diario di una donna pericolosa

I wish that Dracaena weren’t coming today to Londinium. All the reports from all our diviners--dreams, castings, visions--indicate that there will be multiple attempts on the lives of sacred royalty this week, both in the north and in the south. Some of the despatch that’s crossed my desk this morning has been rather panicked, and it isn’t even ten yet. There is also a lot of stuff coming in about wings and ravens that has Edward feeling rather disturbed. He says there was a king here in the north, once, who is still remembered, and that if that spirit returns in some way, it could be very helpful in the war effort…but ultimately dangerous, because it answers to no-one and nothing outside of itself.

It’s too late to cancel the meeting today, but we can certainly make sure to ward the building well. Hopefully there will be little trouble and she will be able to get home before dusk. I look forward to the day I have this engine properly programmed to help me take note of commonalities in dreams, omens and readings. There are always so many signs before things happen, but we’re so disorganised we never know ‘til afterward. It shouldn’t be like this.

There’s nothing quite like being met at your own front door (just as you’re about to be carried upstairs to bed) after a delightful evening at the theatre. With the news that the Royal Academy groundskeeper and head of housekeeping are traitors and are in custody and would the man who’s about to carry you up the stairs please come and interrogate them? I suppose it would have been worse if they’d not been in custody.

But now after all that sleep we’ve not had, I have to go down to Trevena and marry people this afternoon. And I even want to marry Marco and Melina.

I do hope Edward can make it down.

I used to look at the portraits of myself at 14 and 15 and think what a fool I was. That little girl knew more than I gave her credit for. At sixty and sixty-one we’re almost as smart as we were at fourteen and sixteen. I promised myself I wasn’t going to show off the ring (it would be gauche; he’s still married) but if I don’t keep staring at it people are going to keep asking me.

Bee wants to come over this week and have a chat. I think what she really wants is pear tarts and advice. But I can’t tell her how to turn one man into another. Not only is she not cut out to be a mistress, she’s got a Wilkes on her hands, and they’re all, every one of them, rakes. The Ozzer (I have no earthly idea why everyone calls him that, but everyone does!) used to make the most delicate, refined, absolutely unmistakeable passes at me before he realised that it annoyed Edward past sensibility, and I’ve been sending girls to his house for the last five years. The only difference between him and his nephew is that his nephew is pretty...and willing to spend the time and energy necessary to seduce the women he wants, instead of simply buying their time. In neither case is any sort of deep relationship actually required or even desired.

Absolution Potter. Be glad Alexandra does not live with me any more. Because if she did, I would take her to your grave today, and I would have from your shade, just a little of what you took from me.

I am almost afraid to let myself believe that this is really happening. That I will have my god-daughter and my dear friend back (and even if Ercole really is mad, I am sure there are people we know who can set him to rights), that I will see Carmela dead or broken, before this time tomorrow night.

And as for Edward, I don’t think that I have ever loved him more.

Back to the charts...and I should really think upon what to tell Nico, because once we have Ercole back, I think we should wake up Dracaena. If possible. She’ll want to hear it directly from us.

This is really all my fault. It’s good of him to say it isn’t, but if I hadn’t had Fiammetta, this wouldn’t have happened. Of course, he is quite right to say that he could have prevented that himself, and neither one of us can possibly regret her existence, so I suppose that it will be all right in time.

Alexandra says she’s moving out. He says he’s the one who ought to be taking rooms somewhere else, because of his other children, but we both know he probably won’t, unless Priscilla takes him to court, and I don’t think she will. There isn’t a contract between them. I was shocked when he told me. Did I know that before? I can’t recall. He has a contract with me—not a marriage contract, of course—but not with her. Because she didn’t want it. Apparently she and her sister are morally opposed to them. Great Isis, why? I don’t understand her. If I live a thousand years I never will.

He doesn’t think she’ll take him back. I think that’s guilt speaking, and I’m fairly sure she will, but I’m not supposed to have an opinion about it, so I don’t. The question is whether or not he’ll go, and what terms she will offer. I have no idea about that. And I’m too tired to care!