“Yes, Dot.”
Dot cleared her throat. “I... we just...” She pressed her lips together.
“Out with it, Dot.”
Her words emerged in a rush. “The staff wanted to tell you that we don’t care if you’re a mistress or a doxie. You are a lady to us all. We’ll call you anything you’d like. We love you all the same.”
Angelique was stunned.
Her hand went up to her mouth and then she lowered it into her lap. Her eyes followed it there.
It took her two or three shuddering breaths before she could look up again.
She did, and gave Dot the face she’d want to see: Mrs. Breedlove, cool, serene, in command of herself.
And she thought about what Lucien had said about not being afraid to face something difficult but true. She wanted to be brave, too.
“Dot... you may tell the staff that it is true that I was a mistress but I was never a doxie.”
“Never a doxie,” Dot repeated dutifully, as if remembering the order for the butcher.
“And you may tell them that I amnot ashamedbecause at the time it seemed I had no other recourse—which means, I had no other means of survival and I do not think it is noble to suffer when one might survive and perhaps go on to do good things, like open a beautiful boarding house by the docks. It was my choice and I do not recommend it for others. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Like me, when Lady Derring kept me on. I had not another soul. I had norecourse.” Dot was enjoying her new word.
And Angelique’s heart squeezed.
How was it she had never thought about Dot in quite that light? Because one didn’t normally think about servants in that light. But here at The Grand Palace on the Thames the lines between all of the people who lived here were a little blurred, and she ought to think of Dot and what her hopes and dreams might be.
“Well. I suppose that’s true,” Angelique said gently. “And because in time my difficult choice brought me to become friends with Mrs. Hardy, and to know all of you, and to make a true home here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. I cannot regret it. One must go forward, and learn.”
And it was a subtle thing, and she realized as she spoke it had been happening gradually, but suddenly a burden lifted from Angelique: she was no longer ashamed.
She understood, at last, what Lucien had been trying to tell her the day he left. That she ought to have told him about Derring, mainly because he knew she carried a burden, and because he, of all people, understood what it felt like to be ashamed of something one simply could not help and could not change.
Living one’s truth, it seemed, was more liberating than the false safety of no emotion or no risk.
It was just so much easier to do when you knew you were loved.
And she had sent Lucien away.
She didn’t think she’d ever be able to forgive herself for that.
“And Mrs. Breedlove will suffice, Dot,” she said more briskly and brightly. “No need to worry about whether I’m a mistress or a doxie, as I’m neither. But I am a proprietress.”
“Proprietress,” Dot repeated, savoring the s’s.
Angelique gestured with the plate of cake she’d finally accepted. “And thank you, Dot, for your kindness. It means very much to me. This is precisely what I wanted. I waswaitingfor just the right moment for tea and a lemon seed cake.”
But she found her throat was thick.
So she took a sip of tea and ate a corner of the lemon seed cake while Dot watched with wide, hopeful eyes.
She might as well chew on her sleeve. Food tasted like nothing.
But Dot lit up and dashed back down the stairs to impart the good news to everyone else.
“Are you certain you want to do this, sir?”