Page 50 of Miss Dignified
So this is what the fuss is all about?did not seem adequate, and yet, Lydia felt as if the greatest secret in all of creation—the secret of her own body’s capacity for pleasure—had just been put into her keeping.
“Sleep.” Dylan kissed her crown and drew the covers up over her. “For now, sleep.”
A stronger woman might have extricated herself from that tender embrace, might have given up the protection and solace it offered. Lydia had no strength. She had no will. She had only a nameless fullness of the heart and the certain knowledge that she loved Dylan Powell.
Orion Goddard would have spent his evening at the Coventry, given a choice. He enjoyed the role of host, or ringmaster, to use the more apt term. Ann always had the kitchen firmly under control, the head dealer kept matters on the gaming floor in hand, and Sycamore Dorning—as owner and dispenser of bon mots, good cheer, and naughty asides—dropped around just often enough to keep both staff and patrons interested in his comings and goings.
Rye’s job was a lot of bookkeeping and also spotting problems before they blossomed into issues. A dowager playing a bit too deeply for her means, a widow quietly pilfering from the buffet, a young sprig courting disaster by virtue of drunken accusations.
The whole business put him in mind of his army days, dealing with bored recruits, opinionated mules, and squabbling generals. Rye loved the challenge and variety, but he loved his family as well, and thus when Ann told him to go share a few hands of cards with Alasdhair MacKay and Sycamore Dorning at the Aurora, Rye obliged her.
The problem threatening to become an issue at the card table was their fourth—Monsieur Xavier Fournier. He was charming, easy to look at in a substantial, Gallic, dark-eyed way, and he was winning. Fournier was also a successful wine merchant and thus a competitor of sorts for Rye’s champagne vineyards.
“You fellows are tired,” Fournier said, raking in another pot. “No challenge. This is the problem with happily married men. No focus, or no focus on anything but domestic pleasures. I will console myself with your coin, and you will go home and console yourselves with a much more substantial source of comfort.”
Fournier was at least half French, though Rye hadn’t been able to learn much more about his antecedents. Given that England and France had been at war for most of twenty years, personal histories could require discretion, as Rye himself well knew.
“Maybe,” MacKay said, accepting the deck from Fournier, “if you spent less time blethering and more time doing the pretty, some female would take pity on you too. Why isn’t there a MadameFournier? You aren’t destitute, and you’re only half ugly.”
“I am all that is charming, unlike you heathen Highlanders, but I am also a man of discerning tastes when it comes to the ladies. In my gentlemanly acquaintances, I am not as particular, witness present company.”
“You have brothers,” Dorning said. “That ability to annoy with every pronouncement is one honed by a surfeit of male siblings.”
“A French auntie is the equal of five English brothers in terms of polishing a man’s humility, Monsieur Dorning, but I humbly suggest the lot of you are worried about your Welsh cousin.” Fournier picked up his cards and began calmly arranging them.
“Explain yourself.” MacKay flicked the next card at Fournier with particular force. Alasdhair was the sweetest of men, but he had a convincing growl and a positively eloquent pair of fists.
“Please do elaborate,” Rye added. “We take the welfare of family members seriously.”
Fournier sent him an ironic smile. “One hears this, and considering that Monsieur Dorning has more family than Mad George has German cousins, one makes allowances.”
They permitted Fournier a few more moments of posturing—he was French, after all—before Dorning rose to bring the decanter to the table.
He set the decanter on the table with athunk. “If you do not, in the next two minutes, unburden yourself of whatever is troubling you, there won’t be enough of you left for your French aunties to scold.”
Fournier topped up his glass of brandy and passed the decanter to MacKay, who declined and then passed the decanter to Rye.
“We are worried about Powell,” Rye said. “Ourladiesare worried about Powell, and thus you will oblige us with whatever triviality you think you know.”
“Powell goes everywhere safely,” Fournier said. “He has the freedom of the city—the whole city, not simply the mercantile district—in a way no lord mayor ever will.”
“Because,” Dorning said, “he’s always within shouting distance of some old soldier or former regimental laundress. They keep an eye on him.”
Fournier nodded. “As do their brothers, grannies, and pet hounds. He passes as quietly as the breeze, walking the streets by the hour, but they watch out for him. He has been breezing about the slums of late, looking for one William Brook.”
How Fournier knew this was probably a matter of his own network of former soldiers, former prisoners of war, and aunties of the French variety. The émigré community was close-knit and, at the same time, tightly integrated with London’s English population at all levels of society. Then too, Fournier sold a more pedestrian champagne than Rye did, as well as some exquisite clarets.
The Frenchman was thus connected to inns, taverns, and shops Rye would never frequent.
“Brook was one of Powell’s direct reports,” MacKay said. “The fellow doesn’t hear well and has an injured hand. Powell would worry if Brook went missing.”
“He is not missing.” Fournier pretended to study his cards. “He is hiding, and one suspects that if Captain Powell continues his perambulations, even his honor guard might not be able to protect him.”
Dorning poured himself half a finger of brandy. “And you couldn’t simply have a word with Goddard about this? You had to wait until we needed a fourth so you could drink my brandy and lighten our pockets?”
“Do forgive me,” Fournier said. “I am still trying to learn the ways of an English gentleman. I tried riding in the park this morning at the ungodly and frigid hour after dawn, but you sluggards refused to oblige me with your presence. I tried fencing at Angelo’s for half the afternoon, but still no luck. I am reduced to accepting Goddard’s invitation to make up a fourth.”
He put down his cards and finished his drink. “After politely watching you three consult the clock every quarter hour and handle your cards with all the finesse of eight-year-olds, I am reduced to playing the role of your French auntie. Powell needs assistance. He is a good fellow. He helps the occasional former prisoner when he can, and nobody dares criticize him for aiding a Frenchman, because he is Captain Powell. He needs your aid now. I have said what I came to say. I bid youbonsoir, and thank you for an amusing evening. My regards to your ladies, who are doubtless missing the company of such estimable gallants.”
