The Wolf And was the little ancient pub adjacent to The Grand Palace on the Thames. Much like The Grand Palace on the Thames sign featured a ghostly extra word, The Wolf And’s sign was missing a word, and no one could remember what it used to be.
She’d performed with these particular musicians before she’d sung at patent theaters. They knew her repertoire well.
Delilah cleared her throat. She and Mrs. Durand were clearly struggling to formulate a feelings-sparing response.
“They’ve been told not to play with me, is that it?”
Her gut went cold. It was so thorough, the ostracizing. She’d been one man’s lover briefly, and the effects of that had spread like a stain, until suddenly these poor musicians had been told to avoid her. What did that mean for her career in general? Was there naught left of it? What would she do then?
“Delilah and I know all the songs you intend to sing save one, and both of us will learn the aria from The Glass Rose. We shall take it in turns. We aren’t professionals, but we won’t embarrass you,” Angelique said firmly.
It was so kind to say, given that it seemed more than likely she would embarrass them.
The moment she’d arrived today, Valkirk had assigned Miss Wylde the task of transcribing the lyrics from an aria from The Glass Rose—one of her favorites, she said—from Italian into English.
She was doing a credible job of it. Many of the words in this particular song—“delicate,” “fragile,” “transparent”—were similar to the English versions, and were precisely the sort of words one would expect from an opera called The Glass Rose.
Every now and then she looked up, silently, for guidance. But she was determined to do as much as possible by herself, and of this he approved. It was how lessons stuck.
He’d removed all the invitations from the anteroom and tucked them instead in his bedroom. For some reason he refused to examine closely, he did not want her to see them.
Perhaps more accurately—and more troublingly—he didn’t want her to have to look at them.
He’d be dining with the Earl of Balfe and his family a week hence. Who, unsurprisingly, had a daughter of marriageable age.
He watched Mariana perform her careful, slow, even, graceful writing, head bent studiously.
“You can ask me about a word before you frown yourself into a headache.”
She paused. “Was I frowning?”
“As if you could intimidate the word into yielding its meaning.”
She smiled. “Then I’m learning more than Italian from you. Per sempre?”
“Forever.”
“Thank you. As it turns out, it’s a beautiful aria about the fragility of love,” she told him, as she wrote that word.
“Shocking. Such original lyrics, too,” he said.
She quirked the corner of her mouth.
“Why ‘jetty,’ Miss Wylde?”
She went still.
Then she gently laid down her quill, straightened her posture, and stared at him. “You remembered.” She sounded both pleased and not about it.
“It isn’t the sort of metaphor one easily forgets.”
Fascinatingly, she seemed reluctant to share the story.
And then she sighed. “Very well. I shall tell you.” She seemed to be deciding where to begin.
“Do you remember when I said that I had gone twice to the seashore with my family?”
“I do.”
Delight flickered in her expression. She was pleased. “Well, this was the second—and last—time we went to the seashore. My father and mother and me. And it was quite a blustery day. The wind tried to tear off our bonnets, and it whipped our coats out behind us, but the day was clear and beautiful. And we were all in such jolly moods. The three of us walked along the beach until we reached a jetty that reached a long way out into the ocean from the shore. And then Papa decided to be silly—he could be impulsive and silly—and ran out onto it, all the way to the end. He smiled and waved at me on the beach. I could see his teeth.”
Her lips twitched wryly at the memory.
“And I smiled and waved back at him. And then . . .” she took a breath “. . . a huge wave appeared from what seemed to be nowhere and crashed over the jetty. He disappeared. And we haven’t seen him since.”
He was struck dumb.
Of all the stories he might have anticipated.
He’d seen more than his share of impossible and terrible death, so he was surprised by a jolt of devastation, as though that wave had come for him. He was immediately haunted by the image of her smiling father disappearing before a young girl’s eyes.
Words momentarily eluded him.
He already knew, from the warmth in her voice, what her father had meant to her. And what the loss of him had done to their family. They’d all been blown off course.
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Wylde. The sea is capricious even for seasoned sailors.”
She plucked up the quill again, and drew the feathered end of it through her fingers, over and over. She nodded.
“The strange thing was . . . at first it was almost like those Punch and Judy shows. You can’t believe it’s real. It doesn’t seem real. There was a second or two where I felt nothing at all, and then for a moment I thought it was almost funny—surely Papa is playing a joke. Surely he’ll pop up again at the end of the dock. I suppose that’s the thing that helps ease you into the shock and . . .” she cleared her throat “. . . loss of it.”
He considered what to say to her. He was conscious of a peculiar jolt of anger. As though it had been his duty to be there, and prevent that from happening. He could not undo it.
“I think it’s a common enough reaction,” he said gently. “Some years ago, when I was still a lieutenant colonel, I had in my platoon a soldier by the name of Josiah Gunderson. That boy had no talent for being a soldier. But he was game and had a good heart and a ready wit, and he reminded me of my son, whom I saw very rarely. I tended to choose battlegrounds with upward slopes so I could hide more of my troops on the reverse of them—we could surprise our enemy. I knew I could win a battle that way even when we were far outnumbered. I gave the orders for my troops to flatten themselves against the ground. But Gunderson heard a sound, and lifted his damned head,” he said grimly. “And . . .”
Too late he realized he probably shouldn’t have gone straight to gore in order to sympathize.
“Ha perso la testa?” She whispered it.
“Yes. He lost his head. One minute there. The next gone.”
She stared at him, pale and absolutely silent.
“Oh God. I have gone and frightened and shocked you,” he said finally.
“No, Your Grace.”
“Oh, yes, I have. My apologies, Miss Wylde. Like a heathen, I’ve forgotten how to speak to women about things beyond the usual social niceties.”
“And Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.”
“And them.”
“Your Grace,” she said firmly. “Perhaps it isn’t ladylike to say so, but I’m neither unduly delicate nor unduly horrified, and, well, arguably, not a lady.” She flashed him an ironic little smile. “Because war is horrifying, isn’t it? Terrible death is a feature of war. One would hardly be shocked to hear the sky is blue or that there is a cloud in it, because those are the features of the sky. I’m a little shocked because it’s shocking. Even to you. I don’t suppose shock will ever kill me if it hasn’t yet.”