He was ashamed that he’d still reached for her for comfort, because hurting her had hurt him.
He was ashamed he’d somehow made her feel like a whore, like a mere receptacle for his needs, when she’d always come to him freely.
And he was ashamed that he, a man who had built an entire life on knowing what to do, had done the wrong thing, out of selfishness, because of all of the losses he’d known, somehow this seemed to be the one he couldn’t bear. This was the one that would level him.
He was lost.
She exhaled finally, at length. And then she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed. She bent down to pluck up her stockings. She rolled each one on, carefully, slid her dress over her head. Slowly and gracefully.
She didn’t ask for his help with her laces. Deftly, she got them tied.
And once she was dressed, she quietly moved across the room, seized the candle, opened the door, and left, closing the door behind her.
She’d never looked back at him.
He lay motionless for a time. Flattened. Spent.
And suddenly he could feel a bleakness rolling toward him. A scouring emptiness in his chest.
As though he’d been swept off the jetty and hurled into the black depths.
And then there was nothing.
And now he was nothing.
He sat up and breathed into his hands, his shoulders heaving like bellows.
And from within that black nothingness rose wave after wave of love and fury and sorrow that he’d never dared allow expression. He did not know what to do with any of it. He could not bear it.
The man who could not be broken seized the vase and hurled it against the wall.
And saw it explode into smithereens.
Just like a temperamental opera singer.
Chapter Eighteen
There was no more crying.
She felt like a husk. Awestruck by the completeness of the pain.
But, despite it all, mordantly amused: after this, she could not imagine that anything would be worth crying over.
She’d known this thing with the Duke of Valkirk would be a bloody opera. She’d known it was foolishness from the start. She liked to think she could not have saved herself, that she’d had no choice in the matter at all, but the truth was, she’d made a decision each time she’d stealthily visited his room, each time she kissed him, each time she took his body into hers.
She’d accepted that role, and she’d played it right through to the predictably dramatic end.
She lay awake until dawn, empty, yet somehow complete. As if every emotion she could possibly experience had been funneled through her in a month’s time, so nothing could ever surprise her or hurt her again.
Most importantly, she knew now what love felt like.
She was suddenly aware of the silvery thread of outrageous luck and kindness woven through her dramas and tragedies. Fate might have made a shuttlecock of her more than once, but each time she’d been batted sky-high again. From penury to the Italian Opera House. From scandal to The Grand Palace on the Thames. From hope to heartbreak.
From heartbreak into the job of a singing lobster.
No one had ever been more grateful to be batted right into that job, because it meant she could be gone from England in two days, and after that, perhaps forever.
She breathed through the pain.
She imagined him lying awake next to some young woman with a title. Together and still utterly alone. His spirit going arid. Perhaps yearning for her, because of course he would.
She really didn’t think she’d be easy to forget.
He deserved to live with love.
Oh God. He ought to be loved.
But he’d be comforted, naturally, by the fact that he had done his duty. That he’d done the “right” thing.
She brought her knees up to her chest restlessly. She curled in on herself to muffle the pain.
And yet. How grateful she genuinely was to know what love really was. To learn that loving, fiercely, with her whole self, was yet another of her gifts.
She wanted to love.
But he would be her definition of love for the rest of her days. She was certain of that, too. How could any other man possibly factor?
Well, then. So she would just go on loving him.
Perhaps he would open a window one night, and the faintest echoes of her voice from some faraway stage, singing of love and yearning and sorrow, would drift outward on a breeze. It would drift into his window, and he would feel it, and feel loved.
And tomorrow, she would look into the faces of Dot and Helga and all the maids, and she would give her all to a night they would never forget. Beauty ought not to be available only to the wealthy. They would carry that memory with them through their days like a precious thing, and perhaps their joy in it would touch someone else who would be changed or soothed or inspired.
And this was how she would love him for the rest of her days. Not by pining. She would send it out into the world, and her love for him would be as endless and renewing as the tides, and come back to her that way, too.
When the maids crept into the duke’s rooms just after dawn the following morning, they found the bed smoothly made, all of the duke’s belongings missing, including the miniatures and the clock, and the duke gone.
Which was startling, as it was still dark.
In the corner was a neatly swept pile of shards from a vase.
“Looks like writing his book finally sent him crackers,” they said sympathetically, and they swept it up and took it away.
He knew precisely who was in town because he had a stack of invitations to prove it.
Viscounts, earls, barons, marquesses, wealthy merchants—more than a dozen men and their wives were roused before dawn by tremblingly apologetic but determined servants who were less afraid of their employers than the Duke of Valkirk. He’d arrived before any light tinged the sky, in person, eyes burning with implacability, to thump on townhouse doors and request to be waited upon at once.
Because at the end of a night of suffering, James knew salvation meant doing the unthinkable: laying his burdens down.
And surrendering.
He’d finally met a force greater than himself.
Right. How odd that word was. “Right.” So many shades of meaning. So odd, so antithetical to who he’d always thought he was—but surrendering was the right and only thing to do.
And at all of these townhouses, he was consequently greeted by variously unshaven, irritable, hungover, terrified, or burningly curious members of the elite. All of whom would appear for the unveiling of a portrait or a statue.
He didn’t threaten or cajole.
He simply, finally, asked all of them for something in return.
Sergeant Massey and his wife, Emily, smiled encouragingly at Delilah and Angelique, who stood at the entrance of the ballroom behind a beautifully flower-bestrewn table. The program was due to begin in ten minutes.
They peered into the ballroom past Delilah and Angelique.
“Oh my. It’s beautiful. I suspect it has lovely acoustics . . .” Mrs. Massey enthused.
“stics . . . stics . . .”
They all gave a little start at the echo. The ballroom was resoundingly empty. They were the first paying guests to arrive.
Delilah, radiant in deep red silk, and Angelique, glowing in gold, smiled at Mrs. Massey somewhat weakly.
The drunk man who usually leaned against the building two doors down (and who used to lean against The Grand Palace on the Thames, until they persuaded him otherwise) had officially been the first to arrive. He now lounged in a chair, gazing up at the ceiling and the stars. “Am I inside or outside?” he wondered aloud. “That is the question.”