Chapter Three
Mrs. Angelique Durand froze as she was lacing up her dress for dinner and stared, astounded, at her husband.
“Lucien, he’s arriving tonight? And you’re just remembering this now? You told him he could stay here?”
“Yes to all of those questions, and I’m sorry, to all of them, too.
” Lucien, Lord Bolt, was contrite. “I truly didn’t mean to trample on our established order.
” The established order being that Angelique and Delilah Hardy, the owners and proprietresses of the improbably little jewel box of a building near the London docks known as the Grand Palace on the Thames, made all the decisions about guests.
Their husbands, who were partners in an import and export endeavor called the Triton Group, were content to leave them to it.
“Call it an impulse of bonhomie. Gabriel Marchand saved my life once in my wilder days. At the very least, he saved my skull. Someone was about to take a swing at it with a walking stick and he, ah, intervened in a timely and forceful way. I bumped into him near the warehouses this morning. We reminisced and traded war stories and he mentioned he was having a new roof put on his home, so he was looking for a place to stay for the duration. I told him about our little paradise here. I also suppose I was bragging a little, because I feel sorry for everyone who isn’t able to live here. ”
Angelique knew his last sentence was both sincere and a tactic. It amused her, and it worked. She felt the same way. “How
many times has your life required saving? No, don’t tell me,” she said hurriedly. “I still occasionally have nightmares about the one you
told me about.” In his infamously wild youth—well documented by the gossip sheets—Lucien, styled Viscount Bolt, bastard son
of the odious Duke of Brexford and his late French mistress, had been kidnapped and hurled into the Thames in the dark of
night. He’d been rescued from the murk by a Dutch ship about to leave port and had been presumed dead until his return, a
decade later. “So what does Mr. Marchand do now?”
He hesitated. “By do, you mean . . .”
“Lucien.”
“He is the proprietor of a gentleman’s club.”
She stared at him.
“Lucien Emil Jean-Luc Durand. I know you don’t mean ‘gaming hell.’”
“Every day I thank my creator for a wife who’s smart as well as beautiful. For right you are. It’s not quite a hell.”
“Lucien.”
“Let’s just say gaming hells played a significant role in his past, just as they did in mine. And at these hells he learned
how to become a successful business owner, just as these hells in my formative years are in part what gave your husband the
air of danger you find so alluring. Speaking of which, have you seen my favorite stockings?” He was riffling through his clothes
press.
Being married meant knowing that her husband, who had sailed the high seas and killed a pirate or two, had a favorite pair of stockings, which looked to her exactly like all of his other stockings.
Why this pair of stockings was exceptional remained a mystery to her, but she always made sure it was handled with tender care when they sent out the laundry.
“Here.” She scooped up a wrapped bundle on her dressing table. “The laundry was returned to us this afternoon so I haven’t
yet had a chance to put everything away.”
“Ah! Thank you.” He sat down on their bed to pull them on. “Marchand and I struck up a friendship of sorts at the Pit, which
was an infamous hell, over a decade ago, because his job was to . . .” He trailed off again at Angelique’s expression.
“His job was to stop thugs from bashing heads? In other words, his job was to actually bash heads? Lovely.”
“Back then. And before you draw conclusions about him, one might say that this was Captain Hardy’s job, too. The ‘stopping thugs’ part.”
“I should love to see Captain Hardy’s expression when you share this comparison with him.”
Lucien laughed, because he would love to see it, too. Captain Hardy was the legendary blockade captain who had at last broken
the back of the English smuggling trade. King George IV had even sent him a silver cup as a wedding present as a token of
his gratitude and esteem. And while Hardy had become Lucien’s good friend and confidant and partner in the Triton Group, they
were different in as many ways as they were alike.
“Angelique, Marchand has done tremendously well for himself against formidable odds. He’s an enterprising, hardworking, resourceful man of significant charm. I daresay he’s wealthier than we are now. And who knows better than we do about creating something from nothing? Or about taking a gamble?”
Her wily husband was making good points. The Grand Palace on the Thames itself was a veritable monument to risk. When the
former Countess of Derring, now Delilah Hardy, inherited the building from her late husband, the only occupants had been mice
and spiders and possibly ghosts. Desperation, imagination, ingenuity, and hope had restored the building, and Helga’s scones,
Gordon the cat, the Epithet Jar, and their list of rules had turned it into the home of their dreams. Delilah and Angelique
had taken the greatest risk of all by falling in love with and marrying Captain Tristan Hardy and Lucien Durand, respectively,
when miracle of miracles, they appeared at the boardinghouse door and became guests.
From the very first they had vowed to never allow anyone they didn’t like to live there for any duration. This lofty ideal
didn’t always stand up to the vicissitudes of commerce. Regardless, every guest was patiently cherished for the duration of
their stay, whether they were someone the entire country revered (like a war-hero duke), or someone who needed to be dragged
kicking and screaming out of the place by the British army (this had happened only once), or whether they were Mr. Delacorte,
whom no one yet had been able to categorize, but no one ever forgot, and most people eventually loved. Though he was of a
certainty an acquired taste.
“I can see, however, how both you and Delilah might want to exercise a bit of caution, considering the turmoil a certain recent
guest has inspired.”
Now Lucien was fighting a little dirty.
She hesitated. “Turmoil is a bit overstated, Lucien.”
“If you say so,” Lucien said dryly.
It was true that combining certain guests in the sitting room could be a little risky, such as mingling a duke with a scandalous
opera diva, or mingling Mr. Delacorte with . . . well, anybody . . . but that was part of the thrill of the game. So confident
had they become in their skill as social alchemists, Delilah and Angelique had invited Daniel Peck and his family to stay.
They had never before had a guest quite like him.
They were beginning to think they never should again.
Mr. Delacorte was unexpectedly bearing the brunt of Daniel’s stay. Which was a shame, because he’d also been attempting to
teach Dot how to play chess, and this had qualified him for martyrhood even before Dot decided to give all of her chess pieces
first names.
“But what of Mr. Marchand’s character?” Angelique pressed.
Lucien regarded her evenly. “Do you trust my judgment?”
This was a mildly fraught question in any marital discussion.
“It is generally impeccable in most things,” she admitted carefully. “From stockings to wives.”
When he smiled, her heart performed lazy cartwheels. In her weaker moments she wondered why she would ever argue with him
about anything. She felt absurdly lucky to sleep every night next to a man who had eyes the color of moss agates, the soul
of a sardonic poet and made love with inventive fervor.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to fault his manners, Angelique. Which, as we both know, cannot be said about everyone who lives
here.”
Last night in the sitting room while Mrs. Pariseau was reading aloud from The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Mr. Delacorte had thumped his sternum lightly to release a little belch, to everyone’s startled consternation. He’d been
so caught up in the story he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. He was forgiven, as Mrs. Pariseau’s captivating way of doing all
the voices could sweep anyone away. Unlike cursing, belching in the sitting room was not subject to the one-penny fine imposed by the Epithet
Jar, which Mr. Delacorte reliably kept jingling. It was how they paid for the daily newspapers. Mr. Delacorte firmly believed
the Grand Palace on the Thames was smoothing away all of his rough corners.
“So what does Mr. Marchand look like?” Angelique wondered.
“You’ll be disappointed to hear that he’s nowhere near as good looking as I am.”
She laughed. “While that goes without saying . . .”
He grinned at her. “All jokes aside, allow me to put it like this: Mrs. Pariseau will love him.”
Their longtime resident Mrs. Pariseau was a handsome woman in her middle years who was thoroughly enjoying her relatively
monied widowhood. Adventurous of spirit and intellect, she never wanted to be married again, but there was nothing she loved
more than a gorgeous man, unless it was arcane discussion.
And, every now and then, fanning the usual spirited sitting room discourse into something close to bedlam.
They adored her and they did like to keep her happy.
“It’s for less than a fortnight, Angelique. What could happen? Mr. Marchand is nearly forty years old,” he half jested. “One foot in the grave.”
Lucien looped his arms around his wife and she settled into them with a sigh of resignation and contentment. He briefly rested
his chin atop her golden-blond head.
They knew full well what kinds of mischief men that age could get up to without even trying. For instance, the Duke of Valkirk
had acquired an unlikely scandalous opera singer wife at about that age as a result of living under their roof.
“But now I have to tell Delilah that you invited someone to stay without asking us first, and she won’t love that, Lucien.