“Because your sister is married to my cousin. Because we collide all the time as a result. And because I’ve never been entirely sure exactly what we’ve been at war over. Have you?” He had her there. Aside from the unequivocal fact that he—and his dratted shoulders and twinkling green eyes—unsettled her for some reason. “Besides, it occurs to me that all the animosity we seem to harbor for each other is from the past, and a version of the past that wasn’t entirely accurate back then, yet it still taints the now even though it shouldn’t.” There was no hint of his usual mockery as he held out his hand. “Truce?”
She stared at the offending limb for several seconds before she shook it, then immediately regretted it because his touch sent her pulse berserk. “Truce.”
They yanked their hands away simultaneously as if they had both been bitten. His to hide behind his back and hers to fiddle in discomfort in full view. The flesh on her fingers felt suddenly more alive than it ever had before.
“On the tail of that truce, I should also like to apologize for any unintentional offense I caused you the other day. It wasn’t the state of the orphanage that horrified me, Miss Venus—” As always and despite their new peace treaty, the way he insisted on using her full name made her bristle. “—so much as the fact that we have known each other for four years and yet, to my eternal shame, I had no clue where it was. It was remiss of me not to have asked before, or to have shown much interest in your worthy endeavors, when it is a cause close to your heart and the necessary work that you do there is beyond admirable.”
Vee blinked, waiting for the veiled insult, and when none came blinked some more. “Thank you for clarifying.”
He shrugged, looking more boyish and handsome and annoyinglysincere. “I would have clarified at the time, only you stomped off before I could.” To her shame, she had stomped. He had a knack for making her stomp. “So how many little rascals do you have in that place?”
“Forty.” She remembered the reverend’s pickpocket. “Forty-one to be precise, as of last week. Boys and girls who run the gamut in ages from five to twelve years.”
He whistled his surprise. “That’s a lot. More than enough to keep you busy then. All characters, I’m guessing, because you have to grow a big one to survive on the streets alone.” An insightful comment Vee would have questioned had Lord Dorchester not clicked his fingers by her ear.
“What is the name of the new king of France, Miss Vee? The one who replaced Charles the Tenth?” He clicked his fingers again and she suppressed the urge to frown at his rude summons, noticing that Galahad didn’t. His expression at the curt interruption was positively thunderous.
“Er… Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orléans, I believe.”
“Yes indeed.” Lord Dorchester didn’t even bother thanking her as he continued his lecture. “Charles was ultimately usurped by the court of public opinion in much the same way as our despotic King Richard the Third—because his shoddy behavior had lost the goodwill of his subjects.”
“Or so Shakespeare would have us believe.” That surprising comment came from a still-frowning Galahad. “And ol’ Henry had to find a way to justify him killing the king and stealing the crown from the head it rightfully belonged on.”
“Shakespeare was a chronicler ofourpast, Mr. Sinclair.” Lord Dorchester said this in the most patronizing fashion, as if speaking to a child who couldn’t possibly understand it. “He had no reason to warp the facts of what happened more than a hundred years before he wrote about it.”
“Didn’t he?” Galahad’s dark-gold brows kissed in consternation. “He wrote plays for the elite, didn’t he? Relied on the patronage of thearistocracy to pay his bills and knew if he didn’t write something pleasin’ for ol’ Henry’s granddaughter, the sittin’ queen, he’d likely have his head separated from his shoulders with a blunt blade.”
For some reason he was drawling certain words to sound more of a stranger to these shores than not, which was a bold move when discussing the intricacies of English history with a peer of the realm whose family was intrinsically part of it. “That strikes me as incentive enough to do some tweakin’.” His mischievous green gaze locked with hers and managed to send a ripple of awareness everywhere. “What say you, Miss Venus?” He was daring her to disagree with Dorchester.
“Well, I think…” She thought Galahad had made a valid, if surprising, point and one she completely concurred with, but for a moment she considered lying to please her lord. But as that was disingenuous and because Lord Dorchester was always saying that debate was healthy, she told the truth. “Shakespeare isn’t the most reliable source to glean accurate historical facts from. I’ve always taken his royal plays as fiction more to entertain than to educate, as that would have been their intended purpose back in his day and…” As Lord Dorchester’s less vibrant green eyes were shooting her daggers, she smiled as her voice trailed off. “Well, frankly, you know I have always preferred his comedies.”
“Which have no educational value whatsoever.” Dorchester rewarded her traitorous opinion by turning his back to continue his discussion about the new French king as if she hadn’t spoken at all, effectively excluding her and Galahad from the rest of the conversation.
“I prefer the comedies, too.” It was Galahad who came to her rescue by pretending the slight hadn’t happened. “Give me a Falstaff over a Hamlet any day of the week.”
“I thought you’d never heard of Shakespeare.”
Galahad shrugged, a contrite smile playing with the corners of his mouth. “Maybe one or two of his plays made it all the way to the savage, uncivilized shores of New York. And maybe I went to see a couple—including that one that you put so much stock in that you re-read itevery year. I rooted for Beatrice and Benedick throughout, by the way. I liked her grit and his wit.”
“That does surprise me.” Or more, he had. “I can only assume you feigned ignorance to irritate me.”
“Guilty as charged.” His smile this time was disarming. “I might have read them all.”
“All?” Something strange happened in the vicinity of her heart. Something strange and most disconcerting. She decided there and then that she much preferred Galahad when she had thought he couldn’t read, because that had made him easier to dislike.
He nodded. “Even all one hundred and fifty-four of hisfamed sonnets.” He shrugged unrepentant, grinning, displaying a perfectly straight set of pearly white teeth. “Although I have to admit I do find some of his comedies a bit far-fetched. All those women posing as men and the men not noticing makes me wonder what those Tudor women looked like.” He pulled a face. “They must have been veryhomelyladies indeed.”
“Homely?” By the amusement dancing in his eyes that word must mean something quite different to him than it did to her.
“It means ugly in my version of your language, Miss Venus.” He nudged her playfully with his elbow as he winked, which was rather… charming. “More attractive on the inside than on the out.”
“Ah… well…” What a gentle way of insulting someone. “I suppose those plays made more sense in Shakespeare’s time because all the female parts were played by males. Women weren’t allowed to tread the boards until the end of the next century.”
“I did not know that.” He chuckled at the ridiculousness of it. A deep, silky sound that did odd things to her insides. “Another one of life’s great mysteries solved. Though now you mention it, it suddenly all makes such perfect sense I should have figured it out before. No wonder those men never noticed all those incognito ladies were ladies—when clearly they all wore beards.”
She would have told him more about how Shakespeare put his playson, but the first bars of the waltz had begun so Galahad had stepped aside. He swept his arm in Dorchester’s direction. “They are playing your tune.”
“Apparently so.” When her lord failed to turn around to claim her, she tapped him on the shoulder. “I believe this dance is yours, my lord.”
