She didn’t write it, of course. She still hadn’t written, let alone sent, anything after those first few words she’d written the day after she’d arrived.
Mariana had begun to believe she might make a fine nun.
Would a convent have her? They did do a lot of singing in convents, did they not?
And . . . spent a lot of time on their knees?
This was apparently who she was: a woman who made jokes to herself featuring fellatio and nuns, in order to make herself feel better about adopting that position in the duke’s bedroom after dark.
She’d adopted a lot of other positions there, too, granted.
But surely if anyone was qualified for martyrdom, she was, after occupying the sitting room with everyone else as well as the duke, who was not doing anything but quietly being a duke and making no progress on his memoirs. And sitting at the same dinner table at which the duke sat, eating. She needed to eat, after all. She could not waste away to nothing before she redeemed herself by singing in front of—ten, was it, at last count, paid attendees?—and attempted to earn her room and board, not to mention recover a little of her pride in the process.
Playing a singing lobster ought to shave her pride down to a nub. But she was going to be so spectacular that the singer playing the mermaid would expire from envy, and in her fantasies, Mariana would then send her sympathy flowers, take over the part, and become a legend.
The pleasant buzz of plans for decorating the ballroom for the Night of the Nightingale continued, and she could shelter herself within that. There was no need to even glance his way.
He certainly glanced her way. How she knew this, she couldn’t say. She merely felt it.
So she could do these things, bravely enough.
But it was more than she could ask of herself at the moment to sit across from him, alone, for Italian lessons. Or to speak to him. Or to look at him straight on. Though, like a feature of a landscape, say, a mountain, she could always feel his presence even when he was nowhere within her line of vision. She had a terrible suspicion that he would be a feature of her landscape for the rest of her life.
She didn’t know if by distancing herself she was punishing him, though she was certain that was the end result. She was neither gladdened by nor displeased by the notion. She didn’t know whether she was punishing herself, because she thought she deserved it for behaving like a harlot when she’d initially been so indignant to be called one.
Or if it was merely an act of self-preservation. A way of backing up slowly from the edge of devastation. Allowing herself space for the dust to settle after the initial shock, which should not have been a shock. She would see what feeling, what instinct, prevailed then.
She said to Dot the following day, “Would you please tell the duke that I have a headache, and that I fear I must beg off lessons?”
“Oh, dear. Do you need a tisane, Miss Wylde? Helga makes them. They could raise the dead.”
“I think I . . . I think I merely sang too loud in the ballroom, and my brain needs a rest. But don’t say that to the duke,” she added hurriedly.
Dot studied her, brow furrowed. “Too much emotion,” Dot suggested. More wisely than she realized.
“Yes, that’s it.”
When she begged off again for similar reasons the following day, Mr. Delacorte offered her a powder from his case of samples.
“Works a treat,” he confided in a low voice, “but it’s been known to cause the odd effect or two. I know a bloke who took it and had a vision of the Knights of the Round Table riding unicorns through Pall Mall,” he told her. “Cured his mal de tête, however.”
“While that sounds exciting indeed,” she told him, “I think I just need a bit of a rest.”
She could tell the sisters of the convent she was contemplating entering that she was learning about sacrifice, too.
The last two nights—after dark, that was—had seemed resoundingly empty, cold and dark. Her little room, which she quite liked, suddenly seemed strange, and—not necessarily unfriendly—but foreign. As though everything in it was merely a prop onstage. It was so odd to realize how her feelings about the duke had flowed into and colored her feelings about everything else. Had given them outsized life and dimension.
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well. I regret to tell you that I knew better and I should not have done, but I imagined it anyway. Laughter and seashore walks and a family around the breakfast table with him passing the fried bread around. And finally waking up next to him every day with the sun shining through the curtains on our faces. I should not have done, because I feel a little like I have just watched all those people die.
The unfinished letter to her mother remained on her desk, and it looked just the same. It had even been dusted by the maids. It was now several weeks later than she normally sent off a letter.
She could, in theory, afford to buy another sheet of foolscap or some other size of paper now if she wanted to send a letter to her mother. After all, she had those seven pounds that Giancarlo had given to her. But she would need to pay for travel to Dover, and then pay for lodging at an inn for a night, and pay for her passage to Paris from there, as well as some food to keep her alive. She’d no idea if she’d come away a slightly richer woman after the Night of the Nightingale. She would not leave without paying the ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames at least a little something.
Perhaps they could all work out a future bargain or trade of some sort. They were women of business.
What this all meant was that she now was officially avoiding writing a letter to her mother.
In truth, she had also spent more than a little time next to her bed on her knees, hands clasped. She didn’t know what to pray for anymore, specifically. All of the things she wanted seemed inextricably entwined with the things she didn’t.
Her prayers were more after the fashion of a thanks for current blessings, a request for blessings for everyone she knew, followed by, “I’m listening, if you’ve any ideas, God.”
By the third day she knew she would have to face him again, alone.
At three o’clock, she paused in the doorway of his anteroom.
The window lit him from behind, and his face was turned toward it. He didn’t appear to be working on much of anything. His pen was in his hand, but his hand wasn’t moving.
The same stack of foolscap remained near his elbow. It didn’t look any taller.
“Buonasera, Your Grace.” She said it as politely and lightly as she could, which was no mean feat when she was dragging her spirit about like a millstone.
She could swear he’d stopped breathing when he heard her voice.
He pivoted abruptly.
For a long moment, they merely regarded each other from that distance.
“Buonasera, Miss Wylde,” he finally said just as politely. His voice was hoarse. “Won’t you please come in?”
Her heart was beating a little too quickly as she ventured forward.
Oh, what the very sight of him did to her breathing. What a sacrifice it had been to deny herself the sight of him, even if he was fully clothed.
As she came closer, she saw that he looked gorgeous, a bit hard done by, and fully his age.
There were shadows beneath his eyes. His hair was standing up a little, as if he’d just pushed it back with an impatient hand.