“Lord Dominic Kirke came to stay with us not too long ago,Marchand,” Captain Hardy volunteered. Lord Kirke was a famously fiery Whig politician who fought for the rights of the vulnerable, including children.
Marchand looked surprised. “Is that so? I’m a Kirke admirer. I’d love to meet him.”
“We can probably help arrange it,” Bolt told him easily.
Ginny had been assured by Dot that the Grand Palace on the Thames was exclusive, and a visit from Lord Dominic Kirke seemed to confirm it, which was rather thrilling. Presence of a scoundrel notwithstanding.
“Should we resume reading the myths tonight, just for a change of pace fromThe Arabian Nights Entertainments?” Mrs. Pariseau held up the book of myths. “We last left off with the story of Daphne and Apollo.”
Everyone concurred, as adult mayhem seemed like just the thing after a bit of child mayhem.
Mrs. Pariseau read all of the parts of the story with great feeling. The gist was that the sun god, Apollo, feeling very proud and full of himself for shooting and killing a powerful serpent with an arrow, had made fun of Eros, the god of love, for only being able to shootlittlearrows. Whereupon Eros decided Apollo needed to be taught a lesson about pride. So he shot Apollo with an arrow that made him fall madly in love with a beautiful nymph called Daphne, whose father was the river god Peneus.
And then Eros shot Daphne with an arrow made oflead, which apparently made her find Apollo simply revolting.
A smitten, lust-addled Apollo chased Daphne thither and non to no avail, and poor beleaguered Daphne, seeing no escape from eventually being ravished by the sun god, franticallybegged her river-god father to save her. So her father changed her into a laurel tree on the spot.
She was then forever out of reach of Apollo, who was doomed to suffer from lovesickness for eternity.
It was one of those stories that had everything: the perils of arrogance, desperate lusting, unrequited love, spiteful cherubs with arrows, transformation.
And everyone had a lot of opinions when Mrs. Pariseau finished reading it.
“Do you think what Eros did to Apollo was fair?” Mrs. Pariseau asked the room at large.
“I think Apollo asked for it. He insulted Eros’s archery skills.” Captain Hardy took marksmanship seriously.
All the men in the room nodded in solidarity.
“Then again... when you think about it... it wasn’t Apollo’s fault that Eros couldn’t take a joke,” Mr. Delacorte countered.
“But don’t you think Apolloneededto be taught a lesson about arrogance?” Angelique chimed in.
“Maybe he could have bragged about his archery skills without actually making fun of Eros,” Lucien conceded.
“What a pity they didn’t have a cozy sitting room up on Olympus in which to debate their issues,” Delilah reflected. “It’s clearly mayhem up there.”
“What I don’t understand is why turning her into a tree was the only option. Why was that the first thing that sprang to Peneus’s mind? ‘I’llshow him—I’ll make her a tree!’?” Ginny asked.
“She was in a forest. Maybe he needed to make sure she matched the surroundings, if she was going to be there for an eternity,” Dot shyly suggested.
“So by your way of thinking, Dot,” Mr. Marchand said, “if Apollo was about to catch up to Daphne in the sitting room, Peneus would have been compelled to turn her into an Epithet Jar or a settee?”
Everyone chuckled except Ginny, who refused to be charmed.
Dot shot a nervous, speculative glance at the settee, as if it might have once been a nymph.
“Why not turn her into something like a dragon, so she could at least defend herself?” Ginny pressed, feeling oddly frantic for the poor fictional Daphne.
“Because even if she was a dragon, she would never have been able to kill Apollo. He’s an immortal. His punishment is thatshe’snot only forever out of reach, he willsufferover her forever,” Bolt said.
“Isn’t love sort of a punishment anyway, regardless?” Ginny said.
Good heavens, that remark caused a sharp silence she hadn’t anticipated.
“Forgive me! I didn’t mean it to sound so melodramatic. That is, the punishment is built into the reward. Because you don’t get love without eventual grief. And you don’t get grief without love.”
That’s when she noticed Marchand’s cool social mask slip for a moment. He fleetingly looked stunned.