“But... why?” Mr. Cassidy seemed sincerely troubled. “I never understood the ‘why’ of poetry. To go out of your way to sit and ponder and write about things when you could go out and simplybein the world. Smell it. Taste it. Touch it. Climb it. Sail it.”
Bolt was studying Cassidy expressionlessly, but his eyes were very intent and bemused. Angelique could almost hear his single thought:Americans.
“Indeed, Mr. Cassidy. But I like it because the world is a chaotic place filled with millions of things that require us to think and feel, and poetry distills it in neat couplets and stanzas that are very like music. There is something soothing about it, and I think there’s something masterful in the attempt. And I feel it focuses the mind, the rhymes and images. Not every poet goes on about daffodils.”
Angelique watched him, suddenly breathless with reluctant fascination and a near traitorous, restless ache she patently did not want to feel.Have you ever considered that I might be in need of a bit of comfort?He’d endured horrors and hardships with an inimitable aplomb. What, if anything, softened the contours of his life? Apart, of course, from Lapsang Souchong, gaming hells, and the truly wonderful pillows here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
He turned her way as if he sensed an opportunity to drink in her gaze.
It took a moment, but she managed to avert her gaze again and resolved to keep it averted.
I am not so easy, or foolish, as that, Lord Bolt.
“Read a bit of poetry, if you would, Bolt,” Delacorte called out.
Dot had collapsed the entire pile of pillikins when she’d attempted to take her turn at pulling one and they needed to start the game all over again.
Lord Bolt sighed. “Very well, Delacorte.”
And in a sonorously beautiful voice he read:
“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!”
Holy—!
Everyone wasquitesurprised.
Not one person moved a hair.
“‘A savage place, holy and enchanted,’” Bolt repeated, mildly. “Reminds me of this drawing room.”
Angelique stifled with her knuckles what threatened to be a shout of laughter.
“You could go on stage, Lord Bolt, with a voice like that,” Mrs. Pariseau declared.
“Yes, if your gaming hell should not work out, you must absolutely consider the stage,” Angelique agreed.
He was smiling at her. She could feel it as surely as she could feel the sun through a window. She dare not look. To look was to court that sweet sharp jolt she felt in the region of her heart, and, if she were being honest, the region of her loins.
“Mrs. Breedlove, kindly do not laugh while you are posing. I am trying to draw your mouth.”
“Would it be possible to do my ears first?”
“I have done your ears.” Mrs. Pariseau was strict. “Mouthless faces are simply eerie, dear.”
Angelique sighed. “Oh, very well.”
“I recognize that as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, by the way, Lord Bolt,” she murmured between narrowed lips. With a rebellious glance at Mrs. Pariseau.
Mrs. Pariseau paused to glare her into silence.