“You know: Because it’s calf’s head soup.”
“Ah, I see! An insult to the intelligence of the turtle. I have never felt compelled to mock a turtle, myself, but then I have never attempted to imitate one either.”
“Although it doesn’t really imitate turtle, does it, if we all know it’s calf’s head.”
“Me, I am glad to know this is not from a turtle.” Nico lifted a forcemeat ball on his spoon. “Or I should ask what part it was.”
Pilcrow spluttered soup. Nico passed him a napkin, grinning.
They went on from there up Old Bond Street to Mr. Lloyd’s, who sold the finest chicken-skin gloves. He recoiled from Pilcrow’s peculiarly discoloured hands with a look of dismay, and brought out a fine selection, mostly in white, York tan, and bright yellow.
“I trust that is not your arsenic gold,” Nico remarked. He was rapidly developing a wariness towards bright colours.
“Orpiment is not used as a dye,” Pilcrow said reassuringly. “Oh, I like these.” He picked up a pair in a sort of dingy yellow-white parchment shade.
“Those look a little used, my friend,” Nico observed to the glover. If he thought he was going to palm off his grubby stock on Pilcrow in Nico’s company, he would discover his mistake.
Mr. Lloyd started a protest, but Pilcrow said, “No, indeed, it’s isabella.”
“Who is?”
“The colour. It’s named isabella.”
That seemed an elegant name for an uninspiring hue. “Vraiment. And what is isabella? Hemlock? Prussic acid?”
“I promise you, it is quite harmless. Although the name…” Pilcrow shot him a look in which amusement lurked. “The story is that the King of Spain besieged a city, and his wife, Queen Isabella, believed he would succeed so easily that she vowed not to bathe or change her shift until he was victorious. Unfortunately, it took three years. The colour isabella is named for the final shade of her undergarments.” He lifted the yellowed gloves with an unexpectedly wicked grin. Nico caught the glover’s outraged eye, put his elbows on the counter, and laughed like a fool.
It all made for a highly enjoyable day, such that Nico forgot Jacky Gaskin entirely for half-hour stretches at a time in Pilcrow’s company. He was appreciative, undemanding, unexpectedly amusing, and Nico was becoming quite feverish with anticipation of how he would look when he was properly turned out.
Things would change then, of course. Pilcrow would get his new finery and start attending parties where he would be endlessly courted by indiscriminate parents of daughters, bygamblers in need of people to win money from, by all the people who thought they should have some of his wealth for themselves. They’d flatter him relentlessly, and he would start to see himself as a superior being, develop airs, look down on people who hadn’t chanced on wealth, behave as though he merited his fortune. In fact, he’d make a fool of himself while other people made a fool of him, and perhaps one of them would be Nico.
He wasn’t looking forward to that part at all.
Chapter Eight
Titus strolled back towards Carey Street with the Comte in comfortable silence.
It had been a wonderful day. He would never have dared enter Hoby’s or Lloyd’s with his stained hands and shabby clothes and inexperience: at most he would have gone to shops of the second or third rank. Instead the Comte’s confidence had swept him into the best places on a tide of respect and attention that had been deeply enjoyable, even if it was purchased.
A delightful day, at least from the moment the Comte arrived. The Ormskirks had been dreadful, and Titus’s own response even worse. He was still kicking himself.
What made it so infuriating was that Titus was perfectly capable of standing up for himself, in some circumstances. He’d run his own business for years, and knew how to respond to people who didn’t pay, supplied substandard materials, or made baseless complaints. But he didn’t know what to do when everyone else seemed to understand a social rule that he didn’t, or when people broke the social rules he did understand. That was why Henry had been so debilitating:he’d changed the rules all the time, and then made Titus feel stupid and guilty for breaking them. The Ormskirks had done a similar thing, now he considered it. They had refused to be dismissed politely, and since the rules decreed he could not be rude to a titled sixty-year-old widow, they had rendered him utterly powerless.
The Comte had taken back that power without guilt or hesitation. Titus wondered how anyone could be so effortlessly confident. And so untrammelled by the desire to please! He’d pointed out the ghastly duo’s absurdity, interrupted without hesitation, and told them to leave a house that wasn’t even his, and all with an easy smile that rendered their protests ridiculous. He would probably have told Henry he was unreasonable and childish the first time he threw a tantrum, and Henry might even have felt ashamed.
The Comte didn’t feel the need to placate anyone. That was his secret, and Titus could only look on and marvel. At that and the fact that, for all his brisk way with tiresome people, he had been nothing but patient with Titus.
He could have been irritable, since they’d been hours choosing cloth and patterns with Mr. Hawkes yesterday. Titus didn’t think anyone had ever spent so much time or care in attending to his wishes, and he was sure most people would have become impatient—Henry would have called him grossly self-indulgent—but not a word of annoyance had escaped the Comte’s lips. It was intoxicating, and then the Comte had done the same again today. Cheerful, smiling, apparently genuinely interested, his firelight eyes intent on patterns…
Titus had previously wondered how anyone could spend eight thousand pounds a year. Now he knew. He could go shopping with the Comte every day until his coffers were bare and his house full of unnecessary things, just to have his attention. Just to keep in his company.
This was stupid, and might be dangerous. The Comte was charming beyond words, but he was quite obviously a rogue, even if he bore a title. His mother’s legacy, Titus supposed. He’d been after Miss Whitecross’s money before, and Titus did not delude himself that the Comte was helping him now out of nothing but desire for his company.
That didn’t have to be a problem. The Comte had made himself genuinely useful, and genuinely pleasant, and if he had an ulterior motive, well, that made him no different from anyone else. Surely Titus could enjoy his company on that basis without harm, so long as he didn’t do anything stupid such as staring too obviously, or letting longing show on his face, or permitting himself the sort of hope that he should already know was impossible.
And itwasimpossible. Quite apart from the sheer improbability that the Comte, if he were even interested in men at all, would be interested in a gangling, paint-stained idiot, Titus had enough on his plate with Henry.
He hadn’t replied to his past lover’s first, pleasantly phrased letters; the one that had come this morning had been distinctly less pleasant. It had complained of his silence and coldness, trusted that his newfound wealth was not making him forget his old friends, and generally taken a reproachful tone that was alarming, since Henry’s reproaches were the early heralds of explosion.