There was brief little silence, interrupted only by the faintest most peculiar sound.
“Whatisthat?” Delilah whispered to Angelique.
“I think it was the sound of the men in the room sucking in his stomach a little bit,” Angelique whispered. “Trousers rustling, buttons squeaking. That sort of thing.”
Everyone beamed at Mrs. Locksley with pleasure.
Lucien was conspicuously absent from the gathering. Over the past week or so he had taken himself off on evenings when he was not required to sit in the parlor, in accordance with the rules of The Grand Palace on the Thames, getting up to whatever pleasures London had to offer, she supposed. He’d always returned by curfew. She found her eyes going to where he normally sat, over and over, the way one’s tongue seeks out a hole where a tooth once was.
“Oh, please do sit down, everyone. It will make me feel right at home. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to join you for dinner.” Mrs. Locksley was, charmingly, a little shy. “I found I needed a bit of a nap. But I cannot wait to sample the cooking tomorrow. I hear it’s beyond compare.”
Mr. Cassidy said gravely, “Beyond compare, indeed.” His face was glowing with admiration.
She smiled at him as though the words were all for her.
Mr. Delacorte lunged to seize a chair and brought it closer to the fire.
“Why don’t you have a seat here, Mrs. Locksley.” He gave it a pat. “It’s the warmest seat in the house!”
It was also very close to the chessboard Mr. Delacorte usually presided over.
“Very kind of you, Mr. Delacorte. But I am not so delicate as that!” She laughed merrily and everyone laughed with her, though it wasn’t clear that anything was funny. It was born of a sort of general delight, the kind inspired by spring days and gamboling baby animals. “Perhaps we should draw straws to see who may sit next to the fire.”
“Straws!” He laughed giddily. “I ask you, isn’t that a clever idea?” he said to the crowd at large.
“Clever, clever indeed.” Everyone agreed on a happy murmur.
Introducing people was always a grand experiment, Angelique thought, and it was one of the mischievous pleasures of being a proprietress. Like altering the ingredients in a cake, one never knew whether the result would be something marvelous or something that would upset everyone’s digestion.
“Why don’t you settle there tonight, Mrs. Locksley,” Angelique suggested. “You may find it becomes your favorite place. And if you’d like to knit with us, we’ll make room on the seat for you here.”
“I’d be delighted to, thank you, Mrs. Breedlove. You are too good to me.” She’d brought downstairs with her a little blue ball of yarn she hoped to make into a muffler for one of her nephews and she clutched it between her hands.
She settled in and gathered her pretty knit shawl snugly about her. The firelight picked little red glints from her dark hair and lashes.
There was a contented hush as everyone beamed at their new addition with great pleasure and she beamed back at them. Every one of them got an equal portion of her attention for a moment.
“What we usually do of evenings is listen to someone read aloud, while we knit, or chat about our days, or play chess or whatnot. And sometimes there are musicales,” Delilah said suddenly.
Angelique shot her a startled, quelling, sidelong look.
“We’ve had one musicale so far,” Angelique added quickly.“One.”
“We once even waltzed!” Mr. Delacorte exclaimed.
“Now see what you’ve done to Delacorte,” she muttered under her breath to Delilah.
“Do you play pianoforte, Mrs. Locksley?” Mr. Cassidy asked.
Mrs. Locksley smiled a trifle uncertainly to the crowd at large. “I do play pianoforte. Not splendidly.”
One got the sense that she did not want to do it tonight, either.
Mrs. Pariseau, who’d been studying Mrs. Locksley with those dark eyes of hers that seemed to see right through a person without judging them at all, saved her. “I could read your cards for you, my dear. Unless you’ve notions about that sort of thing being wicked.”
Mrs. Locksley gasped in delight. “On the contrary, I think I shall find that rather thrilling! I’d always longed to visit the gypsy encampment near our home in Northumberland, but my parents forbade it.”
The crowd present had varying degrees of faith in Mrs. Pariseau’s ability to tell the future—Mr. Cassidy was perhaps the greatest skeptic, being aggressively practical—but they liked her and they were very much in favor of anything that pleased Mrs. Locksley. So off Mrs. Pariseau went upstairs to fetch her cards.