“Whereas the truly great English opera has yet to be written,” he said. “Because feelings are not the forte of the English.”
“Oh, but we must not discount Mr. Thomas Arne, and Artaxerxes! Lots of murder and romance. Then there’s Mr. John Gay and The Beggar’s Opera . . . I should so love to play Polly Peachum one day. Who knows, Your Grace? Perhaps one day an opera will be written about your memoirs. Although I imagine it would be difficult for even me to sing over the sound of the cannon firing.”
His eyes crinkled.
And then something alarming happened: they lit with true amusement, and in lighting somehow revealed themselves to be filled with subtle little amber and russet lights.
Oh, dear God. They were beautiful.
She did not like knowing this.
It seemed terribly unfair that he should have yet another advantage.
Two tiny curves appeared at either side of his mouth. Dimples.
She stared at him.
She really ought to smile back, but suddenly she was dumbstruck and wary of this evidence of charm.
“Aren’t opera singers on the whole famously temperamental?” he asked. “Buffeted about by great winds of emotion. No choice but to throw vases and tantrums. Laughing one moment. Sobbing the next. Threats and exhortations. That sort of thing?”
“That’s for later in one’s career, when one can get away with nearly anything.” She thought, but did not say, that there was no guarantee there would be a “later” in her career.
He nodded, mouth quirked at the corner.
And then he swiftly pushed over to her the sheet of foolscap he’d been writing on.
She bent her head. Written in a hand that was neat but dashing and singular, she found several columns of words, in English and Italian, sorted into categories, like so:
stage
costume
wig
shoes
actor
actress
coat
stockings
balcony
conductor
long
hot
cold
soft
hard
fat
velvet
satin
loud
quiet
io
tu
lui
lei
esso
essa
noi
voi
loro
essi
esse
And so forth.
She looked up at him wonderingly.
“I’ve made a list of words related to the opera and theater, for a start. Both in English and Italian. In this column”—he gestured—“are adjectives. In this column is a list of verbs, in this one, pronouns, and this one, prepositions. I thought we’d use our time by learning categories of words—clothing, food, conveyances, emotions, colors, buildings. You can study them in your spare time and practice what you learn by writing . . . let’s say, ten to twenty sentences or more each night, conjugated. I’ll test you each day in a different way.”
It was a startlingly efficient lesson plan, concocted while he’d simultaneously held a conversation with her. She could only imagine what the inside of his brain looked like. His entire life was probably sorted into neat little columns.
And it was thrilling. She loved knowing that she would soon impose some sense on anything in her world, let alone the swirl of Italian with which she was often surrounded.
“Conjugate,” she repeated. “I like satin slippers. He likes satin slippers. She liked satin slippers. They like satin slippers. Like that?”
“Like that. Do you like satin slippers?”
“I do like satin slippers.” She referred to her list. “Mi . . . piacciono . . . le scarpe di raso!”
She looked up at him, delighted.
“Very good. Your accent is already creditable. Does this sound like a reasonable approach to our lessons?”
“Oh my, yes, of a certainty.” She looked down at the foolscap, gazing at all those new words that would soon be hers, forever. Feeling, for the first time in weeks, something akin to joy. Perhaps the rest of her life had come to a halt, but these words represented both structure and a sort of progress. Even if she never sang another aria again, by God, she would know how to speak Italian.
She looked up.
To find an expression she could not quite interpret vanishing from the duke’s face.
Her heart skipped. She had the oddest impression, though she could not say why, that she’d missed seeing something beautiful and rare. Like . . . a condor in flight.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said quietly. Somewhat shyly.
“Prego, Miss Wylde,” he said crisply.
There was a little silence, filled with the two of them studying each other.
“We’ve a few minutes more.” Behind them the pendulum on the clock was swinging its way toward four. “You mentioned earlier that there were a few things you’d like to learn how to say?”
He tapped the quill idly against the table.
“Oh, yes. For a start, I should like to learn how to say, ‘Signor, please remove your hand from my bottom at once.’”
The quill froze.
His face slowly went cold.
Then, terrifyingly . . . bored. As if she’d fulfilled every preconceived notion he might harbor about her.
“If this is how you intend to go on, Miss Wylde, I’m afraid we might as well stop right now. If your objective is to disconcert me, it simply can’t be done.”
God help her, her face was scorching now. “I do not mean to make you uncomfortable, Your Grace. I fear I am entirely serious. It’s a hazard of my business. As I mentioned before, it’s mostly men. If I dodge or give their hands a little smack, they think I’m flirting. If I tell them no, they think I’m flirting. If I laugh, they think I’m flirting. If I say no, no, stop, they think I’m flirting. And if in the end I seem angry, I’m deemed difficult, and they are disinclined to give me a job. I already know how to say it in English. I should like to say it firmly, in Italian, in a way they cannot mistake for anything other than a refusal.”
He remained motionless and silent. But his expression cleared to something thoughtful.
Then inscrutable.
But all the while, he fixed her with the unblinking gaze that made her feel as though he were rifling through her conscience.
“I have a temper, too,” she added, somewhat more mildly. “But having one and indulging one are two different things. And I’m afraid until I’m a diva like Angelica Catalani, who makes a thousand pounds per season, my life is entirely strategy. I should like to make it more bearable meanwhile.”
There was a little pause while he took this in.
“So you would like to know how to say, ‘Kindly do not touch my arse,’ in Italian.” He said this entirely reasonably.
“Yes, please.”
“Ti prego di non toccarmi il culo,” he said sternly.
“Ti prego di non toccarmi il culo,” she repeated just as sternly.
“Very good,” he said crisply. He wrote it down and then pushed the foolscap to her.
“Grazie, Your Grace.”
“Prego, Miss Wylde.”
She paused in the hallway as she met Dot, bringing in the duke’s tea.
“I have a good word for you, Dot,” she whispered. “It’s ‘serendipitous.’ Ser-en-dip-i-tous. It means ‘lucky.’”