2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
Morning light filtered through the hotel room’s window and found Marguerite tying her bonnet beneath her chin with more force than the ribbons deserved.
“You’ll strangle yourself,” Elsie said.
Marguerite huffed. “I am perfectly calm.”
Her maid stood behind her with Marguerite’s cloak over one arm, a hatpin between her teeth, and the expression of a woman who expected calamity and disliked being proved correct.
She was small, square, and vivid, with brown hair escaping her cap in wiry curls, cheeks flushed, and dark eyes that could strip a lie to its bones before breakfast. Nothing about Elsie suggested softness except her heart, which she kept hidden beneath starch, pins, and a lifelong suspicion of gentlemen.
Elsie leaned back. “Did something happen last night? Before you lift that blond brow, I must say you look flustered and agitated, and nothing ever agitates you. Not since his excellency was summoned back to Austria and asked you to—”
“That’s quite enough, Elsie. Nothing happened.”
Except a handsome pirate had thwarted her plans. A man whose grin should be declared a hazard to womankind and ruled out in any honest negotiation.
She cleared her throat. “What matters is that I was unable to meet the ambassador.”
Elsie tilted her head. “Because of the loss of your bracelet?”
Marguerite caressed her wrist, where the little stones should be, and a sigh escaped her lips.
“Elsie, will you forget about the bracelet? It was made of paste, not diamonds! And if we do not leave now, we shall be forced to conduct this negotiation by letter, and I refuse to entrust our future to the mercy of the post.”
She stepped into the corridor.
Elsie hurried after her. “I hope we have a better plan than moon costumes this time.”
There had been nothing wrong with her costume. After the wig debacle, Lord Pulteney had avoided her for the remainder of the evening. If it had not been for that pirate she would not have failed to meet the new Ambassador to Naples.
“Leave the plan to me, Elsie,” Marguerite said, striding forward. “You are still a novice in diplomacy. Besides, who understands more than I do about the Neapolitan court? A newly appointed envoy will need information.”
“Well, that’s all very fine,” Elsie said. “But if he doesn’t care about Naples, you might try something simpler. Just flirt with him. If a man calls himself a wolf, he is begging to be scratched behind the ear.”
“Elsie.”
“Or tell him a sad story. No man can see you cry and remain sensible.”
“Nonsense. I do not weaponize distress.”
Elsie sighed. “At this rate, miss, we’ll never get to Naples, and I’ll be left here freezin’ my bones off while all those Italian men go about bein’ warm at other women.”
“Enough skepticism, Elsie. Come. Perhaps by the end of the morning you will learn a thing or three about diplomacy.”
Elsie had the air of a woman who doubted diplomacy could boil an egg, let alone secure passage to Naples, but Marguerite chose to interpret silence as improvement.
They descended the stairs into the hotel foyer, replete with all the usual English discouragements—damp umbrellas, coal smoke, overboiled coffee, and a pair of obnoxious gentlemen reading newspapers.
Marguerite crossed the marble floor with her chin lifted.
She would go to the docks. She would find the Duke of Stormhaven aboard his ship.
She would present herself as an asset, a woman possessed of intelligence, connections, and a practical understanding of Naples that no newly appointed ambassador could afford to dismiss.
Then Mr. Griggs, proprietor of the hotel, stepped from behind the desk.
His face closed the moment he saw her. Marguerite’s heart performed a leap against her ribs.
A closed expression on a man’s face was a language, and this one spoke fluent account book.
There were few creatures more dangerous than a creditor who believed arithmetic made him virtuous.
“Mademoiselle d’Ailes,” he said, advancing with a folded paper in one hand. “A word, if you please, regarding your account.”
Beside her, Elsie muttered, “Third time this week. Yesterday he said constable.”
Mr. Griggs came nearer. The front door lay beyond him, large, polished, and suddenly farther away than Naples.
Marguerite’s gaze moved left—wall. Right—fern. Forward—debt.
But behind the fern, half-hidden by a green frond, stood a tall window.
Marguerite seized Elsie’s hand. “We will use an alternate exit this morning.”
“That’s a window.”
“Precisely. I’m feeling very er… unconventional.”
Marguerite pulled Elsie behind the fern, shoved both palms against the lower sash, and forced the window upward with a protesting scrape. No time for delicacy. Delicacy belonged to women with paid accounts.
She kicked off her slippers, snatched them in one hand, and hitched her skirts above her ankles. The sill was higher than she would have liked, the passage beyond narrower than she hoped, but Mr. Griggs was also faster than she wished.
Marguerite set one foot on the sill and climbed.
For one precarious moment, she balanced between respectability and escape, with one knee over the frame and her skirts caught on a brass latch.
Huffing out a breath, she freed herself with a tug and dropped into the side passage outside, landing on cold stone.
“Elsie,” she hissed. “Come.”
Elsie appeared at the window, face flushed, cap crooked, and eyes full of mutiny. She lifted one leg toward the sill, failed to achieve the necessary altitude, and glared at the architecture.
“A help here?” she demanded. “I don’t have the legs of a thoroughbred.”
“No,” Marguerite said, leaning back through the opening. “You have the lungs of a town crier. Give me your hands.”
Marguerite caught her under the arms and pulled while Elsie kicked, muttered, and finally emerged through the window with the expression of a woman delivered by forceps into public disgrace.
She landed beside Marguerite with a thump, one boot striking the wall and her cap sliding over one eyebrow.
Behind them, Mr. Griggs’s voice rose through the open window. “Mademoiselle d’Ailes!”
They burst from the passage into the street, where carts rattled over wet stones, a milkmaid stared, and a crossing sweeper paused mid-sweep.
Marguerite slowed only when they had turned the corner, and the hotel vanished behind a row of brick houses. Her lungs burned. Her bonnet had slipped. One glove had torn at the thumb. Still, she was outside. Free, and moving toward the docks.
Elsie bent over, hands on knees, breathing hard. “Was that diplomacy?”
Marguerite straightened her bonnet. “That was the most sensible strategy available under the circumstances. Any diplomat worthy of the name would have done the same.”
“Really? He’d tuck his tail between his legs and race for all he was worth?”
“Oh, Elsie,” Marguerite said, “please do be quiet.”