Chapter Two

One night after feasting a little too enthusiastically on Helga's apple tart, Dot had dreamed she was swimming in a vat of treacle. No matter how hard she'd tried, she'd never been able to move her limbs fast enough to get to the edge and climb out.

The moment she saw Mr. Pike, the footman, striding across the foyer to open the door was just like that.

She'd been at the top of the landing. And if she could have, she would have skipped the last three steps and hurdled the banister into the foyer, as she'd once seen Captain Hardy do. Or perhaps she might have yanked off her shoe and whipped it into Pike's path, on the off chance he'd stumble over it. Or aimed it square for that place between his regrettably vast shoulders. She could be surprisingly fierce when it came to protecting things she loved, and of all her responsibilities at The Grand Palace on the Thames, opening the door was her very favorite. For her, it was emblematic of both the place itself, which she loved with all her heart, and her role in the world. She'd always been the first to ever see any potential guest who appeared.

But no matter what she did, she still wouldn't get to the door in time.

So she was forced to watch Pike stride across the checked marble of the foyer.

Pass beneath their beloved chandelier...

Open the peep hatch...

Then, God help her, for the first time ever...

Open the door.

The man Pike had let in had stood perfectly still beneath the chandelier. He was at least as tall as Pike, but a good decade older, she'd warrant. He had black hair and black eyes and his face was composed of stern, handsome planes. He'd looked tired. He'd eyed her with baleful amusement, as if a maid hurtling down the stairs, cap askew, mouth and eyes perfect O's of outrage, was only to be expected. He betrayed not one shred of surprise.

Dot knew Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand wanted a large man to open the door at least at night, on the theory that nights were more dangerous than days. This was a fair assumption at the London Docks, a part of the city where one was just slightly more likely to be stabbed than other parts.

"It's the full moon on a Wednesday, Dot," Pike said, his voice lowered. "Remember? Just like you said in the kitchen when you knocked me down a few months ago."

She didn't reply. It was very ungentlemanly of him to remind her of that moment in the kitchen. That episode had been at least half his fault. But she still felt truly terrible about it.

They stared each other down.

Pike was gray of eye, square of jaw, and sober of demeanor. Dot had both a fierce sense of propriety and a profound appreciation for handsome men—which Pike unfortunately was, by anyone's definition—and these two qualities existed more or less harmoniously when the man in question wasn't so frequently underfoot. When he was, the friction was like a pebble in her shoe. It was a test of character and made her feel somewhat martyred and, given that she was the heroine in her own story, she admittedly took a frisson of pleasure in her suffering. She understood how much Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand valued and cared for her, which never ceased feeling like a lovely miracle. But Mr. Pike had been the result of a long, daunting, and often bizarre search for a footman willing to work at the docks for a modest salary while being willing to perform a variety of tasks in addition to the usual footman duties, such as repairing the roof, or thumping an intruder on the jaw, or firing a gun if necessary. He was after a fashion a prize, while Dot had more or less come along with Delilah when Delilah had been Lady Derring, like a valise.

Mr. Pike was always all that was proper and respectful to everyone, the maids included. His manners were impeccable. But the maids were all on their best behavior around him lest he be taken away from them.

"It is indeed the full moon, so it is," she said cagily, precisely as if she'd remembered it and actually meant what she'd said at the time: that maybe she would allow him to open the door on that day. She hadn't considered that he would remember it so specifically.

Pike had already taken the man's greatcoat. She eyed it covetously. Before Pike, Dot had always taken away the coats and wraps of their guests, and their wraps told her so much about the person. She could see that this one had at least three capes. "And what you said in the kitchen that night? You're right," Pike said. "I thoroughly enjoyed opening the door. It's like opening a present, a gift, as you said. You never know who might be on the other side."

He looked her square in the eye with a determined glint as he said it.

She had a feeling that now that he'd gotten a taste of it, he wasn't going to give it up without a fight.

"I'll talk to our new person and find out what he needs," Dot said, on a low, fierce whisper, while their guest waited, gazing around the place, wearing a bemused expression now, as most guests did once they got a look at things. "And go and tell Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand that he's here. You can take his greatcoat away."

There was a tense little pause.

"Very well," Pike said pleasantly, with the air of a man who knows he's won this round and intends to win many more.

"I feel like a castaway in my own bed lately," Delilah mourned. "It feels so vast."

Angelique Durand and Delilah Hardy liked to end their days in the sitting room at the top of the stairs, where they would review the events of the day, plan the next, and do a little mending. They were reminiscing about their husbands. Which, granted, seemed silly to both of them, since Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt had only been away for a little more than a week and were due home in a day or so.

"I know what you mean." Angelique sighed. "I have to sleep with twice as many blankets without Lucien." Lucien liked to sleep naked and he was like her own personal furnace.

"I do wish Mr. Delacorte wasn't so very attached to that song," Angelique added dryly. "I'd rather like to contain it, like the plague, if we can, before we hear it sung all over London."

"If only it wasn't so insidiously catchy," Delilah agreed. It had been composed on the spot by their former guest, Miss Mariana Wylde, as a not-so-subtle dig at another of their guests, the Duke of Valkirk.

"We'll just have to somehow write another one to supplant it in his affections. Perhaps something cheerful about donkey racing."

They both laughed.

"This is Lucien's favorite waistcoat," Angelique said wistfully, extracting it from the mending pile and smoothing it as if her husband was inside of it at the moment. It was a dark plum color, and one of the silver buttons was loose.

Captain Tristan Hardy, Delilah's husband, a legendary former blockade captain, and Lucien, Lord Bolt, formerly-infamous-now-somewhat-respectable bastard son of a duke, were partners in the Triton Group, an import and export endeavor. They had gone up the coast to a shipyard to see about repairs to their beloved ship The Zephyr, which, after weeks of harrowing uncertainty, had limped into port well after she was expected, late, storm damaged, and dismasted. She was still seaworthy, but only just. They were also seeing to outfitting a new ship in what they hoped would one day be a fleet of ships—The Rogue, it was called, after the man who owned it, who was now also their partner. They were on the brink of a thrilling, and risky, but potentially immensely enriching new chapter in all of their lives.

Meanwhile, finances remained a trifle snug. And though the suites at The Grand Palace on the Thames had been taken for the last half of the season, they were currently experiencing a bit of a lull in guests. Ebb and flow was ever thus at the boardinghouse. They had learned to love the unpredictability the way they had learned to appreciate the changes in weather.

So they both looked up alertly at the unmistakable sound of Dot bounding up the stairs. And winced when she tripped on the second to last one.

"A gentleman has arrived and he would like a room," she announced in a rush.

It was just a few minutes before curfew, the time at which all guests must be safely inside. The arrival of potential guests at this hour often heralded dramatic episodes at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

"Take a breath, Dot, and tell us what he's like." Angelique stood and reached over and righted Dot's askew cap with a finger.

"His shoulders are at least as wide as Mr. Pike's."

The moment the words were out of her mouth, a scarlet blush scrolled from her collarbone to the ruffle of her bright white cap. Taken with her blue eyes, the effect was unexpectedly patriotic, like a Union Jack.

They stared at her, nonplussed.

Dot looked stricken and a little amazed that the words had escaped her.

Granted, the three of them had created the small wonder that was The Grand Palace on the Thames from the tumbledown building Delilah inherited from her perfidious first husband, and the habit of assessing every man they met based on whether they were tall enough to reach the sconces in order to light the candles died hard.

The use of Pike as a standard against which to compare broad shoulders was new, however.

"I can almost picture him, Dot," Delilah replied gravely. Angelique bit her lip against a laugh. "Did you happen to observe anything else about him?"

"The silver cup with the words engraved on it—the one that the king sent to you and Captain Hardy as a wedding present?"

Delilah and Angelique waited with somewhat martyred patience. Sometimes—it helped to have had a sherry—one could almost follow Dot's cognitive leaps, which often resembled the floppy meanderings of a butterfly. Her mind was an enigmatic place, and surely she found much within it absorbing, as she often bumped into, tripped over, or dropped things as a result of roaming around up in its rafters rather than paying attention to what she was doing—for example, in several memorable instances, carrying a tea tray. But she had proved to be a savant when it came to describing their guests.

"Yes?" Delilah prompted.

"His voice is like that. Very deep and elegant and precise and perhaps a bit chilly."

"Mmm. Intriguing," Angelique approved.

"His boots are Hoby, I'd warrant, and the buttons on his waistcoat are silver, and his greatcoat had three capes." She might have once been the world's worst lady's maid, but she did know clothes, and her gentlemen from the not-gentlemen, and she could detect it in a heartbeat. Both gentlemen and not-gentlemen were welcome at The Grand Palace on the Thames, as long as they passed the interview and Delilah and Angelique agreed he would likely get on nicely with the rest of their guests. They had vowed to admit only people they liked.

They had realized this was a bit aspirational when the rooms were empty. They were pragmatic, too.

"Mmm. So an actual gentleman, then." Delilah began untying her apron in preparation for meeting him.

"But here and here"—Dot gestured to the little hollows beneath her eyes—"it's dark. Like he hasn't slept."

"Poor soul," Delilah said absently. She never slept as well when Tristan was away.

"And he smells as though he's been cooking over a fire," Dot concluded.

They froze in removing their aprons.

"Are you certain it's not just cheroot or cigar smoke?" Angelique finally asked.

"I know how gentlemen ought to smell," Dot said loftily, causing Delilah's and Angelique's eyebrows to leap in tandem.

"From taking their coats," she expounded, to their profound relief. "They smell like their coats."

They did. And for an instant, Angelique and Delilah simultaneously experienced fits of yearning for their husbands and the smell of their coats.

They puzzled over all of this for a moment. There had been a time or two where Dot had described a potential guest and they had immediately asked her to go back down and send them on their way. Usually it was a guest who had come bearing a yellowed menu of prurient services once offered by the building's former incarnation, which haunted the sign hanging over the door in the form of the very faint word "rogue" visible behind its elegant lettering.

And then Dot lowered her voice conspiratorially to deliver her coup de grace. "I think he might be someone important."

"Or believes he is," Angelique was amused. In their collective experience, most gentlemen considered themselves important. At least more important than any woman in the vicinity.

But Dot had an eye for this, too.

"Once under our roof, all of our guests are equally important," Delilah reminded Dot diplomatically, with a quick wry glance at Angelique. While it was fundamentally true—and they had indeed received a number of "important" guests, including a duke, and very briefly, His Majesty the actual king—they knew in their heart of hearts that if circumstances involved a shipwreck, room in their lifeboat for one more person, and a choice between their longtime guest Mr. Delacorte and the monarch, well, England would probably need to go searching for a new ruler. They hoped they were never tested.

"Except he only wanted a regular room, not a suite."

This was interesting, too: usually the important people liked to emphasize their importance by taking a suite.

"And when I said, as you taught me, Mrs. Durand, ‘Whom may I say is calling?'" Nothing made Dot feel more sophisticated than the word "whom." Angelique, a former governess, had recently taught it to her and she might as well have given Dot a tiara. "He said ‘KIRKE.' Just like that. Sharp as a handclap." She demonstrated by bringing her hands together. "He's altogether impatient. I told him that we were an exclusive establishment and that you would need to speak to him first, he gave a laugh, like this—HA!" She imitated a short, wildly ironic laugh that made both of them jump a little. "And then he sighed and said, ‘Oh, by all means, do go and tell them I'm here.'"

"He sounds like a joy," Angelique said dryly.

They were still a moment. Bemused.

In the end, curiosity, and the currently empty rooms, won.

"Let's go and meet him," Delilah said. "Will you make tea, Dot?"

Dot gave a little hop because bringing tea to new guests was her other favorite thing to do. And so far, there seemed no chance that Pike would ever be asked to do it, but one never knew.

Dot was right on all counts.

As it turned out, their guest was one of the people Mr. Delacorte referred to as a "The." For instance, the Duke of Valkirk had come to stay with them, and the King of England had briefly parked his majestic behind on the settee, and the Earl of Vaughn and his family had once taken a suite, and the Lord Bolt had reappeared from the alleged dead (and married Angelique). And though he had ultimately taken to all of those men—he liked nearly everyone, and eventually, everyone was given no choice but to like him in return—he was always more comfortable with the likes of Mr. Bellingham, a vicar who shared his love for donkey races and to whom he'd introduced the joys of singing bawdy songs in a pub while drunk. He felt he was becoming more refined by the minute, thanks to the marvelously civilizing powers of Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. But the "The" guests reminded him that he was a work in progress, and he always felt with them at first the way he did when his waistcoat buttons were just a little too tight.

The Lord Dominic Kirke's house had caught on fire. Something to do with a lamp. Hence his smokey aroma. He'd escaped just in time, with a few of his belongings.

They learned this straightaway because, as it turned out, Lord Kirke was every bit as... well, bracingly direct as Dot described.

Angelique and Delilah knew what to do with testy, tired, impatient, wild-eyed men whose houses had just burned nearly all the way down: they clucked over his shocking news, spoke in soothing tones, tucked him into a comfortable room, ferried away his smokey things to be aired and brushed, sent him up some drinking chocolate and a scone, and took his money.

And if he was a bit notorious... well, they had a good deal of experience with that, too.

"He's going to want to orate, isn't he?" Mr. Delacorte said somewhat grimly, when they delivered the news of their new guest as he was heading up to his room for the night. For Lord Kirke's fiery, eloquent speeches in the House of Commons were legendary, and frequently printed in the newspaper.

"Perhaps not," Delilah soothed. "After all, it's his job. Nobody wants to do their job all the time. Perhaps he'll want to quietly sit and listen to a story. Perhaps he'll enjoy a game of chess."

"I happily want to do my job all the time," Mr. Delacorte pointed out.

This was true. While he was a partner with Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt in the Triton Group, he was also an importer of remedies from the Orient made up of herbs and ingredients and what he referred to as "ground up bits and bobs, horns and testicles and whatnot," some of which worked a treat. He sold them to surgeons and apothecaries up and down England. It was how he'd made unlikely friends everywhere. He never missed an opportunity to make a sale.

"If he does orate, Mrs. Pariseau will be in heaven." Their guest Mrs. Pariseau was in her middle years and was thoroughly enjoying her relatively monied widowhood. And while she had no interest at all in ever marrying again, she loved few things more than handsome men and arcane debate.

And not even men like Lord Kirke, whose name regularly appeared on the front pages of the newspaper and the dripping-with-innuendo gossip pages that Dot read to the rapt maids in the kitchen, would be exempt from the rules. And that included gathering in the sitting room four nights a week with all the other guests.

"Does Tristan vote Tory?" Angelique wondered, on a yawn, as they tidied the sitting room for the night. Their new guest was a Whig.

"I don't know how he votes, to be honest. Except that he's exhibited an independent streak when it comes to voting against The Ghost in the Attic."

"Ah. About that. I think Mrs. Pariseau is actually plotting a rebellion," Angelique said cryptically, and they headed for their rooms. "Perhaps she'll recruit him and make a revolutionary of Captain Hardy yet."

Laughing at this notion, they made for their bedrooms.