Chapter Three #2
She’s kind and she’ll allow it, of course. I’ll do it, but I think you should apologize to her for forgetting. And we’ll still
want to have a little chat with him first, as we do with every guest.”
“Fair enough,” he said equably. He kissed her forehead, she fussed a bit with his cravat to straighten it, and they went down
to join the guests for the cheerful chaos that was dinner at the Grand Palace on the Thames.
The little white boardinghouse was tucked in among the other buildings at the docks like a princess among cutthroats. It was
closing in on eleven o’clock at night by the time Marchand found it, but the lamp was still out on its hook.
He paused before the door and tipped his head back to watch the half circle of the moon slip out from behind a cloud.
Still seemed like a magician’s trick to him, that, after all these years.
He’d learned the difference between beauty and ugliness and between harmony and chaos thanks to the moon.
It was the contrast between how he’d felt in his body when he looked up at it, and how he’d felt when looking at the squalor on the streets of St. Giles.
Its soft, clean, remote glow had been the only lovely thing in his world for a long time.
Its light illuminated a rat fastidiously washing its little ears in the rivulets cascading from one of the modest gargoyles
lining the roof edge. Nigh on twenty years ago, Marchand had gotten clean in much the same way, whenever he could. Small,
hungry, dirty, frightened, perpetually, ferally vigilant and alone—he’d been a creature composed of instinct and nothing else,
all his faculties forever pitched for threats. Certainly not superior to that resourceful rat.
How ironic that it had uniquely prepared him to be the ton’s latest obsession.
A haze of glamour and enigma surrounded him now. When he appeared on Lucifer’s Fall’s betting floor, the members turned toward
him like weathervanes, straightening their spines, smoothing their hair, unsettled and excited. He circulated among them,
distributing charm, solace, encouragement, wit, diplomacy, mediation, and, if necessary, some light menace. He remembered
the names of wives, children, favorite liquors, mistresses. They craved his attention.
They all felt cherished, and they were all a little afraid of him.
Marchand hoarded details like currency. A clenched jaw or slumped shoulders, a gleam in an eye, a spring in a step—he took note of such things the way one might study the elements to forecast the weather.
He knew when Lord Galworthy was about to cast his accounts, when Mr. Dunhill was about to take a swing at Mr. Grissom, when Sir Randolph had a brilliant hand; he’d witnessed the furtive, tender looks and touches Lord Milton and Mr. Hanbury exchanged as they slowly fell in love.
They were both married men, and they had children.
He judged no one.
This was less a magnanimity of character than a cynical—and almost heretical, given that he was English, and the English did
love their classes—conviction that all men were the same under the skin. The only real difference between the ugliest of hells
in which he had learned his trade and Lucifer’s Fall was the smell. Instead of vomit and sour ale and gin and the funk of
the unwashed, it was now rich man musk: bay rum, starch, expensive tobacco, polished leather, brandy, and whiskey. They loosened
their cravats and sweated through their shirts over the kinds of wagers that elevated heartbeats to just shy of apoplexy.
But the shiny faces and avid bloodshot eyes were the same in every hell, as were the motives. Some did it for the money, others
did it for the reason a child loves being pushed on a swing, for the giddy highs between the lows. Others did it in order
to feel anything at all.
He didn’t care why they did it, as long as they did it in Lucifer’s Fall.
His dinner companion tonight, Lord Charton, could trace his family lineage back to William the Conqueror. He would have been
both outraged and wounded to know that Marchand thought all men were the same under the skin. He had chattered nervously,
unwittingly desperate to impress an orphaned bastard from St. Giles.
And all through the dinner, the word “specious” in Miss Guinevere Woodville’s voice had echoed in Marchand’s head.
Marchand knew a lot of words now, but good dictionaries remained outlandishly expensive and rare, so he didn’t know that one.
He had a bit of a weakness for clever, spiky women, and that was the only reason he’d indulged that girl at all today. He
knew she was frightened, but Miss Woodville also had a dangerous amount of nerve. And while God only knew he’d had cause over
the years to be grateful to women who traded sex for money, he’d rightly suspected the very notion of that would horrify her.
He’d made his offer strategically to get her out of his office, and he had no regrets.
He could also have told Miss Woodville that sanctimony was a luxury of the comfortable. So-called morality quickly went right out the window when one was desperate. If her family was indeed penniless now thanks to her brother’s eventful night at Lucifer’s
Fall, she’d learn this soon enough.
She might even learn that she, too, had a price.
But he was confident he’d never see her again.
Hats off to the girl for getting under his skin, he supposed.
But his encounter with Miss Woodville wasn’t the only reason his mood was edgy tonight. He always slept badly as a certain
anniversary approached. It never failed to remind him that he’d gotten everything he needed and wanted a little too late for
it to really matter, and that included Lucifer’s Fall. In his weaker moments he could not shake the sense that this meant
he’d failed, after all.
But nothing made him feel more alive than ambition. The Grand Palace on the Thames was right next to a livery stable. Never had a building location been better suited for a gaming hell.
Perhaps he’d call it Kittens and Unicorns when he owned it. Because he wanted it. And everyone had a price.
He raised the knocker on the red door and gave it a smart rap.
He waited. The rat, finished with its ablutions, scurried off.
After a few seconds he put his ear to the door. A muffled male voice muttered “Ow!” while a woman indignantly said what sounded
like “The moon isn’t even full!”
Marchand stepped swiftly backward when at last the peep hatch swung open.
A large pale eye appeared in the little window.
“Welcome to the Grand Palace on the Thames, the most exclusive boardinghouse in London!” The eye belonged to a cheerful young
woman. This was all said in a breathless rush, as though she’d run a mile to get to the door.
“Is it? Well, then. Tonight must be my lucky night.”
“I’m afraid that depends, sir. Curfew is in five minutes. And Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy will want to speak with you first.”
What on earth? Bolt hadn’t mentioned a curfew. “As it so happens, miss, ‘exclusive’ is my very favorite word.”
“Isn’t it wonderful? I like it, too!” She seemed delighted with their accord.
“Forgive me. I ought to have told you, miss, that I’m Mr. Marchand, a friend of Lord Bolt’s, and that I’m expected. I wonder
if my valise and I might come in out of the drizzle.”
Gabriel blinked when the peep hatch slammed shut.
Some sort of murmured conferral took place behind the door. And then he heard the slide of bolts and the clunk of latches.
The door swung open.
He stepped slowly, wonderingly inside.
A fine crystal chandelier sprinkled light over a black-and-white-checked marble foyer. He stared up at it, as momentarily
arrested as if it were an earthbound constellation. Low fires burned in the rooms on either side of the foyer.
Before him stood a petite maid in a white cap and apron. The footman beside her was strapping enough to hurl thugs out of
gaming hells. Marchand approved. It was the only sort of footman an establishment ought to have at the docks, a part of the
city where one was slightly more likely to be stabbed than in, for instance, Grosvenor Square.
“How do you do? As I mentioned a few moments ago, I’m Mr. Gabriel Marchand.”
The maid was staring at him much the way he’d stared at the chandelier.
She said nothing. Instead, a vivid shade of pink scrolled from her collarbone to her hairline.
As women often responded with abrupt silence and violent blushes when they first got a look at him, Marchand wryly accepted
it for the tribute it more or less was.
“How do you do, Mr. Marchand? I’m Mr. Pike.” The footman bowed, then added, dryly, “And this is Dot. If you’d like to have
a seat in our reception room”—he gestured to the room to Marchand’s right—“Dot will tell Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy that you’ve
arrived. May I take your hat and coat?”
The footman gave the gawking Dot a little nudge with his elbow.
Dot gave a start, dipped a curtsy, then whirled and bolted up the stairs.
Bemused, Marchand surrendered his coat and hat and walking stick to Mr. Pike, who ferried them away. He kept his valise with him.
In the reception room, firelight danced over a pair of softly worn pink settees. His feet sank into a thick, faded carpet
patterned in similar shades. A cheery profusion of wildflowers were stuffed into a vase on the mantel; two silhouette portraits
of women hung on either side of the fireplace. He wondered if they depicted the proprietresses.
Marchand had lived in crates in fetid alleys, in rooms crammed with a dozen other people, in tiny rented flats in crumbling
buildings. When he’d finally bought his own London town house, he’d furnished it sparely but expensively. Some of his taste
was innate; some of his taste was learned. He could now easily discern fine materials from not fine and genuine from fake.
As he took in this room, he found himself breathing shallowly through an odd, gathering tension in his chest.
Peculiarly, it felt almost like resentment.
But if he didn’t know better, he might have called it yearning.