and the clunk of latches.
The door swung open.
He stepped slowly, wonderingly inside.
A fine crystal chandelier sprinkled light over a black-and-white-checked marble foyer. He stared up at it, as momentarily arrested as if it were an earthbound constellation. Low fires burned in the rooms on either side of the foyer.
Before him stood a petite maid in a white cap and apron. The footman beside her was strapping enough to hurl thugs out of gaming hells. Marchand approved. It was the only sort of footman an establishment ought to have at the docks, a part of the city where one was slightly more likely to be stabbed than in, for instance, Grosvenor Square.
“How do you do? As I mentioned a few moments ago, I’m Mr. Gabriel Marchand.”
The maid was staring at him much the way he’d stared at the chandelier.
She said nothing. Instead, a vivid shade of pink scrolled from her collarbone to her hairline.
As women often responded with abrupt silence and violent blushes when they first got a look at him, Marchand wryly accepted it for the tribute it more or less was.
“How do you do, Mr. Marchand? I’m Mr. Pike.” The footman bowed, then added, dryly, “And this is Dot. If you’d like to have a seat in our reception room”—he gestured to the room to Marchand’s right—“Dot will tell Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy that you’ve arrived. May I take your hat and coat?”
The footman gave the gawking Dot a little nudge with his elbow.
Dot gave a start, dipped a curtsy, then whirled and bolted up the stairs.
Bemused, Marchand surrendered his coat and hat and walking stick to Mr. Pike, who ferried them away. He kept his valise with him.
In the reception room, firelight danced over a pair of softly worn pink settees. His feet sank into a thick, faded carpet patterned in similar shades. A cheery profusion of wildflowers were stuffed into a vase on the mantel; two silhouette portraits of women hung on either side of the fireplace. He wondered if they depicted the proprietresses.
Marchand had lived in crates in fetid alleys, in rooms crammed with a dozen other people, in tiny rented flats in crumbling buildings. When he’d finally bought his own London town house, he’d furnished it sparely but expensively. Some of his taste was innate; some of his taste was learned. He could now easily discern fine materials from not fine and genuine from fake.
As he took in this room, he found himself breathing shallowly through an odd, gathering tension in his chest.
