“I’m sweating through my clothes,” St. John said. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life.”
He was pacing behind the curtain on the stage of the ballroom in The Grand Palace on the Thames. Delacorte had poked his head through the curtain to see if they were ready to start the recital. They were not.
“You should be,” Delacorte told him sympathetically. “I’ve heard you play.”
“I’ve gotten better!” St. John said, panicked.
“Perhaps when you’re evicted the blokes who run the livery stables will let you sleep there until Barking Road clears,” Delacorte said kindly. “Unless you can swim. Though St. Leger knows a fellow with a little boat. And you’ll need hip waders for the rest of the journey into town.”
St. John made a growling sound.
Delacorte removed his face from the curtain and went to join the little audience, which was all atwitter with anticipation. Angelique and Delilah sat in the first row, like a pair of Caesars ready to deliver a thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdict.
Otto and Hans and Friedreich paced like worried parents.
“Not too much bow, St. John!” Otto reminded him, gesturing. “More bow on the low notes! Remember, more bow on the low note!”
“Right. Right right right right,” St. John muttered.
It had been an alarming revelation to him that one didn’t just saw away at a cello. There was a lot of subtlety and actual technique involved.
“Keep your elbow up, McDonald. Keep your hand straight, McDonald! Watch Frau Pariseau!” Friedreich admonished.
Mrs. Pariseau beamed with the universal pleasure of being the star pupil.
The German boys had proven to be strict and very good teachers. They’d been personally offended any time careless squawking noises emerged from their instruments.
Gratifyingly, none of their pupils were hapless.
And all of them, when they finally strung notes together by dragging bows across strings, had lit up with the magic of creation. Even St. John.
“I’ve never had to do anything for my shelter before,” St. John fretted.
“Is daily life of musician!” Otto told St. John sternly. “Be brave!”
For the mornings following what was to be their final game of Spillikins, two mornings, Daphne had spooned the sugar into Lorcan’s cup, and then poured his coffee.
For two mornings, he had cut her scone into little pieces with a sharp knife.
They were as careful of each other as they would have been with grenades or rare crystal, solicitous and kind.
He had made a grand, reckless gesture, and she had refused it.
She had thrown herself into his arms, and he had shown her the stars.
For two days after that, she’d seen very little of him.
“I will be gone for most of the day on matters of business. Meeting with my banker. My solicitor. And then I’ll need to see about provisioning my ship.”
He’d told her so she’d know he wasn’t deliberately avoiding her. So that she wouldn’t feel abandoned or misused, after riding him and begging him for pleasure while half-naked in his arms. She understood this.
And yet she knew the distance was wise. That even if they didn’t speak, the silence was loud. That in not speaking, they were tacitly admitting to something that neither dared name, and to Daphne seemed nearly as indistinguishable from joy as it was from terror. And would end only in grief.
In the sitting room at night, she joined in card games or knitting with the ladies, while Lorcan exchanged bawdy witticisms with the Germans or chatted with Delacorte and Lord Bolt and Captain Hardy, with what to Daphne seemed improved civility. Last night everyone had gathered around to hear the German trio brilliantly play Bach, and Daphne welcomed the camouflage of aching beauty, because her eyes were not the only ones shining with tears. Lorcan’s face had been taut.
And then he was off to the smoking room to presumably curse and smoke and whatever the men there did, and she went up to their suite without him.
She would not sleep until she heard him return. But she was in bed behind a closed door when he did.
It would not rain forever. As soon as the roads cleared, she would be going home to her father, and to give an earl an answer to his proposal.
Lorcan would be leaving soon.
And this mad interlude in the strange little fairyland of The Grand Palace on the Thames would end.
The night of the recital and party, she emerged from dressing to find Lorcan standing in the center of the suite. He appeared to be taking it in thoughtfully and rather intently—the hearth, the settee, the little table at which they enjoyed their breakfast scones, the view from the window, as though he were planning to draw a map of it.
“I did not expect to be participating in revelry when I came to London,” she said. “This isn’t the dress I would normally wear for dancing.” She smoothed her green silk skirt. The sleeves were short; and the neckline and waist were trimmed in bronze ribbon.
He turned toward her voice.
A stillness came over him. For all the world as if he were withstanding the impact of her.
And he looked at her as though he were seeing her for the first time.
Or perhaps the last.
You are beautiful, he had said fiercely to her.
And inside her the realization dawned soft and brilliant as a spring day: he believed she was.
She thought, no matter what, she could conjure spring inside her always when she thought of him.
“It’s a very pretty color,” he said quietly.
“Thank you. I liked it because it’s very nearly the same shade of new leaves on the hawthorn outside of our home in Sussex.”
His mouth tipped up at the corner as if she’d said something singularly charming.
She didn’t know why this should make her blush.
He wore his black suit and waistcoat in a dashing pewter stripe, done up with silver buttons. He was, in essence, a walking advertisement for the lucrative possibilities of privateering. And he still looked like precisely what he was: staggeringly confident, dangerous, piratical, self-made, bursting with life. No one was going to mistake him for an earl or a viscount.
But his majesty was innate. She knew he was destined to cause a ripple in any room he deigned to enter for the rest of his life.
Her stomach twisted with a sudden realization: she might never know what the rest of his life would be like.
For an instant this so blindly panicked her she couldn’t speak.
For a quiet moment, they merely admired each other.
“Lorcan, would you like me to help you with . . .” She gestured to his still dangling cravat.
He glanced down. “What’s a fake wife for if not to dress me as well as undress me?”
Her face was warm.
“Tie me a fancy knot, Daphne,” he said quietly.
He stood obediently still while she deftly wound the cravat around him and tied it artfully.
When his eyes met hers, they kindled hotly. He quickly disguised it.
Her hands were suddenly clumsy.
“There,” she said finally. “Now you look like a slightly dangerous birthday present.”
He patted his cravat.
He held out his arm. She hesitated, and she looped her arm through it, and thought how odd it was to be familiar with, comforted by, the feel of his huge bicep against her hand. And to feel an ache in her chest at touching him again.
“Thank you. Now let’s go throw fruit at Lord Vaughn.”
They arrived in the ballroom to find the other guests milling about a table promisingly burdened with a ratafia-filled punch bowl and a variety of little cakes. It had been pushed against the wall.
“Alas, no fruit for throwing,” Lorcan said to Daphne.
Present was everyone who lived and worked at The Grand Palace on the Thames and one gentleman they’d never seen before who appeared to already be drunk, and who was introduced to them by Dot as “the man who usually leans against our building.” They’d all been given a TGPOTT handkerchief to clutch.
Lorcan steered Daphne into one of the little white chairs arrayed at the front of the room, behind Dot and Rose, the maid.
Finally, Lucien bounded onstage, and called for quiet by extending his arms and pressing the air downward with his hands.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to present to you what we like to call the Chagrin Trio—Lord St. John Vaughn, Mr. Angus McDonald, and Mrs. Pariseau—performing their rendition of ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.’ Conducted by Otto Heinrich.”
The audience enthusiastically applauded, and Delacorte put two fingers in his mouth to whistle, and the curtains were whipped open.
“Have you heard the lyrics that were set to this tune?” Angelique murmured to Delilah before they began. “Perhaps we can sing along. ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star . . .’”
Lorcan and Daphne glanced at each other. “Star” was always going to be their word.
St. John and Mr. McDonald were as white as their cravats with nerves. Mrs. Pariseau looked confident and cheerful.
Otto’s hand waved, and Mrs. Pariseau launched into the tune at a sprightly pace.
Everyone gasped when actual recognizable music emerged from the cello St. John was playing.
Then Mr. McDonald’s violin harmonized.
And together they all played a fully recognizable piece of music.
Three entire verses, with charming variations here and there. And while it wasn’t flawless—there were a few clumsy muffled places, and squawks—it was competent, and the musicians managed to inject the music with the passion and urgency of people afraid of being thrown out into a terrible rainstorm.
Finally Otto emphatically gestured the end of the piece with a vigorous chop of his right hand.
Thunderous applause greeted them.
They leaped to their feet to curtsy and take bows in every direction.
Already a little tipsy, the audience stomped and whistled.
St. John pushed the cello and the bow into Otto’s hands—he had joined them onstage for the bows. “I need a drink!”
And he leaped from the stage and all but bolted for the table of refreshments.
Lucien returned to the stage and cheerfully bellowed, “Let the dancing commence!”
The German trio remained on the stage and launched at once into “The Sussex Waltz” with such competence and verve they were at once forgiven all the flirting, eating, and loud and untoward merriment.
“I’ve something to confess, Daphne,” Lorcan said. “I don’t know how to dance the waltz.”
She smiled up at him. “I suppose it’s impractical to waltz on the deck of the ship.”
“Not to mention the dearth of willing partners.”
She didn’t say, it’s likely because you haven’t been asked to many balls, which was, in fact, true, and they both knew it. She stayed by him, while the dancers sailed by.
He watched her foot tap out that one two three, one two three rhythm. Her face was alight and wistful.
Lorcan glanced about the room, and noted who had partners and who did not. But he knew instinctively who he needed to find.
Bloody hell. He looked forward to it the way he might look forward to swallowing a nail.
“I’ll fetch us some more ratafia, shall I?” He’d rather bolt a little whiskey, frankly.
“Yes, please,” she said.
He moved over to the table supporting the punch bowl, where St. John was thirstily draining his second cup of ratafia.
“Lord Vaughn,” Lorcan said. “Very moving performance. I fair soaked a handkerchief.”
St. John gave a start. He eyed him warily. “Thank you, Mr. St. Leger. I’ve calluses now.”
“Congratulations. If you’re not careful, you’ll have muscles next.”
St. John pressed his lips together.
“I’ve come to beg a favor of you.”
This rendered St. John briefly speechless. “I’m disinclined to jump off the building,” he warned.
“I’d like you to ask my wife to dance this waltz.”
St. John took this in with understandably great suspicion.
“Are you looking for an excuse to call me out because you haven’t killed enough people lately?”
Lorcan took a breath. “She would love to dance the waltz and I find myself unable to accommodate her. And I find it excruciating to deny her the things that make her happy.”
St. John absorbed this with admirable equanimity, with just a little hint of a brow furrow. He studied him thoughtfully. “And in exchange?”
“How about you do it out of the kindness of your heart and you’ll never have to worry about encountering me in a dark alley.”
“Done,” St. John said.
And so Lorcan stood against the wall, half in shadow, and watched Daphne sail about the room in young Lord Vaughn’s arms.
Granted, she’d been astonished when St. John humbly asked if she would be so kind as to dance with him. She was prepared to refuse and remain loyally by Lorcan’s side.
She’d been even more astonished when he’d nodded and told her to go ahead.
He admired her loyalty fiercely. Of course, no one understood the value of it better than he did. But it was a quality, like pride, that could either buoy or strangle a person. It was the thing that would ultimately tether Daphne to a life that could very well snuff the light out of her. And maybe that was the price she was willing to pay for certainty after upheaval and struggle.
And just look how bloody happy she was to waltz. It was the prettiest sight. Graceful as a swan, he thought. Well, both of them, really. Because they were, after all, of the same species. It was so abundantly clear from this vantage point.
And suddenly he felt as constrained and separate and alien from her as if he was a painting on the wall in the ballroom. As if it was inconceivable for the two of them to ever enter each other’s worlds.
God only knew if one could nimbly fence, and he certainly could, one could manage a few graceful steps with a beautiful woman in his arms.
But the fact that he hadn’t wanted her to teach him with anyone looking on told him a thing or two about his own pride. He hadn’t wanted anyone to bear witness to the true, vast gulf between who Daphne was and who he was.
She smiled over her shoulder at him. And he recalled what she’d said about the remoteness of stars. I think maybe that’s why we associate them with wishes. Particularly for things we think we cannot have.
He’d made it a policy not to waste time on regret. It was ballast; it could drag you under like a hungry shark.
He watched, relieved that he could bring her this moment of happiness, even as he was held fast by a sorrow so corrosive he could taste it in his throat. It was entwined with a near impotent fury that someone had finally outsmarted him. That someone was himself. He’d fooled himself into believing there was nothing he’d ever want that he could not eventually get, so clever, so invincible, was he. That there was no one or nothing he now needed in order to conquer life, to live it on his terms. That he might be, in fact, somewhat superior to Captain Hardy in his strength, wiliness, resilience.
He knew a moment of pity for that boy in St. Giles who could never have imagined sitting in a suite in a boardinghouse by the docks while a quietly lovely woman spooned just the right amount of sugar into his cup. Or laid a hand on his brow to see if he was feverish. Or held his face as if she’d at long last found the treasure she’d been seeking.
If he’d been able to imagine it, perhaps he could have saved himself from what was to come. A grief that would reshape his life the way a tsunami reshaped a coastline.
Lucien paused next to Delacorte and Hardy to sip at his cup of ratafia. Together they watched the dancers swirl (and occasionally collide), and enjoyed the respite from worrying about the ship.
Angelique had gone to play the piano so one of the German boys could attempt a waltz with Mrs. Pariseau. Delilah had kindly consented to dance with Angus McDonald who, they were astonished to see, was finally smiling.
Dot was teaching Rose and Meggie how to dance the waltz, and they were all laughing together.
Bloody hell, all of this nonsense added up to happiness, Lucien thought. What a good life they had here.
“What’s the matter with St. Leger?” he asked Delacorte, gesturing with his chin.
For a moment, they all turned to regard the big man standing quietly against the wall.
“I think he’s just in love with his wife,” Delacorte correctly diagnosed.
“Ah. Tragedy, that,” Lucien said, idly. “A fatal condition, to be sure.”
