Then Dot said,“Oohhhhh!”delightedly and she swung the door open.
In strode a strapping stranger wearing a many-caped greatcoat that dripped onto the foyer floor. He whipped off his hat to reveal hair swept back froma proud, high forehead and impressive dark brows dipped in a scowl of concern. His eyes blazed. Such was his princely bearing that everyone, frankly, gawked at him in silence for a moment.
And then:
“DODO!” Aurelie howled.
Hawkes watched with disbelief as his wife launched from her chair, tore across the foyer, and leaped right into the man’s arms.
“Oof!” said the man. “LiLi! Thank God!”
“My brother Edouard,” she announced over her shoulder, so her husband wouldn’t challenge the man to a duel or faint of shock.
She kissed both her brother’s wet cheeks and he kissed hers and swung her about and put her down.
Hawkes did not quite clap his hand over his heart but it was sobering indeed to realize how bloodyrelievedhe was. How thoroughly his heart and whole world was entwined with hers now.
And how overjoyed he was by her joy.
Aurelie dragged her brother by both hands into the sitting room. “Come and meet my darling husband and our friends. Dot, will you take Do—Edouard’s coat and hat and bring him something warm to drink or perhaps you would like brandy?”
Edouard, who had been indescribably worried by the cryptic letter announcing she was coming to him, then startled and made suspicious by the rhapsodic one announcing her marriage to an erstwhile-spy-now-viscount, had boarded a ship from Boston practically upon receipt of the last one.
Hawkes shook hands with his new brother-in-law and found himself subjected to the kind of burning scrutiny of which only spies and older brothersseemed capable. Edouard’s eyes were unnervingly like his sister’s.
“It is a funny thing, Mr. Hawkes, but when I told my hack driver I was going to The Grand Palace on the Thames, he said your name immediately, and... well, I have never heard anyone’s praises sung so thoroughly... by a hack driver.”
It was said with amusement and challenge.
“Ah, that would be Mr. Berwick,” Hawkes said contentedly. “I find it prudent to have friends in all places. Even Boston.”
Edouard laughed, and settled into a chair, accepted his brandy, and smiled at the room as if he’d lived there for ages.
“Well,” Delilah said to Angelique and Dot, sinking with weary satisfaction into one of their chairs in their cozy room at the top of the stairs a few nights later, “when we write our memoirs of life at the docks, I think we ought to call this chapter, ‘There are easier ways to get a footman.’”
Angelique laughed.
It was tempting to feel like the point of a saga involving a house milling with soldiers, a fleeing Bourbon princess who had adopted an alias, a spymaster, and an evil fallen earl was to bring them the true footman of their—and, perhaps more worrisomely, all the maids’—dreams: Mr. Benjamin Pike.
He was well-spoken, tall enough to reach the sconces, and had proven himself brave and resourceful and able to hold a very righteous grudge—Hawkes had vouched for all of this. He could competently read and write. Heneverwanted to work for an earl again. He liked a bit of a challenge, and he liked sea air.
He possessed a fine wit, a calm presence, years ofexcellent experience, his own recipes for silver polish and stain removal, a trust-inspiring deference and clear respect for women, shoulders for miles, very fine gray eyes and a jaw so cleanly hewn one could use it to cut glass. He was regrettably unequivocally handsome, from all angles.
(“I’m a little worried all of the maids will be pregnant inside of a month,” Angelique whispered to Delilah, after the interview.)
They hired him anyway.
They liked him very much, and one did not look gift horses in their handsome mouths.
(After all, he could reach all the sconces.)
But so far Dot and the other maids were behaving angelically. Almost tiptoeing about, and speaking in hushes, and performing their work with exquisite care. As though they simply could notbelievetheir luck, and they thought Mr. Pike might be taken away from them if they put a foot wrong.
And Mr. Pike was somberly, flawlessly polite when he met the household staff, all of whom were women. He did not smile rakishly or twinkle or wink, though of course he might be capable of doing all of those things. One never knew. They would discover soon enough.
Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were relieved, as well—they had their own work with the Triton Group, and they felt better knowing The Grand Palace on the Thames would have at least one large man on site when they were away. They’d subjected Mr. Pike to their own form of questioning.
“Do you know how to shoot?” Captain Hardy had asked.