“Brrr. Oh, goodness. Does anyone else feel a chill?” Miss Wylde murmured, with a little shudder, as the duke entered the sitting room after dinner the following day. “I aver the temperature just dropped five degrees.”
As barbs went, it was unsurprisingly unoriginal. Miss Mariana Wylde was no doubt accustomed to ceaseless doses of attention and would try any number of things to get it. He’d felt it, a very little. But she’d no hope of leaving a mark.
He settled in at the table just behind where Dot and Miss Wylde sat at the chessboard and laid out the things he’d brought down from his suite—a newspaper and foolscap, ink and pen. The room was unpretentious and comfortable, which also described his suite in the Annex, with its surprisingly excellent bed and the little flower in a vase on the mantel and another next to his bed.
The duke had no objection, really, to the boardinghouse rules requiring “familial gathering” in the sitting room. There were worse things than being surrounded by handsome, chattering, contented women who were unlikely to bother him overmuch; it was a bit like having a view of a garden out of the corner of his eye.
He liked having people about, even if he didn’t necessarily want to talk to them. Strangers were often too deferential or too fawning or too mutely rapt. His own tendency to abbreviation—some might call it abruptness—born of being accustomed to barking orders, and a sense that time and life were so precious one ought not spend them listening to nattering—didn’t help. He often felt a bit like his own statue in Hyde Park, at the center of everything and yet entirely removed, as though he existed now only to awe. The sort of thing parents would bring young children to gaze upon for educational purposes.
Dot glanced quizzically at the fire, which was leaping healthily, then back at Miss Wylde.
The room in fact was quite adequately warm and cozily lit with lamps and candles. “Would you like another shawl, Miss Wylde?”
“Oh, no, thank you. The chill seems to have passed us by for now,” she said easily.
He cast what was meant to be a swift, baleful look across at her, only to intercept her cool one. She demonstrated that he was not the only one who could lift a single brow. Hers were a shade darker than her hair, feathery mahogany arcs. The shape was echoed in the full curve of her lower lip. Hers was a symmetrical, unexceptional sort of prettiness.
He suspected her previous popularity was all due to trying very, very hard.
He wrote,
Dear Arthur,
He didn’t know what he wanted to say to his son yet. He’d genuinely thought starting the letter would help him understand how he wanted to finish it. He ought to have learned his lesson about that by now. He stared at it.
Dot liked to make little clopping sounds with her mouth when she moved the knight, as though he were galloping across the board. Also, because she claimed it helped her think.
A lot of clopping was going on now.
It seemed to be quite a long journey across the board.
He could and had slept through nearly everything, gunfire, drunken fistfights, lashing storms . . . but it seemed the clopping was the thing that would finally twang his nerves. Something about the utter pointlessness of it.
Hardy and Bolt had been spending the evenings attending to arrangements for a new warehouse as they expected their ship to reach port in little over a fortnight. Delacorte was engaged in a game on the other side of the room. Valkirk could not retreat to smoke just yet, per the rules.
“Why, good evening, sir!”
The knight had apparently finally arrived at its destination and was now being greeted by a pawn.
“Chess is typically a rather quiet game, isn’t it?” the duke said with the deceptive mildness that usually reduced ensigns to stammers.
“It was. It was a quiet game,” Delacorte concurred over his shoulder, somewhat sadly. It had ceased to be the game he recognized once he’d taught it to Dot, who had made what could only be described as embellishments.
He had joined Mrs. Pariseau, Mrs. Hardy, and Mrs. Durand in a game of Whist while Dot explained the intricacies of chess, as she understood them, because the strain of teaching Dot chess had finally shown Mr. Delacorte the boundaries of his goodwill.
Although he fully expected she would one day win a game.
“Oh look, Dot! What is the bishop getting up to with the queen?” Miss Wylde said. “The scandal of it all!”
They both giggled.
“What if the knight catches them at it? Oh ho!” Miss Wylde continued.
“I expect there will be a duel,” the duke drawled beneath his breath.
Mariana fixed him with a stare that he could feel.
He did not look up from his foolscap.
Dot propped her chin in her hand as she perused the chessboard. “Knights, queen, king, bishops . . . why are no pieces named for dukes?”
“It does seem an oversight,” Mariana mused. “I think because dukes would ruin the fun for all the other pieces. You see, dukes could only go in very straight, narrow lines, so they would disapprove greatly of the bishop for having the nerve to do anything so original as move diagonally.”
Dot laughed. “What else?”
“And then . . . the duke would be able to tell all the pieces on the board what to do, because only the duke would know, of course. And no one would ever win a game. Let alone enjoy one.”
“Cor! It’s a good thing dukes aren’t included with chess sets,” Dot said in all innocence.
“A good thing, indeed,” Mariana concurred.
“Oh my, it suddenly got colder in here, didn’t it, Dot? Did you feel a chill?”
Did his jaw set a little as he made his way to the table? Unless it was a trick of the light, she thought it had. Mariana allowed herself the tiniest surge of triumph.
The duke had settled in at the table with the same kit he’d brought down last night. This time, he’d snapped open the newspaper and begun to read. Perhaps looking for a fresh batch of people to judge.
Today Lord Bolt had received a message in response to the one he’d sent to Madame LeCroix, and it seemed she was amenable to saying a kind thing or two about Mariana, which could then be printed in the newspaper. Then Mariana had sung for fifteen minutes today in the ballroom and thought she was in fine voice, all in all, though she dearly missed a quartet or a good pianist to accompany her. Every time she sang on a stage, she was entirely in the world of the song, and it was a welcome escape from everything else.
On the whole, today was an improvement over yesterday, and she was willing to believe it was the beginning of a trend.
“Your Grace, we’re given to understand that you’re writing another book,” Mrs. Pariseau said deferentially. She was intrepidly social, Mrs. Pariseau was.
“Yes.”
“How goes your work?” Mrs. Pariseau pressed.
“It goes apace,” he told her, politely. He flicked a glance up from his newspaper.
“Another book?” Mariana took this up, boldly.
“Oh, Miss Wylde,” Mrs. Pariseau said, “perhaps you already know this, but he’s written a very famous book on honor!”
“What was your book called, pray tell, Your Grace?” Mariana ventured.
He stared at her. “Honor.”
She dug her nails into her palm in a vain attempt to keep her face from heating to pink.
“It’s very generous of you to share your expertise, Your Grace. How would anyone know the proper way to behave if we hadn’t a book on the topic?”
He regarded her coolly a moment. “Your question goes some way toward explaining your appearance in the gossip columns, Miss Wylde.”
A little silence ensued.
“I’ve another question, Your Grace.”
He fixed her with those eyes. She met them.
“What does one have to do in order to be dishonorable?”
“If we are adhering strictly to the definition of dishonor . . . it is knowingly behaving in such a way that impugns the dignity of another, or otherwise brings harm. To knowingly and without shame behave without regard for consequences that may bring someone else to harm. In so doing, to violate the rules of polite society.”
She found that she was gripping the table surreptitiously, as if to maintain her grip against the onslaught of certainty. What must it feel like to be so briskly, insufferably certain of oneself? He said things as though they were inalienable truths.
And what the hell did “impugn” mean?
“Who decides what those rules are?”
“Society as a whole in a given era dictates the mores of that era.”
“And then they write about it in the newspaper, I suppose.”
“So it would seem,” he said idly, and returned to his reading.
Her temper began to simmer.
“Will you be addressing all of the virtues in a series of books, then? Is that the book you’re writing now?”
“Why? Have you need of a review of them, Miss Wylde?” he said mildly. “Or perhaps an introduction?”
“I know there are seven. I also can tell you firsthand their application seems rather flexible among the aristocracy.”
“I’m certain you can,” he said with a sort of hateful detachment.
“But it seems to me, Your Grace,” she pressed, “that an intimate knowledge of all the vices would be necessary in order to convincingly write about virtues. Such as honor, for instance.”
He lowered the newspaper, and his dark eyes appeared again.
That momentary flicker in them made her wonder if she was about to be challenged to a duel.
“How do you mean, Miss Wylde?” Mrs. Pariseau piped up.
“How does one describe the day without knowledge of the night? How does one describe honor without a knowledge of dishonor?”
She had his attention. Which was a bit like holding a hot horseshoe freshly forged on an anvil.
“And for that matter, how does one describe, oh, chastity, perhaps, without an intimate knowledge of lust?”
That screen of cynicism moved across his face again, and he eyed her the way he might an ensign he was about to order flogged.
She’d just put the duke in the position of declaiming about chastity and lust. She had no idea if either was considered an official virtue or vice, but she was pretty sure they were considered opposites, and one was considered a sin. She’d done a good deal of soul-searching about both.
She’d take making him uncomfortable as a win.
“May I refer you to prudence and temperance, Miss Wylde, then, if you’re looking for an introduction to virtues,” he said politely. “Although the expression ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’ comes to mind, for some reason.” The last words drifted, and with the tiniest of self-amused smiles, as he returned his attention to the newspaper again.
She was grateful she didn’t have a knitting needle to hand, because she had a fleeting fantasy of hurling one, javelin style, into his forehead.
Dot, listening closely, was puzzled. “Wait. Is chastity a virtue, or just something you call it when you don’t—”
“It’s a virtue, a fine one,” Mrs. Hardy assured her hastily. For the time being, she thought it was probably best not to encourage Dot to entertain complex notions about the permeability between vices and virtues, because she might explain them to the maids. It would lead to more dropped tea trays. Or pregnant maids.
“Your Grace, I apologize for pressing the point”—Mariana of course wasn’t at all sorry—“but have you, then, some experience of dishonor?”
“Given your fascination with contrasts, it sounds to me as though you’re a scholar of Aristotle’s writings on the virtues then, Miss Wylde,” the duke said.
She went silent and fixed him with a cool stare. Because she didn’t quite know who Aristotle was, and she was an actual scholar of nothing apart from how to survive.
He didn’t blink, and neither did she, and this wasn’t easy. Something perverse in her was determined to meet his eyes again and again until she didn’t feel a thing. Certainly not the jolt she felt now, from her forehead to her toes.
“Oh, my mate Aristotle and I regularly have a pint or two together at the pub,” she said finally.
Mr. Delacorte, bless him, chuckled behind her.
“Having only a drink or two with a mate would be the virtue of temperance, Miss Wylde, and having six or seven and getting well and truly foxed would be a vice,” Mrs. Pariseau chimed in. “I know which side I land on.”
Mariana frankly thought it would be rather fun to one day get well and truly foxed with Mrs. Pariseau.
“But I think what His Grace is saying,” Mrs. Pariseau continued diplomatically, “is that you are making quite the Aristotelian argument. Aristotle maintained that virtues are really a sort of . . . oh, how did he put it, Your Grace?”
“A golden mean,” he said at once, because of course he knew everything. “Aristotle defines a virtue as the sort of perfect average between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. So it is, after a fashion, a study in contrasts.”
Mariana furrowed her brow. “I think I understand. What you’re saying is, for instance, that an excess of self-righteousness would then be a vice? Because wouldn’t the—what was that again, Mrs. Pariseau?”
“The golden mean,” Mrs. Pariseau replied approvingly.
“—be humility? Or is that on the excess end of the scale, too?”
He studied her, lips slightly pressed together. She’d never known any man who could say so much without changing his expression.
She didn’t even precisely know what she wanted from him. Apart, perhaps, from being seen. This would likely be impossible. Her pride—which wasn’t a particularly useful quality at this point in her life—refused to attempt to ingratiate herself to him, and her instincts told her it was useless. He had sealed her into the little glass jar of his scathing indifference, and she could get no purchase on the slick, unyielding sides of it in order to escape.
She supposed she would at least like to punish him a little. To introduce a little discomfort and uncertainty into his world as revenge for introducing a lot into hers. If someone like him thought her only bulwarks against the world—beauty and charm and talent—were paltry and common and tedious, how was she to survive? She might as well go into battle naked.
Though she suspected she looked very well naked, truthfully. She hadn’t heard one complaint.
“Aristotle described the virtues as courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, ambition, patience, and friendliness.” The duke enunciated this emotionlessly and tersely and managed to make them sound like the names of soldiers he was ordering before a firing squad.
The net effect was that everyone present silently and somewhat uneasily reviewed their souls for these virtues, and decided they might be missing a few.
Mariana wasn’t certain she knew what “magnanimity” or “liberality” meant, but she wasn’t about to ask him.
“Magnificence,” regrettably, fitted him the way his beautifully tailored suits did.
“Then is chastity a virtue by that definition, or a vice?” she pressed. “Isn’t it an excess of chastity not getting enough—”
Mrs. Hardy cleared her throat noisily.
“And I suppose one can be an expert in one virtue and a failure at another? For instance, excelling at magnificence and failing at friendliness? Or do they all necessarily come as a set, like chess pieces?”
She noted a flicker of irritation, and somehow this was absurdly satisfying as if she’d been trying for hours to strike a spark from a flint.
“And who gets to decide what the virtues are? Why should Aristotle get to decide?” Mr. Delacorte was skeptical. “Do we elect new virtues as one does an MP? And if not, why not? We ought to have a vote.”
“Oh, I do love to vote!” Dot enthused.
“Excellent point, Mr. Delacorte,” Mariana said stoutly. “Who decides?”
Delilah and Angelique exchanged glances. Rumblings of a rebellion were underway. Before they knew it, a guillotine would be erected for the epithet jar.
“For that matter, who decides what the vices are?” Mariana pressed. One admonishing jar in the room was tyranny enough.
“I should think you would want to ease your way into the notion of virtue, Miss Wylde, as one does with new topics of study,” the duke said. “Aristotle has identified more than seven, and Thomas Aquinas identifies even more of them.”
“St. Thomas Aquinas!” Mrs. Pariseau clasped her hands in bliss. “Your Grace, oh, I do so appreciate a learned man.”
Mrs. Pariseau liked to flirt, and that’s precisely what she was doing now, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t about to saddle herself with another husband, as the last one had left her reasonably financially comfortable.
“We haven’t yet played charades here in the sitting room,” said Mrs. Durand suddenly, thinking it might be time to change the topic. “Charades would be rather amusing to try one of these nights.”
“We pantomimed a pirate battle once, Valkirk.” Mr. Delacorte liked to catch new guests up on the history of the entertainments in the sitting room. “Bolt was once almost killed by pirates, and so we all pretended to be pirates, even Captain Hardy.”
“Was he, indeed?” the duke said idly. “It does seem like something you’d want to relive again and again.”
“He killed the pirate instead,” Delacorte reassured him.
“That seems the best route to take when a pirate is trying to kill you.”
Like a child with a new toy, Delacorte always looked delightedly about the room with a “did you hear that?” expression every time the duke said something dry.
“Have you killed any pirates?” Delacorte asked.
“Eleven only yesterday,” the duke replied, to Delacorte’s beaming approval.
“I would love to play charades,” Dot exclaimed. “Is that where we all pretend to be other things?”
“Only while we’re not working, Dot,” Angelique hastened to remind her, imagining Dot pretending to be a bunny, for instance, and hopping with a tea tray.
“And perhaps another evening!” said Delilah hurriedly, noticing a certain grim set to the duke’s expression. “A . . . month from now. We’ve so much preparation to do for the Night of the Nightingale. Perhaps we’ll celebrate with charades or a pantomime when it’s over!”
“Perhaps we ought to have a charade of all the vices,” Mariana suggested.
“I’m certain you’ll be able to more than creditably perform any vice, Miss Wylde,” the duke said charitably.
He returned to his newspaper and therefore missed her cold stare.
“I’m certain I could,” she muttered after a moment, which was about as clever a rejoinder as she could muster.
Frankly, she thought it might be fun.
“I call gluttony!” Mr. Delacorte said after a moment.
“We do have the most delightfully spirited discourse in this room,” Mrs. Pariseau said with a happy sigh. “All credit to Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy, who seem to know precisely who ought to stay here.”
“It’s a conundrum,” Mr. Delacorte mused two days later, aiming a stream of smoke upward in the smoking room one night, when Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were present and the duke was out at an engagement. “Miss Wylde in the sitting room feels like . . . when you open up a window on a spring day, and in comes a breeze and birds tra-la-la’ing their heads off. And the duke . . . I suppose he’s like the first frost, ain’t he? And the first frost ain’t a bad thing. It’s just a very different thing. So I don’t know what kind of weather we have in the sitting room at night.”
It was always warm in the room, though. Even though Miss Wylde unfailingly gave a little shiver, drew her shawl more tightly around her and said something to the effect of, “Goodness, a little chill just ran through me. It was like winter in my very soul,” when the duke passed her table to settle in.
And each night his jaw clamped just a little more tightly.
On the fourth evening after the duke’s arrival, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand thought music would be a welcome change of pace from philosophical discussions, idiosyncratic chess, spillikins, and subtle but palpable tension. On the theory that music soothes the savage breast, they thought they’d give that a go.
“Why don’t we have singing? Oh, Miss Wylde . . . we hesitate to call upon you, as we know you’ve sung for audiences at Drury Lane and the King’s Theater . . . but we did wonder if you’d favor us with a song,” Mrs. Hardy said.
“Oh, my goodness, Miss Wylde, we would all be so grateful!” Mrs. Pariseau breathed.
“But please do not feel obliged,” Mrs. Durand added hastily.
They were so very kind. They were offering her free room and board! She couldn’t and wouldn’t disoblige them, and she’d love to take center of attention over the man behind the newspaper.
She’d availed herself of the ballroom for about fifteen minutes again today, running through scales and exercises, enjoying the surprisingly fine acoustics of the place and the luxurious velvet curtains. It would be pure recreation to sing a light ditty or two.
“I’d be delighted to! I wouldn’t want to sing an aria—I’m very loud, you see, when I sing in full voice. It’s more pleasant to be at a bit of a distance from me.”
“You’ll get no argument here,” the duke murmured, from behind his newspaper.
She ignored him and sat down at the pianoforte. “But . . .” Inspiration struck. “One can turn anything into a song. For instance, I could sing a song about . . .” She glanced about the room. “Oh, I’ve a jolly idea! Would you play a C and G and E for me, Mrs. Durand? Make it a bit jaunty? Like this, perhaps.”
She demonstrated at the pianoforte, tapping out the keys. Angelique skillfully obliged her.
And as Angelique played a few bars, everyone save one person leaned forward in breathless anticipation. Her impulse was always to win over audiences no matter how large or small, and she knew just how to do it.
She clasped her hands, tapped her foot, then launched into her song:
In Mr. Delacorte’s case is quite an array
Of lotions and potions to make aches go away!
But if you take the wrong one
Or perhaps a too strong one
You might wake up next to a tiger one day!
Delighted shouts of laughter and applause erupted.
“COR!” Mr. Delacorte smacked the table over and over delightedly. Each time he did, the duke twitched. “I’ve never been a song before!” He was dazzled.
Mariana performed whimsical shallow curtsies to the room at large.
“We could write even more verses one day! Just like The Ballad of Colin Eversea! The story of Stanton Delacorte.”
Everyone beamed at her. What a pleasure it was to be beamed upon approvingly, and how perverse it was that she craved one particular smile in the room and she wasn’t going to get it.
The duke hadn’t even lowered his newspaper.
“Your voice is so pretty Miss Wylde,” Dot said shyly.
“You’re very kind, Dot,” Mariana said. “Thank you. I feel as though I’m simply fortunate.”
“Would that the rest of us were fortunate.” The duke scarcely spoke above a murmur, but she heard him as surely as if he were right next to her ear.
“But it’s what I do for a living,” Mariana added. “I should be pleased if everyone else would take a turn. I should like to be entertained, too! Mrs. Hardy, do you play?”
Delilah hesitated. “Yes . . . I’ve no gift, mind . . .”
Everyone good-naturedly protested.
She laughed. “Very well! I’d be delighted. Angelique, will you join me in this?” Delilah stood.
“Oh, why not!” Angelique agreed cheerfully.
They murmured together over the pianoforte, deciding upon a tune.
And then Angelique began to play.
“Oh, I love ‘Black-eyed Susan,’” Mariana sighed.
Delilah and Angelique did lovely justice to the long and aching song of a sailor and his woman saying goodbye to each other.
Oh Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My heart shall ever true remain.
Let me kiss off that falling tear,
We only part to meet again.
Change as you list she wins, my heart shall be
A faithful compass that still points to thee.
And while Angelique and Delilah made eyes misty all over the room with their rendition, and even the duke seemed rather still, Mariana used the cover of John Gay’s many, many verses to compose in her head another little tune. The lyrics, born of pure simmering anger and raw inspiration and wicked, wicked, desperate mischief came to her so swiftly, so wholly, surely the angels must have been on her side. Or perhaps it was devils. At this point she thought she’d take any help she could get.
She applauded happily along with everyone else when Delilah and Angelique brought the song to an end, and waited a respectful moment.
Then she suggested: “Perhaps something lighter now? Another song has just come to me, and I believe we can all sing this one together! Would you like to hear it?”
“Oh, indeed!” Enthusiasm was unanimous, minus one.
Mariana went to the pianoforte again to pick out the tune, while Delilah watched to learn it.
“I think . . . C, G, and E . . . then C D F D E C D C, like so . . . yes, precisely.”
“Oh, that’s delightful.” Delilah was pleased as she tried it. “Quite sprightly!”
“Wonderful! Now when I bring my hands together like this”—Mariana clapped them—“I’d like you all to give a clap, too. So watch carefully. You’ll know why in a moment. Mrs. Hardy, shall we?”
Delilah launched into the tune, and Mariana waited two bars before she turned to the room full of happy, expectant faces and sang:
“Oh, I’m a lord of great valor and honor.”
At least that’s what he told her before he climbed on ’er . . .
. . . stairs to the ballroom to partake in a ball
But to the occasion he could not rise, only fall!
“What’s taking so long?” cried the maiden fair.
“Have pity,” he said, “and patience, I pray.
“I’ve a stick up me CLAP and gray in me hair!
“I’ve a stick up me CLAP and gray in me hair!”
Delilah’s delighted face slowly devolved into wide-eyed alarm while her fingers, seemingly independent of her horror, continued to move over the keyboard. Angelique had frozen, astounded, staring at Mariana.
Everyone else—save one person, of course—was thrilled. They cried out in delight. Mr. Delacorte slapped the table and hooted.
“Are you ready to sing with me?” Mariana enthused. “Everyone now!”
Mr. Delacorte, Dot, and Mrs. Pariseau joined her in such full voice that they didn’t notice Delilah stopped playing the pianoforte midway through.
“Oh, I’m a lord of great valor and honor.”
At least that’s what he told her before he climbed on ’er . . .
Stairs to the ballroom to partake in a ball
But to the occasion he could not rise, only fall!
“What’s taking so long?” cried the maiden fair.
“Have pity,” he said, “and patience, I pray.
“I’ve a stick up me CLAP and gray in me hair!
“I’ve a stick up me CLAP and gray in me hair!
“I’ve a stick up me CLAP and gray in me hair!”
Most of her audience fell about laughing and applauding.
Two of them were cautiously gauging the temperature of the room to see if everyone understood what had really just happened.
One of them was as still as if he’d been driven into the ground with a hammer, and he was studying her speculatively.
It felt wonderful. So wrong, and so wonderful. It was sex. It was the ball landing on your number on a roulette wheel after you’d wagered just a little too high, which she’d done only once in her life. She wouldn’t do it again, but she was glad she had done it.
What virtue had she just annihilated?
“Oh, Miss Wylde, that song is a delight! I shall be singing it whilst I go about my day,” Mrs. Pariseau said.
“What a happy song about dancing,” Dot said, wiping tears of laughter.
“Yes, there are so few happy songs about ‘dancing,’ Miss Wylde,” Mrs. Durand said dryly, rather pointedly. “So generous of you to add to the canon.”
She deserved more than a little scolding. But she thought it was just subtle enough that she could feign innocence, and she was going to bask in the champagne bubbles of her cleverness. She’d had so few wins, recently. She felt positively fulsome with triumph.
“I suspect you have a wonderful singing voice, Your Grace,” Mrs. Pariseau said, emboldened and aglow with the happiness of good music. “You ought to sing a tune. We’d be so honored.”
“Yes, why don’t you join in the singing, Your Grace?” Mariana felt emboldened, too. “I’m certain Mrs. Pariseau is right. You excel at so many things, it would doubtless be yet another triumph to add to the chapter called ‘Triumphs’ in your memoirs.”
He didn’t reply. He regarded her with something very like genuine interest. In fact, speculatively.
“Most operas are performed in Italian, are they not, Miss Wylde?” He was very polite.
Unusually polite.
Almost deferential.
“It is my opinion that the best of them are, indeed, Your Grace.” It was lovely to know something definitively that he seemed not to know. The evening was getting better and better.
“Such a lyrical language. So expressive and vibrant.”
“Oh, yes,” she agreed. A little more cautiously now. She wasn’t used to hearing two relatively pleasant sentences in a row from the duke.
“There’s a beautiful Italian expression . . . it’s a favorite of mine. Perhaps you know it? I should be pleased indeed if you could turn it into a little tune, with perhaps a poignant melody.”
“It would be my honor, Your Grace.” Perhaps, the general that he was, he’d decided to call a truce, knowing the battle would go on and that she could, in fact, draw blood.
“It’s this . . .” he said, slowly and beautifully. “‘Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagallo.’ Isn’t that beautiful and profound?”
“‘Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagallo.’” She flawlessly, slowly, imitated the way he’d savored the words. She hadn’t the faintest idea what they meant.
Mrs. Pariseau cleared her throat. “Miss Wylde . . . ?” she said quietly.
But Mariana didn’t hear her. She only knew she could not hesitate for long without looking like an absolute fool in front of him. So she nodded.
Later she was to remember the duke’s immediate little smile.
A snippet of an aria she loved possessed a similar rhythm to those words. With a tweak or two, she could adapt the duke’s phrase to it.
The room was utterly silent as she lowered her head and took a breath.
And then she slowly lifted her head, closed her eyes, and soulfully released the words with full power, trilling the L’s for all she was worth, hands over her heart.
“Non smetto mai di strillare come un orribile pappagalllllllo!”
A resounding silence ensued.
She frankly thought it was a creditable, if not tour de force, performance.
There ought to have been applause, or at least a sigh or two.
Something was terribly wrong.
Mr. Delacorte did pat his hands together tentatively. But he tapered off at the sight of Mrs. Pariseau with her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide and fixed on Mariana with what looked like shock and—more horrifying—sympathy.
A cold dread traced Mariana’s spine.
Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand were similarly wide-eyed and very still.
That bastard had walked her into a trap. That much was suddenly horrifyingly clear.
Dot and Mr. Delacorte had picked up the mood of the room and were somber, if confused.
“Thank you, Miss Wylde,” the duke said, sounding bored. But his eyes glinted dangerously. “That was even better than I expected.”
She saw then how he’d done it. He’d used her flaws against her. He thought her an ignorant peasant, all instinct and nerve, and he’d extrapolated from there. He had trapped her neatly with her own pride, and he’d played a hunch that she wouldn’t be able to resist lying about it.
She knew at once there was no winning against this man. Ever. She would not ever signify.
She supposed she was glad he’d been the one standing between the English and the French. But she was also glad there was bird shite all over his statue in Hyde Park.
She stood in the middle of the room, her palms damp, a cold knot in her stomach, and wished this was in fact an opera stage and that a trapdoor would open beneath her and she would topple in and perhaps die.
She wondered who would be brave enough to tell her what it meant.
It turned out to be Mrs. Durand.
She cleared her throat and said, with an exaggerated sort of politeness, “‘I never stop squawking like a hideous parrot’ is indeed an unusual expression, Your Grace.”
“And now it’s also a song,” the duke said placidly, and lifted the newspaper again to read.