“Does he at least play chess?” he asked hopefully.
“Probably,” Delilah told him.
Such delightfully improbable things happened with such startling frequency at The Grand Palace on the Thames that one would likely need a crowbar and a good deal of prying to get Mr. Delacorte to leave, and truthfully, they would be happy to have him stay forever.
The duke was due to move into his suite in three days.
* * *
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well.
Mariana had written those words, and only those words, when she’d first arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames three days ago.
They’d glared up at her accusingly from the foolscap on the little desk in her room ever since.
She wrote to her mother at least once a fortnight without fail. The very idea of her mother worrying about her, along with the remote but distinct possibility that the London papers might have already traveled down the secluded, muddy lane in Scotland where her mother had been compelled to live with her grim cousin Edith and her cousin’s husband, George, was yet another fine stratum of torment laid down over all the others papering her soul at the moment.
Even if the newspapers had reached her, it’s possible her mother would not have ventured past page one and the article about how the Valorous Duke of Valkirk had donated a hundred pounds to a charity run by the Marquess Champlin. “What a fine person he is!” her mother had marveled more than once over the years, a refrain echoed all over England every day.
Perhaps that was how she’d ease her mother into the news. She could write:
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well. You might be excited to hear that I was mentioned in the paper on the same day as the Duke of Valkirk!
She’d also contemplated taking a “let’s rewrite history” approach:
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well. You may have heard something concerning by now, but I should like to tell you it’s all a very funny misunderstanding. The newspapers got it wrong. “Harlot of Haywood Street” is the name of the new opera by Giancarlo Giannini, and I play the starring role! And Lord K. and Lord R. are merely characters in the story, not my lovers. Can you imagine! Lord K. wasn’t really shot, and he isn’t really at death’s door, so you needn’t worry about that, either.
But she, of course, wouldn’t lie to her mother.
And she could still hear that gunshot. Her body still jerked every time a door slammed.
And she didn’t feel insouciant at all about it.
Her stomach knotted.
“Lord K.” and “Lord R.” was how they’d referred to the men in the papers, to protect them, of course, because they had titles. They always printed her full name, however. Otherwise how would everyone know who to blame?
At least Kilhone was still alive, last she’d heard.
Her mother was so proud of her. Still was, no doubt, in her likely current blessed state of ignorance.
Her indecision about what to write after those first few words was also rooted in thrift. Foolscap was expensive. She, like all the other guests at The Grand Palace on the Thames, had been provided with two sheets. For a pence she would be supplied with more. Given that she needed to squeeze her pence until they begged for mercy, she was going to need to make this particular piece count.
She’d slept like the dead the night of her arrival, exhausted from a fortnight’s worth of ricocheting from circumstance to circumstance like a billiard ball. The following morning, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand had presented her with their idea for a musical evening, which amounted to Mariana singing for her supper and board, as well as a percentage of any earnings after her bill was satisfied. She’d immediately agreed, of course, even before she’d seen the lovely new ballroom. They fixed a date for the event for a little over a month hence.
“What if I’m still a pariah by then, and nobody comes?” she’d asked them. “What if I cannot properly repay you?” She’d said this matter-of-factly, rather than beseechingly. They were doing business, after all.
“We’ll foist some tickets on our friends. But the ton will have moved on to persecuting someone else, surely. We’ll get Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt to stage a duel, if not,” Angelique said.
“We jest, of course,” Delilah added, hurriedly.
And then she bravely asked the thing that worried her most, given how kind these ladies had been. “What if the very notion of me turns everyone away from The Grand Palace on the Thames, forever?”
“We’ve withstood worse,” Mrs. Hardy said calmly. “And survived.”
“We’ve discussed all of this and weighed the odds, Miss Wylde, and we have decided to bet on you,” Mrs. Durand told her, firmly. “We thought you could sing for forty-five minutes, with a break between, and—”
“Forty,” Mariana countered. “With an intermission to meet the guests.” Mainly because she liked to negotiate.
“Done—we thought surely you can break their cold black hearts during the show, and then win them during the intermission?”
She smiled slowly. Mariana frankly thought she could do exactly that. A few light ballads, then a hanky-soaker of a popular ballad, an aria from Giancarlo’s opera, The Glass Rose, the one that would simply scour their souls, and leave the more tender-hearted members of the audience prostrate with emotion, then perhaps a Rossini aria . . .
And then, during the intermission, by God, she would enchant them. She would unleash all of her native charm, well-seasoned with a little skillful acting and flattery. She would be so genteel and gracious and witty and so clearly noble of spirit that they would all depart thinking, There’s no way that angelic creature is capable of a single indiscretion, let alone shagging her way through the House of Lords. The newspapers must have gotten it wrong.
Because it was all she had in the world. That was it: she was pretty, she had charm, she could sing. It seemed a rather thin layer of protection between her and the abyss, but it would have to be enough.
Even before the duel, her career had begun to seem like an endless plow through a thicket—her path would clear a bit, and then she’d come across another dangling, tangling vine. She was growing weary of brazening her way through conversations she only partly understood, because they were a meld of English and Italian, a language she’d never learned, which meant the only way she could perform arias was by imitation. And she was weary of managing men as skillfully as a conductor directs an orchestra: dodging their hands while flattering them, keeping them at bay while still keeping them interested. She was very good at flirting, but it seemed terribly unfair that it had become something of a grim chore.
All she wanted to do was sing. And maybe make one thousand pounds per season, like Madame Catalani, who could make her own rules. And make sure her mother was safe and happy and comfortable in her own house. Entertaining any desire beyond those things was a sheer luxury.
So they all shook hands on it, she and Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. She liked their confidence; it was bolstering and contagious, and somehow, she knew it was built from experience, which was the best kind of confidence.
She’d needed to agree to The Grand Palace on the Thames rules, too, in order to stay here, and so far she’d found every one of them delightful. She had never lived in a place so exclusive it came with a list of requirements for guests printed on a little card. This thrilled her, rather, and she kept it on the desk so she could look at it.