I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

The kitchen of The Grand Palace on the Thames was usually a soothing oasis of feminine gossip, camaraderie, and industry, and one of Mrs. Angelique Breedlove Durand’s favorite places in the world. Today, however, a chilling snatch of overheard conversation froze her just as she was about to cross the threshold.

She pressed herself against the wall outside the door and surreptitiously listened.

“Two succulent hams, I should think.”

Helga—their cook, of all people!—was speaking in the kind of hush Guy Fawkes likely employed when conspiring to blow up the House of Lords.

“My thoughts immediately went to two roasts of beef.” Dot’s reply was similarly uncharacteristically cagey.

Angelique was mystified. Hams and roasts amounted to the kind of budget massacre Helga would likely never countenance even if the king were to take a room. (And he had appeared, one fateful day.) For The Grand Palace on the Thames’s budget was a temperamental, intricate thing, requiring tinkering and babying, prone to sudden expansions and shrinkages. Managing it was an art and a science that Angelique and Delilah, the boarding house proprietresses, and Helga, relished.

She thought, furiously. Then she bit back a smile when realization dawned, peeled herself away from the wall, and strolled in.

“Were the two of you discussing the thighs of the footman Mrs. Hardy and I interviewed yesterday?”

Thank God she and Delilah hadn’t hired anyone who could lie glibly. Helga and Dot froze. Their eyes were luminous with guilt.

“Amusing. But if any of these men should become members of our staff, I trust you will refrain from comparing their anatomy to food.” Last night her husband had compared a part of Angelique’s anatomy to a luscious, ripe peach just before he’d nipped it. But it was the context that was important here. “I know you will be as respectful of them as you would hope they’d be respectful of you. Unfortunately, while the man under discussion was indeed possessed of fine thighs, he stole a teaspoon on his way out the door. Captain Hardy was compelled to chase him down the street and pry it from his clutches. Needless to say, we won’t be hiring him.”

Captain Hardy—Delilah’s husband—had also been compelled to give the footman a good whack with it.

Neither Delilah nor Angelique had anticipated that the search for a footman would prove both harrowing and undignified. It was clear that finding a qualified man willing to work long hours for modest wages at a lovely and comfortable boarding house (granted, one in a somewhat challenging location near the docks) would be easier if they’d relaxed their standards to include scoundrels, lechers, and the just plain thick.

“A spoon? The devil you say!” Helga was incensed. The kitchen was her kingdom, which meant the spoons counted among her subjects. She hadn’t been present for this theft, as yesterday’s interview had taken place in the reception room. “And don’t you fret, Mrs. Durand. We will be all that is respectful when the right bloke joins us.”

Dot nodded vigorously in agreement.

Getting the “right bloke” to join them was a matter of some urgency now that they’d nearly finished refurbishing the adjacent building, which was now connected to Number 11 Lovell Street (The Grand Palace on the Thames’s street number) by means of a cleverly built passage. Perhaps the most thrilling part of the Annex was the ballroom—Angelique and Delilah hoped to entice Londoners of all stripes to buy tickets to musical evenings held there, which would help recoup their renovating investment. They could begin as soon as the little stage was completed. And it would have been this week, if the workmen they’d hired to build it hadn’t disappeared.

It was possible “disappeared” was a trifle prematurely dramatic. It had only been two days.

Angelique frowned when she realized that one of the kitchen maids charged with slicing apples for tarts was all but motionless, staring vaguely toward the buttery. Every few seconds or so she languidly moved the knife up and down. It missed the apple entirely.

Angelique lowered her voice and said to Helga, “What’s wrong with Maggie?”

Helga spoke in a hush. “Mr. Cassidy returned from Devon this morning and do you know the first thing he did?”

Angelique shook her head.

She crooked her finger for Angelique to move closer. “He smiled at her.”

Angelique sighed. “Oh, dear. I do wish he’d be more judicious about his smiles. They ruin the maids for half the day. They walk into walls and collide with each other while they’re dusting.”

“They used to take the bones right out of my knees,” Dot confided. “I once spilled an entire tea tray because he smiled at me!”

Other reasons Dot had spilled an entire tea tray included carrying one when she noticed a spot on the ceiling she fancied looked like an elf; attempting to sing and walk while carrying one; and bending to pet Gordon the Cat with one hand, forgetting both were needed to hold the tray. Dot’s thoughts sailed like a kite into the clouds while her feet were forever consigned to the ground, and the two struggled to work in tandem.

“Now I’m used to them, you see,” she added sagely. “I smile right back.”

“A testament to your fortitude,” Angelique said encouragingly.

“For-ti-tude,” Dot repeated, under her breath.

“‘Fortitude’ means strength and endurance,” Angelique clarified, because once a governess always a governess, even if she was now blissfully and happily married to the notorious bastard son of a duke. And Dot, who had once been Delilah’s lady’s maid, was the best kind of student: she was all but an educational blank slate and loved collecting new words.

Angelique went to stand beside the maid, who was still all but miming moving the knife through the air. “Maggie,” she said softly, as to one sleepwalking. “Maggie? Maggie, dear. It’s Mrs. Durand.”

Maggie turned to her, her eyes hazy and starlit.

“I understand it was your turn to light Mr. Cassidy’s fire and bring his coffee this morning.”

“Drew the long straw, so’s I did,” she confessed, dreamily.

Hugh Cassidy was usually up and dressed and restlessly moving about even before all the maids were yawning through the dark halls to light fires and trim wicks, a habit of a lifetime from when he’d been up to do chores and to watch the sunrise over the tops of tall pines. But one unforgettable morning a maid had come upon him still sleeping. Half of his coverlet had been tossed off, exposing a vast bare shoulder gleaming like a gold mountain by the light of a single glowing log. The maid who’d witnessed this glory had returned to the kitchen all but speaking in tongues. She’d been given smelling salts.

Ever since then the maids had drawn straws and bickered over the opportunity to wait upon him. Because while fascinating men did tend to appear at the door of The Grand Palace on the Thames—notably, the notorious bastard son of a duke and a handsome if taciturn blockade captain—the dark haired, blue-eyed young American was the one who notched most comfortably into their fantasies. He seemed to see them. He somehow seemed more real, and therefore more deliciously devastating.

Delilah and Angelique had always found Mr. Cassidy to be all that was charming, courtly, proper, and helpful—he’d even helped build part of the Annex—and he was infinitely patient with Mr. Delacorte. He’d been a guest for some months now, and they were quite fond of him. And yet, he wasn’t precisely easy to know. He was a trifle guarded. And there was a suppressed energy to him that suggested he’d be moving on as soon as he was able. Mr. Cassidy was clearly a man with plans.

“I suspect you returned to the kitchen and brought Mr. Cassidy one more scone this morning than you ought to have, didn’t you, Maggie?”

Maggie went still. Then she squeezed her eyes closed, as if awaiting the blade that would separate her head from her neck. And then gave one short, sharp nod.

Angelique sighed again.

Maggie turned a pleading expression up to her. “When he smiles . . . it’s like when you look at the sun, Mrs. Durand. You can’t see nothing else after that.”

“Yes, well, he has a fine smile and he knows it.” He in fact had a number of different kinds of fine smiles, all of which she also enjoyed, but the slow crooked one, all intimate warmth and wry, mischievous pleasure, that wrapped the viewer like a sensual net—well, that was the one that typically did the maids’ heads in. “Do you know what a budget is?”

“Well, yes. You and Helga and Mrs. Hardy talk and talk about it and you seem to have great fun.”

Over Helga’s muttered, “Ha!” Angelique said, “Well, it is a bit like a game. You have to be clever, you see. It’s all about strategy. We earn money by providing a service to our guests, but everything costs money. For instance, what if I told you that smuggling an additional scone to Mr. Cassidy each morning could eventually mean we won’t be able to afford to hire footmen?”

She was greatly simplifying the concept of budgets, but the word “footmen” had inspired all manner of excitement for months now, for reasons not entirely related to shared work. Angelique now had all Maggie’s attention.

“It’s a bit like that. We make choices all the time about what to spend according to what we earn. We must be resourceful and thrifty while still providing exceptional comfort and service so that The Grand Palace on the Thames can continue to enjoy its stellar reputation . . .” “Stellar” was a bit aspirational, but it made her point. “. . . and so that we can continue to employ all of our staff members, too. Do you see?”

Maggie nodded eagerly.

“And while Mr. Cassidy is a gentleman through and through and I know he would never do anything untoward, men are deucedly clever about getting what they want, because most of them assume we’re not as smart as they are.”

“And that only proves they are fools,” Helga added. “With precious few exceptions.”

“Mr. Cassidy is better than most, by far. And Helga’s scones can entice a saint,” Angelique allowed. “But we have to be stronger and cleverer than men are and not give them what they want simply because we find them charming. At which point, contrary creatures that they are, they will find us irresistible.”

“Oh, I should love to be irresistible!” Maggie breathed.

“It takes many years of practice,” Angelique added quickly. “Many, many years. So all of you, smile politely and repeat after me in a polite but grave tone: ‘I shall have to speak to Helga about additional scones, Mr. Cassidy.’”

“I shall have to speak to Helga about additional scones, Mr. Cassidy,” everyone present repeated sternly.

“Now please properly cut the apples, Maggie.”

The maid gave a start. The knife went through an apple and she soon established a speedy rhythm.

Angelique exhaled as Delilah sailed into the kitchen. It was one of her favorite places, too. But Delilah’s expression suggested she had unwelcome news to impart.

“At least Mr. Cassidy loves my food,” Helga said worriedly. “Lady Lillias hardly touches it. Too plain for the likes of her, I suppose.”

Delilah and Angelique exchanged a look. The Earl and Countess of Vaughn and their family were the very first occupants of one of their handsome, newly completed suites.

Difficult people had been guests at The Grand Palace on the Thames before. Delilah and Angelique had, in fact, married those difficult people. Difficult people were looked upon as an opportunity to sharpen their wits and exercise compassion. And if all else failed, a blockade captain would drag their deservedly unconscious body out the door. (Fortunately, that had so far only happened once.)

The two of them just hadn’t yet decided what sort of difficult person Lady Lillias was.

As the rules compelled, she dutifully sat in the parlor four days a week and was absent for the other days. A sketchbook sat before her, as did a crayon in a holder, but no one had ever seen her so much as lift it. She did not knit (she’d been invited); she did not embroider (likewise). She spoke when spoken to and her voice was lovely and her manners were faultless. She was a beautiful conundrum, a still presence but not precisely a mild, or even benign one. She seemed to be mounting a sort of personal protest, the object of which was known only to herself. She seemed alive with thoughts.

She made Delacorte so nervous he’d accidentally uttered a curse word out loud for the first time in two weeks, breaking a record of which he was proud and necessitating a trip to the epithet jar.

Her parents and her brother and sister had gamely settled into the routine of The Grand Palace on the Thames and for the most part seemed happy. Though St. John spent his evenings in the sitting room primarily leaning against the mantel, clearly hoping to be admired.

“The rest of the Earl of Vaughn’s family are clearly more than satisfied with your cooking. As well they should be,” Delilah said stoutly.

Angelique and Delilah knew how to dispense comfort. Every gifted artist remained at heart insecure about their art, and Helga was no exception.

Delilah drew Angelique aside. “I’ve been to have a look at the ballroom.”

“Ah. And have the workmen returned?” Angelique said this almost mordantly, because Delilah’s expression told another story.

“Oh, yes. Long enough to steal the rest of the lumber, it seems.”

“Something tells me they won’t be returning,” Angelique mused.

Neither one of them wasted a moment on indignation; or rather, they’d long been accustomed to turning adversity and indignation into fuel. It was a problem needing solving.

“Should we have apple tarts or scones for tomorrow?” Helga called over her shoulder.

That’s when inspiration struck.

“Delilah . . . I think I know how to get our stage built. And it involves guilt, scones, and a certain strapping guest.”