“Damn,” he swore softly and fervently. “I wish I’d been there.”
She laughed. After a moment, she said, “I thought of you.” Softly. Tentatively.
It had felt risky to say such a thing aloud.
But suddenly the air fair shimmered with heat as their eyes met.
He ducked his head. A little silence followed as he applied himself to their breakfast-before-breakfast.
“These scones...” he murmured, with a head shake.
“. . . are heaven,” she confirmed. “Their cook is named Helga, I’m given to understand.”
“Mmmm.”
She refreshed their cups of coffee.
“I think my preparations for my move to New York are complete,” she offered casually.
She sipped her coffee as he took this in.
They fixed each other with thoughtful, unreadable gazes.
“Very well.” He nodded politely. His voice, however, sounded somewhat frayed.
They ought to open a gaming hell, she thought. The two of them had brilliant game faces.
“I’m sorry to have missed dinner here last night. The food here is delicious. How was it?” he said finally.
“Eel pie, potatoes, and peas with a treacle tart. All delicious. Mr. Delacorte sped through his potatoes the way Shillelagh sped around that track.”
Magnus went still, his eyes briefly misty, imagining it.
“Good man, Delacorte. I’m sincerely sorry we’ll have to miss tonight’s dinner, too. As you no doubt recall, we’ve the banquet and reception at the Earl and Countess of Scottsbury’s home this evening. Followed by musical entertainment, I’m given to understand. A soprano of some sort, again.”
“Hopefully she won’t be warbling about yearning.”
His smile was slow and brilliant and for the second time this morning her mind filled with what felt like sparkles and nothing else.
“I’ll wear my pearl-colored satin,” she finally said.
As far as Dot was concerned, the world was made of magic. How else to explain how she’d been promoted to lady’s maid for the Duchess of Brexford, after her own mother, the previous lady’s maid, had run away with a footman? Magic! And surely it was thanks to magic that she’d been hired by the tremendously kind Lady Derring, now Mrs. Hardy, when the duchess had fired her. It was magic when Lady Derring had kept her on as a lady’s maid, even after she’d accidentally burned and dropped so many things.
And it was magic that Dot had been present the moment Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand had decided to turn a tumbledown building by the docks into The Grand Palace on the Thames—right after they’d lost their other home forever. Magic had happened on the heels of terrible trouble so often in her life that she never missed an opportunity to wish on things: stars, dandelions, ladybirds. And now she mostly wished that things would stay precisely the way they were, because she’d never felt happier than she was answering the door and bringing the tea and meeting new and lovely people, and she’d thought she’d never want another thing as long as nothing changed.
And then Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand had gone and hired Mr. Benjamin Pike.
She had inadvertently done violence to Mr. Pike twice: she had trod on his foot in a race to the door (which was why he always wore boots in the house now) and on another occasion she had hurled her fist into his jaw and knocked him tothe floor. But that was when he’d sneaked up on her in the kitchen because he’dknownshe would think he was a ghost. And though she’d been filled with crippling remorse and he had been too filled with admiration for her aim to be too outraged, he’d been remorseful, too, and they both agreed the whole business was mostly his fault, and it remained their secret.
He had also held her hand very gently as he’d inspected her knuckles for bruises. She remembered well the feel of her stinging fingers resting in his big warm palm, the pain contrasted with a sort of tender care that made not just her face but the entirety of her being fleetingly warm.
He’d gotten his revenge, however inadvertently. Because when Mr. Delacorte had said the night before as they walked back to the carriage,I wonder if Pike brought his sweetheart, it had felt as though someone had punched her in the heart.
Which had been quite a shock. Because as much as she appreciated handsome men—honestly, who didn’t?—she hadn’t decided whether she was able to actuallylikeMr. Pike, given that he was her rival. She’d somehow failed to imagine he might have a life outside of The Grand Palace on the Thames, even though imagining things was what she did best. Which made her realize how large he had come to loom, in every sense of the word, in her life in so short a time.
She was a great believer in signs and portents, too, and she’d always thought the word “fate” implied magic, too; she’d always considered it aromantic, triumphant sort of word. And it was jarring to discover she might have been wrong about it. Because even though Shillelagh had won the race, which had seemed very much to prove her assumption about fate, when Mr. Delacorte had said,I wonder if he brought his sweetheart, the night had seemed to take an almost sinister turn.
She didn’t know whether Mr. Delacorte knew something she did not or was merely idly wondering aloud, and there seemed no way of discovering this.