Delilah and Angelique exchanged glances. This story was really beginning to interest them.
“She’s wearing one of the finest ball gowns I’ve ever seen—gold silk with gauze over it. Very dear or I’ll eat my cap. And it looks as though she’s slept in it.”
Dot would know what a slept-in ball gown looked like, too. As a former lady’s maid, she’d tended to foxed women who collapsed drunkenly straight into bed after balls.
Angelique exchanged a glance with Delilah.
“Dot, you’re certain she’s aladylady? You do recall the man and woman whom we were forced to send away the other day...”
Pink bloomed in Dot’s cheeks. She’d been forced to describe those two to Angelique and Delilah in a single, scandalized, whispered sentence: “They are both giggling, and he’s got hold of her left bottom and hasn’t let go since they arrived.”
The Grand Palace on the Thames’s previous unruly incarnation still haunted the sign outside in the form of the ghostly outline of the word “rogues,” and every now and then someone appeared at the door, bearing a yellowed menu of prurient services such as the Vicar’s Wheelbarrow or the Archbishop’s Piccolo, and would be sent away, dejected, the admonishment “read the sign!” ringing in their ears.
“Oh, no. This one is a lady, just like you and Mrs. Durand,” Dot said with conviction. “Just...”
“Bedraggled?” Angelique suggested.
“Yes. Draggled,” Dot agreed confidently.
Dot did indeed know at almost a glance her ladies from her not-ladies. They were convinced she was correct.
“Did you happen to get this gentleman’s name, as well as his coat, Dot?” Delilah asked.
“His name is something to do with a wall, I think, which fits, because he’s a bit like a wall, only human. And he said he would keep his coat, as he was going right back out again.”
Delilah gasped as realization settled in. “Oh, good heavens. Could it be Colonel Brightwall?”
It certainly sounded like him. He’d been away from London on diplomatic duty in Spain since the end of the war.
“Wasn’t his wife arrested for allegedly stealing Lucien’s father’s carriage?” Angelique whispered. “It was in the newspaper.”
Dot gasped theatrically and clapped her hands over her mouth. Aghast and thrilled.
“Well. Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for,” Delilah said brightly.
They went down to meet their exciting new guests.
Chapter Three
Colonel Magnus Brightwall—for it was, indeed, he—and his wife, Alexandra, sat side by side, but a significant span of settee remained visible between them. Their thighs seemed in no danger of touching, even if one of them exhaled, or should Colonel Brightwall take a notion to sprawl. He didn’t look like a man who had ever taken that notion in his life. Dot was right about his posture.
Lavender arced beneath Alexandra’s red-rimmed eyes. Her gold ball gown was crushed and rumpled and her bright hair had slumped to the nape of her neck. She was both “draggled” and beautiful, by anyone’s definition.
Delilah and Angelique liked her immediately. Alexandra’s face lit when she saw them, as if she recognized friends, and they saw in her at once a kindred spirit, someone who had been raised gently and now found herself married to the last man on earth she’d ever expected to marry, a man who was astonishing in some way.
“It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand, but I’m distressed you are compelled to meet me when I’mclearly not at my best. Perhaps you can tell I’ve had a rather eventful evening.” She smiled valiantly.
“Dot will be here soon with tea,” Delilah assured her. “And we’ll have you in a room as soon as possible.”
Angelique nodded her agreement. As proprietresses of The Grand Palace on the Thames from the beginning, Delilah and Angelique were so often of one mind now they had developed a sort of shared, silent language. They were both usually comfortable speaking on each other’s behalf.
As for Colonel Brightwall... well, “liking” was beside the point when it came to someone who was a revered English institution. One did not like or dislike the London Bridge, for instance. Perhaps they would come to know him; such men, when exposed to things like Mr. Delacorte and the sitting room or irresistibly attractive guests, had proved to be human, after all.
But quite apart from his imposing presence, they found Colonel Brightwall had that otherness they had learned often characterized Great Men: a weighty reserve combined with an unsettling intensity born of seeing and accomplishing things no other human ever had, or ever could. He had legendarily saved the life of General Blackmore, now the Duke of Valkirk, who had once been their guest, and in so doing had nearly lost his own.
And he was polite. Just as Dot had said.
But when he’d politely introduced his wife, he hadn’t looked at her.