Chapter Five
Mr. Marchand did not appear at breakfast or dinner the following day. But any hopes Ginny might have had about him suffering
an attack of conscience and slinking away from the Grand Palace on the Thames in the dead of night were dashed when Mrs. Hardy
and Mrs. Durand escorted him into the sitting room later that evening. He’d apparently merely been out all day advancing the
cause of iniquity at Lucifer’s Fall.
She watched Mr. Marchand take in the pianoforte, the little tables and chairs scattered about and the gently worn settees,
the rugs and curtains, the pillows embroidered with things like “Bless our home” with bemused wariness. He looked big, glossily
gorgeous and incongruous in this pleasant room where nothing precisely matched, including the guests, but everything somehow
looked as though it belonged together, for that very reason.
He was clutching a book bound in red. It looked to her quite a bit like The Ghost in the Attic, from which Mrs. Pariseau had read aloud in the sitting room a few days ago.
Perhaps he’d borrowed it. He didn’t strike her as the sort of man who would take a fright about anything, let alone a ghost. Perhaps he hoped to acquire a few new ideas about unnerving people from it.
Ginny had settled in at a table behind Mr. Delacorte and the chessboard, and she’d been contemplating joining Mrs. Pariseau
and Dot on the opposite side of the room. Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were lounging at little tables, too.
Mrs. Durand clearly intended to take Mr. Marchand around the room to make introductions. She began with Mrs. Pariseau, a dashing
widow whom Ginny liked very much.
Startlingly, Mrs. Pariseau launched right into flirting unabashedly. But then that was apparently the sort of thing widows
were allowed to do with no compunctions.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Marchand,” Mrs. Pariseau told him. “You look like a man who has quite a vivid story.”
Do I have a story about Marchand for you, Mrs. Pariseau, Ginny thought, bitterly.
“Indeed I do have a story. I heard you have an enchanting way with a story, too, Mrs. Pariseau.” Marchand twinkled at her. “I’m looking forward to hearing you read
aloud this evening.”
Mrs. Pariseau delicately laid her heart with her hand and beamed at him. “We thought we’d read Greek myths tonight. Lots of
mayhem and bad behavior mingling with moralizing. For adult ears only.”
“Mayhem for adults is my favorite kind,” Marchand confirmed.
He hadn’t so much as glanced at Ginny yet, but she could not help but feel that remark was tailored just for her.
Marchand then shook hands with Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt, the handsome husbands of their proprietresses, who greeted him warmly, almost as if he wasn’t dastardly. He was apparently already acquainted with both of them.
“I hear you’re a tree now, Bolt,” Marchand said, and Lord Bolt laughed.
Mr. Delacorte, whom she liked very much, was built a bit like an egg propped on legs, and he had thick, frisky eyebrows and
rather lovely blue eyes. He sprang cheerfully to his feet. “Very good to meet you, Marchand. I’m in business with Hardy and
Bolt in the Triton Group. And I also import remedies from the Orient and sell them to surgeons and apothecaries up and down
the coast.”
Marchand’s eyebrows went up. He seemed intrigued. “Interesting line of work, Delacorte. Profitable?”
“Oh, I make a fair bit, a fair bit. If you ever need a little help with, you know, a certain struggle unique to gentlemen”—he
extended his forefinger horizontally then let it slowly droop, by way of illustration—“it’s one of my popular cures.”
“Thank you.” Marchand’s composure stuttered for less than a second. “I’ll keep that in mind should that tragic day ever arise.”
At last Mr. Marchand was brought over to Ginny.
Heat rushed from Ginny’s nape to her feet as she met his eyes again. For all the world as if he’d ignited some invisible fuse
that traced the length of her spine. Her heart lurched then began beating at an absurdly swift clip.
“How do you do, Miss Woodville. A pleasure.” He sounded grave and sincere, the charlatan. He bowed.
She dipped a swift curtsy. “How do you do, Mr. Marchand.” She’d attempted to say it crisply, but she’d gone so breathless her words emerged sounding appallingly sultry.
His vanishingly swift, secretive little smile suggested he knew all about that invisible lit fuse and her shortened breath
and her heart speed.
He at last settled in at a table across the room but directly in Ginny’s line of vision, which was unforgivably provocative
of him yet undeniably helpful, on the theory that it was a good strategy to keep an eye on ones’ enemies.
She could not help but wonder what precisely he did during the day. Her own day had featured a fruitless journey to the establishment
of Madame Marceau, the celebrated modiste, who had heard about etched silver buttons but was unfortunately unable to tell
her where to find them, as none of her lady customers had yet requested them. Ginny would visit Weston tomorrow. She knew
a visit to that exclusively male bastion would take most of her restores of nerve.
Ginny’s head shot up when she sensed a fresh tension gripping the room.
This could only mean one thing: the arrival of Daniel Peck.
The primary trouble with Daniel Peck was that he was four years old. And while everyone who lived at the Grand Palace on the
Thames had also once been four years old, none of them currently had children. They only vaguely remembered the age’s bewildering,
unfathomable customs, as if it was a distant land they’d once visited.
Five days ago, Daniel’s mother, Mrs. Peck, had taken a suite for her two sons and their nursemaid at the Grand Palace on the Thames to await the return of her husband, who was traveling on a ship from Dover. Whereupon the family would return home to Northumberland.
Like a cherub in a Renaissance painting, Daniel was all dewy brown eyes, round red cheeks, black ringlets and shy smiles.
Delilah and Angelique had been smitten during that first meeting. How refreshing it would be to have a child about the place!
they’d thought, with wild optimism.
On the first night of their stay, Mrs. Peck brought Daniel (who nightly dined with his nurse in their suite) down to the sitting
room after dinner while their nurse remained upstairs with the baby. The hush of happy anticipation fell. All the guests were
prepared to be enchanted.
It began promisingly enough.
Daniel had bashfully fluttered his fluffy black lashes at Dot and Ginny and Mrs. Pariseau and smiled winsomely, captivating
them.
But then things took an unexpected turn when Captain Hardy greeted him.
Daniel immediately burst into inexplicable, noisy sobs.
Lord Bolt fared little better: Daniel hid behind his mother and peered out at him, his little brow beetled in suspicion.
“Oh, he can be a little sensitive and fussy when he’s tired,” his mother explained with a little laugh. “It doesn’t mean anything.
Please don’t let it hurt your feelings.”
“It doesn’t,” Captain Hardy lied.
But then Daniel saw Mr. Delacorte.
He’d stared at him at length, with rapt, open-mouthed fascination, eyes alight with glee.
Such that Mr. Delacorte could not resist shooting a slightly smug look at the other men.
He’d bent to Daniel’s height. “How do you do, young man?” he said cheerily. “I’m Mr. Delacorte!”
Daniel thrust out his belly, crossed his eyes, and bellowed, “ ’OW do you do! I’m Mr. Dewwacorte!”
Then he’d laughed uproariously.
Mr. Delacorte had staggered backward.
It was admittedly very funny the first four or five times Daniel did it, for Mr. Delacorte’s expression alone.
“Isn’t it fascinating?” Mrs. Pariseau said brightly, after Daniel had been taken off to bed that first night. “It’s how children
that age learn language, I suppose. Through repetition!”
But Daniel seemed to eke as much joy from it the forty-seventh time he said it as the first. It was apparently the very height
of four-year-old comedy. Mr. Delacorte was obviously the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his life.
Everyone soon learned that this was not, alas, his only favorite thing to say.
Since that first night, all of his visits to the sitting room had been brief and harrowing as squalls.
Mrs. Peck released her son’s hand and settled into a chair near Dot and Mrs. Pariseau.
Daniel immediately strutted across the room. “ ’ow do you do! I’m Mr. Dewwacorte!” He beat his puffed-out belly like a drum.
Mr. Delacorte regarded Daniel with a fixed, thoughtful expression that suggested he was imagining the child turning on a spit.
“Daniel, Mr. Delacorte doesn’t like that,” his mother said absently. She had settled in with an embroidery hoop.
The implication that Mr. Delacorte was the only one who didn’t “like that” was almost funny.
“I want blancmange,” Daniel replied to his mother in an exaggerated French accent: Blahhhmajjjj.
A slight rustling meant all the adults in the room were tensing for what they knew came next.
“The tart with dinner was nice, wasn’t it, Daniel?” The Peck family had taken their meals in their suite this evening. “Helga
is such a wonderful cook.” Mrs. Peck said this warmly to Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy, who offered her strained smiles.
“Blaaaaaahmaaaaaaaaaj,” Daniel replied, his mouth open as wide as he could stretch it. “Blahmaaaaaaaaaj,” he bleated like a sheep. “Blah ma ah ah ah ah aj.” He giggled.
He’d clearly heard the word somewhere and cherished it.
Daniel’s “blancmange” record was thirteen times in one evening. Mrs. Pariseau had counted them to keep from going mad. A bit
like a prisoner scratching the days off on a cell wall.
His mother seemed remarkably deaf to his foibles, in the way of all people accustomed to living with a ceaseless ambient sound,
such as the distant gunfire of a constant battle.
Whispered conversations among Delilah and Angelique and their husbands had taken place about whether they ought to have a