Chapter Six

Mr. Delacorte, who was roughly the shape of an egg and had a broad, friendly face and surprisingly lovely blue eyes, was, in fact, a gratifyingly aggressive and wily chess player. He'd trapped Kirke's queen with alacrity. Kirke was pleased. He loved when people upended his expectations, and he loathed limply played chess.

Kirke maneuvered out of that and cornered Delacorte's queen a few moves later.

While Delacorte mulled this new predicament, Kirke could feel the little sitting room lapping at his senses seductively, as if it were a warm bath. Or as if he were a cliff it was determined to erode. A certain crafty genius was evident in its design, he thought dryly. The lovely Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand were not just proprietresses. They had a calling.

They were so committed to this calling that they'd commemorated it in the second of their seven house rules:

The atmosphere in which he'd been raised could best be described as "a pack of starving wolves," so the notion of a "warm, familial, congenial atmosphere" was as foreign to him as London apparently was to Keating. It was strangely disorienting and odd that all that seemed required of him in this room was his presence. His work had taken him into nearly every imaginable milieu—the wretchedness of the workhouses at Bethnal Green and the slums of St. Giles, glittering ballrooms, hushed libraries where the only sound was the glug of expensive brandy into snifters, the smokey male luxury of White's, the austere dormitories of the University of Edinburgh—but his reasons for being in each of those places were rooted in purpose and duty. His own, currently somewhat charred home, he'd furnished for utility. He was in it only to sleep, usually.

It seemed to him the primary point of everything in The Grand Palace on the Thames was to... comfort. He could not quite say why. He didn't think he would have necessarily elected to stuff blossoms in a vase in his room, for instance, but the damned blossoms suited him, which made him feel as though his soul had been clandestinely rifled through to determine his secrets. He absurdly resented it a little. He was not one to give up anything easily.

Nor could he object to the company. Bolt and Hardy were the sort of men he liked: both of colorful pedigree—Bolt the bastard son of a duke, Hardy born God knows where, perhaps he'd been born already in the navy, so renowned were his ruthless smuggler-catching skills—singular of personality, characters shaped by hard work and hard-won authority.

And over in the corner the conversation between the ladies had become very animated. Possibly even heated.

He thought he heard the word "ghost."

Bloody hell. He was curious despite himself.

As Mr. Delacorte sucked on his bottom lip in contemplation, Kirke discovered that Keating's profile was within his line of sight, and he noted that the lush curve of her bottom lip was the color of the blossoms in the vase upstairs.

At once, an involuntary primal awareness settled over him like a net of little cinders and his stomach muscles tightened.

He suddenly felt like a lecher. She was a young woman whose woefully inadequate chaperone left her vulnerable in Gomorrah, also known as London. Not one of the forthright seasoned widows and matrons who often issued unmistakable innuendo-cloaked invitations to him.

He turned his head.

The little kerfuffle in the corner was growing in volume.

"But I promise you, Dot, you'll enjoy this one, too." Mrs. Pariseau's eyes were glinting with a determination. "It might even become a new favorite."

With a flourish, she produced a book she'd been holding behind her back and held it up so that everyone could read the title: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

"The Arabian Nights' Entertainments?" Dot was stubbornly suspicious. "But nights are ordinary! They happen every night! The year is filled with nights! Is there even a ghost?"

"Not as such," Mrs. Pariseau admitted.

"A love story?" Dot demanded.

"Well..." Mrs. Pariseau hedged.

"It's a story about how women are smarter than men," Kirke said idly.

Plink.Silence fell like a dome, so abruptly it was nearly audible.

Alarm and titillation ricocheted between everyone present: it seemed the controversial Lord Kirke was wasting no time in being controversial, right there in the sitting room.

Lucien's eyebrows went up. The words, "I hope you're enjoying the Whig you allowed to stay, Angelique and Delilah," practically pulsed in the air above his head.

"Are we really smarter?" Dot whispered finally to Angelique, who was closest.

"Yes," Angelique replied.

Her husband whipped his head toward her.

Angelique bit her lip against a laugh. "Sometimes," she amended on a whisper, with a wink at Lucien.

Captain Hardy's lips were pressed together. He was eyeing Kirke patiently and steadily, with a certain dry amusement and a bit of a warning, as if he was braced for all manner of anarchy.

Kirke continued easily. "To clarify, I do believe that's one of the fundamental themes running through a story about a king who murders all of his wives until he finds one who doesn't bore him. This version, by the way, is a translation of the French version called 1001 Nights."

Dot gasped and her hand flew to cover her heart. "Good heavens, Mrs. Pariseau!" she remonstrated. "Is that really what it's about?"

This was mostly dramatics, on her part; there wasn't a soul in the room who wasn't intrigued by that description.

Dot in fact adored being terrified in the safety of the sitting room.

"Who among us has never been tempted to murder a boring person?" Kirke pressed brightly.

Keating stifled a laugh.

"Or decapitate a spouse?" Mrs. Pariseau added supportively.

Everyone turned to her, startled.

She shrugged with one shoulder.

"Her name is Scheherazade," Kirke added helpfully. "The wife who doesn't bore him."

"Her name alone would take a thousand and one nights to spell," Delacorte marveled. "No wonder he was interested."

"How does he murder them?" Dot ventured after a moment, on a whisper. She couldn't resist.

"Chops their heads right off, I'm afraid," Lord Kirke said matter-of-factly. "Just as Mrs. Pariseau implied."

English history was unfortunately filled with all manner of bloody mayhem and, while appalled, Dot was less shocked than she could have been.

"Do they become ghosts?" was her next, perhaps inevitable, question.

"You would think," he said. "Though I don't know if the sultan has an attic. Or why a ghost would consider an attic their only option for eternity."

"Perhaps they don't want to stay in the attic, but they can't help it. Maybe they've no choice. They're compelled to drift right up there, like steam from tea," Keating suggested.

He turned to stare at her in surprise. For some reason he was almost transcendently amused by this. For such a soft-looking person Keating's wit had surprising angles and edges. There was almost nothing he loved more than angles and edges. They were the means by which puzzles were put together.

She smiled back at him, like a coconspirator.

He decided he liked her expressive brows.

"I find I cannot object to your hypothesis, Lord Kirke," Mrs. Pariseau, never one to shy away from the "spirited" part of spirited discourse, made all the men in the room apart from Kirke shift a little in their seats when she said this. "I wonder if you would explain your assertion about the superior intelligence of women?"

He was fully aware that his proprietresses—and their husbands—were poised for possible philosophical mayhem. Kirke knew how to foment mayhem; he also knew how to soothe it. He thought he might enjoy doing a little of both tonight. That would teach them to make him obediently sit in their diabolically comfortable sitting room.

He was also aware that Keating was now watching him as though he was a mad genius. He felt a ridiculous rare urge to impress for the sake of impressing.

"Well, Scheherazade was an extraordinarily brave and resourceful woman. The story begins when the first woman the sultan married was allegedly unfaithful—I know this is difficult to believe, given how charming the man clearly is." He paused for chuckles. "So he had her put to death. In fact, he was so incensed by her infidelity that he married a new woman every day, and on every wedding night he'd bid an executioner wait outside the door of his chamber. Each morning he'd send his new wife out to the chopping block. Literally cut a swath right through the young women in his kingdom. The whole thing was almost as bloodthirsty as the London season."

Keating smiled at this, too. Which gratified him, as he'd said it for her benefit.

Dot was pale and thrilled. "What a terrible man!" she breathed.

"Indeed. And you'll notice that the House of Lords has made it difficult for the king to simply divorce the queen here in England. You're welcome," he said to the gathered, ironically. "Thankfully, beheading them has gone out of style. So along comes Scheherazade, a brave, clever girl with a plan. She volunteered to marry the sultan so that no other women would die. And then night after night—one thousand and one nights, mind you, and I am a writer of all sorts of things so I can attest to the gruesome challenge of this task—she told stories that so enthralled him, that left him in such suspense at the end of each night, that were infinitely more compelling than The Ghost in the Attic, if you can imagine such a thing, Dot—until the day came that he forgot to tell the executioner to return. And that was the end of the killing."

There was silence in the room as the audience absorbed this summary in a thrall that was equal parts fascinated and appalled.

"And they all lived happily ever after," Keating said.

Dominic gave a laugh, then turned the laugh into a cough.

It was clear that despite her fealty to The Ghost in the Attic, the potential for a fresh influx of drama, gore, and romance was proving difficult for Dot to resist. Her struggle was written all over her face.

"To your question, Mrs. Pariseau—the sultan indulged a fit of pique and solved his problems by chopping them away. A lazy man's solution. Scheherazade, to save her life and the lives of other women, used her wit, wiles, courage, and resourcefulness. And often, these are the qualities that come to the fore when you have no power at all. And those who have no power at all are the most vulnerable among us, usually children and women. Abusing power simply because you can is despicable."

Everyone in the room was raptly quiet, absorbing the words.

"Is that why you wanted to become an MP?" Keating asked shyly. "To change the laws?"

Her eyes had gone a little starry, which made him wary. He was always quick to curtail budding urges in young women to view him as anything like a hero.

"I wanted to be an MP because I like a good fight. And I wanted to finally make enough money so that I could always sleep in my own bed instead of with any of my six siblings, because I never wanted to smell my brothers' feet ever again."

Everyone laughed.

He'd in fact been a lawyer at Lincoln's Inn before he was an MP, but the day he'd bought an excellent mattress with his very own money indeed was embossed on his memory.

"How many brothers and sisters have you, Lord Kirke?" Mr. Delacorte asked.

"There were seven of us children, and we all slept arse to toe, all crammed into one bed, except for the baby in the cradle."

A silence dropped instantly.

The ladies were watching him with eyes limpid with regret, heads tipped. The men were amused.

Comprehension set in.

He lifted a hand in resigned acknowledgment. "Do forgive me." He stood, reached into his coat, found and gamely flung a penny into the Epithet Jar.

"It's harder than it seems, ain't it?" Mr. Delacorte sympathized. "But it's good for a man's character, I think. Like cod liver oil for the soul."

"Well said, my brother in profanity." Lord Kirke reached out and Mr. Delacorte shook his proffered hand. "I am living proof that you can only civilize a man so much."

"You should have heard me when I first arrived. I am improving by the day!" Mr. Delacorte declared.

"And so is that what you are intending to do, is that not so? Pass a law preventing the abuse of children in mills and the like?" Keating pressed urgently. As if this were some magic he could perform. As if he were a genie from a lamp.

"In essence, yes," he said carefully. "I expect we'll get there in increments, not all at once. For example, we'll perhaps achieve stricter enforcement of the weak laws already in place, which has been woefully neglected."

"Doesn't it get exhausting to try and try and not win?" Delacorte wondered.

Kirke looked genuinely surprised into momentary speechlessness. "The winning is in the fighting."

He said this as though he'd thought this would be obvious to everyone.

There was a silence as everyone absorbed this.

Catherine's heart contracted. It struck her as so valiant. The winning is in the fighting. She admired it so much she could scarcely breathe.

"Like chess," Delacorte ventured hopefully.

"No, with chess the winning is in the winning," Kirke said wickedly.

Delacorte deflated a little in his chair. He knew he was about to lose.

"You only start losing when you stop fighting. If you were, for instance, buried by an avalanche and you see a pocket of air, would you stop digging? I don't pause to wallow in disappointment or fantasize about outcomes. You dig until there's daylight. You never stop. You explore every avenue. And, well, you know I come from mining stock. I can hardly stop digging."

He winked at Mrs. Pariseau, to her absolute delight.

"How do you make a law?" Dot asked.

Delacorte hissed in an involuntary warning breath, clearly worried that she'd just opened the floodgates to orating.

Kirke was thoroughly undeterred. "Well, it works a little like this. Let's say, for instance, you live at The Grand Palace on the Thames and feel oppressed by the fact that you can't curse a blue streak in the sitting room. You might campaign for that particular rule to be struck from The Grand Palace on the Thames's rules. You would have to persuade everyone here that it's a good idea. You might have to give a speech. Maybe many speeches. Form a political party. Perhaps you could call it the Blue Streak party. And then you would hold a vote."

"This is hypothetical," Angelique hastened to add. "It is merely an example. We will not be doing this."

"What if we vote to clap instead of using a curse word?" Mr. Delacorte wondered.

Catherine laughed.

"What if we wanted to add a law that says only one certain person is in charge of answering the door?" Dot asked innocently.

"You would need to persuade everyone that this is a good idea," Delilah said dryly. "And I can tell you what your chances of that will be."

"Mind you," Lord Kirke added, "what I've just said is quite a simplification."

"Do you think women ought to be able to vote the way men are able to vote, Lord Kirke?" Mrs. Pariseau asked.

Catherine's breath stopped. It seemed to her a question so daring it plucked her nerves to hear it aloud.

She understood that some women who owned property—usually inherited—were allowed to vote, but usually through an appointed male proxy. Women were at the mercy of men in nearly every way, until, apparently, they were widows. But she in truth knew very little about it.

"Yes. I do. One day they will." Lord Kirke said it as casually as "would you please pass the peas?"

There fell another loaded little silence.

She knew men in her village would immediately push such talk away as "daft" or "lunacy" or even "heresy." She could imagine the mutterings about it in the pub now. People said those kinds of things out of fear of change, and always had dozens of reasons why things should remain the same. She wasn't even certain whether her father would agree. It was so easy to dismiss anything that hadn't been done the same way for hundreds of years.

But when Lord Kirke said it, she knew everyone in this room could picture it. Such was his presence and conviction. One would have to be mad or utterly fearless or some combination to say such things, let alone attempt to lead a populace toward them. She supposed they were fortunate he had chosen to use his powers on behalf of the weakest among them.

She was momentarily held fast by awe. It suddenly seemed outlandish that she'd ever had the nerve to speak to him, because history—the sort recorded in books—was made by people like him. Statues were often made of this sort of person.

"Those who have the power are loathe to relinquish or share it," he continued. "And they fight to keep it out of fear—fear of the loss of power. This has been true throughout human history. Fortunately, every generation, a few mad bast"—Delacorte cleared his throat noisily, and Dominic nodded his thanks. "A pigheaded few like me are born, and we attempt to push the whole of the world closer to justice for all humans. I firmly believe we all suffer when the weakest among us suffer. Oh, women voting probably won't happen, not in our lifetimes. But one day. Mark my words."

Kirke looked over at Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt and raised his brows at them in a "Well?" sort of way. It was, after a fashion, a dare.

Bolt and Hardy were amused, and yet not, at his capriciously stirring potential uproar in their sitting room, and of putting them on the spot. But it was only what was to be expected.

Captain Hardy sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair. "Very well. Bolt, Delacorte, and I are partners in our own business, the Triton Group. Our wives own The Grand Palace on the Thames and make the decisions about everything and everyone in it, and they run it beautifully," Captain Hardy said. "You can see for yourself the results of it. If only our country were run so well. I cannot think of a single reason women ought not to vote."

"And they were clever enough to marry men who were happy to leave them to it," Bolt added.

Cat thought she was witnessing a different sort of politics, the kind men learn when they're married.

Delilah and Angelique were both wearing contented, approving expressions, as if they'd known this all along about their husbands.

"If only the world were run like The Grand Palace on the Thames," Delacorte added, "with an enormous Epithet Jar to fund things like... road improvements."

"A room full of revolutionaries," Lord Kirke said on a hush. "Who would have guessed? I won't let on."

"We vote every night here," Dot told him shyly. "I'm good at it."

"Do you, now? And does your candidate win, Dot?" Lord Kirke asked.

"Well, it usually does. My candidate is The Ghost in the Attic." She said this somewhat defiantly. She was loyal, Dot was.

"I see. Are there other worthy candidates?"

"That brings us back to The Arabian Nights' Entertainments," Mrs. Pariseau said. "We have read and enjoyed The Ghost in the Attic countless times. We'd like to propose a temporary moratorium on The Ghost in the Attic and read The Arabian Nights' Entertainments instead for the next month."

Dot looked suspicious. "What is a morta—"

"An end," Mrs. Pariseau said bluntly.

Dot uttered an inarticulate cry of protest. "Does everyone want a mortatory?"

"It's time, Dot," Captain Hardy said gravely.

Lord Kirke leaned toward Dot, his hands clasped, and fixed her somberly with the full force of his dark eyes until she blushed. "You enjoy ghost stories, is that so?" he asked her. "Supernatural beings?"

She nodded.

"Dot, in one of the stories Scheherazade tells, a genie, which is a sort of magic being, emerges from a lamp and grants wishes. When the lamp is rubbed."

Dot's fingers curled tight on the arms of her chair. "Never say a magic lamp," she said faintly. She looked almost ill with hope.

"I wouldn't lie about something so marvelous," Lord Kirke said somberly. "More marvelous than Castlereagh riding a winged horse."

The tension in the room was palpable.

"Perhaps we should read a few pages of it," Dot said, with attempted casualness. Magnanimously.

The tension gathered into something like excitement.

"Shall we vote?" Mrs. Pariseau suggested gently. "Everyone who would like me to read from The Arabian Nights' Entertainments tonight, please raise your hand."

Every hand, including Kirke's, shot up for the vote.