Lucien nodded slowly in agreement.
They both received copious amounts of fussing, sympathy, and gratitude from all of the ladies for their efforts. In truth, attempting to hire even one proper footman remained a trial. One prospect had stolen a spoon. Another had swiped his hand across Angelique’s bottom. Good footmen could work nearly anywhere, and Angelique and Delilah offered ordinary wages, excellent food, lots of work, and a location by the docks. The search continued, attended with passionate interest by all the maids employed there.
“Oh, look, everyone,” Delilah breathed, and pointed up.
They all stood beneath their handiwork, heads tipped back, and experienced awe at their ingenuity.
The nets had each taken a slightly different amount of dye, and layered and swagged, the effect was surprisingly beautiful. It was, indeed, like looking up at a cloud-hazed midnight sky. The stars they’d carefully constructed twisted gently, twinkling in the low light of a setting sun pouring in through the windows.
Mariana slowly paced the ballroom to where she’d stood and kissed the duke for the first time. She gazed up to find one of the largest stars dangling over her head. She wondered if it was the Star of Damocles, or the sort she ought to wish on.
Now all they needed was a moon. It seemed, suddenly, the most important part of the stage decorations, the thing that would illuminate her ethereally from behind while she sang onstage. But no one yet had any (good) ideas about how to craft one.
Because of the net raising, or as they preferred to think of it, sky raising, Dot had got hold of the newspaper late today, and was making up for lost time by reading the gossip aloud while all the ladies made folded roses in the sitting room.
“Oh, look. Here’s a little bit in the gossip columns called ‘The Disappearing Duke.’”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be an exciting story, Miss Wylde! Maybe he’s in the attic . . .” Mrs. Pariseau suggested slyly.
“Because he’s trying to get some privacy to write a book?” Mariana said.
They all giggled.
“Can you imagine? The Disappearing Duke. You could turn it into a song, Miss Wylde.”
Mariana laughed. Then she affected an ominous baritone and a sea-chanty cadence. “Oh, the duke disappeared one dark winter day—”
Dot gasped so suddenly and violently that Mariana clapped a hand over her heart.
“Sorry, Dot. I didn’t mean to frighten you! I hadn’t even gotten to the scary part of the song yet!”
“Sorry to frighten you, Miss Wylde. But oh, my goodness! They’re talking about our duke! The Duke of Valkirk. On the gossip page!”
The dread—the premonition—was so instant and leaden it gave her vertigo.
She prayed no one had said a word about her. How would anyone know? She hadn’t met anyone during her trips to his room, apart from Gordon the cat, who seemed pleased to see her.
The august and valorous Duke of Valkirk, lately a coveted presence at the best tables in the ton—notably, the ones set with the monogrammed silver and the prettiest daughters—has suddenly vanished. No one has seen him for dinner for nigh on a fortnight. Could it be that he’s decided he wants to look across at a certain pair of celebrated brown eyes forever? The on dit is that his last supper with the family of a certain Lady G will be his last supper as a single man.
Her ears rang as though she was a tea tray and had been unceremoniously dropped from a great height, by, perhaps, Dot.
She suddenly couldn’t quite feel her limbs.
“Oh, my goodness. So many new words in this one, but then, that fits, don’t it, Miss Wylde, as he’s teaching you words.”
“Doesn’t it,” Angelique, who was the person responsible for so many of Dot’s new words, corrected her absently.
“Doesn’t it,” Dot repeated, dutifully. “What is ‘valorous,’ by the way?”
“Brave,” Mariana said shortly. “Like valor.”
“And why did they call him ‘august’? He’s a bit more like December, if I had to pick a month,” Dot said.
Stop talking, Mariana thought suddenly. I cannot bear any sights or sounds or anything touching my senses right now.
“It means esteemed. And . . . wise and respected,” Delilah told her.
“Or old,” Mariana said curtly.
Delilah shot her a glance. It was the word Delilah had been diplomatically skirting.
He wasn’t, really. The gossip columns just never quite got things right.
“Ah,” Dot said happily, as if she’d just taken a long drink of something delicious, absorbing more words and more meanings.
Mariana realized she hadn’t moved. She looked at the half-made flower in her hand as if she’d never seen such a thing before.
It was almost funny how instantly and dangerously everything had stopped mattering. How instantly different reality seemed. But it was like waking up from a dream via a splash of cold water to the face.
She imagined this young Lady G, a girl likely not yet twenty. The townhouse with marble floors and ceilings twice the height of the duke from which chandeliers dripping with crystals hung. A long table set with a linen cloth and bristling with things that gleamed and glinted, candlesticks and tureens and china. She’d be pristinely lovely and lissome, her hair done up by a maid, outfitted in a virginally white gossamer gown. She’d be gazing across at the duke by candlelight with her famous eyes. He’d gaze across at her with his own beautiful eyes.
Why wouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he?
He wasn’t “our” duke.
And he most certainly wasn’t her duke.
And here she was at twenty-five years old. Last night as she’d slowly lowered herself onto his cock, his hands sliding along her back, her nipples chafing his chest, she’d leaned in to lick a bead of sweat from his collarbone. That’s who she was. A brazen hussy who knew exactly how to use her hands and mouth to make him growl hoarse oaths of pleasure.
His hair had stood up every which way because her hands had rummaged through it while they were kissing. And his eyes had softly burned into her, and that little smile, that acknowledgment of the world they created comprised of just the two of them. She lived for that, she realized. He loved to watch her, she knew. He loved to give her pleasure, too.
And now she sat in this room full of happy chatter, wearing a dress with a spot on the hem and one on the bodice that was small but stubborn, feeling a trifle less than fresh from all the work today, though she always washed as best she could in the basin in her room. She’d already unpicked all the stitches and turned it outside in one, to keep the fabric fresh. A new dress was out of the question until she was paid to play a lobster (or a mermaid!) in Paris.
It was a madness, the lust. She’d resisted, hadn’t she? A little?
Had she?
It seemed, right now, through the haze of memory, that resisting had simply not been an option, for either of them. After all, she’d shown up at his door with a candle.
What was the word for a woman like that? The ton—the world—did need their words and labels. She was worried the right word began with a “w” and ended with an “e.” Or an “h” with a “t.” Maybe they’d gotten it right from the beginning. Maybe they saw her more clearly than she saw herself.