“I think weallknow what it’s about, Lord Bolt, thank you,” Angelique interjected sternly.
Delacorte’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. “Well. My brother had one over on me, then, when he taught me that. How much should I put in the jar?”
“Fiftypounds,” demanded Mr. Cassidy. He was pretending to be incensed. “Because now I shall be going about singing ‘jingle bang, jingle bang’ in my head for weeks, damn you.”
“It’s unprecedented,” Delilah said soothingly. “Though it’s undoubtedly a wholly inappropriate poem for mixed company. Mrs. Breedlove and I shall need to discuss it later to decide. But how about a pence for now, as usual?”
Delacorte heaved another sigh, stood, and plinked a pence into the epithet jar.
Followed by Mr. Cassidy, who, being a man of honor, dropped in his own pence for the “damn” without being asked.
“If you’ve done with spillikins, Delacorte, Mr. Cassidy, we shall have a cheroot and I’ll tell you about a poem you can recite in mixed company. It makes the ladies swoon.” Bolt issued this surprisingly magnanimous invitation.
One could only hold in all epithets for so long, she supposed.
Mr. Delacorte and Mr. Cassidy were up for some time with men only. They shot to their feet.
Bolt languidly rose from his chair and lead a caravan of sorts to the Gentleman’s Room. “The poem goes a bit like this:
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
“Oh, my... right beautiful, Bolt,” Delacorte breathed.
“I so agree,” Bolt murmured idly as he swept Angelique with a look as sultry as a caress on his way out of the room. “Don’t look up, Mrs. Breedlove. Mrs. Pariseau is working on your eyebrow.”
Chapter Seven
Lucien seldom frequented the north end of London Bridge, but Mr. Exeter had told him that this was where he ought to be at two o’clock in the afternoon. And of all the things Lucien had learned to place his faith in—his sword arm, his W.A. Jones pistols with the saw-handled butts, his charm—he perhaps ranked Mr. Exeter’s suggestions at the top. Of the precious few qualities that he and Exeter shared, thoroughness was one of them.
Lord Cuttweiler, his step not quite so jaunty and assured now—his aspect might even be described as a trifletwitchy, Lucien noted with grim satisfaction—came into view.
Lucien waited until Cuttweiler was flush with the place he stood. And when the gold tip of his walking stick flashed flush with his hiding place, Lucien stepped forward and shouted, “NOW!”
Cuttweiler shot straight up into the air and spun about like a drunken mill wheel, his limbs flailing all at once in every direction, swinging his walking stick through the air as though at invisible attackers. “Ah! No! Ah! AHHHH!”
A few passersby eyed him warily and picked up their pace.
Lucien enjoyed this spectacle for the space of about four seconds and then raised his own voice. “For God’s sake, don’t piss yourself, Cuttweiler. It’ll make this conversation even more unpleasant than I intend for it to be. I’m alive. Not a ghost. Do shut up.”
The reasonable tone finally got through to Cuttweiler. He got hold of himself and stopped the flailing and the little terrified shouts.
Cuttweiler inspected Lucien with a dumbstruck fascination.
Lucien allowed him to do this for a quarter of a minute and took great pains to look bored.
“Bolt. Well. So the rumors are true. You’re looking well,” Cuttweiler tried finally. With a certain cautious friendliness. He dared to allow a wobbly smile to begin to form.
Lucien fixed him with such a look of cold amazement that all hope drained from Cuttweiler’s face and left it gray.
Lucien allowed Cutty to chill in that gaze in silence.
“Are you going to kill me, Bolt?” Cuttweiler was trying for defiance. He missed it by about an octave. His voice emerged like the strained blat of a broken flute.