“Six pence up in flames, just like that,” Delilah mused. “What istroublingthe girl?” She meant Lady Lillias.
“I suspect we’ll learn eventually. Things have a way of coming to light here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. For now, we’ll just add it to their bill,” Angelique said serenely.
Chapter Seven
When she was eight years old, Lillias, Gilly—Lord Bankham—and her brother St. John decided to try to ride down part of the stairs at Heatherfield on a little carpet.
Once they got going it was rapidly clear the ride wasn’t going to be as amusing as they thought it would be, but there was no way to stop once they’d gotten it going. Bump... ka bump... bump... her head banging on her collarbone, her teeth clacking... no choice but to endure it until they got to the floor. Intact but wiser.
That’s a bit how it felt now that her cherished assumptions about life had crumbled into dust.Everythingwas a jolt now.
There was nothing she could do about the uncomfortable forward jolt of time toward the Landover Ball apart from distract herself from it, or pretend it wasn’t happening at all.
This wasn’t easy to do when the well-meaning maid brought up a newspaper filled with gossip.
And Mr. Cassidy had not appeared in the drawing room last night. That was yet another jolt.
Of course,shemight have left the boarding house if she’d been able. To make the point that she could. Just like her brother, just like all men,who could up and go where they pleased as whim took them.
It was just... she’d been so certain he would be in the drawing room. After this afternoon in the little park outside, it seemed as inevitable and inexorable as that carpet trip down the stairs. He’d been enthralled. She’d wanted the balm of the distraction. The tribute of his attention.
She’d felt thwarted. Which was to be expected.
She hadn’t expected to feel... bleak.
Or strangely... ever-so-slightly panicked.
Finally, she was coolly resolved. He was merely an American laborer, his way with words notwithstanding. If they were not confined together here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, she likely would not have taken any notice of him at all. As of course their worlds would never have intersected.
She had time to come to this resolve as everyone in her family was out again today. Her mother had taken Claire for a fitting for new shoes. Her father had gone off to do something related to being an earl, and St. John was off enjoying being an heir.
“Enjoy your day in the tower, darling. Your sentence is almost up!” was how her mother bade her a cheery farewell.
And now it was quiet. She was left alone with her shattered assumptions, encroaching dread, restless, nascent, inappropriate lust, and worst of all, a badly shaken sense of herself. The fact that all of this was occurring away from her usual environment, in a suite of rooms by the docks, lent to the air of unreality.
Only seventeen thousand two hundred and eightminutes until the Landover Ball. There was nothing unreal about that. It was going to happen.
Partly from reflex, partly to comfort herself by doing something familiar, she stood and poured water from her basin pitcher into two little battered tin cups she carried about with her for that purpose.
She brought them to the table nearest the window, the one looking out toward the ocean and the garden.
She hesitated again.
And then she fetched her paintbox.
She gently, almost tenderly, settled it before her, and slowly unlatched it. As though whatever lived inside was sleeping, and might bite if awakened.
She hadn’t opened it in a few months.
“Good day,” she whispered to it. “Sorry I’ve been away.”
She peered inside and her pulse quickened a little with joy.
All those colors represented infinite possibilities.
“Infinite”... where had she last heard that word?
Oh, of course: Mr. Hugh Cassidy.