my lord, as I understand the economic forces better than most.”
“That may be, but you don’t understand the political landscape, Brendan. You don’t understand how the king holds power. I do. Stay out of it.”
He moved as if he meant to walk away. Marek spoke before he could. “What ails him?”
Dromio’s brows dipped lower. He didn’t like being questioned.
“You said he was ill,” Marek said.
“How can I know? If you ask me, he drinks too much.”
That was a lie. The king did not drink to excess—Marek would stake his reputation on it. He’d never heard it said, and he’d not observed it in these last few weeks. If anything, the king seemed very careful of drinking at all. Like father, like son, he thought idly.
“He ought to have a physician brought in to have a look, but he refuses,” Dromio added.
“Refuses?” Why would the king refuse the advice of a physician? If he was ill in a foreign land, he’d want to be made better. He’d want a medical opinion...unless he didn’t trust either the physician or the person bringing the physician to him.
“You don’t understand that His Majesty is a—”
“Beg your pardon, sirs.”
A footman stood off to the right of Marek, holding a silver tray with a calling card on it.
“What now?” Dromio said, annoyed. He gestured at Marek to take the card.
Mrs. Hollis Honeycutt, Publisher
Honeycutt’s Gazette of Fashion and
Domesticity for Ladies
Marek felt the color drain from his face.
“Who is it?” Dromio asked impatiently.
“No one. Someone from one of the local papers,” Marek said, and shoved the card into his pocket.
“Take care of it,” Dromio said with a flick of his wrist. He glanced irritably at the footman, who was still standing there. “What do you want?”
“The lady is waiting,” the footman said.
“The lady,” Dromio repeated.
“Where?” Marek asked.
“Just outside, sir,” the footman said.
“Je, thank you.”
“The lady,” Dromio drawled, and a salacious smile lit his face as the footman retreated. He waggled his eyebrows in Marek’s direction. “You surprise me, Brendan,” he said. “I’d begun to think you were a eunuch.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Go on, then. Far be it from me to stand in the way of a man’s pleasure. But don’t let anyone see you. You shouldn’t bring your paramour here.”
The color flooded back into Marek’s face. Dromio was stupid and vulgar, two things he despised in a man. “She is not—”
It didn’t matter what he said—Dromio was already walking away. Marek bit back a sigh of exasperation and turned toward the entrance of the hotel.
Mrs. Honeycutt was standing on the walk with a female companion, and the two of them looked terribly out of place among all the gentlemen coming and going from the hotel. She was bundled up in a heavy wool cloak, a scarf around her neck and a bonnet firmly on her head. But he could see that her cheeks and the tip of her nose were pink with cold. And as he walked toward them, he could see the happy smile that bloomed on her face. Remarkably, Marek could feel that light power through him.
“Mr. Brendan!”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Honeycutt.”
She beamed at him for a moment, then remembered her companion. “May I introduce my friend, Miss Poppy Dumont?”
Miss Poppy Dumont, a thin woman with auburn hair and a hat worn slightly askew, was smiling with great anticipation, almost as if she expected him to do something remarkable, like turn a cartwheel. She dipped a curtsy.
“Miss Dumont.”
Miss Dumont unabashedly looked him up and down. “How do you do, Mr. Brendan?”
An enthusiastic greeting, he noted. “I am well, thank you. Mrs. Honeycutt, is something wrong?”
“Not at all!” she said cheerfully. “Things are positively right, isn’t that so, Poppy?”
“Right as they can be, I’d wager!”
“I’ve come because I have something for you,” Mrs. Honeycutt said. She withdrew her hand from a fur muff. She was clutching an envelope, and by the bend of it, she must have been clutching it for a time. He could see his name plainly written across the front of it.
“What is this?”
She laughed. “Read it!” She handed it to him.
Marek opened the envelope and withdrew a single card of heavy stock. It was an invitation to a gathering at the home of the Earl of Iddesleigh. The invitation proclaimed there would be a tree to be trimmed in the spirit of Christmas, and Christmas pudding would be served. Lord, she’d done it. He looked up; she beamed at him. “You can come, can’t you?”
Could he? “What of Lord Dromio?”
“Ah. The problem, you see,