Page 7 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
“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.”
Chapter three
Tristan braced his forearms upon the rail of HMS Resolute. Brighton rose beyond the harbor in white terraces, bright fronts, and sloping roofs, all of it washed in morning glare. Windows flashed in the sun. Chimneys smoked. Carriages lumbered along the front. Somewhere among those pale houses, behind some blasted curtain or painted door, the Moon Goddess existed away from him.
He closed his fist around her bracelet. The stones bit lightly into his palm. He turned his hand and watched them wink between his fingers.
At sea, a man could always find a prize. A sail appeared on the horizon, a course was calculated, canvas was crowded, guns were run out, and sooner or later it revealed itself—merchantman, frigate, privateer, enemy, neutral, worth pursuit or not worth the powder. Meanwhile, society scattered a woman among terraces, chaperones, calling cards, and rooms where everyone smiled while concealing something.
He did not even know her name.
The ignorance sat under his ribs like a hook. His palm flexed once, remembering the narrow give of her waist, and his mouth went dry with the memory of her parted lips. He should have pressed closer when she swayed. He should have kissed her when her mouth opened for him. It was not by hesitating that he had boarded and taken over fifty prizes in a year.
