“It’s possible you’ll hardly notice I’m here,” was, in fact, what General James Duncan Blackmore, the Duke of Valkirk, had said to Delilah and Angelique a fortnight ago, at the conclusion of his interview.
Later, this had struck them as funny. After all, even when the moon isn’t visible in the sky, everyone knows it’s still up there. Valkirk’s influence was immense, and shone on every part of England.
Five years had passed since the war that had made him a general, a legend, and subsequently a duke. A huge handsome statue of him was erected in Hyde Park and was now perpetually topped with a modest crown of bird shite; in the British Museum hung a painting depicting him wearing a scarlet dress uniform and a triumphant sneer. Some years earlier he’d written a slim book called Honor that had become a sacred text for earnest young men hoping to live noble lives of bravery and distinction. No doubt he would be interred in Westminster Abbey when the day arrived, provided they could cram another dignitary into the place.
The actual man proved almost alarmingly vital in person.
Yet there was a sort of impenetrable certainty to him, and a grandeur that had nothing to do with pomp. Delilah and Angelique thought this certainty seemed actually to be a sort of completeness, as though, having done what no other human could do, and seen things no other human had seen, he’d nothing left to accomplish, and nothing could possibly impress him.
Roughly the same, of course, might almost be said of a cliff.
He took up a good deal of room on the settee and, it seemed, most of the available oxygen in the room. It was as though his history crowded in with him like an invisible entourage.
“I’m writing another book, you see,” he told them. “My autobiography. And I need a place to stay while I finish it, as my London townhouse is undergoing renovations.”
Ah. This, apparently, was what there was left for a man like Valkirk to do: record the story of his life so that young men all over England could pore over it to learn the secret of greatness.
They could sense in him a tendency to briskness straining against his faultless manners; he took care to speak gently. No doubt he assumed, rightly, that Delilah and Angelique were awed into speechlessness upon meeting him. Everybody was.
When he’d admired and approved their list of rules (not even a duke was exempt from their rules), he’d endeared himself to them forever. Because who knew more about rules and the right thing to do than the Duke of Valkirk?
He was a man. They hadn’t yet met one who couldn’t be domesticated with a warm fire, some drinking chocolate, Helga’s scones, and kindness, which was a bit how wolves had become dogs. They were confident they could make him comfortable.
But they’d needed to break the news to Mr. Delacorte, whose sentimental heart had taken a buffeting when Mr. Hugh Cassidy had improbably married the daughter of an earl staying at The Grand Palace on the Thames and ferried her off to his home in the wilds of New York. While he was happy for Mr. Cassidy, Mr. Delacorte missed having a friend who was game to go to a donkey race or to a festival featuring men attempting to grasp fleeing greased pigs, or any of the other entertainments available to thrifty men who eschewed gaming hells.
He didn’t miss having an earl and countess about the place. The strain of reining in his natural exuberance sawed at him.
“We all miss Mr. Cassidy,” Delilah began.
“He is a prince among men,” Delacorte said, forgetting that he’d have enjoyed Cassidy a good deal less if he’d been an actual prince.
“Well, we think you’ll be pleased to know that we’re getting a new gentleman guest!”
Mr. Delacorte smiled expectantly, his blue eyes shining as they shifted between Angelique and Delilah.
They realized they might have overplayed their bright, encouraging expressions when he narrowed his eyes. “How might a bloke address this new guest in conversation?”
Their silence was a beat too long.
“Your Grace,” Angelique finally admitted.
“He’s a duke?” Delacorte croaked incredulously.
“He was a general, first, mind.”
“How is that better? Hold on. You can’t mean Valkirk? Valorous Valkirk? Holy sh . . .”
When he’d first arrived at The Grand Palace on the Thames, he would have lost a pence then and there to the epithet jar in the sitting room. One of the reasons he was happy at The Grand Palace on the Thames was that he felt the ladies would “knock the rough corners from him.” He wanted a bit of civilizing. He liked to think he was getting more civilized by the day.
“We won’t be calling him ‘Valorous Valkirk’ in the sitting room, of course,” Angelique said.
“He was made a duke because he was brave in the war,” Delilah tried. “He wasn’t born one, like Lucien’s father. Perhaps think of him as a bit like Captain Hardy! His beginnings were likewise rather modest. Only . . . he’s now a bit grander than Captain Hardy. And perhaps . . . ah, quieter.”
Mr. Delacorte often congratulated himself on bringing the taciturn Captain Hardy out of his shell (a notion that would have greatly surprised Captain Hardy), but he’d found it no mean feat. They were now business partners and friends, but Hardy was never going to be as voluble as Delacorte preferred. Notably: Hardy hadn’t seen fit to tell him that he’d talked a duke into staying here.
Because Captain Hardy had indeed been the one who’d enticed the Duke of Valkirk to take a suite of rooms at The Grand Palace on the Thames. He’d presented this coup to Delilah and Angelique with much the same pride and fanfare as Gordon, their striped cat, presented them with dead mice. After all, the suites ought not to sit empty. And it was the duke who had loaned them his opera box; he owned one, perhaps because it seemed like something a duke ought to own, and while his son made good use of it, the duke never attended.
“So . . . a bit like Captain Hardy,” Delacorte guessed. “With a dash of Bolt thrown in, perhaps?”
“Ah—a bit like Captain Hardy. Not at all like Bolt.” While it was generally acknowledged that Lucien was quite reformed, predictably good company, responsible, successful, and besotted with his new wife, he’d begun life as the bastard son of a duke and had sown every oat conceivable when he was a young man. His youthful exploits had been gleefully documented by the broadsheets and would likely be recalled for decades.
Whereas Valkirk’s entire allegedly blameless life ensured he was spoken of only in hushed, reverent tones, and the details of his life had been reported as national news, safely on the front page of the newspaper. Never on the gossip pages.
“Why does he need to stay here?”
“He’s writing his memoirs, and he thought a change of scene would help, as there are apparently too many distractions in his townhouse with builders and whatnot. And he needed to stay in London in case he’s required for a parliamentary vote.”
Mr. Delacorte was quiet.
“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.
All guests will eat dinner together at least four times per week.
The food here was heavenly. It was all she could do not to seize her plate and lick it after every dinner. Helga, the cook, was a genius. One had to be quick, however, to keep up with Mr. Delacorte, who created foodscapes, mountains of potatoes and rivers of gravy, on his plate, which he then swiftly, cleanly demolished the way a vengeful God might with a tornado. It was an awe-inspiring thing to witness.
All guests must gather in the drawing room after dinner for at least an hour at least four times per week. We feel it fosters a sense of friendship and the warm, familial, congenial atmosphere we strive to create here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
She would not be flirting with anyone’s husbands, though when she got a look at Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt, she had cause to be grateful indeed for their sheer decorative appeal. But there was a sort of sealed, inviolable contentment to people deeply in love; she’d recognized the same quality in her parents. It made her wistful and restless. The whirlwind world in which she found herself now was full of the window dressings of it, the flirting and sex and flattery and drama. When all of that was cleared away—say, by a gunshot—emptiness remained. She wasn’t certain whether it was a mercy or not that she knew this.
All guests should be quietly respectful and courteous of other guests at all times, though spirited discourse is welcome.
So far the spirited discourse involved how they intended to decorate the ballroom for the Night of the Nightingale and whether they ought to play Whist or read aloud from The Ghost in the Attic.
Mr. Delacorte was jolly and pleasant, and his lovely blue eyes were twinklingly appreciative of Mariana’s feminine charms, but she got the sense he preferred a cozier sort of female, rather than the more sparkly sort, which she was. They recognized in each other a fellow card, and became fast friends. He imported remedies from the Orient and India, which he then sold to surgeons and apothecaries up and down England, and he’d shown her the samples in his case, little pills, vials, teas, and powders. “Ground-up herbs and animal whatnot!” he’d said. “Most of ’em work a treat.” He’d entered a business partnership with Captain Hardy, who owned a ship, and Lord Bolt, who already had a successful enterprise importing goods from the Orient. He resembled a sturdy, well-fed Welsh pony, and laughed a good deal.
Mrs. Pariseau, a dashing widow with snapping dark eyes and wonderful silver stripes in her dark hair, was clever and worldly but quick with a laugh and a wink. She’d played Faro with Mariana last night; they’d placed wagers using buttons, and Mrs. Pariseau had lost nearly all of them. And now Mariana was learning to play chess from Dot, who had learned it from Delacorte.
She’d learned that Dot was a collector of vocabulary words, too, another person who was compelled to learn by listening.
They all got on famously. No one seemed to mind that she had been in the gossip columns. After all, Lord Bolt lived here, too.
There was also, unfortunately, an epithet jar, however. It always seemed to hover accusingly on the periphery of her vision, as if it knew how often she wanted to let fly with a “bloody,” which would cost her a pence. She couldn’t risk it.
Guests may entertain other guests in the drawing room.
Which was the genteelest possible way of saying that bedrooms were for sleeping, not for orgies.
Curfew is at 11:00 p.m. The front door will be securely locked then. You will need to wait until morning to be admitted if you miss curfew.
She quite liked knowing she was securely locked in at night. Dot might have opened the door to one gently pleading woman, but surely she wouldn’t be tempted to allow in a mob howling for her blood? She amused herself briefly by imagining the proprietresses calmly conducting interviews with people holding torches and pitchforks, one at a time.
If the proprietresses collectively decide that a transgression or series of transgressions warrants your eviction from The Grand Palace on the Thames, you will find your belongings neatly packed and placed near the front door. You will not be refunded the balance of your rent.
She could not imagine doing a thing to jeopardize those rules, in light of the kindness of the ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames. She could well understand why Mr. Delacorte and Mrs. Pariseau never wanted to leave, if their rooms were anything like hers.
Against the wall was shoved a narrow, soft bed heaped in layers of coverlets, topped with a quilt, and crowned with a plump pillow. Alongside it lay a braided rug in shades of rose and green; it was a pleasure to press her feet into it first thing in the morning. A mirror the size of her face was hung on the wall above a basin and a water pitcher painted in little pink flowers. Across from the wardrobe was a desk, and on it perched a tiny vase from which a sprig of white blossoms peeped. It made the entire room smell like spring. She’d carefully tied her cherished pink satin ribbon, the one her parents had given her on her tenth birthday, around the vase, to make the room feel a little more like home.
Her window offered a view of another building, all brick, and an alley in which she’d seen two cats making love.
She rehearsed in her head another approach to the letter.
Dear Mama,
I hope this letter finds you well. I’ve some wonderful news. I’ve moved into a lovely new room at an exclusive boardinghouse. You must pass an interview to be admitted. If you’re found wanting they won’t let you in! I’ve made many fine new friends and the food is very good. I’m to sing at an event featuring only me at the end of the month, and lords and ladies will be invited. Right now, there is a little blossom in a vase on my writing table, and the smell of it reminds me of the first trip you and Papa and I made to the seashore so many years ago. Do you remember the green hills on the way? Sometimes I picture them when I can’t sleep.
It was neither untrue, nor entirely true. Much like the gossip written about her, the difference was in what was omitted and what was included.
Was it dishonest?
It left out the part where she’d awakened with a start last time, from a dream in which she plummeted out her window into the gaping maw of someone screeching the word harlot harlot harlot.
She suspected those dreams would be her lot for a while.
But she’d be fed and housed at least through the month.
At any rate, she didn’t write the letter.
She would try again tomorrow. It was time to go downstairs to the sitting room to join in the cozy familial atmosphere and spirited discussions, and revel in the fact that for now, she was safe from anyone in the ton who might judge her, even if she wasn’t quite safe from the epithet jar.