Delilah sighed. “We won’t be sending you into the street with a bell, Dot.”
Dot began to smile.
“Yet,” Delilah muttered, a moment later. She was only half joking.
It was just that the fortnight of stillness was a shock after weeks of ceaseless and, quite frankly, exhilarating and triumphant activity. Together Angelique and Delilah made decisions about expenditures and aesthetics shrewdly and effortlessly; they’d done clever things with the curtains and carpets and counterpanes and so forth left in Derring’s townhouse that hadn’t been taken away by creditors. The Grand Palace sparkled.
Such was Delilah’s confident pride and zeal in their endeavor she’d even managed to lure Helga, her old cook, away from the Countess of Brexford with the promise of absolute autonomy in the kitchen and the potential for renown far and wide, given that they expected an exotic variety of guests.
“It’ll be so much fun, Helga! Imagine!” Delilah coaxed. The way she had coaxed Angelique.
“The duchess pays me well, but I’m right miserable, so’s I am,” Helga admitted. “And I miss you, Lady Derring. I’ll do it!”
And she’d given her notice and moved in at once.
On the day they’d hung the sign (painted artfully over the old one, which said something about rogues) and dispatched Dot and the two newly hired scullery maids-of-all-work with notices to post in all the businesses nearby, they waited in breathless delight.
Absolutely no one appeared.
It was baffling. London fairly teemed with people coming and going. Ships and mail coaches disgorged them every day. Surely one or two of them would find their way to The Grand Palace on the Thames, if only accidentally?
But no.
And in the gathering tension of the quiet days, the gears of Delilah and Angelique’s partnership began to slip and scrape. Every now and then a spark would shoot—a quip emerged perhaps a little too pointed, a tone a trifle too irritable. They laughed less together as the weight of worry began to settle heavily in, the way Gordon settled into his basket. Only infinitely less cozy.
By the time the clock struck eight they’d fallen so broodingly silent that the sudden knock at the door resounded through the house like a gong clash.
They all froze like thieves caught in the act.
Delilah cleared her throat. “Would you go and see who it is, Dot?” Delilah said, as though this happened every day.
But Dot was already a blur, scrambling down the stairs.
She and Angelique remained silently, almost comically frozen in position.
Dot returned moments later, panting.
“Lady Derring Mrs. Breedlove Lady Derring Mrs. Breedlove Lady Derring Mrs. Breedlove!There’s a chap downstairs! Looks full of himself and...” She paused, and then said on a hush, “He wants to let a room!”
Angelique and Delilah exchanged glances. Well, then. Perhaps that silver-eyed man had been an augury of the guests to come. The first drop in a refreshing rainstorm.
Perhaps itwashim? The description certainly fit.
At the notion, Delilah’s heart lurched in a way that stunned her.
“Dot, will you make some tea?” Angelique said coolly.
Delilah and Angelique shook out their skirts, removed their aprons, reviewed the mirror for any hairs that might have escaped from their pins, then followed Dot downstairs.
In the reception room they found a man of modest scale and scrupulous neatness and plainness. His features were tidy: a short straight nose, a small thin mouth. His black hair was clipped so severely and flawlessly, surely a ruler of some sort had been employed. And his clothes were exquisitely, precisely tailored. He was a man who could fit in or disappear into the wallpaper nearly anywhere.
He rose when they entered.
“We would like to reserve your finest, largest suite,” he said without preamble.
They surreptitiously, out of the corners of their eyes, cast glances about the room.
It was Delilah who asked it, very gently. “We?”