I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

“Do you remember Mrs. Locksley?” Delacorte said wistfully a few hours later, over two pints of the dark at a pub they’d escaped into after a misguided foray into a music hall. “She was pretty.”

Delacorte had indoctrinated Hugh into the types of entertainment thrifty men who were not debauchers could enjoy in London, including donkey races, festivals oriented around people chasing pigs that had been greased, lectures, boxing matches, darts in pubs, singing flash ballads in various pubs, meals in pubs, and walking about the city.

The pub was smoky and crowded and lively. A fire was leaping. No drunks were starting knife fights. The waitresses were pretty and flirtatious and none of them had yet attempted to sit in his lap. The dark ale wasn’t terrible. He’d had worse.

Which was a blessing, as Hugh felt he needed to drink more than the usual restrained taste of brandy he usually indulged in after dinners at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

He was here to smugly prove he did indeed have greater powers of resistance than that poor bastard Odysseus.

The Grand Palace on the Thames’s rules required that guests be present in the little sitting room for at least four days of the week, and he’d rather be there right now.

Only he knew he wasn’t actually proving anything at all. He wasn’t so much lashed to a mast as he was lashed to the woman by an invisible cord that tugged and sawed at him even when she was well out of sight.

While he’d measured and sawed boards for the stage this afternoon, he’d thought about the tops of her breasts. He suspected they rivaled the apple blossoms in the little garden for their silkiness.

A minute part of him thought he might die, as if from starvation, if he didn’t lick one soon. She’d certainly played that moment with deuced skill, he thought grimly. She was clever and fierce and did not back down from a challenge and these were qualities he admired in anyone . . . to an extent.

But she was playing a reckless game.

A different kind of man would have her on her back with alacrity.

He found at once that he gravely disliked the notion of her playing a similar game with any other man. This realization blackened Hugh’s already capricious mood around the edges.

Delacorte offered him a roasted chestnut from a paper cone of them he’d bought out on the street.

He’d actually been holding it out to Hugh for close to half a minute, but Hugh hadn’t noticed.

Hugh took one. “Mrs. Locksley was pretty, indeed,” he said absently.

Mrs. Locksley been a guest at The Grand Palace on the Thames not too long ago. Blue eyes? Why couldn’t he quite recall at the moment? They’d all been mildly smitten.

She smelled like a damned garden. Lillias, not Mrs. Locksley.

“How is your sister?” Delacorte tried, when Hugh failed to pick up the conversational torch.

“Oh, she’s well.” Hugh smiled faintly, because Maeve lived in Baltimore with their aunt and he missed her like the devil.

“I take it you’ve had no luck finding the Clay family, otherwise we’d be . . . celebrating?”

Hugh had told Delacorte, in general terms, that his search for Woodley’s daughter was how he came to be in London, his only lead.

“No. There are an unconscionable number of families named Clay in the general London area, and I learned the Clay family in Dover was not the one I’m seeking. I’ve been directed to a possible likely Clay family in Surrey.”

He fell silent again.

Delacorte chewed noisily and drained the last of his tankard.

“I should say we’ve been lucky at The Grand Palace on the Thames, surrounded by so many pretty women, the likes of Brownie and Goldie and our handsome Mrs. Pariseau,” Delacorte said.

Brownie and Goldie were the pet names Delacorte had given the brunette Delilah and blonde Angelique, quite unbeknownst to them.

“Indeed.”

“All that said,” Delacorte told him, “it looks like you could use a woman. Or be well used by one,” Delacorte added cheerily.

Hugh stared at him. “The devil are you running on about?”

“You’ve been a moody cuss all night.”

“A ‘moody cuss’?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or bang his tankard down with a scowl. Which he supposed would have proved Delacorte’s point.

“And you’re usually an even-tempered fellow.”

“Which, believe me, is no mean feat around you.”

“Ha,” Delacorte said, and popped a chestnut into his mouth and chewed.

“Or . . .” Delacorte mused. He finished chewing before he went on. “Perhaps you’re moody because you’re already being well used by a woman.”

“Or perhaps we don’t need to talk about women,” Hugh said very evenly.

Delacorte’s brows went up. “I see. Fair enough.” Delacorte glanced down, then shook out the bit of paper in which the roasted chestnuts he’d purchased were wrapped. He read silently for a moment.

“Well, would you look at this.”

He read aloud:

The yearly Landover Ball is well-nigh upon us and all the ladies of the ton are atwitter with speculation about what the lovely Lady Lillias Vaughn will wear. If history is any indication, we can anticipate an enchantress set loose in a ballroom specifically to bewitch all the bloods. The ones not in love with her are bound to be by the time the night is over, and hothouses all over England will be denuded of flowers as heirs spend their inheritance to fill her foyer with flowers. Oh, whom, whom will she choose in the end?

Young Giles, Lord Bankham, lately in town from Heatherfield, was out riding in The Row today looking like a modern Adonis on his new gray hack. Rumor has it that a certain young and fetching Lady Harriette will be making her debut at the Landover Ball, and perhaps soon after a debut as a wife of an heir. Care to speculate which one?

“Good God,” Hugh croaked. Appalled.

“Do you hear that, Cassidy? ‘Denuded.’ ‘Enchantress.’ ‘Heirs.’” He said this grimly, as though it were instead a list of criminals scheduled to be hung. “Told you she was like one of them goddesses.”

A dozen disparate thoughts and impressions beset Hugh: those paragraphs were hilariously florid, and deserved to be roundly mocked at once, and yet all of his words seems to be lodged in a lumpen mass in his throat; the ridiculous cost of hothouse roses; the utter absurdity that she occupied a world in which a paragraph featuring the words “enchantress” and “bewitched” would be written and published about her; the probable bald truth of the “enchantress” bit; the fact that every bit of it, from the hyperbole to the ball, was foreign and possibly antithetical to his experience and everything he believed in; her blush as she’d watched him remove her gloves. The word “raccoon.”

The quick little despairing hand over her eyes today as she stared at her blank sketchbook, as though he’d pressed a wound with his question.

Her eyes fixed on him as if she was drinking in his description of his land in the Hudson River Valley.

The fact that he’d tried to avoid her and she had somehow found him here in this dark pub, anyway.

He was motionless.

“I can tell from your expression that she’s gotten under your skin, too, Cassidy.” Delacorte held up his hand for another round, and the pretty waitress beamed at them and raced over in the hopes that the big blue-eyed man would finally look her full in the face.

Hugh’s jaw set. She was a bored debutante confined in a boarding house near the docks, and naturally she’d found a diversion in him, and he was here because Woodley had entrusted him to bring his daughter home.

He would leave for Surrey the minute he’d finished building the stage.

“I hope The Grand Palace on the Thames doesn’t become one of those duke and earl places,” Delacorte added.

“Clearly those are the worst places,” Hugh said casually. He startled Delacorte by scraping his chair roughly back, standing abruptly, and striding over to hurl that gossipy scrap of newspaper on the fire.

“I’ll have another of the dark, darling,” he told the waitress when he returned. And with a smile he looked her full in the face.

“That’s the way it was done at the Stevens Hotel. I would do errands for the guests, like.”

The maids were still going about the business of lovingly waking up The Grand Palace on the Thames with fires and scones and coffee when Mr. James Barton, the latest candidate for footman, arrived, and now Delilah and Angelique sat in the kitchen across from him at the kitchen table, while behind them Helga pummeled bread dough and eavesdropped.

It was unlikely that odes would be written to Mr. Barton’s thighs, but he was tall and appeared sturdy and clean. He’d demonstrated manners and a decent command of the English language, and claimed to possess experience and letters of reference from the Stevens Hotel. If they were not bowled over by his charm they could not find fault with his manners.

“Why are you seeking a new position, Mr. Barton?” Delilah asked.

“I thought a smaller establishment might be a bit cozier, you see, and the guests more exclusive.”

This was meant to flatter them and it did, though they weren’t credulous. The word “exclusive” whistled a bit through the little gap between his front teeth. The fact that he was able to produce a word with three syllables nearly had Delilah and Angelique reaching for each other’s hands to squeeze in hopeful disbelief.

“And Mr. Barton, are you able to read?” Delilah thought it best to make sure. Their footman would need to carry and deliver messages on occasion and find the directions of vendors.

“I can, indeed. If you would like to see my references . . .”

He reached into his coat and pushed across two letters. Delilah and Angelique each took custody of one and read them quickly. Written on stationery from the Stevens Hotel, they did not immediately appear to be forgeries. Though one never knew. They would of course investigate.

“Well, thank you for coming this morning, Mr. Barton. We’ll write to you at your direction once we’ve reviewed your references.”

They stood up to allow him to move around the table. And as he passed them he dragged his hand across Angelique’s hindquarters so deliberately one would think he’d gotten up so early to do precisely that.

Helga growled and hoisted her rolling pin like a cricket bat, and James Barton felt the wind of her swing in his flying coat tails as he fled at a run, Helga on his heels.

Angelique and Delilah were so surprised they couldn’t say a word.

They heard the front door slam, and the thunder of Helga’s footsteps heading back up the stairs. She was shaking her head.

“They do not think with their brains,” is all she said.

Not one them was a fragile flower or prone to hysterics. It was hardly the worst thing to happen to any of them.

But honestly.

“What a pity. At least he seems fit,” Angelique said finally.

They all laughed, darkly.

“We’re lucky Lucien wasn’t here, or there would be bloodshed,” she added, more morosely.

Lucien—Lord Bolt—and Captain Hardy were out at the ship. And they both knew that The Grand Palace on the Thames was the province of their wives. They did not involve themselves with the running of it unless specifically requested. But there had indeed been a few disconcerting occasions when a man on premises would have been useful for something other than heavy lifting or reaching the higher sconces. Ironically, this was one of the problems a footman was supposed to solve.

Captain Hardy had made certain everyone in the house knew how to shoot. Even Dot. But only Delilah and Angelique knew about the loaded pistol in the buttery. The “just in case” pistol.

“At least they’re weeding themselves out,” Delilah said. “Imagine if we’d hired him and he did that to any of the girls on staff.”

They shuddered.

Helga sighed heartily and returned to pummeling the bread while Delilah and Angelique settled back in at the table, chins in hands.

“Are you beginning to despair, Delilah?”

“Of course not,” Delilah said firmly. Although she’d hesitated just a little before she’d said that. “Perhaps we ought to advertise in the newspaper.”

“Perhaps,” she said, with less conviction. They hadn’t yet, as it was costly to advertise. “Speaking of the newspaper, where is Dot? She’s normally in with it by now.”

Dot liked to read the gossip aloud to everyone in the kitchen before breakfast. Newspapers being dear, it was then usually passed about and read by everyone who lived under the roof of The Grand Palace on the Thames until it was in tatters.

As if summoned, Dot drifted into the kitchen just then. Her eyes, normally wide and round, seemed haunted.

They glanced down. Her hands were empty.

“Dot, is aught amiss?” Angelique said.

Dot turned her alarmed expression toward her.

“Didn’t you . . . go to fetch the newspaper, Dot?” Delilah asked gently.

“I did . . .” she began. Then she sighed and folded her hands like a penitent. “Well, I suppose I will just tell you. Today I read the gossip straight off! I couldn’t wait. You know I like to. I’m so sorry. I know I normally read it to everyone in the kitchen.”

She said this as though gossip was something that, once consumed, was then digested like a lemon seed cake, and could not be re-shared.

“Yes. Of course, understandable. No harm done.”

Dot took a breath. “There was a bit about Big Bartholomew Bellamy’s last words before he went to the gallows. ‘I will see this through!’ My heavens, so thrilling. So I read that. But then I read a lovely bit about Lady Lillias and how she was an . . . enchant . . . enchanter? Enchantress. And about Lord Bankham, of Heatherfield, who was an Adonis, and isn’t he a friend of their family’s? I thought she might like to read it, as she seems to be a bit out of sorts and I thought the pretty words might cheer her a little.”

Dot was kind. And she noticed a good deal more than most people suspected.

“So I brought it up to her and showed her and she was ever so kind. I stood by while she read it and . . .” She gulped. “She went white as a ghost! Oh my, she went so still! I thought it might be apoplexy. Cor, it gave me quite a fright.” She clapped her hand over her heart.

Delilah and Angelique exchanged baffled glances.

“And then Lady Lillias said”—and Dot adopted, amusingly, Lillias’s gilt-edged, dulcet aristocratic tones—“‘oh, dear, my hand slipped’—and she dropped the whole newspaper right into her fire. It was ashes in seconds.”

Angelique and Delilah absorbed this in amazement.

Something was indeed troubling the girl. What on earth could it be?

“I’m so sorry.” Dot raised her hands to her cheeks. “I didn’t know how she felt about Big Bartholomew.”

Angelique and Delilah had no idea what to think. “You were trying to do a kind thing, Dot, and you’re to be commended. Thank you,” Delilah said. “We’ll just have to fetch another newspaper. You might be able to find six pence in the epithet jar.”

“Thank you!” Dot was relieved.

She dutifully went off to have a look.

“Six pence up in flames, just like that,” Delilah mused. “What is troubling the girl?” She meant Lady Lillias.

“I suspect we’ll learn eventually. Things have a way of coming to light here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. For now, we’ll just add it to their bill,” Angelique said serenely.