“Very well. We thought we’d perhaps have a conversation before we admit you to The Grand Palace on the Thames, since we know only what we’ve read about you, you see,” she said.
“You have me at a disadvantage, then, as I have read nothing about you.”
They didn’t laugh.
Mrs. Breedlove gave him a tolerant little smile. “And it issucha struggle to remain out of the broadsheets.”
When he grinned at this, she turned her head away ever-so-slightly from him, toward the mantel. The line of her fine jaw and the slope of her throat, and the way her skin took the light like a pearl, suddenly struck him as almost insufferably lovely. It made him feel fleetingly restless, as if someone had dragged a hand over his fur backward.
“Perhaps the most pertinent thing we’re read about you is that you’re dead,” Mrs. Hardy pressed on.
“Boo, I’m a ghost,” he said mildly and fanned his fingers in mock fright.
Two strained smiles greeted this.
“Lord...” This was from Mrs. Hardy.
“Bolt.”
“May we presume that you’re claiming to be the very same Lord Bolt who raced a high flyer down Bond Street?”
“Not at all.”
There was a pause.
“You’renotclaiming to be the same Lord Bolt who fought a duel with the Earl of Cargill and shot him in the shoulder?” Mrs. Breedlove also had an interesting recollection of his exploits.
“No.”
“And you’re not the Lord Bolt who wagered a thousand pounds by writing in the White’s betting book that a hummingbird would—”
“No.”
“Or that you wagered five hundred pounds that you could get a donkey to kick Lord—”
“No.”
“But... then...” This was Mrs. Hardy.
“It’s the word ‘claim’ I feel I must take issue with,” he clarified. “It rather implies a defense must be mounted, wouldn’t you say, in support of an assertion? Shall we choose a different verb? I was born Lucien Durand. My father is the Duke of Brexford. He was not married to my mother. My mother, Helene Durand, was beautiful, kind, and a bit of a fool. Hence my existence in the world.” He gave them what was meant to be a bit of a self-deprecating smile. “For which I am certain you are grateful.”
They regarded him with tiny polite smiles of their own.
He had the sense they wouldn’t have minded sliding the hairpins from their coiffures and jabbing him.
He liked their composure and their obvious intelligence. It wasn’t boring. He loathed boredom and he found it more and more difficult to tolerate dull people with anything like grace.
“To further expound, my father, the Duke of Brexford, persuaded the king to confer upon me the title and the modest lands when I was ten years old. I was in favor then, you see.” He said this very, very ironically. “It’s safe to say I am no longer. But I am still a viscount.”
“I feel I must point out that this portion of Lord Bolt’s... history is rather widely known in London and in other parts of England,” Mrs. Breedlove said gently. “Among those who read the broadsheets, most particularly.”
Bolt gave this the tiny taut smile it deserved. “Some weeks ago you decided to choose to accept one half of the token on the table and three guineas from a small, maddeningly efficient, nondescript, supercilious man, the sort who manages the sorcery of both blending into the wallpaper and nettling like a burr beneath a saddle, to hold your finest room for his employer, who would be me. His native dialect is irony, which you would probably come to understand if you spent a few years working for me as well.”
Their silence told him they remembered him well.
“I don’t believethatwas mentioned in the broadsheets,” he concluded.
“Does this supercilious man have a name?” Mrs. Hardy said suddenly.